Excerpt from 'Via Dolorosa'
The first two chapters of Via Dolorosa as a free PDF file. PC users - right click, 'save as,' Mac users - control-click, 'download to disk.' If you'd rather read them online than download to your computer, the sample chapters are also available on Scribd.com.  Excerpt from 'The Diary of Blue Horse' Saturday, January 5th, 2008 It's now over two weeks since I took what I consider to be only option. It was the peak of a horrible few days of almost endless Shineboxing. Most of it had been verbal: n-words at blacks, sexual come-ons to groups of threatening looking drunks. I shouted at one man, an enormous chap, to “fucking rape me before I kill your dog.” He didn't have a dog. I hadn't eaten for days after calling each and every waitress or counter-monkey a dirty fucker and throwing plastic straws at their faces until they made me leave. Bordering on hysteria, I took refuge in an alleyway alongside a sex club. “The Runny Hole” it was called. A fat man wearing a grubby sandwich board painted like one of those novelty aprons made to resemble a nude woman was advertising it down the street. He called me “son,” and asked “have you ever seen a girl blow bubbles out of her gruffer?” I'd heard stories of tourists who'd gone inside and been charged a million pounds for a glass of coke, so I just ran past, directionless, until I found myself down the alley, exhausted and near-deranged. What I did next was no spontaneous twitch, but the most thoroughly intentional action I've undertaken in months. With one hand, I gripped the end of my tongue, stretching it out as far as it would go, and in the other, the razor blade, with which I started slicing. Someone yelled at me to stop, and I flicked my eyes over to an open doorway with a neon frame. A man with a cigarette waved an upturned palm in my general direction. “I know someone who can help you.”  Excerpt from 'Between Flaws' It was around the twelfth hour that I began to panic for the first time. I'd kept pretty composed until that point, coping in what I thought was a rather admirable way, but it crept up on me, unexpectedly. The darkness suddenly seemed heavy and close, a blanket that had dropped over my head, pulling towards the floor at the corners. I whipped out my phone and huddled over the screen, a lantern in the darkness, soft blue light that didn't reach the walls. The low battery beep was the heartbeat of my dying sun. I knew I should preserve it, turn it off only use it when absolutely necessary, but once it was gone, it would be too late to do anything, and what's the point in worrying about things you can't change? I'd let it burn out, then see what happened, see how I'd be forced to cope. If I knew there was no light, I'd be calm. No point panicking. No point, no panic. But I did.  |
