The Mushroom Diaries

hug.

  ‘Sammy?’ his Nan calls from upstairs.

  ‘I reckon she’s made us food,‘ he says.

  ‘Go check.’ I smile. ‘It’ll save us from having to go out and get some.’

  He leaves and I wait. The door opens and he re-emerges, two plates, bacon sandwiches. Food. We can’t eat it yet, we know that, but at least it will be there for when we are ready.

  I look at Sam. ‘Love you.’

  He smiles. ‘Love you too.’

  We hug. So far so good, we’ve managed to prevent this from going bad. We sit together, the centre of each other’s world...

  TWELVE

  Twenty-Fifth of November

  Two Thousand and Six

  The video stops short, the tale of the memory brought to a close before its end. The dog-eared notes folded up and put back in the purple box, the box of memories, the box of Sam.

  I lay back against the headboard, my legs crossed, ashtray resting on my leg. I’m smoking, I’m always smoking. A slow suicide. I feel my eyes close, feel the pen leave an incoherent trail of blue across the page. I handwrite everything, memories are too important to be remembered in front of a computer screen.

  So why end it? Why not finish the trip? Why finish now? It hurts, a memory brings with it other memories, forced to remember everything, everything rises to the surface, pain relived. The ring around my neck lays to rest above my heart, it always falls that way. Memories can be glorious things, beautiful, perfect. Most you share but some you keep to yourself, secrets that only you and the other know. I’ve been doing that throughout, small little things, events that shall remain silent, personal, for Sam and I alone. The end of that trip shall be one of those memories.

  When you’ve opened your mind so often, allowed it to journey on the other side of reality’s mirror frequently, it changes. Small things, gaps left visible, a wafer thin barrier is all that separates the sides. I’ve been having nightmares, frequent, every night for the past two weeks. Visions living in my head, memories pulled up from the past and acted out with clarity, past confusions solved painfully in dreams. Reality splitting within my head. By remembering you reopen, old cuts bleed afresh. Welcome to my mind.

  Walking around a town I pass a fat woman. Surely she can’t exist. Stop, turn, no one. People at the corner of my eye. Jump, turn, no one. A flash, a white light. Flick my eyes in the direction. Nothing. A tear, a rip, a hole. If I capture it, reach it, touch it, could I open it wide? Crawl through it like Alice and the looking glass. Fall down a rabbit hole of light into the unknown. Madness is only a state of mind.

  Dent-de-lions burn in the sun, the remains of battles fought and survived all for the entertainment of others. I pick one up and hang it around my neck. Remembrance.

  Time passes. It ticks away, constantly pushing forward. It chooses to do so, there’s no law which says it cannot run in reverse. A notion of past and future gives us meaning, the present grounds us. To live without past is to live without memories. To live without future is to live without dreams. Only the dead have no present to call their own. But what happens when dreams and reality merge? That’s when you know something is wrong, when you can’t differentiate between being awake or asleep. Living in fear that at any minute you’ll wake up and all this has been but a coma dream.

  Acid drops fall from the sky, corroding everything mankind has created. Demons preying on the souls of the already dead. Life in tedium. Faded dreams, jaded, wasted. Everyday I feel like I walk in limbo, disconnected from everyone, from everything. Watching, observing. Everywhere strict guidelines, mechanical people moving at mechanical pace. Creatures on their shoulders, controlling, dictating. Morals beamed like text messages into their minds. Brains connected to the master server, slaves on pain killers. The love of one dismissed for the lust of many.

  All around me are faces. Each face containing seven, one for every deadly sin. Their mouths stitched, their eyes empty sockets, knitting needles through their ears. The wise monkeys of the modern age. Saying nothing, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. Skullfucked and empty. Pawns. Usable, disposable.

  Sit on the floor, the centre of a roundabout. What of me? Where do I fit in? Has my purpose been served and now all I can do is observe or join? Is my card still to be played and this is the wait? My halo a crown of thorns around my head. I believe certain people are chosen. Key pieces in a divine game. Pick up my piece and play it, see how brightly I will burn then watch me crash to the ground once my task is done.

  I’ll wait for you. Stand here on the wall, hanging by a silver thread, supported by a spider’s web. A stray in the gutter, a burden on your soul. Can’t you taste me? My scent lingers like cancer. Cut it out, but still it remains. Re-grows. A scar on your soul. I know your dreams. Do they still feel good? Do they keep you warm? From this wall I feel close to heaven. Mother please tell me I can be an angel, so I can cut off my wings in protest and fall from the heavens, shatter the halo and cross through into a garden of snow. Ebony snow stained by my bitter blood. Red on black. I shall be born again.

  Sam once said he liked my writing because it seems to be written from the edge of madness. One man’s madness is another man’s wisdom. One man’s dreams another man’s reality. Messages written in words, hidden deep within imagery. Pull the crack wider. If you exist on the other side, you don’t come back cleaner.

  THIRTEEN

  Fifth of September

  Two Thousand and Five

  ‘I’m going.’ My words cut across the room, slicing through the awkwardness. Two figures sat at opposite sides, a silence within them all day.

  ‘What? Now?’

  ‘Yeah, no point in delaying the inevitable is there?’ I raise slowly from the bed, straightening my clothes as I stand. I’m delaying, I know I am. I don’t want to go but there’s no choice in the matter. ‘So this is goodbye then.’

  Sam lunges towards me, leaping from his chair and rushing forward. I hold out my arms, my palms holding his shoulders, keeping him away. He doesn’t give up, forcing his way through the barrier his arms meet their target, wrapping themselves around me tightly, his head resting on my shoulder. He’s crying, the first time I’ve seen him cry since all this happened. There’s no tears in my eyes, I’ve shed them openly already.

  So it ends like this, a one sided hug. I look forward at the wall, face deadpan, arms by my side. Sam’s body warm against me. ‘I’m going,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll walk you to the station, okay?’ His voice muffled by my shoulder.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dom, please. Please let me.’

  ‘No.’ It hurts every time that word leaves my lips.

  ‘Please.’ His voice drenched in tears.

  My arms reach up, pushing him away, forcing him to give up on his tight grip. So this is how it feels to rip out your heart. To see it held at arm’s length before it is thrown away. ‘I don’t want you to go with me.’

  His eyes misted, cheeks wet. ‘Okay.’

  My throat’s dry, all my effort being used to hold back the waters of emotion. I reach for my bag and swing it onto my shoulder. I stand still for a moment. It’s time to move on, there’s nothing left to do. ‘Take care of yourself. Don’t do anything stupid.’ He nods, I continue, ‘And, I don’t care what you feel or think about it but I still love you.’ My voice almost breaks, almost collapses at the mention of those words. Love. If only he knew how much that word means to me, maybe he does, maybe my saying it one last time will cut him deeply, it’s something I’ll never know. Love. What I feel is so much more than a four lettered word, it’s true love, a connection, a meeting of souls once parted then joined and now so cruelly torn apart again. How can you feel this way for anyone else?

  ‘I love you too,’ his reply.

  I snort, it wasn’t the reaction I’d planned but it came out without thought.

  ‘Dom, don’t. I really d
o.’

  I know he means it. Maybe this is the hardest thing he has done, maybe it’s tearing him apart as much as me, maybe they’re just words. I turn to the door. ‘Right, I’m going.’

  His Nan comes to see me off, delivering me with a hug, making me say those words which I know are to be lies.

  ‘Will we see you again?’ she says.

  ‘I should think so,’ I reply. Maybe it’s my brain offering a glimmer of hope to the situation, maybe it will all blow over. There is finality in the air, I know I shall be walking from this house one final time.

  Alone I descend the steps, don’t look back, never look back. Turn the corner and disappear from the building that has housed so many happy memories for me, for us. Don’t stop moving, keep on walking, let the tears cloud your eyes.

  So it ends like this. The inconceivable happening, the unhappy ending, the volume of life closing one book and opening afresh on another. Words echo through my ears, memories play before my eyes. Replay the bad memories one last time. Get them out of the system before they devour those which are so cherished.

  A scene replayed as it was filmed, through tear stained eyes. Sam and his Nan. Words witnessed that cut me deeply. ‘How could you do this to him?’ she asks.

  ‘Well, I’ve had my year of fun, thank you and goodbye,’ his reply. A throw away comment which feels like a thousand knife blades entering my body, and yet, despite that,