Happy Ending?

There was a time where I believed in a happy ending. Once Upon A Time had etched into me that “believing in the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing,” but it didn't do me much good when push came to shove. To me, a happy ending is just feeling surrounded by the things you need and love, whilst your personal suffering comes to an end. Your job feels good, you feel content with being single (or meet the man of your dreams) and everyone you choose to accept into your bubble of friends is decent and cares for you.

In my youth I worked a part-time job waitressing for a small café in the middle of a small town. It was enough to pay for what my student loans didn't cover, but only just. It was there that I met an aspiring actress, Josephine. Always perfectly kept she waited for her callbacks and auditions, coming to the café after each one, always bragging about her latest show or the people she meets. But she was very friendly, and after not very long, me and her became fairly close. She showed me how to party properly – although much to her dismay I would avoid the drugs. I learnt to feel confident in my body, and how to use it to get free drinks, this was her idea of happiness. But it didn't take long before my grades began to slip and I had to stop going out every night. Keeping it to Fridays was my way of keeping both my friendship and my grades going. But this wasn't good enough and Josephine began to have stories that were much more exciting than mine and her life grew and flourished whilst mine just stayed as it was. Working a minimum wage job, being treated like dirt, and being hit on by people old enough to be my dad.

It didn't take long for Josephine to start coming to the café with a new friend, young and beautiful – but not anything close to Josephine, and always high. This was when the peer pressure of a Friday night became too much for me and I had to either accept the drugs being thrown at me from every direction, or stop going out completely. The last time I saw Josephine was when she and a group of stragglers entered the café talking about some job in Hollywood with the big actors.

For the rest of my time at university I avoided friends and parties in general. Drugs were not my scene and I didn't want to be pushed any further, I wasn't sure what I could take. But I did meet a boy. In lectures he would smile at me and I would smile back, and it was one day in our final year that he approached me. We spoke of music and films and books and childhood TV shows. Knowing the right things to say was always his speciality and I couldn't help but feel like he was the one. We graduated university together and had a few drinks in our flat rather than partying like everyone else. We spoke about our future together and how it would be the most perfect thing we would ever know.

Saving for months, we managed to buy a house before the market crashed and we began to make it our home. It wasn't long after that I discovered I was pregnant and was filled with fear and joy – knowing that our future together would be bringing a new life into this world… He didn't see it that way, and before I could even think we were at the hospital and my baby was being extracted from me. I shouldn't have thought it was okay, he would say. For months I was blamed for the pregnancy until even I began to see it as a disaster – how would we feed it? How could we afford it? Do I even know how to be a mum? Probably not. It was a bad idea and I was to hasty in my decision to have it. Babies were monsters.

After years of mental torment and strain, I came home to find him strewn across a younger version of myself, young beautiful and better than I was. I shouldn't have come home so early. I didn't even get the milk we needed. Forgiving him became a daily occurrence and my mind was slowly fragmenting. My happy ending was fading away and I didn't know how I could fix it. Women flew in and out of our house like we owned a brothel and I couldn't take it anymore. Grabbing my keys I ran out into the driveway and went for a drive. Where I was going I didn't know – the shops, the park, the afterlife – could have been any of those destinations if it weren't for the blonde I clipped on the road. After a quick apology things got very heated very quickly and I suddenly forgot myself in the moment. It turned out that he didn't live far from me and so our accidental meet-ups soon became a regular occurrence. I could tolerate the demons in my home because he would always outshine them. He would cook me dinner and buy me chocolates and things would progress, before I would tidy myself up and face the devil with a smile. Half the time I would go home and there would be women already still in my house, in my bed, derobed and declothed.

The blonde had cooked me a pulled pork dinner on the night it all fell apart. It was the most beautiful dinner and we followed it up with a small amount of wine and brandy afterwards. It was the perfect evening. With a spurt of drunken courage I told the devil what I thought of him, how I hated being around him and how I was in love with someone else. That is was over and he needed to find a lawyer so that we could organise the splitting of our things. He knew about the affair and as it so happens, he also wanted me gone. The blonde was a good mate of his and, due to me cheating, I lost all of the money.

Flash forwards ten years and I am renting a room whilst working as much as I physically can. I'm about to hit the retirement age but have nothing saved and so will either have to work until I die, or live on the streets. I guess this is the happy ending?

Untitled Piece

They say a person is shaped by their past – nurture over nature – the way they are brought up. That a person's actions are only caused by a slow progression of what they learn and witness throughout their childhood and adolescence. But I had a friend once who convinced me that, without a doubt, this theory was wrong.

***

December 21st was the day I met him. I still remember the way the wind whistled in my ear, whispering secrets of cold intent, as I sat alone on the little red swing. The swing had been a part of the woods for many years, since before I could remember, and it was where I went when I needed to think. At the tender age of thirteen, the only fear that had crossed my mind was the idea that my brother would get a bigger, better present this Christmas, that I would be forgotten. Forgotten like the goldfish that never got fed. I was swinging on that little red swing was when I fist saw him. A shadow hiding in the woods. Too afraid of what I would say to him if he asked for a turn, yet I gestured him over. I saw the friend in the stranger. From that very first day I knew there was a connection between us that couldn't be broken.

***

Although my parents were what could be described as “helicopter parents”, at fifteen I still managed to sneak out to see the one person they hated. Black jeans and a red top – finished with a leather jacket was how I left the house when their eyes were averted. Otherwise it was pretty pinks and pastel blues. But he liked my leather jacket, and I liked his. We would drive to all sorts of hidden locations, speeding on every winding road that could be found, drinking whatever we could get our hands on – cider, vodka, sourz. Just for the thrill of it. Under the stars we would have the deepest conversations about life and death and what it would be like to fly. He would talk about his past and I would talk about my future. I wanted to graduate and start my own film, documenting all of the things I did as I travelled the world, meet some guy and be married before I was 30. No kids though. He didn't know what he wanted to do, but he knew what he didn't want to go back to. Home means many things for many people, but for him it meant pain, it meant hell, it was not where his heart was, he wanted to fly away, be the free eagle he knew he could be. We had already planned what we would do, the two bestest friends hitting the world with whatever we could find.

***

Constant rows with my parents about where I had been and where I was going and who I was going to be with and what I was doing was how I lived my seventeenth year. Refusing to let me see him was their way of telling me they thought he was a danger to society, one of those people who should be avoided at all times, but I didn't care. They couldn't stop me. By now they knew about the alcohol and the speeding and the leather jackets. I was to be my own person and no matter what they thought about it, how many sins they thought I was committing, I couldn't stop. I couldn't stay away from him because although I was completely unwilling to admit to any of it – I was completely in love with him. Dating other guys was a thing I had tried, the jock, the goth, the guitarist, the skater, but it wasn't right. None of it was. Not when I constantly had his voice, his face, his touch in the back of my mind. Trouble was what followed him, and I liked it, I liked the adrenaline rush that came with spending time with him. The terror that swallowed me when he announced he had stolen the bottle of rum we'd been downing in the park, or the bike he'd picked me up on. Something about it was exciting. Terrifying, but exciting, and I loved it. Every moment spent with him was a rush, the opposite to boring, exactly what I had been looking for in life. And we were never caught – he would make sure of that.

***

Heading back to the place the swing used to be, I noted the splinters, still left behind from when it was destroyed, smashed up. The little red swing that had meant so much to my past, gone. Constantly trying to protect me was what ended up pushing him away. He knew the stealing and the drugs and the alcohol would end up coming back and smacking us in the face, but I wouldn't listen, I loved defying the ones that once held power to us, fighting off our superiors. But he was right. I last saw him eight years ago. Just his face glancing at mine, filled with both sorrow and disappointment as I was pushed into the car that took me to my temporary home. Locked away from the world. I had been out a year now and hadn't had the courage to see if he was still around. Heartbroken was the last look he gave me when I left, and I couldn't face the guy that knew I was such a disappointment. We could never have been together, and maybe that was for the best, saves him getting in the same trouble as I did, saves my parents blaming him for how I turned out, saves him. Standing where the little red swing once was, I saw a shadow, dimly lit in the flickering streetlight. I saw the stranger in my old friend.

Lunch Break

I could almost taste the scent of freshly pressed sandwiches before I had even reached that aisle. Filled with lettuce and chicken and the most succulent of mayonnaises. Gurgling in joy and desperation, my stomach encouraged me on my way towards the unsuspecting victims of my hunger. Running hopefully towards the inevitable spend I grabbed the drink (coca cola of course) and chocolate (a twirl) that made up the other parts of the £3 meal deal, before going to the fridge to grab my specially selected chicken and bacon sandwich. Nothing could stop me now.

Nothing except the young man reaching into the aisle to look at the last one.

Undecided he placed it back upon the shelf and kept browsing, if I was quick I could just reach in there and grasp it from behind him, before he turned around and could see, before he could take it from me. The last sandwich – and it would be mine. Creeping subtly I reached for the sandwich just as he turned to grasp it himself. Our hands reached the sandwich at the same time.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” looking about nineteen years of age, the man looked shocked at my being there.

“Haha it's fine,” I figured the best way to win over my sandwich was to strike with politeness.

“It is a rather nice looking sandwich, especially where it says about the mayonnaise… what was it? Like some special type?”

“Yes… I have this sandwich like every day, it really is one of the best here.”

“The best you say? Well sir, would you mind if I took it for myself so I could try this delight?”

I wanted to tell the guy that actually yes. Yes I would mind. And as I was here and I get the sandwich everyday and I am a qualified, benefit to society, I should have it. But then looking up at his gleaming blue eyes and silky smooth skin, I realised that being rude just wasn't a part of who I am, the British way was to just say no and move on. Sucks to be me.

“No, no, sure, go ahead and have it. I'm sure there's something else I'll like here...”

“Are you sure? I feel so bad for taking the last one now, especially since you expressed your clear wanting of it...”

If he wants the damn sandwich he should take it before I change my mind about just how British I truly am, because I want that sandwich and if he keeps taunting me with it I will have the sandwich.

“I'd take it – quick before I change my mind!” the most classic joke in the “I WANT THE DAMN SANDWICH SO LEAVE BEFORE I TAKE IT” book. Haha.

“Thanks sir, if there is anything I could do to repay you, maybe I could treat you to your lunch if you made a decision on what sandwich you want?”

“I'd take that offer up, thank you very much… maybe I'll try this chicken, bacon and stuffing one instead...”

“That sounds like a remarkable idea.”

After that we went and paid for our food and then parted at the shop exit. He went back to whatever clubbing and drinking people do at nineteen and I headed back to the office. Two strangers never to meet again. Good job really… I switched the sandwiches at the checkout.

The Box

Brick walls surrounded her. Dark, looming walls everywhere she turned, a square ceiling just above her. Not enough room to move, barely enough to breathe. Stuck. Locked away. Darkness exterminated any hope of finding a door handle which would ultimately lead to her escape. A numbness enveloped her mind as she realised that this could be it. She would spend the rest of her not-so-ambitious life waiting in a box. For a doorway to reveal itself. This was no good.

Flashbacks of the past always lined with gold, sugar-coated. Her life had never been pleasant, but compared to the entrapment she faced now… She would take it all back. A life that would never stop throwing poison arrows at her heart, but she never lost her hope. Never lost her ambition. Always knew there was better. Well now that is the better.

She should be happier now. False friends had fucked off and past heartbreaks were forgotten, but somehow the walls were closer than ever. What once was a diamond fortress was now a small cupboard. A small inescapable cupboard. With only the window of the past to entertain. Numbness was happiness and happiness was legend.

***

Strangers brought the walls crumbling down. A realisation of how bad the past had been, of how bleak a time had been passed. Of how everything will always change. The brick walls would only hold her for so long, as even brick corrodes eventually. Somewhere, out there, is a force constantly corroding everything. And if the walls fall away to reveal thick steel walls… Well metal will rust. The end is far and to descend into numbness so soon, well the world would be a dark place indeed.

At least life's poison arrows couldn't enter a steel box.

And at the collapse of the steel and the bricks and whatever else held her captive, success would shine. Success at whatever she should choose to do. Writing, filming, eating, dieting, collecting, cleaning, selling, sleeping. All would come naturally. If she believed it.