consciousness

Come to. You're in a bed, the softest and warmest, the howling wind can't reach you and it's dark outside. Dark. It's evening and you've fallen asleep before your dinner, your fish and chips, your parents have gone to fetch.

Walk downstairs, past the landing covered in the photos of ancient family, past the painting of the Moulin Rouge, past the light of the living room. Leave your grandmother's house, pull the door to behind you. Light up and keep walking. Up the hill and to the right, between two fields, past a scrambling track clinging to the edge of a valley.

Sit down, inhale the smoke and silence as separate essences to the air and faraway noise. Stare down at the bay, hundreds of feet below you. Watch the fog rolling in from the sea, the thrill of it enveloping you so quickly, you wouldn't have had time to run.

Watch hills and grass and quarries disappear. Hold your hand out in front of you, lose your fingertips.

Jump, run home, your filthy hair in your face, skip across the lane and back into the house. Look back and instead of the place you were sitting, see mist.

*****

Come to. You're on a bridge, with your family, the south of Scotland somewhere, the sea rolls below you and music belts into your ears, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, brittle and euphoric.

Stretch, your muscles cramped, remember the last time you did this journey you took the endless hours of the journey to pray. Consider it and then decide the only people who can hear you are right here in the car.

*****

Come to. There's saliva on your face and it's the first thing you notice, falling from your lips, cold. Your hands, your head, your body is crushed into the grass with the wait of being asleep.

Your bag is behind you, spilling receipts onto damp ground, where it landed when both of you fell.

He's shaking you awake while your brother's taking a piss by the fence. He says you scared him. Tell him that you scare yourself.

Wonder what pills you'd need to take to fix what these pills have done to you. Wonder about September and no pills at all.

You think that fainting is fuck all compared to the way you used to blackout, emotional blackouts, with no one to wake you.

You feel like saying, now you're scared?

*****

Come to. Another morning, another place. The floor of your parents' living room, the carpet rubbing grazes into your limbs, your head a bucket of concrete.

Beside you, on the fireplace, a pair of nail scissors, an orange and a phone charger, inexplicably gathered in drunken logic last night. This morning, even, an hour and a half after you turned 19.

It occurs to you, when comparing this morning to the fresh-faced 29th of July that happened last year, that if your alcohol consumption continues this current growth rate, you will die very soon.

The sight of the orange makes you sick, your breath smells like piss, there's a txt from a man you don't know on your phone and you don't feel entirely fulfilled.

You try to move but can't, and in your head a voice begins to sing, happy birthday...

*****

Come to. You've been scaring at the screen for over an hour now and you still have no idea what to write. All you have these days are pretty stories, you're pretty sure if you had morals they'd come through too but at the moment -

all you can express is confusion, a vague apprehension, a certain lack of consciousness.