Christopher Sand-Iversen was born in Wales and is bi-lingual in Danish and English. He lives in Copenhagen. Mad Season is the title of the first chapter of the novel-in-progress, Fragments of a Family History. The novel recounts the history of one family, in the context of English history, the British Empire, World War II, immigration and identity, Thatcherism and the working classes. The first part of the novel takes place in a working class, ex-mining community in South Wales, brought to it's knees by the politics of Thatcher's government. The second part is to be set in London.

Mad Season

‘I’m gonna fuck every boy in thuh plaece,’ Aimee said.

‘Huh?’ I looked around, eyes tiny, red as fuck, didn’t get it.

‘I’m ‘avin’ a party inni,’ she said, ‘up a’ th’ Ex-Railwaym’n’s Club, i’s my sixteenth birthday, like,’ nudged me, ‘Gonna come?’

‘Oh yeah… Wha’ abou’ yu’ boyfriend?’ I added, registering the wicked turning up of the corners of her mouth.

‘Ah, fuck ‘im, don’ wanna be with ‘im no more any’ow, ‘e’s turned into a right propa wanka.’

The street outside was dark, I was stoned and the headlights of the cars were like two strobes, two searchlights that scoped out the street, strong and penetrating like the searchlights of helicopters picking out miscreants on the run or, more likely, lost Labradors freezing on the hillsides. I didn’t even know there were working men’s clubs, or had been, thought it was an exclusively northern thing, must be an Ex-Miner’s Club too, that would be very fucking ex, no idea where it might be, it had probably been turned into a community centre frequented by middle aged women doing aerobics before I was even born. Though most often when the helicopters flew over they weren’t using searchlights; John said they had infrared equipment, looking for people growing hydroponic. He said it was easy to get away with it though, just line the roof of the shed with tin foil, it reflects the UV-light back so the helicopters can’t pick it up, makes the plants grow quicker as well. I watched another car turn the corner, its two beams of light swinging quickly through ninety degrees, racing across the front gardens all along the street, wondered if any of the drivers had time to look up at the window, to clock what was being smoked in the window seat, the bright lights in my room picking the three of us out for the whole street to see. Like sitting ducks. Why such bright light? Suddenly aware of how small and squinty my eyes were, I went and turned off the ceiling light. The others exhaled a wave of silent relief. Now only a dim yellow glow emanated from my bedside table.

‘Berrer ‘ope tha’ twat don’ show up,’ Kelly said.

‘Which one?’ Aimee asked.

I chuckled even though I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a joke. Aimee turned to me with a wry smile, passed on the joint. The Moroccan black, cheap, nasty, oily shit, was making me feel stupid and self-conscious. What a fucking surprise.

‘The guy frum th’ Uwni.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Aimee lit a cigarette reflexively, formed an important facial expression and pointed with the fag, an elongated sixth finger perfectly designed for accusatory jabbing, ‘gorra tell ‘uw ‘bou’ tha’.’

I zoned for a moment, soft focus, thought about how the day had been, it had been bright and chilly, the sun had shone cold and thin on the dry stone walls and exposed how far from everything this little town really was. Chilly, well into autumn, mendaciously warm in the sun with a bitter bite under it. September turning October. The day had been so different from this unfolding night, the night was secret and cosy and welcoming. I felt at home in the night, as though I could be a little more in touch with life, as though the walls and the hillsides receded in the darkness. In the night I found my pulse.

‘This guy, righ’,’ Kelly had started telling Aimee’s story for her, ‘we wuz ar-a party up ut th’ Uwni, we ‘ad to sneak Aimee in, like, inni’, fuckin’ wicked party ‘ough, I tell ‘uw we wuz so fuckin’ ‘ammered, and we didn’ ‘ave the keys to Lloydy’s ‘owse so we ‘ad to go back to Aim’s, like, but we couldn’ cuz we wuz so fuckin’ pissed an’ Aim’s step dad don’ like i’ when i’s ob-vyus we’ve bin on ‘uh lash, like… anyway, we wuz knackered an’ all, so we wen’ back to this guy’s plaece, wha’ the fuck was ‘is naeme?’

‘Ohhh shit, yeah, carn’ – Brian, tha’s i’, fuckin’ Brian,’ Aimee said, ‘we wen’ back to ‘is shitty li’l ‘owse and slept on ‘is disgustin’ floor, dunno when the last time he fuckin’ ‘oovered was, and we left early, like, soon as we woke up-‘

‘Yuw ‘ad to go to school, luv.’

‘Did I? Shit yeah, I ‘ad a fuckin’ monuw-mental ‘angover,’ she broke into a riotous laugh, ‘don’ think I learned shit all day… anyway, next thing we ‘eard he was goin’ round th’ Uwni tellin’ everyone ‘e’d fucked borth uv us an’ ‘en throrwn us owt, like.’

‘An’ we thought, We’re noh ‘avin’ ‘a’, like.’

‘So we borrowed Lloydy’s air gun, inni’, ‘e’s goh this gun, yuw’ve prob’ly seen i’, if ‘uw taeke the slidey thingy off ‘uh side i’ looks more like a real gun, inni’, so we took i’ off an’ ‘en we wen’ roun’ Brian’s scrubbin’ li’l ‘owse an’ ‘e looked a bit fuckin’ surprised to see us to be ‘onest, like, but kind of pleased as well, the sad fucker, so we started off bein’ all nice, flirtin’ with him an’ ‘a’ so ‘e’d ler-us in, an’ ‘en once we was inside we tol’ him ‘e’d berrer stop talkin’ all tha’ shit about us sayin’ ‘e’d fucked us, wasn’ no fuckin’ chance we’d shag ‘im anyway, and ‘e’s still bein’ all cocky sayin’ he wasn’ sayin’ anythin’ an’ course ‘e could’ve shagged us if ‘e’d wan’ed to, and tha’s when I pulled the fuckin’ gun owt inni’, an’ I said if ‘e didn’ shut the fuck up I’d fuckin’, an’ ‘en ‘e’s suddenly all sorry sorry I didn’ mean nothin’ by i’ an’ I’d ‘ad i’ up to yur with ‘im already so I jus’ kept on wavin’ the gun at ‘im and we ‘ad ‘im backed up in the corner by ‘is bed and we said if ‘e didn’ stop talkin’ all tha’ shit we’d fuckin’ ger-‘im, and yuw should’ve seen ‘im the fuckin’ wuss ‘e was curled up in the fuckin’ corner sobbin’ an’ beggin’ us noh to do nothin’ an’ ‘e’d only said i’ as a jorke an’ all tha’ fuckin’ bullshit,’ Aimee took a long, hard drag on her fag, right down to the cork, and her eyes stared rigid and grey like steel at the red carpet. She looked up, reinvigorated, ‘Yuw gor-an ashtray?’ she said brightly, holding up the dog end.

‘Er…’

‘Jus’ yuwse this luv,’ Kelly held up one of the empty beer cans. With her other hand she answered her phone.

‘’E mus’ be fuckin’ twp,’ Aimee added.

My mind was boggling on me. I didn’t know if it was the hash or the fact that they’d chosen to tell me that story, or both. Was it a warning? The hash’s paranoiac current was wheeling around my brain. No, they were just telling a good story, just talking, just talking for the sake of saying something, the way people do… Christ, that’s some way to make small talk. It was Baggsy on the phone, couldn’t remember the exact address. He had pre-rolled and some more of that Moroccan black crap. He was up in my room almost before I realised anyone had knocked on the front door, had various kinds of pills he fished up from his jeans pockets with a hard-bitten air and a look like he was doing us a real favour. Kelly and Aimee haggled with him. It happened so fast I couldn’t work out what they’d bought and how much.

‘Yuw might wanna see ‘im out, luv,’ Kelly whispered in my ear as Baggsy was already heading for the stairs, ‘’e might nick somethin’ on ‘is way owt’. When I came back, Kelly was sitting on my bed rolling another joint, while Aimee had plonked herself in the middle of the settee and was fingering two white pills, her eyes running over the poster’s on my wall, as if judging them, working me out, seeing deeper into who I was. Still studying the walls, she popped the pills without water.

‘I fuckin’ love droppin’ Vals and smorkin’ a’ thuh same time,’ she said. Kelly looked at her sceptically and lit the joint, raising her naturally arched eyebrows to a pointy inverted v.

Aimee stroked her palms flat out along the material, spread her fingers wide, ‘Makes yuw feel really calm right down inside,’ she explained, ‘really peaceful as deep as yuw can feel.’ ‘Wharever yuw need to do, luv,’ Kelly said, and picked up a splayed paperback I’d left lying on the carpet. She scanned a few lines, her face suddenly thoughtful, pretty and full of expression, as if even in this quick, stoned grazing of the surface she could get under the skin of it, be grabbed by the narrative as though she were part of the book’s action. She looked up and around the room and said sort of to me and sort of to no one in particular, ‘I need to be in ‘is kind uv…’ she considered, ‘environment. Would do me good…’ She turned to me, ‘Wan’ a blowback, luv?’ and held the end of the joint up to me with a wicked smile.

At the window we sat diagonally, knees touching, she flicked most of the ash off the joint, turned it around, planted it expertly between her teeth, cupped her hands over her mouth and motioned for me to do the same. Aimee wandered over, drawn out of her infinite stillness by a pang of jealousy, I could see it in the way she looked peevishly at Kelly, ineffectually glazed she sat down to watch. I sucked the acrid grey smoke in as Kelly blew it out, my eyes met hers as I pulled back and there was that sly, cheeky gleam in them, well pleased with herself.

We were bouncing down one of the steep hills, sliding forward in our shoes as they gripped the incline, Aimee in the middle of explaining something to me when her gesticulation changed into a wave. A faded red car was coming up the hill and the middle-aged woman who drove it smiled a friendly, caring smile back and Aimee, who smiled brightly and waved again.

‘Who was that?’

‘One uv my teachers. So any’ow,’ she continued explaining, ‘I was really knackered, as uwsual,’ she laughed, ‘an’ I wen’ to lean my elbow on the desk, an’ I must’ve been so tired I was seein’ things or summin’, ‘cos I missed the desk an’ landed in the lap uv the kid nex’ to me, and fuck me ‘e gor a fuckin’ ‘ardon from i’, the sad fucker.’

I was trying to make the two moments fit together, the attitude at the back of the class giving the nerds hardons, and the sweetly smiling girl whose teacher seemed to like her. She might be exaggerating. She was a little charmer, and like most little charmers she was prone to embellish. Then again, there was no reason not to believe her. It was all too easy to sit at the back of the class being irritating and doing nothing, and still churn out some old shite with your eyes closed. It kept the teachers happy , it made them feel they were steering you to some bright future you knew didn’t exist.

We dipped into town, across the river, started up the hillside, bumped into the others. Beyond the last houses the hill steepened, the road hugged the face of the valley side, a view across the valley opened up. Here, the grass and undergrowth had an almost lime green colour, light, or perhaps just fading as the autumn cold had begun to take the life out of it. On the other side, the greens were darker in the distance, a patchwork of fields and fences, dry stone walls meandering through the landscape. The motorway swished and hummed down on the valley floor, even this far up you could hear it. And as the hill steepened Aimee pretended to be tired, hanging back until I slowed my step, came level with her.

‘Noh unfit are yuw?’

‘She’s well fit an’ yuw knows it,’ someone called back, unleashing a gaggle of sniggers.

‘Fuckin’ eggsausted,’ she breathed, making her full, round tits rise and fall as in a satisfied exhaling. I tucked in behind her, burrowed shoulder and face into her shoulder and back and pushed her along in front me, forcing her legs to go like pistons until she broke down laughing and broke away from my maul, fell in beside me and took me by the arm, let herself hang back a little with heaving breathing so that I tugged her gently along.

It was as though I had forgotten I had come this way years ago, many times. But now we passed the field I had passed childhood hours, lost in the intense meditation of crouching amongst little bushes and turning the dense web of leaves to reveal the little purplish-blue berries – picking winberries. Now it was as though I had never forgotten. We had always taken a picnic with us, sandwiches, peeled and washed carrots, water, maybe even a big bottle of coke as a treat, and of course there had always been plenty of winberries to eat. We had always picked more than we could carry, an overflowing of containers of all shapes and sizes. There had been a big flat stone somewhere in the steeply sloping field, like an island in the sea of low, dense bushes. I looked for it now. We had often picnicked on it, lapping up fizzy toothrot and warm sunlight; I saw it now at the far end of the field where the abundance of bushes and berries came to an end, at a fence with threadbare pasture on the other side of it. I remember trying to lean over the fence when I was little, straining, wondering what was over the brow of the hill. The winberries would stain everything, shoes and socks smattered with their pulped flesh, and wrists stained red-purple, slash marks of juice right across the ticklish surfacing of veins. It looks like we’ve slashed our wrists, I remembered my mother saying.

‘Wha’ yuw lookin’ a’?’ Aimee nudged me.

‘Oh… don’ know really.’

Beyond the winberry field the road swung into a copse, hiding the valley and laying everything in cold shadow, like going into a passage. We wandered through the half-light, the verges sodden, the sunlight never licking them dry. Then emerged to see a long sloping field to the left, like it was the last patch of grass before a precipice. There was a wide wooden farmyard gate, in front of it a big dark puddle, mud churned through by tractor tyres. The gate was padlocked. Masey was already making the climb when Lloydy shooed him down again. He pointed up to a Range Rover crawling along the top of the hill, ‘’Ey don’ like us comin’ ‘round yur, ‘ey know we come t’ pick magies, inni’.’

‘Wants ’em all f’r ‘imself,’ someone answered.

‘Ber-‘e don’ even know whar-‘ey do, like.’

‘Fuckin’ ber-‘e do, butt.’

The Range Rover disappeared and we began climbing again. I caught the edge of the puddle on my way to the gate. Only as I straddled the thick beam did I notice it had splashed my trouser leg. ‘Fuck. Oorgh, fuckin’ ‘ell.’

‘Wha’s’i’ love?’ Aimee asked.

‘Fuckin’ oil in i’, inni’.’ I looked down at myself. In my mind’s eye I always saw myself with dark blue jeans on. I’d wade through anything.

‘Why the fuck did I pu’ white fuckin’ jeans on t’ come up yur?’ I said bitterly. Aimee looked down at my black-splattered leg with concern, then let out a raucous laugh. I let myself down on the other side of the gate, walked over to the others pulling the material of the trouser round as I walked to study the damage. Fuck. That’ll never come off.

The field wasn’t in fact the edge of a precipice but went sloping down towards the valley floor, the view open again, the sun warming my back as we crouched down. Spread out in a line at regular intervals, we looked like a police search team.

‘’Ey’re whitish, inni’, bell-shaeped with ‘is kind uv li’l nipple on thuh top,’ Lloydy tutored me, ‘Yuw c’n always tell i’s one ‘cos ‘ey’re blue down a’ thuh bottom, like, ‘a’s where all ‘’e acid is so try to geh thuh borrom as well, dig down with yu’ nails, like, inni’.’

‘Yuw find morst of ‘em in thuh clumps of grass, like,’ Kelly put in.

‘Aye, in ‘round where all thuh sheep shit is, like, ‘a’s where ‘ey grow best.’

‘’A’s where i’s morst furtile,’ Masey added, rolling the word around his mouth like a flavoursome rarity.

Methodically, the line advanced up the hill, filling baggies and Tupperware with an abundance of mushrooms. As we reached the top of the hill the afternoon sun began to set. I stood gawping at it until the last rays disappeared, leaving the grass the same deep green as on the other side of the valley. I felt the chill of the autumn air now that the sun was gone, and looking back over the town I could see dusk beginning to settle over it, its contours darkening, blurring in the failing light. How I hated it. Always had. Up here in the hills, the countryside, that was the only good thing about this stinking hole of a town.

We hurried back into town, bags and containers carefully stashed in inner pockets we made look as inconspicuous as possible. Wouldn’t want to be caught with it on you. Lloydy reckoned the police were wise to teenagers coming down off the hills this time of year. Masey reckoned he was just paranoid. Stormed past the winberry field. I was lost to Aimee who was trying to engage me in conversation – I was thinking about picking winberries. The retracing of the route now, years later, took on a special, metaphorical significance I could neither argue for nor reason against; a phrase formed in my mind and kept on running through it, insisting on itself: the only road ever set foot on, in the afternoon into the evening, that day and this.

At Lloydy’s, we sorted through the magies, spreading them out on a baking tray, sifted through them, picking out the ones that looked suspicious, that might be something else, something that could kill you. The word ‘Deathcaps’ circulated like a secret, holy cipher, an abstract entity venerated and feared in its unknown compass. We threw the mushrooms that cleared the filtering process were thrown into a saucepan of boiling water. Lloydy stirred them, lovingly, reverently.

‘’Bout an hour,’ he said, ‘’en we’ll brew up a nice strong cup uv PG Tips f’r all uv us, so we carn’ taste tha’ shit, like.’

‘Yeah, we’ll be a right bunch of fuckin’ monkeys by the time we’re finished an’ all.’

‘Wha’s it taste of?’ I asked, thinking that PG Tips tasted enough of shit in itself.

‘Used spud water.’

I had no idea what used spud water tasted like. At the same time I knew exactly how it would taste. It would be starchy, earthy, milky-silty, murky. And thoroughly disgusting. ‘D’yuw yur abou’ Ryan?’ Jonesy asked. ‘Bout ‘im shaggin’ tha’ Megan girl in ‘is car.’

‘Tryin’ to.’

‘Yeah, tryin’ to, fuckin’ well funny i’ was.’

‘Come on, butt, tell us.’

‘’E’s gor-‘imself a car now, inni’, an’ ‘e’s bin drivin’ i’ ‘round like a proper fuckin’ player f’r weeks, like, thinkin’ ‘e’s gonna pull all ‘ese girls, inni’. So finally, like, he’s pulled tha’ Megan girl, inni’, an’ ‘e’s parked the car up ‘air on thuh Drive an’ ‘e’s gor-‘er on the back seat inni’, an’ ‘e’s fuckin’ fuckin’ ‘er in broad fuckin’ daylight, like, broad fuckin’ daylight I tell ‘uw. Well, ‘is fuckin’ skinny arse is goin’ up an’ down up an’ down an’ Megan’s gran comes walkin’ down thuh street, like, c’n ‘uw ‘magine, walkin’ down thuh street an’ ‘uw think some wanka’s moonin’ ‘uw an’ ‘en ‘uw nortice ‘em two fuckin’ moons is goin’ up an’ down... An’ as she’s walkin’ past she’s seen i’s Megan lyin’ ‘air with Ryan’s skinny arse goin’ up an’ down between ‘er chubby li’l legs, an’ she’s dropped ‘er carrier bags on the paevement right where she is an’ she goes to orpen thuh door an’ she’s grabbed ‘im by th’ ankles and pulled ‘im out all of a sudden like an’ ‘e’s started shoutin’ Wha’ the fuck is ‘app’nin’? an’ she pulls ‘im right owt so ‘e whacks his chin on the door an’ she drops ‘im on the curb, c’n ‘uw ‘magine, ‘is rock ‘ard cock whackin’ onto the paevement an’ all ‘is waeght on top ov i’, an’ Megan’s started screamin’, Nan, wha’ thuh fuck-‘r’-yuw doin’? an’ I swear to God there’s a fuckin’ melon rolled owt uv one of ‘em carrier bags an’ i’s started rollin’ down thuh ‘ill, an’ Baggsy’s seen i’, ‘e’s comin’ up ‘e ‘ill, inni’, and ‘e’s started playin’ fuckin’ football with i’, like, bits of skin rippin’ off i’, splattin’ everywhere, and Megan’s screamin’ ‘er-‘ead off while ‘er gran’s standin’ ‘air lookin’ straight up ‘er fuckin’ fanny tellin’ ‘er she’s too young to be doin’ ’a’ sort uv thing an’ i’s dirty an’ ‘a’. An’ Ryan’s lyin’ ‘air with grit on his fuckin’ bellend and ‘is trousers round ‘is ankles an’ as ‘e’s scrabblin’ to ‘is feet Baggsy’s seen ‘im, inni, an’ ‘uw know wha’ Baggsy’s like, inni’, ‘e’s booted thuh melon as ‘ard as ‘e c’n right up Ryan’s arse an’ sends ‘im flyin’, an’ Ryan’s shouted Fuck off owt uv my car you fuckin’ old cow! jus’ as ‘is wet fuckin’ melon’s splatted all over ‘is arse an’ ‘e’s gone flyin’ an’ scraeped ‘is bellend along thuh ground again an’ ‘e’s shouted Aaarrgh! you fuckin’ cronky fuckin’ bitch! an’ Baggsy come sprintin’ orver to Danny’s before Ryan c’n see ‘im, me and Danny was fuckin’ pissin’ ourselves, we was, we wuz sittin’ up in ‘is room waitin’ for Baggsy to bring us up some tabs, like, an’ when ‘e come up we was creased up f’r-‘ours, butt. Fuckin’ ‘ilarious it was.’

Lloydy stirred the magies calmly like he was in another world and hadn’t heard the story at all, stirring and tending, he flicked the kettle on and it began making a horrific racket, shaking and shuddering like an ancient washing machine. His face was serene as the heat from the brewing magies curled and stroked over his cheeks in white wisps. A smile played at the corners of his mouth.

Jonesy looked over. ‘Them’s abou’ ready I’d say, butt.’

‘Aye,’ said Lloydy, ‘ giving the brew a few last, thorough stirs with the wooden spoon, ‘Teabags is orva there, butt.’

‘Yuw’ll wanna make tha’ a bit stronger,’ he said, I was already letting the last drops drip off the teabag, ‘yuw’ll wanna cover the taste as much as ‘uw c’n.’ I balked at dunking the teabag in again, watched the water turn dark and brown, thick and unwholesome, while Lloydy poured the muddy broth into it. Then he shoved the milk carton into my hand. The concoction lightened a bit, and was cool enough to drink. We all drank as fast as the heat allowed – it did taste of used spud water. That was exactly it.

‘Yeah, ‘bout twenny minutes,’ Lloydy confirmed to someone, ‘’s’bout how long i’ taekes to digest, inni’.’

In the front room Rhys had taken the weight of the world upon his shoulders and was only drinking – the sitter. ‘Yuw wanna keep watchin’ ‘em walls, butt, just keep watchin’ ‘em walls an’ see if ‘ey don’ star’ movin’,’ he said.

The first things that started moving were the curtains, I zoned in on them and studied them intently, trying to analyse whether or not it was the wind. Then my attention flitted to the big Bob Marley poster hanging on the wall above the fireplace opposite the comfy chair. ‘Yeah, yuw wanna ‘ave a good look a’ tha’, i’ll start doin’ funny things soon,’ Rhys’ voice reached me, and I looked down in the slow motion movement of half an ice age, just in time to catch the fleeting hand and smile of Rhys’ comment. I didn’t know if it was the breeze or the magies beginning to take hold or just my mind playing tricks on me in expectancy. Found myself sitting on the sofa. Was sure I’d been sitting in the chair. I had, when I thought about it. Had moved from the chair to the sofa and sunk comfortably deep into it, as if I were in a little padded tunnel of my own, from which, protected, I observed my vision unfurling unknown perspectives before me. Fascinated by an unimaginable phenomenon – that the corners of the room had disappeared and the room was round, I turned my head round and round, scanning what had once been four walls and saw that I was now within an ellipse. When I studied the corner in front of me again it receded into darkness as the two walls grew closer and closer, never actually meeting until the space between them was too narrow, too fine for my eye, even in this state, to register. But my magic magie eye knew all the same that the walls did not meet, like the two rails of a railway track running to the horizon never meet.

‘Must’ve bin ‘ours,’ Masey said next to me.

‘Yeah, ages ‘as passed.’

‘Look at yu’ watch, butt,’ he smiled.

‘Fuckin’ ‘ell, i’s only ten minutes ‘as gone. Feels like ‘ours an’ ‘ours. Wicked.’

‘Yeah they do ‘a’, the shrooms, i’s fuckin’ wicked, inni’?’

Kelly and Aimee where now sitting on either side of me. Out of nowhere, a marble hand daintily placed a glass ashtray in my lap. I looked on, a helpless and amused observer of my own body, unable to form any idea of how I might ever remove the ashtray. At the same time, the hands reached over from each side and flicked ash in it. The double action more than my mind could manage, the glowing red cherries required all my attention whilst the two girls competed for it. I focused and refocused on the two glowing dots in my lap, as if I were afraid their heat shatter the glass and the whole bundle, shards and hot ashes, would fall onto my crotch. At some point I must have given up, zoned into my own trip again, found the ashtray was no longer there and that Kelly had turned Could This Be Love? up loud and was jiggling her round little arse around to it bang smack in front of me. She was glancing back over her shoulder at me singing along through long, languid drags on a fag. I followed her movements, unable to muster a coherent response from my muscles, had the idea that my jaw was slack and lolling like that of a particularly stupid dog, knew how I was supposed to react but failed. You couldn’t say miserably because everything was hilarious and it didn’t seem to matter that I was lost. I remained adrift in the images flowing out of my mind and in from the room, colourfully. The contents of my mind emptied out onto a highway in front of me, the highway of the mind. I wondered how I was ever going to move from my sofa tunnel again, and suddenly noticed that I was no longer seated in the middle of the sofa but somewhere far to the right.

Kelly came and sat down beside me, engaging me in a conversation that had gone on for what seemed like half an hour and amused us both immensely until Rhys leaned round from the other side of her and asked if we were making any sense to each other.

‘Yeah,’ we both answered, puzzled.

‘’Cos all I can yur is bleurbleurbleur, I carn’ understand a fuckin’ word yuw’re sayin’.’

I thought I said something like ‘It maekes sense to us’ or it could have been Kelly who said ‘We ain’t ‘avin’ no problems yur’, in any case it just entertained us even more, dissolving my momentarily well-formulated presence of mind into an idiotic giggle while Kelly held the back of her hand up to the tip of her nose and tittered.

Out in the hallway I was talking to Aimee, the front door was open and the cool night air blew in and over our skin in streams and currents, forming and brushing over and past us like the airflow diagram of a car in a wind tunnel. My attention was caught by the rose motif running along the wall at chair rail height, it began to curve, round and up, like a time-lapse film, growing, a rambling rose crawling up the wall. Aimee saw what had grabbed my attention: ‘Yeah, i’s fuckin’ mad wha’ tha’ rorse does’, she looked at me and laughed, ‘yuw’s lovin’ i’, i’n’ yuw?’ My eyes were wide open and the rose snaked, budded and branched, taking over the wall as if it were a trellis and rushed into my giant whirlpool pupils.

John was sitting next to me on the sofa with a spotty girl on his lap, Kelly was making frenetic hand signals and I overheard someone talking about John and the girl shagging upstairs. Thought that there hadn’t been time for them to disappear and shag and come back again, then I thought that time passed slowly, an hour to each ten minutes, but it was all going so quickly all the same, flying by, I had no idea what time it was. And then someone else was slagging her off, saying that Megan would fuck anything and she was diseased and I looked round but they were gone again and someone else was sitting there. And John was sitting in one of the chairs near me and the spotty girl, Megan, was nowhere to be seen, and I thought I heard someone saying that John was going to get diseased too ‘cos he’d shagged her without a condom and then someone else was saying that Lloydy had started bad trippin’ because of all the people in his house and the state of the place, and John had started bad trippin’ too. And John was gripping the armrest with his hand and there was a wild roving in his wide-open eyes. I found the stove lighter in my hand, or maybe someone had offered it to me and I had taken it, passively, held out my hand and limply curled my fingers around it. Maybe Rhys had lit it in front of my eyes and said, ‘Look a’ tha’, butt, fuckin’ amazin’ inni’?’ and I had been delighted and fascinated by the red sparks and the blue flame when Rhys sparked it and had wanted to have it, wanted to hold it like a child wants something it desires, like sweets, had sunk my vision into the play of the blue flame and been mesmerised and then, slack jawed, reached out for it, and Rhys had let me take it, because Rhys knew, Rhys knew how fucking mind-blowing it was, he knew what it was doing to my brain, and I had sat and stared into the deep space of the blue flame, click click, click click, the sparks and then the flame, then nothing, then the sparks and the flame, click click, just as fascinating each time, sucking my vision into it’s hypnotic warp. That must be how I came to have it in my hand, when I thought about it, and John was having a bad trip and I had the stove lighter in my hand and at the same time as I had followed the long train of thoughts back to how I had it in my hand I had instinctively begun entertaining John with it, click-clicking the blue flame on, ‘Look at that, butt,’ and John had focussed on it, tried to focus on it, then focussed on it again, slowly returning to my realm, our realm, and then he had reached out for it but I held on to it like a child hanging on to its bag of sweets. Someone had put on Scooter or Orbital or something I had no idea what was but I heard now that new music had been put on, and my mind was flying through the electronic sounds, my brain was shooting out rays of pleasure into the electronic soundscape that sped like fast moving lights, and I coaxed John out of his bad trip with the blue flame until John was smiling sloppily at me, asking me for the lighter with pathetic puppy eyes, and my brain was flying in rays through the sound and it was beyond words. John was back and he was eerily calm and the wild reaches had gone from his eyes and he was happy, he looked at me with infinite friendship and said simply, ‘Thanks, butt,’ and I let the stove lighter slip into his hands.

Aimee was gone. Kelly was gone. John was still there, but the spotty girl had vamoosed, as if into thin air – I had no concept of the time, but I felt like I wasn’t as fucked as earlier. John seemed to be feeling the same way – at least he was to be contacted somewhere in the land of logic: ‘I might ‘ead off,’ he suggested.

I looked around. Aimee wasn’t there, Kelly wasn’t there. Lloydy seemed to have come down from his bad trip. ‘Yeah.’

Down the street the breeze was taking hold of some trees. I couldn’t even feel the air now but the shadows of the branches clawed across the wall of a driveway like hag’s hands, clawing out at me. Clawing at me, long, crooked, pointy fingers sharp as daggers reaching, stretching to get me. Now I felt the breeze, the movement of the air across my face, could feel the airflow, as though every tiny downy hair on my cheeks had been made hypersensitive. And then they seemed to be waving, the hands, no they were whipping, the shadows whipping back and forth across the wall, threatening to slide off it and into the air, coming at me, my skin in which each pore dilated to the fresh night air.

On the bridge the view of the stars wobbled in the reflection of the river below. We stood staring at the sky, the silver dots of the stars like holes in a great black stage prop, a lamp shining brilliantly behind it. They appeared to be racing in and floating with the leisurely turning of the heavens, racing in towards our eyes, into our very selves as we stood there gawping, faster and faster the closer they came.

I had difficulty taking off my clothes, was still high, much higher than I thought. Looked at myself in the mirror, I looked almost normal. I looked into my eyes and they were dilated and racing, as if what I saw was physically passing through them as they flew out into space. In the light behind and above the open door of the wardrobe, my skin was yellow and cast with long shadows, hollow almost. I studied the form of my cranium and followed its shape down over my cheekbones and nose, over the furrow in the middle of my chest and further along the belly, along my body’s seam. Down over my pubes and round over a bollock – I stopped, the shadows were moving, hollows and forms were shifting across me. I felt a chill. No idea how long I had been standing there. Lifted one foot from the floor and had trouble keeping balance. Much higher than I had thought.

With the sheets tucked up under my chin I looked at the posters on the wall, the ones Aimee had studied. They were alive and Kurt Cobain was talking to me. My mind was spinning into a vortex of colours, spinning me into the beginnings of a bad trip, a technicolour nightmare. But I hauled myself back from the edge of it, again and again, focussing on Kurt morphing out of the wall to speak to me, zoning out into the vortex again, pulling myself out of it again, trying to concentrate on the what Kurt was saying to me, sweating, hyperventilating. But it wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t that intense, the magies were wearing off. I could control the trip. They were just playing their last few tricks on my brain.

The vortex subsided. Kurt had withdrawn to the flat plane of the wall again. For the first time since I crawled into bed I dared to listen to myself breathing. It was alright. The last few wibblings of my hallucinations bent their waves through my brain. But they were friendly and I made myself comfortable under the sheets, got my head in place on the pillow for a good night’s sleep. I began to smile, felt the smile spread across my mouth, stretching my lips. The last strains of the trip were beautiful, it felt safe to go to sleep now, and I let myself drift off.

The next night we were up at Lloydy’s again, smoking a couple of joints, putting a lid of slow dullness on the post-trip brain spasms. Aimee was sitting with some exam revision, pretending to herself that she was achieving something. She wasn’t fooling anybody. She wasn’t even fooling herself. I accepted the joint from her and moved in a little closer on the sofa to peer at the A4 sheet lying in her lap. It was a line drawing, a cross-section of a dick, balls, bladder, and arse. Written across the top of the page, Organau cenhedlu gwrywaidd. Four arrows around the bollock: Vas deferens. Epididymis. Caill. Sgrotwm. More arrows pointing in to the bladder area: Pledren. Chwarren brostad. Chwarren Cowper. Three arrows around the bellend: Glans. Blaengroen. Agoriad yr wrethra. Two behind: Rectwm. Anws. My already distant gaze went cross-eyed, w’s swimming around everywhere. I decided it was better to suck on the joint and shut the fuck up.

‘Aaah, fuckin’ ‘ell,’ Aimee said, ‘I know all ‘is anyway, i’s all sex inni’,’ she laughed and threw the A4 sheets carelessly aside. She was ready to go. We walked home across town together. About five minutes down the hill Aimee whipped a packet of Jaffa Cakes out of her pocket and grinned. ‘Look. Nicked ‘em from thuh kitchen. Always gotta taeke somethin’ f’r the way ‘ome, like.’ She held the tray out in front of me, already scoffing one. Taking one, I began to eat it the way I did when I was a kid. First, I gnawed off the biscuit.

‘No fuckin’ idea ‘ow yuw can eat ‘em so sloow,’ she said, stuffing her second in, ‘fuck me I’ve goh thuh munchies…. Wha-‘re yuw…? bitin’ i’ off bi’ by bi’?’

‘Didn’ you eat ‘em like ‘is when you were a kid?’ and turning to her I began to lick the chocolate off the quivering sliver of orange jelly, savouring it, letting my tongue roll out full and curl back and under before it slapped up again.

She laughed, more provocative than provoked, ‘Yuw sexy mwnci fach.’

I licked it conscientiously clean of every last flake and smudge of chocolate, the single-minded operation of a stoner. Let the orange jelly wobble on two fingertips, held it aloft, letting the air tickle it as I walked, then bit into it, eyes wide in mock delight, dilating even more when the shock of the sugar content caused an itching sensation at the meeting of my teeth and gums.

‘Fuck yuw’re eyes ‘re almos’ as big as ‘ey were las’ night.’

‘Mmm,’ I was engaged in using a combination of the tip of my tongue and the inner side of my lips to suck on my teeth.

‘Whar-are yuw doin’?’

‘My teeth are givin’ me gyp… were my eyes really tha’ big?’

‘Fuckin’ massive.’

‘Feel like my fuckin’ brain’s been rewired.’

She looked at me askance, like she thought I really had gone mental. All the same, the glimmer was still in her eye, the spark of fascination, and then she ripped into a raucous laugh, ‘Yes! I knew i’, I knew yuw was lovin’ i’. I knew you was gonna love i’ firs’ minute I saw ‘uw.’

As we reached the street corner she put her arm through mine, drew up closer. ‘Come back to mine, Kelly’s ‘air too, we’ll smorke another joint,’ she nudged him.

‘Kelly’s there too?’

‘Yeah, she carn’ really be bothad t’ go ‘orme t’ ‘er mum’s. They’re always argewin’, she’s always goh some new blorke over… So ‘arf th’ time she staeys at mine, or orva-a’ Lloydy’s.’

Aimee’s step dad and one of his friends were engrossed in getting some clapped out old PC to work, fiddling with some wires behind the bulk of the ancient yellowed base unit and showing their bum cracks like brickies. We breezed past, through the kitchen and upstairs to Aimee’s room, Kelly was snoozing her way out of her hangover on the bed.

‘Ooooh,’ she said lifting her head squiffily and squinting, ‘uh we gonna smorke a joint?’ Without waiting for the answer she got out her tin and went to work. Aimee picked up her guitar and fiddled with it a bit, strummed a few chords and tuned one of the strings, put it down again and went over to the stereo, put on the song she’d been trying to play. While she was toking on the joint Kelly had rolled in double quick time, she stopped the song, sat down on the edge of her bed and began strumming the guitar, passing the joint on to me so she could sing along. Taking a thoughtful drag, I wondered if it was possible that communication between the two hemispheres of my brain could be rerouted – like taking wires out of an amplifier and plugging them in again differently, crosswise, criss-crossing each other, or hot-wired like a stolen car. I peered along the joint, cross-eyed to see how the cherry glowed as I sucked in, and over at her, quietly impressed by her voice, her dextrous fingers. I liked the idea of my brain being hot-wired, my brain being thrown around my cranium like a joy rider throwing a car around corners.

‘You’re pretty fuckin’ good,’ I squeezed out while holding the smoke down, then exhaled a big, dirty cloud as Kelly answered, ‘She’s really good. Aren’ yuw luv,’ she gave Aimee a friendly nudge.

‘I c’n play all ‘eir songs right through ‘cept this one,’ she said between lines.

‘Play one uv yer-own songs, luv,’ Kelly said, turning to me again, ‘’er-own songs uh really good too.’ But Aimee was lost in getting the song right at last, meditating over it in her stoned zone.

‘Cum an’ ‘ave a look a’ this, love,’ Kelly motioned for me to follow her out into the corridor. In the next room there were a couple of paintings hung on the walls. More canvases stood against the walls, some facing out, some showing the raw reverse. They all seemed to be abstract works in tones of blue and turquoise, with the odd flourish of red. We looked at the largest one on the wall.

‘Aim’s mum painted ‘em,’ Kelly explained.

‘They’re not bad.’

‘Yeah, yuw c’n kind of see something in ‘em, tha’ could be a bir uv sea ‘air,’ she gesticulated, ‘maybe tha’s a boat, or-i’ could be a little shack far off on an island.’ She passed me the endie and and stared hollow-eyed into the abstraction. Disconnected from everything but the glowing, zinging sensation in my cerebral cortex, and a light year passed there before I said, ‘Does ‘er mum live yur? She always talks about ‘er step dad.’

‘Nah, ‘er mam left. Just fucked off an’ left, like. This is ‘er step dad’s ‘ouwse, so she stayed yur.’

‘Just fucked off, just like tha’?’ I studied the canvases again, as though they would offer some kind of clue.

‘More or less, like. Found a new blorke. … She is pretty nuts ‘ough. This one time…’ she trailed off and approached me, playfully pretended to box me in the stomach with a four jab combination. Err err err, oof. I held her tiny soft fist inside my hand for a second. She frowned a moment, the lines deep on her forehead.

‘Don’ know if I should say really buh,’ she stopped again and listened. Aimee was still strumming her guitar and singing softly to herself.

‘This one time Aim’s dad come to visit, everythin’ was cool, ‘im and ‘er step dad was gerrin’ on fine, bur-‘en ‘er mam started kickin’ off, inni’, argewin’ with ‘er dad abou’ some shit, inni’. And ‘e wasn’ taekin’ thuh baet a’ first, like, ‘e didn’ wanna geh into a rauw, and ‘er step dad was tryin’ to calm ‘uh situwaetion down bu’-r-‘er mam goes fuckin’ mental once she goes off on one, like, an’ ‘er an’ Aim’s dad start shoutin’ a’-r-each other, inni’, an’ Aim’s ‘air too, like, ‘is was down in the kitchen, like. I’ was supporsed t’ be a nice family geh together, like, yuw know, nice food an’ everythin’, and Aim’s askin’ ‘em to stop an’ in ‘e end ‘er step dad’s tryin’ to break i’ up an’ Aim’s pleadin’ with ‘er mam to stop bur-‘ey’re goin’ abs’lutely fuckin’ aepe on each other, an’ ‘en ‘er mam pulls out ‘is fuckin’ big knife from one uv the drawers an’ she’s goh Aim’s dad up in a corner threat’nin’ ‘im with i’, saying all ‘is stuff like if he don’ shu’ the fuck up an’ fuckin’ leave, an’ ‘a’, an’ ‘er step dad’s tryin’ to ger-‘er mam to pu’ the knife down an’ Aim’s trapped in ‘e other corner sittin’ on the floor cryin’ ‘er eyes out begin’ ‘em t’ stop, inni’…’

My thoughts were spinning into uncharted territory, I was listening but…. inside my skull my brain crackled and burned, squirmed around in the gap between itself and the cranium looking for new space. A tightening of the scalp spread across my head. I was sailing in the vast blueness of the room; Kelly’s face zoned in and out, and somewhere in the tightening of my skull’s vice grip around my frontal lobes a stray thought came to me: we really ought to go back in to Aimee…

©Christopher Sand-Iversen