It's been a while...

I've been busy. That's all I can really say. I've started to let things fall by the wayside and this blog has been one of those unfortunate things. But I'm back at it now. During my study breaks I might start posting again. But even if I don't I want to get back to writing. Listening to depressing music and pounding out art on my keyboard. How enchanting does that sound!?

So - this is only because I can't actually think of anything real to write about - I'm going to post a little bit of a short story I've been working on...

It’s grey. Grey and cold. I don’t think anything has ever felt quite this miserable. Well, a few things might have, but I’ve put them behind me.
The skeletal shapes of buildings lurch out of the fog and gloom as far as the eye can see. More grey. More cold. I sit, nestled inside my one room apartment staring out the window. I ignore the crack. Shitty affordable housing. Isn’t even that affordable any more. Another crack runs down the street. Not the invisible one keeping us from them. No, this one’s real and it slices the pavement cleanly in two; a fissure where the tectonic plates of the neighbourhood have collided. Blades of grass bloom from the crack. Life in so much death.
Across the street, behind the invisible border, a crowd of trench coats stand huddled. Wisps of smoke escape from their tightly drawn circle. Acrid yellow against the grey. More of their vomit in our backyard. I can feel it catching in the back of my throat. The smell. Damn crack in the window. I feel one of the trench coats look up. I shy back from the window. My heart pounds in my chest. I shut my eyes. One. Two. Three. I count to block out the racing tattoo my heart smashes against my ribs. I open my eyes and the feeling is gone.

I moved into this neighbourhood three years ago. What the hell was I thinking? The apartment I got, if you ignore the stupid super, isn’t half bad. It’s cheap and comes with a kitchen. That’s all I need. I moved in to be closer to the night life. Artists. You know, the low paid, underfed, passionate about their craft to the point of insanity artists. Just, no one told me about the rest of them. I learned one thing from high school physics: ‘every action has an equal reaction’. Whatever, someone still could’ve told me about the reaction.
We’ve got artists but we’ve also got drug addicts. And I don’t mean your average pot-smoking, ‘helps me do my work better’ drug addicts. We’ve got the scary ones. The ones that terrorize alleyways and can scare you with the feeling of a look.
But they stay on their side and we stay on ours.
I was an artist too. A writer. No, I am an artist. I used to think my Pulitzer was in the mail. Just like the cheque the paper is always sending me. I do my best stuff, my best writing, down here. You look around the corner and something’s going to inspire you. But it’s dark. And grey. And cold. Not really mainstream stuff, you know. But still, I write and, well, thank god the rent isn’t much.

I look back down at the street. The trench coats have started to disperse. I rock back from the window and shuffle into my apartment. I dodge piles of clothes laying at the foot of the bed that stretches too far into the room. The covers are crumpled and tossed in a heap on the mattress. The sheets, they used to be white, are now more of cream colour; they’re almost grey. I think about doing a wash. I jingle the contents of my pocket. It’s a tiny sound. Brassy. Nothing in there except for pennies and dimes.
I get to the kitchen. Really, it’s only one room and getting to the kitchen implies some noticeable divide; the invisible line where disgusting unwashed carpet meets disgusting unwashed food-stained carpet. My shoes squelch and shuffle on the floor. I get to the fridge. Like my sheets I bet the fridge used to be white. It’s almost black now.
The fridge rattles when I pull on the door. I reef on it for a second and it bangs open. The meagre contents hardly make sound. I grab a jar of pickles. I can already taste the dill on my tongue. The sour vinegar burns in the back of my throat. I welcome the wash of reflux that scours my oesophagus. I pry the lid off of the jar and dip my spindly fingers into the urine-like brine. My hand surfaces with a wrinkled pickle clutched between the fingers. It looks like some obscure slug dregged up from the bottom of the ocean.
I put the jar back and slam the fridge shut. The front door rattles. Damn draft from the window. Stupid rickety building. Fucking stupid room.

I like to think that it reads like a graphic novel/god-knows what modern thingy. There's oh so much more but I didn't think people would be too keen reading like three pages so I cut it off there. Anywho, enjoy and come back to my blog. I swear I will be writing!!