Junction X by Erastes (best autobiographies to read .TXT) 📕

to fear. Nothing more to hide. I walk for hours, no matter how wet or cold it is. The hail stings my face and leaves it numb. It’s a good feeling. It’s a feeling.

I leave the curtains open and watch the wind whip at the bare branches, stark against the sky. If it snowed, at least, I could see him in the shadows of the streetlamps. But it doesn’t snow.

I’m locked in, locked up. Paralysed from the heart outwards. I don’t know how to put it more clearly than that. If heat was the wrong emotion, maybe cold is too.

Phil came once. He rang the bell for ages but I didn’t answer it. He got in the main doors, eventually. Probably bribed the ticket collector or slipped in with one of my neighbours. Eventually I had to let him in the flat because he wouldn’t go away. But I couldn’t talk to him. Not even platitudes or reassurances.

“Come to me,” he kept saying. “It’s better than this place.” But I shook my head. I don’t think I said four words to him altogether, even when he told me that Valerie had moved back to her mother’s with the twins. “Until…” and then he stopped. Maybe he didn’t know that I knew she was pregnant. I don’t know what he really thought. I don’t care.

He didn’t come again, although he said he would. He said there was paperwork needed doing. I dare say there is, but I won’t be bothering with it now.

+ + +

One more trip to take, and here comes the melodrama. One more trip down to the platform, to stand in the rain and let the cold numb my skin once more. To watch the trains pass and not to take their numbers. To lose track of which train is when so that I won’t know which one it’ll be. No cry for help. No pills. No note—unless you count this diary. Rent is paid to the end of the week. All bills paid.

And without him—well, that’s really rather the whole point, isn’t it?

One question left. Do I take this book with me, let its leaves scatter like snow on the line, or do I leave it here? The question should be, I suppose, why did I take the time this last few weeks to write it all down if not to leave it? But as what? Is it an excuse? Another rationalisation?

Perhaps I’m so deluded that I think Val would read it and understand. Forgive. Say nicer things of me to the children, including the child I’ll never know. But she won’t. Alex never understood and could never have understood my feelings for Val, just as Val—well, there’s no point.

I should take it with me. If there were a blazing log fire here, or one in that freezing station hall, I could perform a grand gesture and watch it blacken, curl and disappear.

And Alex—my Alexander—would be lost forever.

I should take it with me.

Other Titles by Erastes from Cheyenne Publishing

Frost Fair

Hard & Fast (novella included in Speak Its Name anthology)

Other Titles from Cheyenne Publishing

Prove a Villain by K.C. Warwick

The Glass Minstrel by Hayden Thorne

A Hundred Little Lies by Jon Wilson

The Filly by Mark R. Probst

Home Fires Burning by Charlie Cochrane

Hidden Conflict: Tales from Lost Voices in Battle