I know you follow me; I can feel it.

You chase me down sharp-edged, shiny chutes with crazy bends like some Helter Skelter Hell and I just can’t seem to shake you off, no matter what I do – you’re like the plague, only not as pleasant. A charcoal mark, branded on my weary heart as crap graffiti and I can’t scrub you off.

You’re indelible and infinite: my dirty, black shadow.

I fear for my restless spirit as well as my uneasy mind; Honestly, I do.

Your not so secret smile and metallic laugh rots my core and leaves me eternally blemished; like the unloved cars that swing from the salt-rusted carcass of the abandoned carousel…this Fairground Attraction  has ridden its very last ride, I swear, but still you won’t stop the song.

That grating, Sunday afternoon plink-plonk that scrapes its nails down my ever-blackening board of a veil; trying to pierce the gossamer shield that pointlessly guards my earholes: now too fragile to prevent irrevocable harm. So I hear you, still.

Again.

Relentless.

Your toxic lies hiss and slither into the hole where my soul used to be; this crimson tide unstoppable  – like your poisoned love – a venomous snake dripping cancer steadily, intraveneously through my veins so that it clings on to my cells. Coating them, sealing them; smothering them with your fetid love, with your sinister tides and black hearts.

I was hungry and you fed me; now I am full up. And I’m going under – I truly don’t care anymore.

Wait: what fresh, slimy hell is this?

The silk-thin skin over my eyes is too stretched to shut the white light of life out now, and you fucking knew it would be. You peel my redundant eyelids back with your clawed, sand-infested talons whilst the blue-ink-black waves lap ravenously around my frigid face, beckoning me in to their watery arms; just so I can look up and see my own sorry demise. You wretched excuse for a pirated thing. Can’t stop the night, eh? I think you said that once… Welcome to Wonderland.

Where are you now, Oh gracious maritime saviour of mine?

How can you leave me to flounder like one of your simple-minded salmon or insecure stones; stuck in an oceanic loop – coming back for more punishment no matter how bad it stings and grazes – with every ebb and flow of your stupid surf? Am I to be bounced against your curvy, unyeilding cement buttress like an unread message in a bottle or will you come and save me now, fickle tide? Your waves crash, unabashed, like the steady flow of imposters to our putrid, sea-shelled haven of a shore – singed by the sun and covered in a layer of slime; laid on by the smiling man in the stripy coat. Here comes the summer, son.

But wait. There’s nearly always a deal to be done – isn’t there? Could I not hear Mephistopheles whispering those very words into my water-clogged ears as he rummaged through my pockets for change with one hand and clasped his fingers over my violet lips with his other?

Of course. I forget; they all float down here, don’t they? IN YOUR SHIT.

Okay, look. I saved my pennies, all right?

I squirreled away my hard-earned nickles and dimes for just a rainy day like this –  and boy, is it wet.

Have them. Take my coins; feed them in to your defibrillating slot and come back with my soul. Please.

I know how much it costs…

SJ.

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