Baby Steps
Your eyes roll back into your head like an addict nodding out. I hold you close. You throw up. A milky stream trickles down my back.

Like a punch-drunk boxer, your tiny arms swing jerkily. Fists clenched, eyes suddenly screwed shut, cheeks puffed; you gulp for air before releasing the ear-piercing scream.

I’d heard it before, but this time it was different. Desperate. The hours passed. The screaming didn’t. It was an unusual sound. A shrill high-pitched note followed by a hoarse whine, like an old cam belt on a sick engine.

My eyes sore and red, I try for what feels like the hundredth time to hold you close. Your little head nestles into the crook of my arm, your ear placed on my heart. You give a final, forlorn yelp and drift off into a deep and blissful sleep.

Day breaks. Our journey together has only just begun.

Answering-Machine
I grew up in the countryside, in a bungalow the colour of corned-beef, sandwiched in between two farms. 

We had two dogs, part-lurcher, with bodies lithe as greyhounds. They'd hare across the fields, bobbing up and down in the long wheat. I still like to imagine the farmers shaking rusty rifles, shouting "Why I oughta..."

I told my friends at school I could make the dogs howl on cue. We had this old answering-machine, with a tape that went "Ka-tch, Ka-tch", before broadcasting the family rap:

"The Watson family are not home, so leave a message after the tone!"

I told my friends even my impersonating of the answering-machine made them howl.

I'd lied. The machine unsettled them but the reality was I had to take the lead. I'd bark, they'd bark. I'd start howling, then they'd start howling.

Then I'd sink into the couch, satisfied.

I loved my dogs.

Paper Doll
Nancy makes perfect folds with perfect creases, though the paper is tattered and stained. She cuts along her dotted-line roadmap with a cautious hand; she wants to be perfect, too. The tip of her tongue is just visible, held between lips pursed in careful concentration. 

Her shoulders hover up around her ears, until the final snip, when she lets out the breath she’s been holding. 

A flick of her wrist and, like magic, a perfect family appears. They hold hands, these perfect people. She draws brown hair and eyes on the middle one. Brown hair and eyes like her own.

From downstairs, Nancy's foster mother shouts for her.

“Girl! You better not have my sewing scissors again. I warned you before, that’ll earn you a beating.”

Nancy tucks her new family beneath her shirt for protection and with the scissors held like a sword, she turns toward the stairs.

Intrusion
I wonder what it is my doctor reads.
 	I’ve never really wondered before but now that I’m here and we have a little time between us, I’m trying to distract myself. I don’t go to the doctors often, only when I’m sick – and by sick I mean only when in pain or when I feel like time or plasters won’t see the thing pass. 
This time she is investigating my rectum. I noticed a lump while shaving. If it had been there for a while, I couldn’t answer her. It never pained or smarted. It was only when I lowered the razor to trim around that area – anticipating sex - that I became aware of its existence.
For some reason I don’t want her to read the things I do. I hope she reads something flighty just to tell people she reads. I hope she plays tennis in her spare time.

For One Night Only
‘Shall I squirt hairspray on your tights so that ladder doesn’t spread?’ I say.

‘Why did you tell me that, Becky? I’ll have to change them now – everyone’ll see.’

I roll my eyes. ‘They won’t notice that tiny thing. They’ll be focusing on your hair – it’s massive.’

‘Is it too much? I’m not used to all this.’

I pat the huge beehive, spraying extra hairspray on it for good measure. ‘It’s for charity. You never know – you might get a taste for it.’

‘Everyone’s gonna laugh at me. It’ll be obvious I’m miming.’

‘Everyone mimes here. You’ve been practicing for ages. "I Am What I Am." Shirley Bassey’s got nothing on you.’ 

I wouldn’t "sing" in front of any audience, but I don’t say anything.

‘Right. I’m ready. Let’s get it over with. Wish me luck, love.’

‘Good luck, Dad.’ I say, patting his back. ‘Knock ‘em dead.’

Unspoken
The secret hung like a thin veil between us – yet it was in my possession. It clawed at my throat wishing to reveal itself, but to speak it would change everything. Despite my best efforts, my eyes had already betrayed me. 

Like a hound on the scent of a fox, she chased my lies with her questions, desperate to trip me up and tangle me in a web of words. She picked at the edges of my inconsistency and stuck needles in my whimsical bubbles of fantasy. I knew that eventually I would beg her to share the burden that weighed heavy in my soul. But for now, I was determined to cling onto it. 

For my secret was as delicate as a silver thread in an ancient tapestry. To unravel it would destroy the very fabric of our relationship. 

I wasn’t ready for that.

Some things are better left unsaid.

Kiss
A plastic mask is placed over my face and I gulp at the steam.

‘Slowly now. Let the nebuliser do the work for you.’

The paramedic avoids my eyes, turning his attention to the needle in the back of my hand. Coldness rushes along a vein.

Standing on my right is a girl in a blue dress watching me gasp as she chews on a nail. She knows me better than anyone; my love for Danny Boyle movies, my fear of sharks, how I sleep with two pillows, my nut allergies. 

She also knows I’m a cheat, we’d established that last week. 

But then she rang;

‘Shall we meet up? Maybe we could work through this?’

Welcoming me with wide eyes and a salty kiss I knew instantly that something was wrong.

I hadn't been forgiven at all.

I lay on the pavement as the men in green buzz around me. She wipes her lips with the back of her hand, then turns and walks away.

Dead of Night
She doesn’t feed the foxes, ever. She doesn’t want to encourage them. In the dense woods to the side of her house she hears their harsh call at dead of night, along with the protracted Woo Woo of an owl.

This morning she opens the back door. Strewn across a flowerbed is a red-gold fox, probably a vixen. Legs tucked beneath her body, her pointy, soft muzzle lies on the foliage, her chin resting neatly by the side of a broken lupin. Two cats are standing guard on one side, teasing the air with inquisitive paws as they gaze on. The fox’s tail is spread like a fan. Not a mark on her, no sign of disease.

This evening she comes home from work. Gone; the Council’s duty is done. The flowerbed is crushed, there’s a long dent. After dark she creeps outside solicitously with a saucer of food.

Confession
Today the queue snakes around the font and down the aisle. In desperate times we are all believers. To pass the time I list my sins; my brain cannot contain them all. As I kneel, my heart races a marathon.
 
The door opens, his silhouette bows. I watch his lips move in silent prayer. Dust motes dance, confetti in his red hair. The scent of him hangs about us; sweat, cigarettes and spice. 
	‘Father, forgive me…’ he begins. For a moment darkness traps me; I can’t move or speak. 
	Panicked footsteps jolt me from my study. Father Duncan, late again.
	‘Jamie, I love you.’ 

I flee before he knows my name.

Intrusive Thoughts
Yeah, so I’m ordering a coffee – that’s normal. Or I’m at the gym sweating on the machinery – hell everyone sweats on the bloody machinery. Whatever, it’s all normal on the outside. But in my mind I’m picturing a train wreck; bits of shredded metal and indistinguishable biological mess, people screaming.

The thoughts just come. Today the thought is me bleeding from my face. I’ve caught it on the edge of a pig trough as a thug forces my face into slop. I think, “What if that happens?”

Sometimes the thought is my girlfriend trapped under rubble at an abandoned building site or my brother having his teeth knocked out at a bar.

I never call to check. I mean, you just can’t can you? You have to convince yourself that no one is tied up and gagged or drowning. You have to get on with ordering coffee or sweating your bloody guts out.

The Bleeding Milkman
'The bleedin’ milkman’, Nan says when I ask who my dad is. ‘Yer Mam ran off with him'. I’ve seen the 
milkman and he doesn’t look much like me. He’s got ginger hair and wears white gloves like Mickey Mouse. Never seen any blood either, so I’m not sure she’s right.

I run away with him anyway looking for my mum, hopping onto his cart while it’s still dark, legs 
swinging as we chink and rattle round the streets. I get off at the top of the estate. In the pink light of the rising sun the milk looks like it’s bleeding. I’ve drunk a pint of full fat bleeding milk and I feel sick. 

I ask him where my mum is and he swears at me. I kick him in the leg and it bleeds through his white trousers. The relationship has soured.