Fineliners

I constantly wonder about what would happen if I died. Right now. What would happen? And I always come to the same conclusion: Nothing. Nothing would happen. The number of people who would cry for me is lower than the number of fingers hanging from my hands. And when I say the people who would cry for me, what I really mean is the people who would cry for themselves, for their "loss". It's very true; we're a selfish species. We're terrified of losing people. Very rarely do we cry for the person who has passed away; we cry because something is now missing from our lives. I'm not condemning this mentality. I'm guilty of it too. We're condit

Depression is a parasite. I sometimes imagine it as little person hauling himself up through my body, using my veins as jungle vines, while my ribcage and spine are a skeletal tree whose bone-like branches act as a ladder to my skull. He is a relentless squatter whose final destination is my mind. Once he has waded through the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding my brain, he sets up camp and plants a dark garden there using his pouch of seeds: a little self-loathing there, a little fury here, a little suicidal ideation sprinkled over there. The seeds sink into my thoughts, taking to them like a furry moth to a light bulb. Once they are planted,

Ba-boom. Ba-boom. I am alive - the painfully irregular beating of my puzzled heart tells me so - but I feel like a ghost, Ba-boom. lost, confused and wandering - (something is wrong) Ba-boom. my leaden hands stretch out to try to touch a reality that is just out of my reach and I blink - and blink and blink and blink and blink and stop blinking, goddammit - in a dazed attempt to dispel a fog that only I can see. I am a black and white anomaly on a colour TV and seconds (or are those hours?) pass me by like snow flurries - I watch them go, Ba-boom. but the spell breaks and in that moment sensation strikes me lik

Kettle whistling. Voices murmuring. Birds cheeping. I open my eyes. I squint. There's a small spider the size of my thumbnail dancing across the ceiling in all its eight-legged glory. If I move my head to the right, I can see the warm glow of morning light streaming through the air in thin bands, dust motes swirling within the confines of its rays like a vast school of microscopic fish caught in nets made of fire. Lazily, I lift my right hand and drag it slowly through a beam of sunshine, watching as the mote-fish disperse in an erratic flurry of panic, only to relax again once my hand is gone. My attention returns to the spider: it is p