Fiction #2, Million Little Cuts
A short story from the archives
Sharing some archival writing, as I put together a project. It’s been fun looking through past work. I didn’t set out to be a writer, and never studied, so, as I search through endless back-ups, I have been watching my writing develop from slips of sentences, tiny beauties, little pearls disconnected from story, into fiction like this, containing ideas but no deeper narrative, and then, stories that begged to be novels. I’m less inclined, now I focus on longform, to write down little pearls. Not so easily impressed. Disinclined to believe text equals permanence. But it’s lovely to look back and see a younger me having fun with the beauty of words.
I’m a writer.
I write blogs for this huge, international magazine and articles for this British indie paper and orders on a pad of reconstituted mulch for a restaurant/bar in Leicester Square.
I’m thinking of quitting the magazine because the hours are tantamount to a part time job and they don’t pay me and when I hand in an article I don’t get any reply and don’t even know if it’s going to be published until it goes online. I look for it everyday until it does. I am planning to quit but then today they liked a picture of mine on Instagram and I felt a stir of loyalty and gratitude towards them. My generation is pathetic. We can be bought for so little.
My parents think I’m doing great. That’s what I tell them on the phone. The line crackles and they are far away when they ask hey sweetheart, how’s it going? We miss you. Your father can’t see you online. Can you video chat?
I say, oh, I can’t Skype now, I’ve got another meeting, yeah, they want me to write for this national paper. Yeah, it’s great, a big opportunity.
I don’t say, it’s for their unpaid blog and I’ve sent them seventeen different pitches and if you video call me I’ll take one look at your hopeful, worried, needy faces and collapse in a messy pile of tears and failure.
I don’t say that. And I don’t add, that’s why you can’t see me on Skype, cause I’ve blocked you so I don’t have to face you and how much you think of me and want for me and everything.
They don’t protest much. They’re always tired when they call. The time difference is really awkward.
When I feel really shit, I cut.
I don’t like to cut myself.
No.
That would be dramatic.
I cut other people instead.
It’s easier than it sounds. I take a little stabby knife or sometimes one of those thick safety pins. I figure they work even better because you can pretend it wasn’t on purpose if you get caught. It could still look accidental if it’s a knife of course but then the police would be all, why are you carrying an open penknife around, and, that point looks sharpened, and, why is there old blood on there as well as new. It’s not that I don’t mean to wash it but when I get home I’ve usually already folded it away and I totally forget about it. One day I’ll wash it while my housemates are in the kitchen too, and they’ll be all freaked out and won’t say anything as I lather soap onto blood and make pink foam with a really deadpan face. That’ll be hilarious.
I take the knife or safety pin and I walk around with it, usually in my windcheater, so I can stuff my hands deep in the pockets, and then I find somewhere I can be close to people and I just give them a quick but pretty forceful poke through the fabric.
On Monday, after my parents call, I go do it at a bus stop, where there’s a crowd trying to get in the door of the bus but the person sitting next to me obviously isn’t getting on, so I wait ’til there’s just a bit of crowd left then I stab the person’s thigh, jump up and push into the mêlée, before she can point at me and start swearing. Which people invariably do. Londoners are such potty mouths. I see her through the bus window, her teeth on her bottom lip saying fuck and giving me the finger.
I’ve achieved several quite difficult cuts.
The next week, after the paper commissions that blog off me, lets me write it, and then doesn’t tell me they’re bumping it for a breakdown of summer fashions until the issue is published, I realise I need to do a difficult cut to relieve the stress.
I dress up in track suit pants and a jumper over a vest top and then I do a jogger by pretending I am also a jogger and nicking her Lycra thigh as I go by. Then, I run like shit away from her.
I didn’t think about it before, but when I am throwing my legs out in front of me and feeling my heart beat in my temples and she’s still gaining on me with blood spoiling her shiny shorts, I’m thinking, well obviously she’d be fast, she’s a bloody runner, this was pretty stupid.
I think I have preconceptions about women, like the blog editor does when he asks me for 400 words on moisturiser when Tom, who also writes for the blog, gets to go on a bloody skiing trip to Estonia and review it.
Luckily I’m way taller than the runner, so I make some headway going downhill and then go into the tube. She doesn’t follow so maybe she doesn’t have her Oyster card stuck up her arse or wherever you’d keep it in that fancy running gear.
I take the tube a little way towards home but I get off at Hyde Park because it’s a nice day and I don’t feel like going home yet. It wasn’t a very satisfying cut either, because it just made me feel like I was an idiot; not planning my cuts properly and not realising a runner would have way more stamina than someone who sits on a laptop all day and eats nothing but cheap shit, like frozen pizza and comfort Starbucks.
In Hyde Park, I sit on a bench and a dog comes up to me panting and sits down just in front of me, turning to look at me as if to say, hi, nice day isn’t it?
I look around for the owner. The dog’s watching her so I know who it is and she’s looking the other way teaching this black lab to follow her around, so I steady the dog’s bum with my hand, grip the fur between my fingers and give it a good jab.
It turns around and bites my fingers.
Not hard and with this kind of regretful look in its eyes, like it doesn’t want to bite me but I deserve punishing.
I say out loud, I don’t need punishing, I’m going home to squeeze out 1200 words for no money for a magazine where they print my name wrong every time I’m in it, and you’re going to spend the afternoon running about in the fresh air.
I continue, I’m going home to the two other girls I live with in a three bed flat with no living room for £1000 a month and you’re going home to a cuddle on the sofa, free dinner, and a sex dream by the fire.
I wrap up, shouting now, because the dog has run off, their expression dubious, and their butt seemingly unscathed, I wish I could get some posh, jobless bint from Hampstead or Notting Hill or wherever to let me sleep in her house and feed me organic canned food! Even dog food! I’d take dog food!
Then, I go home.
The best is when I cut people in the tube, cause they’ve got security cameras but they can’t see anything because you’re moving in a tightly packed crowd like rodents or scrabbly ants fighting to get to a meal. I do it today, on the way home, to make me feel better. I press up close when we’re all turning a corner and I give someone a quick slash and they look behind them but I’ve already pushed past and I look backwards, too, like someone maybe also got me with the sharp thing, so even if the cameras get my face, they think I’m a victim too.
Then I’m like yeah, fuck you, big brother.
What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe they’ll deport me back to Australia and then I’d be like, cheers, suckers, free flight home.
This is from a short collection about female rage. To read more, subscribe below.
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