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FRIDAY
There’s a crack in the pavement, a dragonfly is stuck there, upside down, unable to open her wings, get back onto her feet. The crack is connected to dozens of other smaller cracks and if the rain keeps on, the puddle of dirty water that’s growing nearby will overspill and send forth rivers, filling the cracks like brand new veins receiving their first pulse of blood and the dragonfly will drown, upside down. A cigarette packet floats in the puddle, spinning slowly as the wind pushes it across the tiny lake. You sit on the cold street leaning against the window of a used electronics shop as the traffic lights turn your shaking fingers green then red and green again and people walk by ignoring you, unaware of the fate of the dragonfly. Cars roll past spitting mist onto your already soaked clothes and the last remaining bats – who do not yet consider the rain heavy enough to quit for the night – dip and swoop around the streetlights where the moths congregate. The skinny rain falls straight down and the enormous buildings seem to lean over and crowd around and look down at you, up and up among the bruised and angry clouds which hang heavy over Scotland and the world spins and whips around the sun and somewhere a planet is dying and a million stars are exploding and the rain keeps on falling down and down and just before the banks of the puddle break you push a matchstick underneath the dragonfly and she spins up and up to be eaten by bats.
You don’t know your name, you’re imaginary, you see. You exist inside the mind of someone else, only, you don’t know whose mind you were born from. You’re supposed to be their imaginary friend but something went wrong, they stopped needing you almost as soon as they had created you and now you’re stuck in existence, invisible and perpetual and trapped.
It’s a funny thing; existence, it just goes on and on.
SATURDAY
You pack up your things, your sleeping bag and your mug and your lighter and your hat and your spoon and your gloves and your needle and you walk to the underpass. You’re not the only one, you see, there are a lot of imaginary friends without friends and we always find each other. We have this medicine, you see, it helps us with the tedium and the pain of existing but you have to know the alchemist before you can get the medicine and you have to pay with money or acts of kindness or whatever you have to barter with.
The medicine is dangerous, too much can make an imaginary person invisible to even other imaginary people and as silent as space, we don’t mourn the missing, here in our world, there is no such thing as a minute’s silence with all of these voices in your head. Existing without the medicine is hopeless, many have tried and they all come back, given enough time. The real world is no place for an imaginary person but it seems for every one that the medicine takes, two more appear.
How many days has it been raining now? It is growing thicker and bouncing like bodies off the blacktop. The underpass is a waterfall behind which we huddle like hibernating beetles counting our numbers and whispering in our code.
“Holdin’?”
“Tapped, you?”
“Agonies, pal.”
“Shit, eh?”
“Bama’s lit, dunnae ken how.”
“Aye? Mustae found the bag-man.”
“Aye. Prick.”
“Aye.”
And on and on until someone knows someone who knows the alchemist and the reaction begins, promises and knives up the chain of command and back down again until it’s bubbling under small fires and another night is beautiful and gone gone gone away.
SUNDAY
Bloodshot eyes and rubber tubing still between your teeth and the rain has stopped but the sunlight shines golden through the raindrops on the leaves and Bama’s invisible and silent now. The medicine has taken another and maybe he’s the lucky one, you see.
You pack up your things, your sleeping bag and your mug and your lighter and your hat and your spoon and your gloves and your needle and you walk to the used electronics shop where you rest your head against the glass and you chant your chants and you hope that real people will see you but they rarely do and even when they do they forget that they saw you almost immediately.
MONDAY
The sun went down without any medicine and your teeth are chipped from grinding. Word comes down the line that Gash has got a doss and you pick up your hat and there are some coins in it now and that’s good.
You follow Shnecky to Gash’s place and there’s already the art on the walls and the metal piled up in the corner and the floor is thick with imaginary people on heavy doses of medication because the pain is too much for them, you see. That’s another thing about the medicine; you build up an immunity to it. The first time you take a dose you slip through the door to the other side so easily and you find bliss in the void that exists there, but a year later the same dose would barely ease the pain for a moment.
Numpty and Loupin are talking in tongues and you know that medicine is flowing thick in their veins like angel blood and you lick your lips and wish the pain away.
All the coins you have don’t add up to what you need for a dose but you put the word in to Gash that you’re on the look and he says he’ll see what he can do and you wait among the toothless grins and the whites of eyes for a reply.
And the itch comes now, crawling up your arms like summer heat and blood-loss and you’ve been here for hours or maybe minutes and you think about the dragonfly, blue and black and wings of glass flying up and away from the street and up to try its luck among the bats.
“Frankie’s got a bag.”
You’re snapped out of your thoughts and you’re led to Frankie, you can’t afford the dose so you arrange a deal and you go into a room that might be made of rubble and it only takes six minutes and you’re back in the main room with the medicine in your pocket.
It comes in the form of powder and some preparation is needed on your part. You add water from the screaming pipes and heat it to boiling but not for long, just enough so it doesn’t go south, and you suck the solution into the metal fang and you search for a blue pipe in your tree-bark arms and then you’re gone; through the door and out and up and away from all of the pain of the world and nothing bad can happen up here nothing can hurt you inside this armour nothing nothing nothing.
You’re under the bed and there are no monsters and you’re floating on water in the middle of the calmest lake and you’re a dragon fly freed from death by a colossal giant and you’re soaring through the warm dark.
And you’re bitten by a bat.
“Bad go, bad go.”
There’s commotion somewhere way down below you, you’re still flying but there’s panic now, you see, as the bats close in and they swoop and they take another bite.
“It’s a bad bundle, fuck! Don’t touch the Aries. They’re drowning.”
And now you’re falling. You are broken, you see, and there’s pain everywhere, an intense pressure is building in your head and your falling down and down and down and your heart pumps liquid metal through your veins and your lungs are filling up with glue and you can feel the wind whistling through the holes in your wings and the medicine has turned on you, you see. It happens to all imaginary people eventually.
Eyes wide and you’re back in Gash’s doss and there are faces floating above you, vacant, paper faces.
You try to suck air into your porcelain chest, as bathwater leaks out of your mouth and you can’t stop your rigour limbs from thrashing.
You’re going now, through a door much bigger than the medicine ever showed you before.
You don’t know your name, you’re imaginary. You exist inside the mind of someone else, only, you don’t know whose mind you were born from. You’re supposed to be their imaginary friend but something went wrong, they stopped needing you almost as soon as they had created you and somewhere a planet is dying and a million stars are exploding and the rain keeps on falling down and down and you pack up your things; your sleeping bag and your mug and your lighter and your hat and your spoon and your gloves and your needle and just before the banks of the puddle brake you push a matchstick underneath the dragonfly and she spins up and up to be eaten by bats.
