Civil Slavery

this is the first chapter of my book and is about departure from an old life

Civil Slavery

3rd March 2014

 

Perpetual partying can really weigh heavily upon a dearly departing bag of bones.

Juggling the last few weeks of my time in England somehow became a circus within itself. Circles of social prospects breathed fire upon the audience of my life. Affable bodies were charred with the black enigmas of not enough. Familiar pupils were widened by the amber glow of insatiability as the fire turned into gold and their desires would always want more of me. Work commitments stood on a tightrope above me wobbling and wavering under the weight of an evicted responsibility. It leaned with a casual carelessness that wore brightly coloured socks, frizzy hair and a clown’s red nose of redemption.

The final organisational touches for travel were like hot potatoes in my hand. Connections. Check-Chuck. Travel insurance. Check-Chuck. Giving away everything that I had except that in which I could take upon my back. Check-Chuck. Thrown out into the wind by the ruby of rouged fingertips that habitually pressed down 5am alarms with an ambience of the greater good upon them. The necessity in continuity of motion was never more apparent. That necessity sat in the quiet of the kitchen with me, though we did not speak. It was a necessity that wound its long careful fingers around the sausage rolls of my clothing. Fabrics rolled their frayed edges back and forth between desire and need. Packed in a retired old red Duke of Edinburgh pack, only to be evicted for reconsideration and then submerged once more into the darkness, with just a few less garments than before. There sits with me a soft necessity that need consider the versatility of numerous eye shadows and underwear. There were mermaid lagoon eyes fighting for a place against the unweighted nudity that I knew would find my skin. Silky undergarments hungry for browned buttocks looked nervously at me from atop their piles, knowing that my derriere also desired the undressed freedom of swooshing around in the commando jungle of liberation.

Those same buttocks sat upon the cold tiles of my kitchen floor. A tile floor that pushed cool air up into my skin leaving me with cheap thrills. It was a tile floor that did not actually feel anything like a tile floor at all. It wore fake plastic squares with diamonds inside of its impersonations. The oven breaks the silence. It attempts to heat away the fake that has joined me and the quiet necessity, for there is no real heating here in this empty place. Still, I began to defrost and tried to entertain the idea that my destination could ever hold temperatures above the currently freezing English air. Winter held me captive and the illusion of the sun mocked my subconsciously packed wooly socks and jumpers. The Duke of Edinburgh laughs to himself with a fabricated tongue that hung down lazily beside a necklace tag that read: Destination Asia.

I looked around the soft walls of my little one bedroom, bottom-story flat. My winter retreat. Our lovers den. Mould crept up the ivory walls like aged vines of untamed ivy. It partied. The duke propped his fabrics up against the sofa bed like a drunk who had forgotten to pack his last legs and somberly he looked upon the clothes that didn’t quite make the cut. I admired the smallness of a kitchen that encircled me in the pit of its square belly and I rested my fingers on its edges as if to show quiet gratitude. Knowing that this dream was born from its cold plastic tiles. Summoned from the colourless kettle that lived a solitary life within its own kitchen corner where it birthed for us hot tea and dreams of warm summer skin. Together we ate toast with marmite in the early hours of darkness before work and then toasted late into the night when we all gathered our tired bones and returned home. There stood three fragile glasses that constantly touched towards our future adventures. Towards our unified desires to be reckless and to have fun. To enter a life that was far from the schedules and the governing clocks of this one. Here in this kitchen is where we cooked our Sunday roasts at 3am on a Tuesday evening and imagined our great escape. Now, with one foot in this world while the other dangles in another world of unknowns, my imagination began to formulate itself into the first pencil outlines of a reality. Winter ghosts chased the cold draft of my transitions. The circus act of this fleeting life was a jester’s best work.

 

One moment slid into the next and soon the maintenance of an all engulfing full-time occupation was no more. A*s successfully busted at fifty hour work weeks for the rich and for the famous. Two years of departmental meetings, gold stars and sharks out for the blood of the weak and the financially needy was now behind me. I slid finally out of the weights of responsibility like a silken nightgown that gathered itself around the callous of my worked feet. The metallic clank of £6 an hour minimum wage shackles released themselves and sent shrills into my being. Jolting me. Waking me… reminding me not to forget to pick up my soul on the way out of the door; tucked away in the cash register for safe keeping. I waved a farewell to responsibility bubble wrapped in slavery where polished shoes of airs and graces covered over a dark mask of gluttony and misguidance. The faces of grimaced wallets smiled their green dollar-bill, toothy smiles at me for they knew that falsified interactions of pleasantries were simply all in the name of excellent customer service. We were buying one another over white linen table cloths...but it was a civil kind of slavery!

I had tried it on and I had worn it well. I had actually gained success in this world of responsibility and business, just to ensure that when I left it all behind me, I would know that it would not be because I was unable to function in this world of consumers. I was not leaving because of its hungry mouth and my inability to feed it. I was not leaving because it reminded me of dark things under large beds, but rather, I would leave down to my own personal choice. I would leave a productive member of these suit and tie lands. I would leave my proposition for promotion back in the stuffiness of our monthly meeting room with the memory of suits that loomed over my underpaid contributions. I would depart a conqueror of the machine who in reality was not a conqueror at all but simply a girl wounded by the inhumanity of its systematic structure. We were created creatures of cattle all wearing skins that never belonged to us and I could not stand to be just another number for even one day longer! I was tired.

Being in England for these last two years was long enough to let the grass grow between my toes for the first time in many moons. No sooner did I begin to depart under the pull of my own insatiability for travel, did then my wavering heart show me of all the entwined connections that these past few years have offered up. Christmas day spent amongst my family of a reestablished connection where together we opened presents and ate ourselves into slumber. A familiar farmhouse that would always protect our quiet comforts for too long had my familial chambers been vacant. The cold care of a Russian’s voice began extending her family unto me and we drank wine and shared gifts of our precious time while our worlds connected very unexpectedly. Sleepovers of forever friends also continued to formulate, where the fountain of youth is forever flowing stories of our connections between the pillows. Through the linen there has always been those same deep green eyes searching out my frequencies. The emerald inquisitions that wear themselves upon the familiarity of my best friend. She looked at me through the white of her sheets and she wondered why I was leaving her yet again. Piss-ups often poured our pack of wolves into the park on a Saturday night where we would be lost in a round-a-bout destined for Never-Never land, for even though 26 years had found me, it was never the plan to grow up.

A network of continuity had been formed and now fevered farewells took precedence to the moments in between as I prepared myself for an undetermined amount of time away. Years swam around in my possibilities and from the mouths that had become accustomed to my being around, there now formed upon their curve the cool whispers of my abandon. The sense of simultaneous desperation and excitement sat in the diversity of their eyes. Each step that I took further from them seemed to suggest diminishment in my love for them but these were just the demons talking. “Keep walking.” my loved ones encouraged to my dreams. “Keep walking.”

Sleep was no longer as readily available as the winter had previously offered, for we were busy bees with bittersweet farewells and leaving parties to attend to. One final burst of playing in the park until three o’clock in the morning found me with socks in my hair for lack of a hairband. Bands were started in the bathroom of heavenly acoustics. Carefully orchestrated dinners asked me slyly if I could get used to this. Kitchen wars of Spatula Spartans left my loved ones skin arisen with the swollen red memory of me. Forget-me-nots of debauchery were pressed into the tenderness of our memories. “Let no one be like me.”...I say...”For nobody is like you!” Captain Morgan stood proudly in his honouring of The Wolf Pack and the pieces of my current life began to dissolve into black leaving all the room it needed to grow anew.

 

Dawn finally broke to find me still awake and void of any serotonin left in an over-driven neocortex. We spilled out of a souped-up van wondering what could possibly be next. Tattooed hands waved us goodbye full of smiles and disappearing acts. The train station appeared from dawn’s thick-clouded uncertainties as the kitchen kissed my cheeks and began to retreat into the background of ‘what it took to get me here.’ The three of us stood there, with backpacks and hazy eyes that rested lazily upon the possibilities of our new way of life.

I stood beside Ben. My psychedelic lover. Born of abandoned dreams and angelic soul. We were two years in the making and together we swirled around one another with the curiosity of those who lock souls as they lock eyes and know their journey together to be grand.

Jon led the way on stumbled feet. He was our house cat compadre of all things chilled and groovy and dear to the heart of my friendship. Our late night conversations would often drift into the soft care of a roseate sunrise as we laid on the sofa bed sprawled side by side. Our friendship was made of the mornings same gentle colours.

And then there was me. Self-appointed mother of the lost boys.

We dragged our tired and smiling bones upon that train together. Ties fell loose around worked ankles as a sort of weightlessness carried us onto the carriage and we became lost in further alcohol-infused delirium.

Our adventure, my greatest adventure thus far, had finally begun.

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

im looking for someone that can help me with the final grammatical corrections of my book

Reviews

[Schatzi]

Hello April Lee Fields,

I don't think you have many issues with grammar here. I would suggest that you break some of your longer paragraphs into smaller ones. They are a bit too long. Try to give your reader a break, especially when the topic is so intense. Otherwise, you have good dialogue and an interesting story with an interesting twist to it.

Thank you for sharing!

Kind regards,

Schatzi