Untitled by William Couper

Here I am, sitting on the side of the canal, the cold gripping at me and the wind trying to force its unwanted fingers inside my shirt.  I’m aware of the chill, but I can’t bring myself to react.

The water below me glitters grey, reflecting the low overcast and the feeling in my chest and gut.  I want to vomit, but can’t.  I want to scream, but the sound I want to create isn’t within me anymore.  Like so much else, it’s been taken from me, sucked away by a wild gale I don’t understand and torn apart, never to be recreated.

It’s out there.  I can feel it slinking through the bushes, watching me in my misery and feeding on the horror and revulsion I felt for myself.  It’s just the beginning of what it wants from me.

If only it wanted to kill me – that would be something I could understand.  It doesn’t want my death, or to feed on my burst corpse.  Those would deprive it of something.  Something even more fundamental than simply the ending of my life.

A week ago I had a normal life.  Perhaps I wasn’t happy, but I understood what was happening and I had friends and family.  Thinking about it is like looking at it through the lens of a camera: it’s not mine and never was.

There’s no great mystery about when it started.  Harry came up to me while I was working on this old car and he started chattering like I’d never heard him.  Normally it was a task to get two words out of him, but that day he was eager to talk.

Part two by Chris Bartholomew: