Atmospheric Fantasy

 The Cliff Walker          I often wonder what it is that 'makes' a suicide spot. Is it just a semi-random accumulation of infamy around some place, each act of self-annihilation leading inexorably to another, or is there something more inherent, some genius loci that draws people to certain landmarks, something beyond the simple availability of means? There are surely many woods where hanging corpses are almost never found, many high places from which people rarely hurl themselves. Perhaps there is something in the air, or the arrangement of scenery that calls to the despairing. Certainly, it seems that some locations offer a grander aesthetic experience that appeals to a certain sort of suicide. Hundreds more die annually on the London Underground than ever plummet off of Beachy Head, but where is the romance of being smeared under the 19:09 to Upminster?            Yet practicality is im...

Happier Times I cannot possibly recall how many times I have done my little Ritual. I don’t know if I discovered it, or if it was taught to me, or whether it is simply something I have always held within me from whenever it was that I was born. My past becomes more and more confused the further back I go, a patchwork of dreams and nightmares, shifting uncertainly, and always coming apart at the edges; the mismatched threads of a tapestry constantly unravelling even as I strive to patch and expand it with fresh experience. Only my special Ritual remains constant, a golden seam that anchors whatever it is that is really me into my body. There are few other certain memories before a couple of years ago, when I took up my current occupation. In some ways, hospice work has been good for me. There is something to the routine, the regularity, the consistency of it. I am eating better and more regularly, I sleep well, I look fine, as I’ve always looked. But there is also, quite naturall...

Rubber Relic       Looking in my side mirror, I saw the cop who’d checked my documents and taken down my registration stare down at her clipboard for a moment, then tilt her head, lifting her radio up to her mouth. I caught a glimpse of myself frowning as I turned my attention to parking, turning the van round on the concrete strip so the back doors were as near to the unit’s shutter as I could get them. I noticed my knee was jiggling up and down as I lit a cigarette and picked up my cap from the dashboard, pulling it on in the way I imagined a man with nothing to hide would. The padlock on the shutter had rusted in the eleven years since I'd last shut it; I had meant to come back and change it, but I never got the nerve up. I figured after dad died I could put some money from the house toward getting a company to come down, crate everything up and dump it in another state. At least this way I was saving some cash. The shutter came up, and I stared for a...