Bitterhall by Helen McClory (story books to read .txt) 📕

and took her in to the dance. Blindly ongoing the dance. And white and black, and a kind of emptiness around us – we were in fact the only couple dancing. I steadied myself in dancing, and holding her warm hands. The music swirled us two specks tossed us about. But the song ended and all at once I all but dropped. I’m not good at this, I thought. I can’t do this. Órla guided me to the side, and Mark – Mark was there, holding up glasses for each of us. I slopped the liquid across my lips as I drank. Fear in the depths dragged me, a weight. But I was smiling. I should have found it fine to hold that fear. I am strong.

I – with wiser options available – split myself in two. In one version, I took Mark by the shoulder and led him to a quiet spot to discuss the book, and what I might know. In another I walked off on my own and found myself drinking meeting nobody’s gaze bent under the sense that all my life I had been a mistake and that I would always slam into a crossroads, knowing I was lost, because where other people have strong internal compasses I had none at all. I might have navigated by the stars but I had no stars. Daniel you could have printed stars for me, I think, out of nowhere. Then I’d know. I’d be steady. But I’m not allowed. I tried so hard not to put my head into my hands and cry.

Circling

Then he came, flickering, the notion of him, and places began not just to overlap but, like, stitch together. Someone dropped their hand to their chest and their necklace sparkled. A candelabra overhead almost guttered in a breeze I couldn’t feel. Someone passed me a tray of hors d’oeuvres and I pretended not to know what to pick. The waiter said, ‘Oh this one, definitely the best,’ and I saw him briefly and he smiled, and he was not the waiter but he was himself the man who had insinuated his way into my life.

‘Get away,’ I said quietly. I don’t know if he heard. I stood upright, I furtively knocked back drinks – tasting only the salt part of them or else the fumy, fragrant part, like drinking hothouse flowers and clammy stagnant air. At one point I was talking to a Cloudberry client about 3D technology turning us all into objects to be scanned and read and our originalities must be discarded in the after effect or we would perform clunkily or worse, become redundant. I must have done well, because the small crowd pressed around me was laughing. I had Órla’s hand again; I led her outside – how many hours had passed. We spoke and I was nearly crying though holding back. He’s here, I nearly said. Red crackle in my voice as I talked so I flitted from group to group so no one would find me out. Nothing else was under control, not even my sight was to be trusted. I saw Órla dancing with my tormenter. I saw her sit down beside him on the steps. I drank, there were always glasses rising to hand and salty, humid booze slipping past my lips.

Wander

It grew so late and no hours passed. All the while music came winding from the vinyl records, sounds so relentlessly ambiguous, upbeat and sad at once. I danced and I ate something hard with a slippery savoury paste in it. Another source of dissonance led me upstairs. I saw Mr MacAshfall bashing on a piano in a high room of the house that was not visible from any place in the street. His guests were immortal his pose seemed to say, or they’d died in their finery in garden bunkers in the first fall of the Blitz. I wondered if there was an experiment going on. I knew there wasn’t, but if I pretended it made it easier than the fact that none of it seemed stable or to make sense. Still he played away, waving at me. I raised a glass back and hesitated. Then with no more greeting forthcoming I left. Why had I tolerated him or even looked for him? The real thing I was looking for was – some help, some notice – not even a guide to all this but someone to hold my hand and stop my sobs coming up like stopping a sneeze. To be understood is all I ever want. I know I don’t seem the most —but if you see me and I’m there. I see you and you’re real. If we don’t notice each other we are both at risk of dissolving. Blipping out. It terrorises me, being seen, and existing when there are so many other better things people could be looking at.

I was in the kitchen and my palms had nail marks pressed in them from me making fists all night. I saw a window and blackness beyond. Then wooziness. My nose stung. Wasn’t this an— Perfume filled the air: of woodsmoke, cut across with sex heat semen – I walked quickly dispersing it – with the smell of party sweat Chanel and spilled white wine and cold tiny pastries cluttering back to fill the void. The sound of a river flowed around me, a hand grabbed my arm, I could not feel my feet. I shook off the hand and walked away, trying not to stumble. I went upstairs two at a time, gripping the rail. Had to get away. A river in my lungs and in the woods black at night. An owl cried. Straw and horse shit stamped by hoofs into the white carpet. I passed by everything and into another century, up and down the floors. I see it, it was there, these blasting pictures that did not belong to me. You understand. I could have managed if not for