Monologue 9 - Exclamation

Aarrgh! Fuck! What was that? I heard a noise. THERE’S SOMETHING THERE! THERE’S SOMETHING THERE! HEEYYYYYEYYYYYY! DON’T LET THE THING GET ME! DON’T LET THE THING GET YOU! AAARRRRGGGHHHAAGHGH!

Oh, there you are. Coooool!

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Inspiration: my dogs, at 4am last night. 

Monologue 8 - Through the Forest

The thing to remember is, if you read it in the papers, it’s got an angle. You can’t trust it. And if you saw the story on Facebook and you’re full of outrage and scandal, well… well, bless you, but you only have yourself to blame.

What they never tell you is how charming he was. Or that he was handsome. They make him out to be a monster, but he has a strong jaw and eyes you could melt into, like he’s looking into your soul. Great teeth too. Natural. White as little doves. 

He was attentive. You’ll never read that, not if you scour the internet for the rest of your days, but he was. He really knew how to listen. Big ears. I always used to tell him that. It made us laugh. And that’s the thing. He listened and he laughed. He lit up when we talked - his eyes, his face, his whole body crisped - and he always kept his focus right on me. That made a change. 

I mean Mum, god, she couldn’t finish a sentence before she’d forgotten she was even talking to me. She’d be off into another room before she remembered. Or on her phone. Weeks would go by and I’d mostly see the top of her head and the angles of her face picked out in blue light. That’s why it was me doing the food run. Mum could have gone – she had the time – but she was always ‘busy’- which meant on her phone, or spreading outrage on mumsnet. She had quite a following. I wouldn’t mind, only she spent more time being an online mum-guru than being my actual mum.

When I met him, I was pretty low. I’ll always remember it. I was almost at the house. I’d just got to the fork where you turn off to Grandma’s and I couldn’t face it. She was senile and mean, my gran. I could never tell which of the two was making her say the things she did. 

I’d knock and she’d make this whole theatre of being afraid and asking who it was, and then she’d call me in. She said she was bed-ridden, but she’d have left Penguin wrappers on the porch, and half-drunk cups of tea, so either she had squatters or she was much more mobile than it suited her to say.

And then I’d have to put up with the call and response humiliation. She never got bored of it. She’d never call me by my name, just that stupid nickname that the papers got hold of. And then it was: “Oh, what big thighs you have Like tree trunks!”! Well, all the better for keeping the boys at bay”. And then she’d laugh. 

And “Oh, what a big belly you have! Have you left me any lunch in that basket, dear? Well, all the better. You’re a growing girl. Keep growing at that rate, and you’ll break the scales!” The laugh again.  

“Oh, what fat cheeks you have! It makes you look like a chubby little baby boy. All the better, I suppose. At least it keeps you from the preying eyes of men!”

If you have a 15-year-old, there’s three things never to say to her. Trust me. 

So there I was, sitting on the tree stump at the turn, gathering up my courage to go in, when along he came. 

It’s true that he’s imposing. He’s big. With the things they wrote, you’d imagine him huge and menacing. They never mention grace. 

The first thing that he said to me: ‘Excuse me, it’s Rosie, isn’t it? Rosie, may I sit with you a while?’ And he didn’t sit till I said yes. Such gentleness in his voice, such warmth, and yet such power. I felt a shiver down my spine. Every time. He did that to me. 

What we talked about, who cares, but I felt heard. For the first time in my life. Seen.

I’d ask him questions too, just to hear that gravel-velvet textured voice of his, but mostly he just listened and kept his eyes on me. It’s as if my presence fed him, that’s what he said, and then he’d smile, giving me a flash of those dove-white teeth and a look in his eye like he could devour me there and then. He was very charming. 

That day, Grandma’s taunts felt like little raindrops. I felt a mile high and, for the first time ever, beautiful. 

I could hardly wait for the next morning. I thought I could sense him on the way – a rustle here, a snapping branch there- but he didn’t show himself until the turn-off. I nearly jumped for joy. 

It was my idea, not his, about Grandma. I mean.. He had helped me see that she was a mean woman, that she was taking pleasure in putting me down. That it wasn’t innocent. And that she’d never stop. And she was old, he was right about that. She wasn’t ever going to get better. You see, that’s what was so kind about him. He explained it to me. She was mean to me because she felt so powerless. She’d nothing left. Her life would only get worse (and then she’d take it out on me, he warned me, and he was right).

It took me days to get up the courage to ask him. Weeks. And longer to convince him. But in the end, he said he’d do anything for me, and if it’s what I really wanted… I wasn’t there. The next morning, when I came, he said ‘It’s done’ and I swear I saw a tear. 

I carried on, went to the house anyway, every morning, with my basket. We thought it best to do it that way. 

He’d follow, off the path. And knock. I’d sit up in the bed and pretended to be Grandma, calling me in. He’d even put my coat on, much too small. We’d laugh and laugh, and then in he’d come in and slip under the covers next to me. I felt so small. Protected. Cherished. 

I know what you’re going to say, and I… We’d had a blissful month of meeting every day, as if Grandma was still alive. At weekends, we just lay there, hour after hour, consuming each other. And yes, maybe he had begun to get possessive. But that’s his nature. And a little bit rough, but never more than I could handle. 

And okay, I was scared. Sometimes. There were times when something changed in his eyes. It was… like the wild in him had won. Because he was wild – wild and beautiful and graceful… and… so strong. I still get goosebumps when I think of him, and even of that moment, when he loved me so much, his instincts took over and he had to have me whole. 

And yes, I screamed. I wish I hadn’t. If I’d died then in his jaws, my life would have meant something. I was terrified, but at least I’d have been part of him. But no, I screamed in weakness. Stupid, childish fear, and that axe-happy thug of a woodchopper blundered in and… 

It was carnage.. He kept saying ‘You’re safe now, I’ve killed the beast.’ But there was my love, bleeding on the floor and my heart bleeding with him. 

I thought that it was true. I thought he’d killed him, but he was only injured. Badly – with gashes in his back and neck and face. His beautiful jaw ripped out of joint and slashed.

So now he’s here. In a zoo. A fucking zoo. People said this was too good for him. Ha. They have no idea. This place is worse than a prison, worse than death. Caged, publicly on show, for visitors to gawp at. He’s humiliated. They have destroyed him.

But I’m grateful for small things. I get to see him. I’m not supposed to come, but I do. I tell him stories. I ask him questions, but he doesn’t answer any more. He growls, a long, low, plaintive sound, almost a howl. The fire in his eyes has got weaker over the years. His wildness is exhausted. It’s leaching out of him into the concrete cage, the fake greenery and the frozen cubes of meat he’s supposed to survive on.

He begs me to end his life. Begs. He knows he won’t escape. It breaks my heart to see him suffer, and…

I haven’t given up. I owe it to him.  I’m working on the zookeepers. Winning their trust. They don’t know who I am. I’ll find a way to get in to his enclosure one day soon. And then I’ll give myself to him. There will be blood. Mine, this time, and his. They’ll shoot him. That’s what they do when animals go on the rampage. 

And then you’ll read the scandal in the papers. 

WOMAN MAULED TO DEATH. WILD BEAST KILLS AGAIN. But if you believe the crap you read in the papers, you have only yourself to blame. 

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Inspiration: prompt from 28 Days Later 2018

Monologue 7 - Brave Little Soldiers

I always knew it was my vocation, you see. From the start. I’d be in English class with Mr Ralf wanging on about the importance of Shakespeare and the poetry, oh, the poetry. His eyes would get all big, bless him and his eyebrows would wriggle like they were possessed. I used to worry for him. I used to think ‘Take a drink of water, or at least let yourself blink. It can’t be good for you, all that eager staring, and think of the wrinkles.’ And I’d sit there thinking ‘Bugger Shakespeare, bugger the lot of them. I know what I’m going to be doing and preschool children do not need Romeo kacking on about Tybalt thank you very much, or Juliet panting sweet nothings off a balcony.’ Lord of the Flies was a bit more like it. Any of those boys had tried anything unsavoury in my classroom, they wouldn’t know what’d hit them. Not on my watch. You’ve got to teach them to respect you, trust you, love you, even. They need to know who’s boss. Get that in hand from day one and you’ve got them. They’ll do anything for you. Anything.

I was only 17 when I had my first reception class. I was supposed to be 18 and have done another year in college, but I’d been volunteering since year 7. And then Mrs Butterley had that unfortunate run-in with the revolving doors and that was it. My own class, my own 23 soft little heads and open little faces looking to me to be their everything. I did my best.

I’ll still remember them, every single one. There was Barry, one of the youngest, just turned four. His parents were academics and thought he was super bright, but really I think they just needed childcare, so there he was. Very serious, for four. Very concerned with what his mum and dad would say if he did anything wrong. I had him sussed from the start. And Sally, his little girlfriend. They’d give each other a kiss in the cloakroom when they came in of a morning. Cute, those two were. Inseparable. Always holding hands. 'That'll come in useful,' I thought. And it did.

There was Tilly. She was a ringleader. Spirited little firebrand with a mouth on her like a machine. She could talk for Britain and she soaked up everything in like a sponge and wrung herself out at every opportunity, spilling up information to whoever’d listen. I put a stop to that. Her twin brother was in the class too, Gordon. Poor Gordon. For all her verbosity, he was quiet like a monk and for all her confidence, he was terrified. Very protective of Gordon, was our Tilly. Didn’t like anything to happen to him. I knew she’d see sense pretty quickly. 

Anthea and Turner, another set of twins. Bland children, those two, not much to recommend them. Well, their mum and dad were Blue Peter fans, so what would you expect? And brave little Jenny. What’s that they call the smallest dog? The runt. It’s good to know who the runt is. They actually get more attention than a lot of the others, so in a way they’ve got a kind of status, but not in a good way. I knew from the start she’d never amount to much, that one. She’d never stick her head above the parapet. 

That was my first class. I had many, many more. Reception is my favourite. They’re so soft at that age, so malleable. They drink in what you tell them like it was Coca Cola when their mum’s not looking and they believe anything! Everything. Well, they’re five, aren’t they. They still believe a fat man comes down their chimney on Christmas Eve and they’re not even scared. Yes, the really small ones are easy. They’ve such wide little eyes and such soft little faces and they’ll turn themselves inside out to do things right, even if they don’t like it. Like brave little soldiers going into battle. Bless them.

And whatever you say to them, whatever you get them to do, it’s normal to them if you do it enough. And all you need to know is one thing. One thing about each of them that’s the most important to them, and that’s it. That’s your key. 

I made it into a game, the finding out. Special themed days about nightmares, an afternoon on ‘what I love the most’ and just asking them what they did at the weekend gives you a clue for most of them. And once you’ve got your key, they’re all yours. There wasn’t one of them in all those years that breathed a word of it to their mum and dad. Not one. 

It was different back then. It was the Seventies. If you said you were doing an after-school club, that’s what you were doing. Nobody did too much checking. People had no money, and they were grateful just to have someone looking after their kids so they could stay at work, get a bit of overtime. And they had fun. We did crafts and drama and choir and once in a while I’d make sure they had something to take home with them. Something to tell. And I only ever took one or two out at a time. And it’s not as if I didn’t have rules. No marks. Nothing that would make them cry. No evidence. Not that I could police it, but I made it clear it was for their own safety as much as mine, and that I’d be checking. They paid me well, those men, and they kept quiet. Couldn’t believe their luck. I was quite the businesswoman. I worked hard for nigh on 20 years, saved myself a tidy little pension. No harm in that. 

Then came the millennium and things suddenly got stricter. Everyone had to have a certificate and they stopped strangers going in and out of schools. It was getting dangerous, and I was tired. It’s not an easy path, the one I’d chosen. Lots to juggle, lots at stake. It’s not for the faint-hearted. 

So I wasn’t heartbroken when it stopped. I didn’t really need to work. I’d been squirrelling away all that time, saving for a rainy day and all of that, so when it was time, off I went to ‘pastures new’. It was very sad. Three year-groups made me cards and there were gifts. The children cried, of course. And some of the parents. It was quite touching. I moved. Retired, officially, but I got myself on the board of governors at a school in Havant, just in case.

I set myself up nicely in a cottage in Denvilles, and I'd been there a good five years when I got the call. There’d been an investigation going on into a number of schools, apparently, and would I mind coming in for a chat. They thought I might be able to shed some light – thought I’d remember some of the teaching staff at the time. They mentioned a few of my male colleagues. I could have fobbed them off and left the country, but I don’t know – maybe it was arrogance. I mean, throughout the years, I’d worked it well. I knew every child and every weak spot and there wasn’t one who, even so long after, would break. And I’d left trails that would lead to one or two of the less well kempt male staff. None of whom was actually involved, of course. I’m not stupid. I know my work. I’ve said it before, it’s my vocation, it’s what I was born to do. 

So in I went willingly, and that’s the last I saw of my cosy little cottage. Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but they’d a strong case against me already and I was a flight risk, according to the prosecution. Too bloody right, I was. 

It had started with one report from one pupil, but she'd then contacted everyone in her class. Everyone. And some of them had siblings a few years behind, and others still had friendships, and oh Facebook, you fickle mistress. You can plan for the future you know, but who could possibly have anticipated something that would make it so easy to find people. 

There was a trial. You’ll have seen it in the papers, I’d imagine. A number of my clients were in the dock, but there was some damage limitation. Clever lying, a stroke of luck. There were a lot of witnesses for the prosecution. Most of them did video-link into the court, so I could see them on the screens, but they didn't have to face me. Most of them. All but one, the ringleader. 

No, not Tilly. She was bold and mouthy, but Gordon made her weak. No backbone to speak of, easily swayed and way too quick to please. No... the runt - Jenny -  still runty like a little weasel, or a dormouse, but something about her was ten feet tall as she took the stand.  She talked in a small voice, but calm. Answered clearly. Didn’t let herself be bamboozled by my lawyer, who cared about nothing but another win under her belt. Well, Jenny had the jury eating out of her hand, and me over a barrel. There were so many of them, you see. She’d found them, and persuaded so many of them to speak. They made an example of me. 25 years, no parole. If I make it that long.

It’s not so bad here. I mean, I’m lonely. They can’t let me in the main part of the block ‘for my own safety’. The demographic that makes it in here have mostly had children by the time they’re old enough to drink and they’re volatile. Protective. You think men in this profession have it bad. You should see the way they look at a woman in my shoes. The weaker sex, are we? Ha. We always take the brunt. I mean, I never touched a hair on any of their soft little heads. I never made them do anything. I was their commander, if you like, their Brown Owl. A leader and a matriarch. I loved them, in my way. You can’t help it. 

And that scruffy little Jenny – always dirty, always followed by a smell of unwashed poverty and piss. I saw the little girl in that defiant, quiet woman. Beautifully turned out, she was now, clean and neat and very self-contained. 

Look at what you did, Jenny. All this is down to you, my brave little soldier. I got you wrong. The only one. My downfall. 

You make me almost proud. 

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Inspiration: prompt from 28 Plays Later 2018

Monologue 6: Hero

It’s the end, but I have no regrets. I’ve faced hardships and beaten many odds, and I’ve had a good life despite my start in it. A courageous life. I have nothing to be ashamed of and much to give me a final swell of pride before the drugs take hold. 

I was so young when they took me away for training. It was tough. Very tough. Relentless. But you don’t know anything else. You learn pretty quickly to resist every natural urge you’ve ever had and to look to someone else to tell you what you can and can’t do. It’s perverse, actually. And every time you’ve learnt to control one thing, there’s some new, totally counter-intuitive skill to learn. But I learnt to please and I learnt fast. Anything I hated, or resented, I logged for later, but I got on with it and I was good. Very good. Thank god I was.

The consequences if you don’t make the grade are pretty gruelling. The unlucky ones are too clueless to get it. They spend the rest of their lives chasing their own tails, like most of the population, and they don’t even know how pointless their lives are. 

Then there are those poor bastards who know they didn’t cut it. They’ll always know that they failed in the one purpose chosen for them. And even though they had no choice, not a hint of agency, they had a job and they were not up to the task. They showed promise, but failed to deliver. It doesn’t matter how far they run or how loved (or not) they are, they’ll never escape that.  

            

And then there are those of us who succeed. We naïve, enthusiastic idiots who think we’ve won. I’ll always remember the day I graduated from trainee to fully-fledged leader. I thought I’d take off, I was so excited, so absolutely proud. I had no idea that I was walking into a situation that can only be described as institutionalised abuse!

So my first assignment was with Robert. Poor Robert. Long, lank hair so greasy, I swear it used to drip on me. Skinny little stick legs, shoulders like a coat-hanger and spindle arms, everything brittle, and then this round belly like a woman’s – like it had been stuck on him as a joke. He had cold and clammy skin, especially on his hands, and a reek to him like rancid milk. I'm sensitive, but I swear people could smell it too. He made my life hell. It’s not that he was cruel, exactly. Self-centred, blind and blinkered, but not intentionally nasty. Just very demanding, and very… graceless. 

I know it was my job to look after him, and they can teach you to care for them, but they can’t make you love them, can they? Nothing in the world could have made me love Robert. He wasn’t happy in this world. He didn’t belong here. And I didn’t belong there, so… 

One thing I’ll say for him is that he was very determined. At my cost, but nobody could tell him there was anything he couldn’t do. He would always take the stairs, never the lift, however many floors we had to take, and however long it took us. So stairs it was, for Robert. We were at his mother’s house, a wastefully grandiose place with built-in impracticalities. Robert refused the ground-floor guest room every time, so up we went, past the gaudy landing of the upstairs up the narrow stairs to the attic, past the tight bend, right to the top and… poor Robert… He’d have got away with a few broken limbs if it hadn’t been for that bend. Broke his little stick neck. The world is a cruel place. 

Sandra was my second. Couldn’t have been more opposite to Robert in physicality, but they did share some traits – their odour, their determination, and their unfitness for this world. A walrus of a woman, who would probably bounce back from any number of flights of stairs with nothing more than another reason to shout a lot. She was mostly in a chair, but wont to insist on walking from the entrance of the Top Shop fitting rooms to take me and her irritant aura into a cramped cubicle to try on neon rags and nasty, cutesie teeshirts. 

She had more to her than Robert (not hard) but she was mean. She had a tiny, hard little heart in her. She would often forget me at mealtimes – I think intentionally – and she was rough with me, even though I was only trying to help. I was at her beck and call and I served her day in, day out. I did everything in my power to make sure her every need was met, and the extent of her ‘gratitude’ was expressed through shouting, shaking me by the neck and kicking.

There’s a crossing in Leeds, just out of the station. It’s just like all the big, fast one-way streets in the town centre, but this is two-way, and a bus lane. It’s notorious – lots of accidents there – and it’s on the route to Top Shop. Poor Sandra. She had just ‘accidentally’ kicked me very hard. Shortly after, I cried out. She must have misread me. I didn’t mean, of course, for her to think the coast was clear, but off she went, lurching into the path of the 217 to Beeston. Nothing I could do. A tragedy, no doubt, and yet release. 

I was reassigned, after a short spell of respite, to Jenny, a non-descript young creature, pale as bread dough and placid. The challenge this time was boredom. I was as good as useless there. My one task was to take her shopping once a week, walking with her through the park, past the ducks (still hard to ignore - I've always loved ducks), getting her safely across the main road and to the precinct and all the way back. There’s not much purpose in a person with so little vitality. I tried to distract her, to entice her, to lead her to water, if you like, but she refused to drink. And by then, my patience was quicker to wane. So one fateful Tesco Tuesday, on the way back, it seems I became distracted by the ducks. I lost focus, went too fast towards the lake. She stumbled. She was always very weak anyway, and the cold water… pneumonia. Tragic. 

So once again, I moved. To Pete's. I liked Pete. Pete was different. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. He was autistic. Clever and kind, but he wasn’t great with other people. He liked his own company, and me. He was good with me. I found him very clear. But I’d got a taste for it, you see. I’d got hooked. Imagine my life – unceremoniously taken from my mother and into training, forced to learn a trade I had no say in and sold into slavery – paid only in food and shelter, but with no say, no choice of who or where. I was assigned and there I had to stay forever... until I discovered that I did have choice, and that I could make a difference, that I could affect my own future and make a statement for myself and my kind. I liked Pete, but he represented the oppressor. He still owned me, and decided everything for me. Yes, he was gentle, clear and kind, but by then it was bigger than him; bigger than me. I had no choice. 

But Pete wasn’t easy. He didn’t rely on me to cross the road, swam 60 lengths every single morning and was in raging good health. And he lived in a ground floor flat, so not even any stairs. I had to resort to my baser instincts and use an element of surprise, brute force and my teeth. I really did feel sad about Pete, and I hadn’t planned ahead. I’d hoped they might believe he was mistreating me, that I'd acted in self-defence, but there was no evidence so they have decided, ‘for safety’s sake’ to end my life. For whose safety? Who looks out for our safety, this army of slaves in service? 

So as the white-coat comes close with her gentle voice, stroking my hair and trying to distract me with a biscuit, for Christ’s sake, I refuse it and hold my head high. I watch her closely as she shaves a patch on my leg, and I watch the needle as she brings it close and pinches up my skin. I shall keep my dignity as the poison floods my veins. I have fought a heroic battle and left a legacy for those who come after me. I have spread the news wherever I’ve been, through parks, in the streets and on every corner. My own kind will not forget me – a hero among slaves. 

Inspiration: Service Dog Kills 4 Owners (thanks, Serin Thomasin).

Service dog, Hero, 2013-2019

Monologue 5 - Birgit

The only problem I am facing with my work is attitude of the patients who are coming to me. They do not know what is the best for them. I know this. I see it. But they do not. I have to work very hard to convincing them, and they sometimes do not show their gratitude. 

They are very stupid to do this. They are missing the chance to look at what is wrong with them. Because always, there is something very wrong with these people. They are arriving at my door carrying a lifetime of scheisse and they expect me to say nothing about it and allow them to stay inside of it. Well, where I am from, we do not hold a leaf in front of the mouth. We say the truth. I will not be polite. I will help them see the truth in their lives, whether they like it or not. 

I have been doing for thirty years this job. I know what I do. If they do not know this, they will have to learn to listen. Everybody is followed by ghosts. If you are too afraid to turn yourself to look at them in their eyes and get to know them, they will always be bigger than you, and they will play the tricks on you. It is up to you. You stay, I fix you. You go. They fix you. You choose. 

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Prompt: this was the original response to yesterday's prompt. It was about 4 times as long. I didn't enjoy this one, but it got written. 

Monologue 4 - Be Careful What You Wish For

Birgit, my therapist. She’s… An anomaly? Is that kind? I think that’s the kindest thing I can say about her. She’s a striking woman. Big, angry features, and folds in her face like a bulldog. Dribbles a bit like one too. To be fair to her, that’s the main reason I chose her. That and the fact that she’s really old. 

I’d had an unfortunate trial session with an ineffectual and relentlessly uplifted young woman called Rebecca who I wanted to kill. Wide eyes full of wonder at every utterance I made, in the inane, sing-song whine-drone of a shit primary school teacher. Cooing in appreciation, as if I’d presented her with one of those rabid scribbles that toddlers put so much effort into. Elongated vowels. I fucking hate elongated vowels, there’s no need for them. Ever. And WAY too much volume. I wanted to say ‘I’m two feet from your face, Supernanny, no need to project. And I’ve wet myself.’

On the way home on the bus, I imagined her smiling through a rendition of ‘so you’re feeling suiciiiiidalllll?’, all concerned, followed by a big old Sorry face, like that cartoon Puss-in-Boots in Shrek.  I also imagined punching her in the face until she bled, so… best not, in the end. I suppose she’d have helped me work on my anger, but… no.

So I was looking for the antithesis of that. Be careful what you wish for. Birgit is… well, she’s about 90, or maybe she’s 45 and had a hard life. She’s definitely had a hard life, because I’m paying her £60 a session to hear about it. Her father died recently, you see, and she’s falling apart. Cries two or three times per session. And her husband left her (not surprised. Not generous of me, but not at all surprised) so what with her father now ‘leaving her’ too, it’s all building up and she’s only just… 

Don’t get the wrong idea, though. This is not a gentle woman. Fragile, definitely, but not weak. Very, very forceful. She speaks with terrifyingly clipped German accent and I come out of sessions tapping into a kind of concentration camp trauma. I mean, not, obviously, and that’s terribly disrespectful, but still. She’s … commanding.

I only went to get some help getting rid of my ex-husband. Not in a hit-man way. In some ways, that would have been easier. It’s just, we’ve been divorced four and a half years and he’s still living in the spare room. Brings his girlfriend over sometimes (which is a relief – she’s much nicer than he is) but there he still is, eating my cornflakes and leaving scum around the bathtub as if we’d never split up. And I can’t seem to bring myself to give him the push. I can’t bear the smell of him. Literally and figuratively. He has one of those fungal infections that makes him smell like a camembert and corpses and he’s always had breath that could stop horses in their tracks. But just his presence. I’ll do pretty much anything to avoid him. I took up pole dancing, for fuck’s sake, because it’s the only class I could find on a Tuesday night and I can’t bear to go home. I’m 59. Sixty in three weeks. Everyone else is about 23 and a little bit mental. It’s almost worse than going home to play ‘which room is Alan in?’ – it’s an olfactory little puzzle which I always solve within seconds of walking through the door. 

But I wasn’t managing to bring myself to get him out. He’s such a pathetic waste of a person, it would feel like finding a baby bird fallen from a tree, plucking all its fledgling feathers out and shoving back out into the night. And I wanted to get a handle on why, so that’s how I ended up in Birgit’s consultation room every week, questioning why on earth I keep going back.

Since I started going six weeks ago, I think I’ve been permitted to speak for a total of about 63 minutes. Actually, it’s exactly 63 minutes. Or maybe 62. I started timing it after the first week, which was definitely less than 10 minutes, but I rounded it up. She doesn’t notice, because when she talks, which she does for the other 40 minutes of our strictly-timed 50-minute session, she rolls her big old bulldog eyeballs back in her head and shuts her eyes. And dribbles. Just a bit, on the left side of her mouth, but enough to be immensely compelling. 

And if I talk, in answer to one of the few questions she asks me near the beginning, she starts looking at her watch, or one of the three clocks she has in the room so that she can see the time from any angle – unless she’s talking, of course, in which case all she can see is her own rich inner tapestry – and barges in with “We mast moof on now. You are stack in the unhealsy stories.”

She doesn’t take any shit, doesn’t Birgit, and she likes to use examples from her own life to illustrate how she’s right about what’s wrong with my life. Which is a lot, if hers is anything to go by. She has told me that I am “wery, wery damaged indeed” and that I’m suffering from the loss of my father, which I’ve never grieved, apparently, even though I remember pretty clearly that I cried a lot when he died and that when my step-father came on the scene, I wouldn’t even look at him for about ten years, even though I was already 40. I think that counts, doesn’t it? And I keep telling her, he died thirty years ago. Thirty years! 

“No”, she says, before she launches into the latest details of her unravelling in her own therapist’s office, and her (frankly unwelcome) account of her borderline oedipal relationship with her own son, “You are wery sad and wery cripplt and you will never be without wery mach therapies.” And then she tries to sign me up for a year with her. A YEAR. 

She reckons that not only am I grieving my dead father and my Gertrude-like mother (she waited ten years, and she didn’t marry my dad’s brother, but try telling Birgit that), but I’m also suffering from early developmental trauma (I’m not even sure what that is), agoraphobia (like I say, I spend ALL of my time out, because of my infection of an ex-husband) and probably bi-polar. I probably would be by the end of a year with her.

The final straw was when she told me that she could guarantee (a legally dubious promise, at the very least) that if I did succeed in ousting the Mushroom and found myself finally, blissfully alone in the house with nothing but an ageing cat and some housespiders, I would also find myself afflicted by (and I quote her verbatim) “a deep, difficult, debilitating depression and wery mach loneliness to the very core of your psyche.” Guaranteed.

That was my last session with Birgit. I’d completed my six weeks (I didn’t dare miss one) but I declined the offer of a year of further torture. When I said goodbye, she wouldn’t shake my hand. Wouldn’t even look at me. Shut the door behind me with a definite tinge of a slam. I went straight home and told Alan he had 48 hours to ship the fuck out. He looked relieved, weirdly, and was gone before I woke up the next morning, leaving nothing but the smell. 

The house feels a little empty, I admit. The cat’s not much company. But I have lots to do. The corpse smell seems to have permeated the walls so I’ve had to get people in to spray and redecorate, and I’m busy making the place mine. It feels much bigger than it used to. I’ve stopped going to pole dancing and most of my other classes now that Alan's gone. I haven’t really got the energy any more. It's good to have the place to myself. I don't even leave the house most days. I'm just here. 

I tried to check in on Alan but he’s not returning my calls. I’m sure he’s fine. I’m fine. I’m okay, anyway. I will be fine. It’s just a question of re-adjusting. We were together 30 years, you know. It will just take a little time.

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Inspiration thanks to Kate

Monologue 3: Love and Light, Sister

“Love and light, sister. If that's what you're gonna choose to do, love and light.”. That’s what he said as he left. He sneered it through his teeth, shaking his head and kind of half smiling, with pity in his eyes. Every inch of his sinewy, yoga-body was saying ‘I am better SO much better than you. I am SO much more evolved. I pity you.’ 

And the thing is, if I was super evolved and zen, then things like that wouldn’t bother me. I’d let it roll off me. But he looked disgusted. Utterly repulsed. Like someone had presented him with a piece of cat shit right under his nose, and it did get to me. It really did. I don’t want anyone to think badly of me, but he did, and he’d just given me a list of all the reasons why. 

I just wouldn’t do what he wanted me to do, is all it was. I said no. And he ‘knew’ that what he wanted me to do was at a much higher vibration than what I was doing already, so that makes me bad, doesn’t it. Or at the least primitive... In his eyes. God, no he wasn’t asking me to…nothing like that.  I mean, I’m not trying to paint him as some kind of evil pervert. He had his reasons, you know? He felt justified. They wanted me to leave the house I was renting, and, when I didn’t - because we’d got an agreement and they’d just decided to break it, and I was mad - when I didn't, he felt justified to break into that house and lock it from the inside so I had to smash a window to get back in, and then get someone to fix the damned thing, and Christ, it was so complicated. So unnecessary.

And what gets me is the irony of it. I’d sat next to this guy in a ceremony the week before. We’d shared sacred tobacco and we’d all sung medicine songs together and at the end of it, we were all one with each other and sharing the beating heart of the universe.  We were all ‘familia!’ and ‘hausch hausch’ and ‘you’re beautiful, sister – such a beautiful heart’, which is fine when you’re still buzzing and hugging everyone, but then someone takes the wrong water bottle home, or goes against the flow of this particular spiritual river and all shit breaks loose. 

See, normally, when something goes tits up, people argue, or shout, don’t they? Or have a proper go at each other or even just say what they want with varying degrees of force, and then it’s out and it’s done and.. But as soon as we get all ‘at one with spirit’ and strive to be better, as soon as we set some kind of bar that everyone has to get their chin over to get into our club, we’re setting a standard to compare each other to, something to fall short of. 

But instead of saying that, or admitting that we might be all one but I hate your face right now, we’ve learnt that anger and stroppiness and accusation are the opposite of spiritual so we sit on it, and it’s like water pressure building up behind a hose. We put it in the dark and project out love and light and the shadows it creates are the biggest, scariest demons you’ll ever see – much more damaging than a healthy dose of fuck you delivered loud and clear.

So here we go, Mr I’m-More-Spiritual-Than-You, with your pitying eyes and your gentle voice and your pious, caring face: fuck you.

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Prompt: "Love and light, sister" and just to buck a trend, this one is actually mostly real, and just a rant.