IV

As the days wore on, and once I had managed to exchange the first few words with him, we grew almost companionable.
Every morning I'd go downstairs to make coffee and say hi. He'd generally have been awake a while longer than me, as the hot water pipes are loud in the basement. Conversation was sometimes stilted. We knew nothing about each other. So, as is often the way with relative strangers, we talked about culture. And what was more appropriate than the books I had given him myself?

"...but the German word is actually more correctly translated as 'vermin', not as 'beetle'. If you read the story with 'vermin' instead, it puts a whole different light on it. It explains things that didn't quite follow on..."

We worked through whole bookshelves together. I loved how he thought, the way he pointed things out to me, unsure and knowledgable at the same time. The way he spoke made me want to like what he liked, read what he had read. It made me love him more.

Once, in the middle of the night, I felt guilty for keeping him all this time. Maybe there were people in the outside world to miss him, people he had never mentioned? But I knew I could never let him out. It was better this way. Much safer this way.

III

The first week was difficult. He was noisy, and I found myself leaving the house for hours at a time to get some peace. When I realised what I was doing, I sat down to work out a solution. Of course, he was scared. Waking up in strange surroundings with no explanation... He needed me to engage with him. I realised I didn't even know his first name (his surname had been on the University of East London IdentiCard attached to his jeans pocket.)
So the next morning before he woke I placed a package at the bottom of the steps into the basement, locking the door behind me. I had wrapped a note from myself explaining that he was safe, along with a deck of cards and some of my favourite books in a tea-towel. How could a boy be bored in the company of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Patrick Suskind, Henry Miller, Salman Rushdie, Franz Kafka and James Joyce...? Then I left the house to buy apples, bread and pasta sauce, all of which I had run out of the previous day.

On my return the house was completely silent.

II

As soon as I got him in the door, I started to worry. While fairly slim, I had no idea how tall he was. What if my basement wasn't big enough? Would he be warm down there? Would he get scared? Bored? To be on the safe side, I decided to sedate him. I laid him on the blankets I'd padded the floor with, and placed a bottle of water near him. Then I climbed the ladder, bolted the door and made coffee while I waited for him to come around.

dangerous I

It was a miracle I’d never met him before that, or maybe he was new in the area. But I’d seen him three times in as many days. On the way to work, at the station on the way to town, and then waiting in the queue at the Post Office. That was when I decided. Things were getting risky…what if I spotted him while out with a friend? They’d wonder why I stopped in my tracks. What if I ran into him with an armful of shopping? I’d drop it on the floor, without a doubt. What if I saw him while I was driving? It didn’t bear thinking about. I decided I would kidnap the strange boy who made me go weak at the knees.
It was much simpler than I’d imagined. I was part-way through drawing up elaborate plans, some involving extremist political action or the involvement of the Triads, when I collided with him at the top of the road I lived on. He smiled at me, and I knew I had to act fast. Knocking him unconscious was the easy part. Luckily there were no passers-by to observe me hauling him the 100 metres or so to my front door….

mumps part 3

3.14
My ears are numb. My neck is agony. My whole face feels a different shape, my eyes are too wide. My shoulders even feel odd. The skin all over my body is dead. I scratched my neck. I scratched my shoulders my cheek my stomach. I have all these scratches and no memory of slicing myself. That sounds odd, like I’m taking a kitchen knife to my fingers, slicing them thin and placing them in a cooking pot. Or scoring little lines in my flesh. Like a tally. Or a line-drawing.

6.28
I’d rather be at work. I’d rather be on my feet, making my own decisions, making my own fucking meals. I’m wasting away. Shaking away. I feel inhuman. Less than? Just different. I don’t feel like who I am. And the punctuation is fairly arbitrary.
Watch her get restless.
Dammit. I liked my neck. It was long and it has those little tendons running down the sides. I had hollows and indentations around my collarbones. It was pretty. I liked my neck. Now I have some round, swollen trunk keeping my head up. I want me back. I look different, but I only feel different when I remember that I’m sick.

mumps part 2

10.11
Fucking hell. I can only eat after taking painkillers. Cloudy apple juice, plain yoghurt and honey, liquidised soup. I want TOAST! I want dark chocolate, straight from the fridge so I have to chunk it off with my back teeth. Melted butter, hot milk, glutinous bread sticking to my teeth.

Sitting in bed with my jaw pushed forward. It’s weird not having an overbite. None of my teeth meet. Taptaptaptap tapping my front teeth will have to do.

5.17
There is Belladonna on the table by my bed. And cups and bowls on the floor. A bottle of prescription-labelled pills. They look so ugly, blue lines and grey printed words and yellow lines.
Some other sweet white pill to put under my tongue every two hours. Ecinachea for immune system. Orange juice for recovery. Hot chocolate for my flagging morale.
Suddenly dozing, drifting off. Time is moving in odd ways. This song has been playing for hours, this minute has lasted for days. Melting away. I feel hot and feeble and cranky. All my chin wobbles every time I move.

9.47
I had a dream I was choking up blood clots. I had a dream I was coughing up droplets of blood, splashing in perfect circles on the tiled bathroom floor. How poetic. Reminds me of a song, but I couldn’t say which.

mumps part 1

(this was all written over the three of four worst days. i appear not to have left AM or PM on any times. testament to the fact i was only semi-aware of the world at best, and in agony at worst)

9.18
Impossible to flick my fringe. Impossible to drink the dregs. Impossible to yawn. My neck is so painful that my ears feel numb. How bizarre. The skin on my shoulders feels like rubber. Morphine, or something like it.

7.22
I never had much truck with recording the passing of time. Calendars, clocks, deadlines. And it’s always the same. The only reason I’d look at a calendar would be when my period came. Record start, record end, neglect once more.
And clocks. They surround me, walls, tables, phones, wrists. And they’re all telling subtly different lies. The only time I’ll listen is when I’m ill. “1 or 2 tablets every 3-4 hours” allowing 20 minutes for the drugs to hit my system...
I’m lucky I’m not vain. I find it hilarious. I look like some kind of retired opera singer, neck sagging but face still taut like canvas, courtesy of the tent pegs in their hairline.

Puffy neck puffy face. While I’ve been writing this the drugs have kicked in. My head throbs less. The sieve-holes in the pain are letting my sense of humour leak through. Possibly. My sentences are getting longer, always a sure sign…