Pt. 27 - Neurons Like Brandy - Chapter 10: Joshua

Neurons Like Brandy is a long running project of mine that I have been trying to finish for about 8 years. It focuses on a house in Brighton after the zombie apocalypse has passed, with flashbacks told by one of the remaining survivors every other chapter.

The chapter numbering is a little confusing so if this is your first time here and you are interested in reading more then I would recommend starting at the index where each of the chapters are ordered in the manner that they are meant to be read.

This chapter is a long one and focuses on Joshua. Please note, the lack of line breaks is a stylistic choice to fit Joshua's psyche. Previous lacks of line breaks were fuck ups on my part.

Chapter 10: Joshua
I knew it was a bad idea to take on that job for a fortnight.
  I had a networking project to deal with in Chertsey, a tiny shit hole of a place outside of London, and my boss said that the other guy was sick and that I needed to help some crappy company bring in a new QA team ready for the latest and greatest piece of shit that they were going to put out. By the way, if you didn’t understand much of that last sentence, don’t worry it makes no difference to the outcome.   I agreed to do it, I don’t know why. I really didn’t like the idea of spending all of my time in a place where I’d have to live in a four star hotel (which reads as a place with expensive food and drink and annoying firewalls that you have to get around before you can look at porn) dealing with people who had probably given up on life and given up on their jobs for sure. The news of the problems started appearing about 2 or 3 days before the end of my job, the only reason I knew anything was happening was because people would come over on their coffee break and mention something, like ‘Apparently the blackout has consequences’. I carried on doing my job wishing that everything around me would just stop. The days in the hotel had got longer, as the wait for my comedowns on Speed to end seemed to grow in length as well. They put me on a conference call with some guy who spent half his time coughing and apologizing for said coughing that I wasn’t even sure if my project was over or not. I didn’t care all that much just so long as he eventually shut up. Fortunately, the project was done. These were some of my thoughts on the train back to Brighton. Just common grumblings of a nerd with a drug habit looking to not have to deal with bullshit that seems to haunt them as they get older.

  The carriage I was sitting in was a standard size, could probably seat 50 odd people, at this time (midday/1 o'clock) it should have been full, instead I had a set of four seats to myself.

  From where I was sitting I could see I was sharing a carriage with two cute looking school girls (I’m sorry but at the age of 17 you just look the perfect combination of sexually active and innocent - sue me) a guy who was looking rather aggravated like he had something on his mind that he needed to talk to a psychologist or priest about, and a couple who were holding each other’s hands far too tightly.

  I was a little on edge, my last night had involved a lot of snorting lines while falling down a hole of information that started with me clicking on a link about what a pop duo called Daphne and Celeste were doing and ended with me reading a 8000 word essay on the possibilities of this thing called String theory. The whole thing had been warped into one long stream of information with none of it really seeming more important than the rest.

  Now, I was sweating it out of me, hoping that I could summon the strength to do the same again tonight. The train ran through a copse of trees and the sun beams intermittently stabbed my irises as it chopped through the branches overhanging the tracks. My teeth felt unwashed, caked in a rubbery residue. I could feel the dirt under my finger nails vibrate in time with the jostling of the train as it ground along the metal tracks. My socks felt like used condoms, sticky with my excretions, and they clung to my feet inside my vegetarian leather boots. My T-Shirt seemed to chafe no matter which way I sat and was insistent on making me want to scratch at my neck; peeling off dry dead skin that then mixed in with the sweat and further made me want to claw at my skin.

  I sat in that carriage hoping that how I felt would dissipate. My only consolation was that the stressed guy looked even worse than I did.

  The train driver passed a barely comprehensible message about there being a blockage in the tunnel ahead or something. When the message ended the couple got up and looked around anxiously. When the woman looked at me I pretended to be have something really important on my knee that needed my undivided attention. By the time I got the nerve to look back the two of them had vanished from sight.

  The train jolted to a halt, it wasn’t an easy stop and felt like the front of the train might have collided with a wall and caused it to stop so violently.

  Other people in the carriage started to stand up and look around.  As they did so one guy popped into my view from over the top of one of the chairs – total alpha male (clean cut, suit, jaw line that could slice through steel) – started saying something that I only caught a little of.

  “-something about people.”

  My gaze went back to the only person not standing yet, the afflicted guy had stopped jittering. I hadn't noticed before but his skin was an alarming colour of grey.

  I couldn’t place it at first but this kind of whirring noise started in my head, I could tell it wasn’t a real noise but more like one of those that you get when the hairs in your ear die and it feels like the tiniest mosquito is inside your head. I could feel this tightness in my chest like my T-Shirt had suddenly got a couple of sizes smaller.

  The carriage itself had started to gently shake from side to side, it was then that I realised that the tightness I was feeling was a panic attack. A rhythmic pounding started against our carriage and even though I knew I didn’t want to, I shuffled in my seat to look out of the window and down.

  There must have been at least 100 of them. All of them in various states of disfigurement and decomposition. They didn’t seem to see me but the way they were banging against the train like they knew we were here.

  The school girls (who sends school girls to their death?) started to scream.

  The clean cut guy started saying things but I am not really sure what they were, they were obviouly meant to be reassuring. I tried to shake the whirring sound inside my head.

  “-on the train. We are safe.” Alpha male said.

  I started to wonder how he knew this, that this mob couldn't get on the train, all they needed to do was climb.

  “No, I know what this is. It's Zombies.” The Alpha Male said, looking straight at me. It was then that I realised that I had spoken out loud and that he had responded to me.

  “See, they can't climb. They aren't smart.”

  A couple of people walked past him heading towards the back of the train, as they did the aggravated guy stood up and attacked them. That's when I started to move.

  I scrambled out of my seat and stumbled towards the back of the train. I made it to door that separated the carriages and cast a look over my shoulder. Alpha Male had managed to disentangle the couple from the zombie-man. He looked at me again, his composure completely gone. His eyes darted back to the snarling creature in his hands and he seemed to realise something then drop it and start running towards me.

  I freaked out, pulled the door open and tried to open the next to get into the following carriage. I then realised that there were more of them in there ripping the living apart.

  By this time Alpha had made it into the divide and saw what I saw. Swearing he started moving around inside the small compartment. I heard the sound of a shutter sliding down and looked to see that he had managed to get one of the windows for the doors that were used to descend to the station platform.

  I really didn’t have a plan, my head was still fucked and these things were trying to make it worse. I looked to see that the two teenagers were now in the compartment with me. The only thing I could think about was getting out of this place because it would become our tomb. The whirring noise in my head now escalated to a roar and it felt like an airplane was taking off around me. I saw one part of the couple who had run away rush towards the door that lead into our tiny area. His eyes were turned up into the top of his head as he barreled straight into the glass.

  I grabbed one of the girls and told her and her friend to get out of the window and up on top of the train.

  As the glass caved in completely the thing shoved its arm and head through and tried to get at me. I surprised myself by just taking a fire extinguisher that was secured to the carriage wall and caving in its head. In that moment of impact the roar stopped, the tightness was gone, there was no itch to scratch or rather this felt like the most satisfying itch scratched ever.

  The whole experience was rather surreal, the dull sloshing sounds as the cranium gave way after repeated blows, and the sense of relief that I felt when the body slumped down on the sixth strike.  The girl still in the train with me started gagging and then she threw up into the brains, sinew, cartilage and bone fragments.

  I just said ‘great, now I want to puke.’

  The body was being dragged out of the way now. There were more things in there trying to get to us. The girl managed to look up at me, still cute, even with the stains.

  She then made a move to the window and started to scramble out. I came up behind keeping one eye on the moving parts coming through the broken window.

  As I started pulling myself out, I made the mistake of looking down. A foot from my face were clawing outstretched hands, broken, bloody fingers tearing at the side of the train. Beneath these were ashen, ghastly faces, the eyes turned up into the sockets, that still seemed to be looking straight at me.

  For a split second it made me think of this Cameroonian football player, died of a heart attack in the middle of an International match. The tabloids had splattered the image on the front pages, his face a death mask. It almost shook me out of my comedown to be looking down into death.

  What really fucked me up was one of the schoolgirls. She must have lost her gripping and slipped, or gotten scared and frozen up and fallen, I don’t know. What I do know was that I lost a couple of seconds as she fell past me and smacked my head on the window edge.

  I staggered back into the compartment trying to figure out what happened, blood blossoming from a gash on my forehead. Then I head the screaming, still shaken I tried to make my way out of the window again.

  They tore her apart in seconds, I didn’t look for long. I dragged myself out of the train, my stomach pressed tightly against the hull of the carriage. Something grabbed one of my feet as I was pulling myself onto the roof nut I lashed out and whatever it was let go.

  I scrabbled onto the top of the cab, huffing and puffing; my head was spinning so I just lay there for a bit. The pain from my forehead mixing with my general feeling of shitness made the whole place was a blur.

  I managed to shift myself into a semi-respectable sitting position and reached into my left pocket for my pack of cigarettes and lighter. I sparked up and took a long drag on it.

  It is funny what your mind will do to you, just to protect you, like the way people faint when they don't have enough oxygen. My brain had decided to give my senses a leave of absence so as to keep me from losing it.

  I had this wonderful sense of calm, I fancied the idea of just sitting up there forever.

  Then some son of a bitch stood in front of me and blocked the sun. I told him as such, and was surprised to not be able to hear my own voice. I repeated the sentence and still couldn’t hear myself.

  I squinted up at the person and tried to make them more than just a silhouette. It was the other school girl, the one that wasn’t dead. I said ‘hey’ and I still couldn’t hear myself.

  I looked around we were on the third carriage from the end, closer to the front of the train were a group of people who had had the same idea a me. They were shouting something, not sure who at. Then it all started rushing back.

  People were shouting, screaming, crying from within the train, I looked around, still puffing away. I noted dully that some of those zombies, had started running away, I saw their target – a man in a tracksuit - stumbling up the rise on the side of the tracks desperately trying to get away from them.

  I took one more drag and flicked my cigarette off the side ‘Well he’s fucked’. I winced as I pulled myself up; the blood on my head was already starting to coagulate and stretched my skin painfully as I frowned.

  I decided that there were worse things to do than join up with the group on the roof of the train. They were three carriages down so I yanked another cigarette from my packet, lit it and walked towards them, trying to ignore the groans from below. The shouting and screaming were, fortunately, starting to end so I could hear myself think at least.

  With hindsight, I suppose I must have looked a little unhinged, caked in blood and grinning cheerily as I approached. The estimation would not have been entirely wrong as I did not entirely feel myself.  Going crazy at that point really didn't seem like a bad idea either.

  My reception was better than it should have been.

  The Alpha Male, for he was among them, started shouting at me asking me if I was bitten. I waited patiently while he got it off his chest, all 6 of the people who were part of the group looked shit-scared and I could empathise.

  I think the Alpha was trying to organise something, I wasn't even listening, instead I fished into my pocket and got another cigarette. I lit it quickly.

  The schoolgirl had followed me, I turned to her and told her that she should stay with these people.

  The Alpha asked me what I was going to do, I just told him I was getting the fuck out of here. He didn’t like that answer but it didn’t stop me.

  Everything became very vague after that, I’m not sure how I got off the train, I just did.

  It was during this run that it was drilled home to me how completely out of shape I was. Within less than 100 metres I was wheezing, coughing mess. I was lucky that none of the fast zombies were after me so I was given enough time to get over a fence and slow down. From there I just started walking.

  During that period there is only on one section which is utterly clear. At one point I came across a small farmhouse somewhere near a town called Hassocks, I didn't trust the house but there was a barn close by that I reckoned I could use.

  The barn was split onto two levels, the lower had a bunch of stables while the first floor was a smaller platform with some stuff wrapped in black plastic bags.

  I had a quick look around and then went up the steps to the first floor. I found a spot right at the back behind the bundles and began sleeping.

  I was awoken later by the sound of a crash. I kept utterly still, from what I could tell there were at least two people/things outside, they were fast as well, like the ones I'd seen chasing the guy up the incline outside of the train.

  They were both growling and spitting, almost comically, they kept bumping into things. Then I heard another crashing sound. There was silence for a few seconds then there was a low moan. It sounded like one of the slow ones. Then I heard a scream coming from inside the house.

  A few seconds later one came into the barn, by which timethe screaming had already stopped. I lay there waiting for it to leave, then it started walking up the steps to the first floor of the barn.

  I lay very still, hoping that these things weren't able to smell me, although that always seemed to be the way in films. It walked to the top and then headed in my direction. I couldn't risk staying there, I scurried to my feet and jumped down to the stables below me. There was no hay waiting for me and I landed heavily on a stone floor. The thing above me started running back down towards me. I headed for the entrance and waited just outside. These things were, really dumb and one on one you could beat them, especially if you had the upper hand. As it tried to get out, I slammed the door on it hard.   It popped its head out and so I smashed the barn door on it harder. I tried a couple more times and I had popped out one of its eyeballs. A few more bashes and it crumpled to the ground. At no point during our encounter did it try a different tactic other than get at me like the mindless thing it was.

  I took a closer look at my handy work in a kind of dazed fascination, as I did so a pair of hands gripped me from behind, I panicked and shoved whatever it was away and ran towards the house, there was a ex-human in the door way.

  I barged my way through and kept going.

  I got to the kitchen of the house, the thing was already giving chase. I looked around desperately, looking for some kind of weapon. 'Shit, it is a fucking kitchen!' I exclaimed. I spied a kitchen knife by the sink to my left, the thing rushed into the room and lunged for me as I put a kitchen table between us by running for the knife.

  I snapped up the knife and it lunged for me again, this time with the benefit of not having the table in the way.

  The knife went straight through its eye socket then as the weight of the creature fell on me the blade found its way to the back of its skull. I kid you not I felt the blade graze against the inside of the cranium through the vibrations in the hilt.

  We were stuck like that for awhile with it slouched against me. With a heave, I managed to push it off of me. Breathless, I tried to catch up with the pulsing in my body, unfortunately for me there was something moving in my peripheral vision. A slow one, was shuffling in my direction. I looked around and the only thing I saw that said 'ultimate weapon' was a toaster. I grabbed it and advanced on it only to find that it was still attached to the wall, so I had to back up, pull the cable out of the socket then I waited.

  It shuffled ever closer to me, I just waited. It was already within 2 meters of me, I just waited. Its arms were outstretched, I pushed them aside and hit it hard with the toaster.

  I didn’t sleep all that well for the rest of night.

  The trip around that was a complete blur, lots of stumbling, lots of running, I vaguely remember hiding in a tree. The thing that got to me the most was the hunger. It built up inside at sporadic moments and at first I treated it by taking speed but there was only so long I could be on my feet before I would have to sleep and then I would wake up with these clawing pains in my stomach. I was too afraid of most houses to go in them so I did things like eat grass, stuff on trees and scraps in bins. I have no idea how long it was before I walked down into one of the outliers of Brighton, it could have been weeks or even a couple of months. Regardles that was all pretty much pointless because no matter how long it took me to get to Brighton, the place was dead when I got there. I walked in through Falmer and I already knew that the whole place was pretty much fucked right then.

  The only thing I saw that gave the place any semblance of life were herds of domestic dogs wandering around. Not that I was looking all that hard, the trip to Brighton had been enough to teach me that wandering around aimlessly was the best way to attract attention. I finally summoned up the courage and targeted a house that looked like I might be able to make it defensible and broke in straight away.

  It was an average council estate house, with the bedrooms and toilet upstairs, the kitchen and living room on the ground floor; it was only memorable because it was first place I went into in Brighton.

  I walked through the main ground floor hallway, going for the kitchen, there was breakfast stuff on the table: a half eaten piece of mouldy toast, a cracked, stinking, boiled egg still in its cup.

  The power was out so I ignored the fridge and went for any dried or tinned produce that might have been in the cupboards. As I clanked open the wooden door I must have disturbed her. She came at me pretty quickly, the thing is by that time I knew what to expect. I didn’t even make a noise when she slammed into me. I knew where she was aiming for, knew her weakness. I flipped her and jammed a stick (that I had been carrying specifically for the occasion) between her teeth, like a gag, to stop her from making any more noise.

  She clawed at me, but I’d acquired a thick coat and gloves, the only part of me she could have scratched was my face and neck but I pinned her elbows with my knees. I paused to look at this woman, gritting her teeth against the stick and gargling from the bottom of her throat. There was no signs of blood, or of any wounds.

  I used a tin of baked beans to kill her.

  I stayed in that house until there wasn’t anything left to eat. I searched the house found some books and porn and chilled out. Most of the nights I slept in the living room a trip wire fashioned from the tin can I’d used to kill the woman and some string was across the main door. One night I didn't sleep at all mainly thanks to there being 2 or 3 Camers prowling around. I’d already planned my main escape route out of there through the back garden, it wasn't ideal as there was a path that divided the back garden of this house and the garden of the other, meaning there could easily be something lurking in a very confined space (confined spaces=bad).

  That was one thing that became very important with each of the places I chose from then on, they always had at least two ways that would get me out and away.

  Running from house to house became the norm for a very long time, days stretched into nights and then back into days and events became lists of things that in my mind really had no chronological order when I look back at them. I would like to say it was because of drugs but I spent large portions of it completely clean.

  I wore shin-pads, and sewed some metal plating into the forearms of my coat as a way to give me some protection against bites without losing all mobility. I slept on elevations, on the top shelves of walk-in cupboards, even outside on sheds. I went through people’s private things, once had a wank wearing someone’s underwear on my head, I don't even remember if they were male or female pants either.

  I read books all the time to try and stop myself going crazy. Austen, Shakespeare, Coupland, Hardy, Easton Ellis, Jilly Cooper; anything would do, I always knew when I was starting to lose it was when I started talking to myself.

  I traveled at night, got used to sleeping when it was light, they could track me easily at either time but it gave me the advantage if I was awoken to have the daylight as my guide, waking up at night, disorientated and in pitch black is ridiculous better to stay alert and mobile. I got better at seeing in the dark.

  I spent a some time in a sporting and camping goods shop (I used it as my base of operations) and made a vicious spike out of a strut from a tent, two badass knives from some metal tent pegs, and I had a rounders bat as a cudgel.

  I don’t know how many of them I killed. I know I did about fifteen while searching the American Express building alone; that was during 2 days.

  I stopped being afraid, I felt like I was the only person alive, although I knew I wasn’t. I saw some of the real people sometimes. They would appear on my travels, raiding corner shops, being attacked or attacking those things, the Camers, as I started calling them.

  I didn’t talk to them or approach them, there was a good chance that they would just kill me any way.  I'd never been particularly trusting when things were normal and now that they were this fucked up I saw all bets as being off.

  In the beginning I never felt depressed, it was strange, I was too busy being alive and staying that way to ever have a chance to think about my parents, my sisters, friends (the few that I'd had); I was too busy taking my time looking for a place to stay that was reasonably safe, that might have food, books, cigarettes, and if I was lucky, drugs. The kind of drugs that keep you up for days.

  I didn't notice it at first, but after living this tenouous existence for as long as I did; I finally caught myself in the mirror and was horrified by what I saw. My skin had gotten sallow, my neck was stringy and I ended up taking my coat off to observe that my ribs were sticking through my skin. It brought me to the verge of tears, or at least the weird, bearded skeletor I saw in the mirror was almost brought to a sobbing wreck.

  My front teeth slowly became too painful to bite anything with as it felt like my gums were receeding and filled full of electricity that jutted out through the fading enamel anytime they came into contact with food. I drank my water as warm as I could. To achieve that I would collect what I had in a plastic bottle and stick under my arm and hold it there. My legs and arms became thinner but also more sinewy as I got used to running and climbing for my life.

  The funniest thing of all was that I never thought about leaving Brighton, the same feeling that I was the only person alive also made me feel like I had become the king of the city.

  I started to believe some of the theories that had been floating around before the end of the world, that time didn’t exist, that the mind, to handle the fact that the instant was all that existed, created the illusion of time. That what had then happened was my nervous system had broken and now I was experiencing all time longer than anyone else. I started to read the Acid House mixed with some nutter called Lacan. I started talking to myself because of something somwhere that had indicated to me that societies created language as a means of communicating amongst the inhabitants therein, and that if society didn’t exist then communication could be lost. The logic being that if you didn’t have anyone to communicate to then you had no use for language. That, in fact, a rose by any other name, has no name. Everything would cease to matter, that although I was walking around in a city I was really inside a giant barrel and that I would no longer be able to identify anything, or prove that anything existed.

  It was some point after I lost a couple of molars that I noticed how lonely I was becoming. As much as I had hated the little moments of banality, the exchanges with the idiots I saw every day. I now felt the need to swap pleasantries with someone, so I would tell myself but that wasn't enough.

  By this time though, the people had almost all disappeared. I no longer had to worry about coming into contact with someone who might kill me as I saw no one. I started to really think that maybe I was the only person in the world. Some nights I would find a good spot where I was safe and listen to old Future Sound of London tapes and try not to cry. I could feel it at the centre of my philosphical concept of a soul and I knew it was killing me.

  I had been trying to get to this piercings parlour on the shore that I knew had some good stuff there (lots of perscription pain killers), but had been forced to take refuge on the rooftops of the square next to the street with the parlour because the Camers had been all over the place. It was unusual for so many to congregate in one place but I hadn’t thought much about it until I smelt the wafting, sweet pungenscy of weed float into my life again.

  People, people who smoked pot, not people who were stealing and beating Camers. People who had time to smoke and get stoned. People living and breathing for the sake of living and breathing.

  I tried to move across the roof to try and see evidence of the smoker, and I was shocked to catch what might be light, artificial light, power.

  I watched them for several days while I ate corned beef from a cup. I made sure that the real people didn’t see me all during this time. They seemed to have a good arrangement, they moved around their house as and how they pleased, there were two who were keeping a greenhouse, and I regularly saw a few of them smoking pot and laughing. I mean really laughing, like they were chilled out and not worried about the end of the world. I was fascinated with them. I wanted to be like them.

  I held out for an opportunity to get to their house, there was about 250 meters between me (not including my descent down the house) and their front door, however there were also about 200 to 300 Camers between me and that front door and there had to be at least another 50 or so milling on the outskirts of the main nucleus.

  My opportunity came a while later, the occupants had a bridge made from two ladders connected together that they then used to cross to the building next to them. In total, five of them clambered across this bridge, one by one. The scaffolding on the front of the building allowed for two of the other members to attract the attention of the Camers in the square to them as the other five then made a run for a car parked at the stairs in front of the adjacent building.

  When the car tore away, the Camers started chasing it. The entire square was almost emptied in 10 minutes. I scrambled down from my perch on the burnout building opposite the house.

  The square was virtually empty, I couldn’t help but grin.

  A Camer ran at me from the left and got a really good whack in the face with the rounders bat, the blow snapped the head back. The creature collapsed dead before it had a chance to know what it could’ve won.

  I tried to get back into my stride but two more were in my way, I dodged left, one snapped out a hand too quick for my own good and caught my forearm.

  There is rule that I have lived by ever since I got into this mess. All Camers are weak, but if they managed to clutch onto you they won’t get let go and you are fucked.

  I reached into my belt, aware that the second one was now moving towards me and that the first was leaning forward to bite my hand.

  I think I even said ‘Tough shit’ when I lunged forwards and stabbed it right in the face with my make shift blade. In the same moment I planted a foot right into its sternum and pushed it into the other.    The Camer didn’t let go of my arm, instead the hand remained gripping me as the entire limb ripped off the body.

  I was free, thank fuck.

  There were another 150 meters to the building and only another few contenders in front of me. I pelted through those meters, world class athletes would have been jealous. At least in my head I was doing world athelete quality running but I probably looked like a starving, pathetic man limping in a way that made me look like the hunchback from Notre Dame.

  I got inside the building and ran up. I didn’t stop until I reached a metal ladder leading to the roof.

  The top of the roof was clear, there were the people on the other building, some of them were just gaping at me.

  A wave was all it took to get them to lower the ladder bridge, I clambered across. They hit me with a lot of questions and I found that I couldn’t say anything. I was petrified, it scared me because I thought that maybe I’d forgotten to speak.

  The questions stopped and one of them said that they needed to clear the building after my entrance. I think that I nodded.

  We went back across the bridge and I helped him, Phil, clear out the building and hold the doors until the car came back, the five occupants exited and ran back in. We opened the doors, it made me smile that one of the guys took the time to ask me who the fuck I was while the rest just ran up the stairs. Big guy, long hair, oafish nature.

Phil told him he had no idea but that I'd just shown up after they had left in the car.

  Together we all ran back upstairs and went to their safe place.

  The first day was particularly hard, I could tell that people were walking on egg shells around me, not wanting to upset me, at the same time it was difficult for me seeing what I had become. My facial hair had been running wild for... I didn't know how long. I looked half dead. I made the mistake of looking in a mirror again and collapsed into sobbing.

  Someone interrupted my breakdown. Some girl introduced herself as Caryn and then asked me if I needed to rest. I looked at her and nodded. She guided me to a room and a bed, I almost started crying again. I lay down on this bed and it took me a good couple of hours to get comfortable. To believe that there wasn't some guy going to come through my door.

  Words were difficult, I can’t explain it, it was like my mind was fucked and it didn’t want me to fry it more by using words, I still managed to learn a few things though:

- I had been in Brighton, alone, for at least 9 months

- Beds were pretty amazing when there was no risk of being attacked

- You don’t unlearn light sleeping

- All drugs are great

- The people I was living with had problems with each other

  It was so weird watching people interact with each other for the first time in a long time. They had seemed so chilled when I had observed them from far away but now I was amongst them it was apparent they all had problems and it wasn’t so much what they said as what they didn’t say. I found the whole experience very refreshing as it gave me time to look at life again and realise that you could do it without freaking.

  I spent a lot of time just walking around in a bit of a daze; I acknowledged people but didn’t say anything. My circadian rhythms were fucked, I would spend hours trying to sleep at 3 in the morning and find myself unable because that was the time I would prowl. No one tried to hassle me to do anything and I was offered food and other ways to forget myself. It felt so difficult trying to talk to these people because they didn’t seem real.

  Two weeks into it I was in their recreational room (it became our recreational room), there was just these guys Denny and Phillip (the guy who had asked who the fuck I was on the first day). Phillip was playing some game, which seemed to involve running around and talking to people while buying food and playing arcades games. The main character was going about their daily business and nothing very important happened. I just stared, almost went into a fantasy where I could do that too. Just be in a world where nothing happened, where the most important thing you could do was collect some toys from the local vending machine.

  ‘So what are you doing’ I asked.

  Philip answered by telling me he was playing Shenmue. I asked him what that involved, the desire to talk flowing out of me all of a sudden.

  ‘You go around, find out who killed your dad but really you mainly do other stuff to make sure your day goes by as normal.’ Philip answered, shifting to look at me, half grinning.

  So we played and slowly I got more accustomed. I was so grateful to see that Phillip was just going to take me for who I was. At the same time it was easy to see that some of that acceptance was from the darkness that resided within. There were others in the household who were clearly afraid of him and it was easy to see why. Prone to violent swings of temper and aggressive drunkeness that were essentially harmless as long as you knew how to talk to him but potentially terrifying if you disagreed him or didn't know to talk to him on his level.

The biggest tension that neither seemed to be able to properly see was between him and this guy Dan – a good person in his own way but prone to this passive aggressiveness that started fights and arguments almost as soon as he left the room.

  It was hard to tell if they hated each other or not.

  After over two months of this I started to feel the itch to leave again, the place just wasn't as safe, emotionally, as I had expected. It also became clear to me that unless I acted rashly then I was going to be trapped in this weird spiralling drama. Dan needed to stand up for himself and air his grievances, that other members shared with him, but in a way that Phillip would understand. The thing was, he was so messed up and unfocused that he only knew how to lash out in these unconstructive ways that caused Phillip to react equally as bullish. Maybe it was the isolation or all the reading but all of this seemed abundantly clear to me but not to anyone else except possibly Caryn but she just seemed to be trying to ignore it.

  That was one of her flaws, she basically wanted to stay on the good side of everyone as a result it meant that she did shit all about anything.

  That was why I was kind of impressed and a little appalled when her and Dan had that fight on the roof. It solved nothing but it gave me an opportunity to get out of the building. Dan could drive and would be able to get me out of there. 

  It was definitely time to leave.