Transcript for Aviator Radio, Saturday 8th March 2014

Good morning, and happy women's day! That was Bang On by The Breeders, I'm Cerise, 
As a journalist, part of your job is to be assertive. Most teen girls don't want to be journalists for that very reason, see, because they're socially awkward. That includes me, by the way. But saying that you have to be assertive is just presuming that you'll be a success. The only kind of journalist that has to be assertive is the kind that talks to Morrissey and get terribly embarrassed in the process. (Or, most of he time, the type that gets to talk to paparazzi that have taken a photo of Morrissey and got lynched because they had a turkey sandwich in their pocket). If you wish to be a journalist, a writer daresay, but of course, your self diagnosed social anxiety is holding you back, then never fear! There are always illegal radio stations, and there is always a five minute slot for making up and reading out horoscopes. That, my dears, does not need any a-levels, as I've demonstrated gracefully for the past six years.

My room looks out from the front of the farmhouse onto a dreary set of fields followed by a patch of square beige houses. A stout clock tower pokes up from them, banners strung around it and the clock caught in ivy. If I crane my neck I can just about see the glimmer of the city in the horizon, obscured by a tangle of green and motorway. The view is almost disappointing from my window, even though most people would prefer to look at the countryside. I hate the countryside. It might looked quite appealing to anyone else just passing through, but after a while you definitely get sick of the green grass the green trees the green hills the greenish farms the green meadows, though actually there are no meadows in Molehill. Molehill, a nearly suburban village so creatively named after its being on a hill and little population of moles. Well, they like to believe that they have some sort of population. Rather the moles just root up lawns and move on. Maybe they're all sick of being associated with such a pathetic place.

There are a few fresh hills on the patches of grass by the porch. One of the farmers is cursing and trying to stamp it down. I lean by my window for a while before turning away and starting to walk back to bed, but I'm soon interrupted by another bang. I ignore it this time and climb back under the clammy sheets, but now a series of clatters ring in my ears. This time, from outside my door. I breathe out shakily and peel off the covers, trudging to the door and cracking it open. I glance down the hallway to see an exhausted looking girl hammering furiously at the wall, a pile of flyers under her arm. She looks in a hurry but turns to see me and stops dead, her mouth hanging agape and her purple circled eyes twitching. Odd reaction for someone who's supposedly flyposting. She drops her hammer and nails and takes off down the hall, flailing around the corner and pattering down the stairs. I crane my head to look around the hall. It's completely empty, as normal. No one's shouting. No one is chasing after her. I'm certainly not. Though I do usually do that to people. You know, make them run away. Perhaps it's my hollow, lifeless eyes. Or my strict schedule of washing my hair nearly every five days. Or my cleverly constructed permanent state of looking vaguely offended. Actually, a lot of people say I have little to no personality. I prefer the term extremely self-absorbed. It's something, at least. I hear the door slam from the porch, and when I glance back at my window I see a flash of ginger darting away from the farm. If I was insane enough you'd see a brunette running with her.

I do actually manage to get a few minutes sleep after that, before there's more hammering. On my door. I snort with hay fever and roll out of bed for the second time that morning (evening? afternoon? what the hell is the time anyway?), dragging my feet to the door. This time the offender is right in front of me. My mother, smoking a cigarette at this time of day (whatever it is) kindly informs me that there had been a fly poster about.

'There's been a fly poster about.

'I know.

'You knew?' she speaks her smoke into my face. Maybe annoyed. Maybe happy. Who knows.

'Yeah. Heard em hammering. There's her poster.' I point to the flyer on the wall behind her. She sighs in that way that she does when she wants to establish that she was sighing because there's an actual problem and not just because she's extremely passive aggressive.

'Why didn't you report her?'

'She ran off. She seemed quite tired, anyway. Probably having a bad one.'

'You don't sympathize with... vandals.'

'Why?'

'Right. You get dressed and you go round and collect these posters, seeing as you know this... vandal so well.' I process this. She certainly likes saying vandal.

'What time is it?'

She slams my door.

 ***

PART ONE- LAND AND SEA

I use the abandoned hammer to pull the nail out of the wall. The last poster slips to the ground and I bend over to pick it up. By now, I have acknowledged that the posters are advertising a record fair in Manchester. A record fair I could easily go to, seeing as it is next Saturday. If I was fourteen, I might have jumped at the idea seeing as I am supposed to be an edgy indie record collector by now (according to my Letter To My Eighteen Year Old Self which I opened five months too early- some would say it shouldn't have been opened at all. Some would say it should have never existed. Some means me.). Apparently, three years where I live can turn you sour.

Molehill is a very small parish near the suburbs of Manchester. It's not really suburb, but it's not really countryside. The only reason I am here is because I was born here, and specifically I was born to my parents.

Molehill has a bit of a complex when it comes to the residents. See, if you're born here and you're a destructive brat with ADD, then you're fine! Come along for a cup of tea and a biscuit at the vicarage, and maybe a swift bible bashing. However, if you think Molehill looks a lovely place to move into (???) and you have any other skin colour than dried porridge, then you can forget about it. Not that you would ever want to move here, of course, because after two weeks you'd be drowning in cigarette smoke and would have gotten food poisoning from almost anything anyone offers you as a friendly gift. Everyone knows each other in Molehill, and everyone knows Molehill is not an elegant country village that cherishes its mole population. In fact, everyone knows by the sound of gunshots every now and then that most people despise the moles and have no problem in getting pest control in to cherish the population for them.

Molehill' s only export is the farm which I live on, and my parents own. It's not the greatest place to live, and my parents aren't really the nicest people to live with. In fact, I'd much rather live with the vicar than my parents, seeing as that's only one bigot to deal with.

My parents are very proud of their farm, and tell me so every time we eat, even though we all know that we got that meat from the co-op in the neighbouring town and Maria from down the road gave us the fruit basket as a gift. The farm stands on the edge of the village, where the concrete ends and the field begins. The farmhouse is a yellowed terracotta colour, inside and out, and has a tendency to attract mice in the summer. I don't think the farm is anything to be proud of, after all, there are plenty of others that are

I peer out of one of the hall windows. It turned out to be half past ten, by the way. It’s also a Monday. The younger kids are at the school down the road. Teens are at the high school in the next town over. I’m sulking. I lope over to the window and tap my forehead against it. Our village is in a cluster of towns and parishes, some more miserable than others, some almost exactly the same as the last but with a different catch. Out of one sprouts a railway, and another, if I remember correctly, has a pretty good Spar (by that I mean it’s easy to shoplift from). In all of them, boys play football and kid themselves they are good in fights, girls pose for their MySpace photos and chug beer into any hole they can find. I sound like an outcast, making everyone out as the inferior chavs and me as the oh-so-intelligent poet. But I’m not clever. I’m reminded of that when I look around and I am exactly as smart as every other scummy, hopeless kid in my age group. I know just as many words as they do, but because I listen to vinyl and I wear second hand clothes I’m deep and intelligent. I’m about as deep as toilet water.
In my early teens I did, like many others who are of average intelligence at best, spend my time scribbling in my half-hearted diary convincing myself that it would get published one day (because everyone wants to hear about the trials and tribulations of a whiny thirteen year old) and that I was different to all the other girls- Because I put my eyeliner all the way round my eyes. Really, I wasn’t all that different. I just looked like a sad panda with a bad career as a poet. And even then, I wasn’t smart or funny or witty or worth reading. I was the same as everyone else inside. I fit in like a sore thumb… under a hammer.

I scoop up the pile of tatty posters as I make my way back to my room and huff at them again. I do want to go. And I can go. But it makes me sad, because I go places and then I come back. And then the grass seems ten times yellower and the cigarettes smoke twenty times thicker and the skies just as grey because nothing really changes here. And neither will I. Of course, fourteen year old me would smirk and flick her hair over the back of her Smiths t shirt and say, ‘Well, yeah, but you’re going to move when you turn eighteen and leave all those imbeciles behind and make friends in another town and it’ll be the best time of your life!’ but no, I’m not doing that. I’m staying here and working on my parent’s farm off the apprenticeship I did for the last year. And no, not in music. Agriculture.  Because that’s stupid, and maybe I’m just not meant to go off to a big city. Maybe I’ll break in and learn to enjoy small talk and church. And that’s pathetic, I know, but whatever I wanted when I was fourteen just isn’t for me, I guess. Some people say that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. I just never got any lemons.

I sigh. I slipped into another bout of self-pity. God, I’ve got to stop doing that.

I see my mother round the corner with another cigarette hanging from her mouth. She's a fairly stumpy woman with ragged blonde hair and a face oily with cosmetics. She's wearing her indoors clothes, which is trackies tucked into her hiking boots (which lie to the world, she has never and will never go hiking) and a faded football top. Classy. I’ve never really seen much resemblance between my mother and me, nor my father. Maybe I’m adopted! I hope so. She gives me a brief smile and it fades again as she walks past, as if I’m a colleague she sits opposite and doesn't really talk to but I seem nice. I don’t smile back, because I’m not her colleague yet, I’m her seventeen year old daughter and I like listening to loud music and wearing spikes and heavy black eyeliner and pretentious poetry. I look over my shoulder and glare at her, even though she can’t see me- Actually maybe she can, because she turns around and rolls her wrinkled eyes.

'Don't be like that, Cerise.' I snap my head back around. I bolt up the stairs and drop the posters. All except one. I need it to check what time the fair starts.

 I walk to one of the nearby towns. It looks a bit newer than Molehill because there's more houses and less fields and a train station, but it's also more trashed. I look over the bridge and see all of the yellowed gardens outlined by twisted metal fences. Shopping trolleys and tyres are dotted around for no apparent reason other than maybe cheap garden ornaments. The houses have smashed windows and in some just empty window panes that I can see all the way through. A man brushes his hair. A girl knocks back a beer. A family screeches at a football game. The not at all homely but unfortunately familiar smell of burning is strong. I glance at my watch and lower the volume in my tinny earphones. I have five minutes until my train arrives. I run my hand along the ripped yellow paint on the railings of the bridge and look further across the string of Swiss cheese houses. The wind picks up.

A man with a leathery face and a patchy grey beard stands next to me.

'Shithole, innet?'

'Never really been round here.' Don't really think it's my place to comment on where someone lives if I don't live there. Even if I already do it internally.

'Where you from then?'

'Molehill. Not far.'

'Yeah, yeah, I been Molehill. Fantastic market. Nice place.'

'Market, yeah. Parents own the farm. It... It ain't nice though.' He chuckles at me and nods to the sulking suburban landscape.

'You and me looking at the same place, right? Molehill can't be that bad.'

'It shouldn't be, no. Guess it gets worse as you stay there.' He clucks and leans forward over the rails. I flick my gaze to the orange screen over the bridge.

MANCHESTER PICCADILLY-10:25-ON TIME

Two minutes. The man checks his watch as well. The sun is smouldered out by the early grey clouds but it still stings my eyes when I try to look at it. Smoke pumps out of chimneys and a boy boots a football down his street to no one in particular. I hop down the steps two at a time to the platform and huddle under a wooden shelter that is also decorated with the tragic yellow paintwork. The train whistles towards the platform and the man comes down from the bridge. It whistles to a stop and I walk on taking a seat in an empty carriage. As the doors slide closed and the locomotive rolls away from Saddleworth, I notice some untainted houses at the end of the town. Only a few have missing roof tiles and the odd broken gate.         

Give them time.

The train jolts to a stop next to the white pillars of the train station. I make my way down the aisle as the mechanic female voice reminds me that this is the train's last stop, and that all passengers are to exit. I go along with this and hop down onto the platform and into the crowd, pushing towards the glass exits. As I get outside I jump down the steps and pull the crinkled poster out of my pocket. I'd managed to keep this even though my mum seemed pretty opposed to me going to this fair, because she thought that I would be 'supporting' the fly poster. She didn't seem to understand that the girl probably wasn't getting paid that much for it any way, and didn't even know that our house wasn't an attraction. After all, it did use to be a tourist site where you could see a cow being milked and buy the fresh cream made from it and stuff like that, before they bought the site twenty years ago. The sign is still up, 'Molehill Ice Cream Farm' because it's painted onto the wall and we don't have a ladder to get it off. We really should buy a ladder. Anyway.

The poster says that it's near the library, so I start to head in that direction. I start to see tie dye patterned signs along the way, which also gives me a subtle clue. I turn a corner and I'm caught face first in a headache coloured paisley print flag, followed by the slurry laughter of what could unmistakably be the stoner regulars of these kind of fairs. I laugh gently and bid my farewell to them, who are now trying to sell me something that could either be weed or some strange kind of confetti.

There are stalls lined up and down the street, most filled with records but at the sides are racks of scarves and dresses and bootleg band t shirts. I start down the first aisle and stop at a stall specialising in 60s garage, picking up a few as I go along. By the time I'm at the end of the second line, my elbows are aching with supporting three carrier bags full of records, jabbing into my sides. I look down the third and final aisle and then at my wallet with a sheepish longing, but then see the neon stickers slapped to the vintage clothing stalls at the sides. That can only mean one thing- cheap imitation leather. Perfect.

I stroll through the stands of hats and scarves, until I come to one last record stall, hidden away behind a shop for emo beanies and a vintage porn stall. It seems the most interesting of the stands, and for once isn't run by an elitist forty year old man. Instead, a girl typing away on her laptop is sat behind the counter, her face obscured by impossibly red... hair. With purple rims around her eyes, and a faded Bowie t shirt. A flower crown threaded over her head and behind her ears. I walk over and laugh internally. I kind of respect this girl for being able to make my mum rage that much. I flick through the crates and the girl stares down at the counter through her tangle of hair, looking wide eyed and not really like she knows where she is. I'm about to hand her a record and she glances at me for a second and begins to mumble something incomprehensible, when it looks like she recognises me as well. Her blue circled eyes are wide in horror and she's gripping her hand over her mouth.

'Oh god, I'm so sorry, I was... Was I in your, the other-' she has a drawly, warbling Yorkshire accent and looks like she's killed a puppy.

'Uh, yeah you posted something in my house last week, but I don't really care, seriously, it's fine.' She laughs throatily and the whites of her eyes disappear in relief.

'Jeez, good, oh wow, I'm so sorry. I thought it- I thought it was just a tourist thing....'

'Yeah, people do that we can't really get the sign off, we're still a farm but we don't do the whole ice cream thing. I guess it was good though, I mean, I got to go to a record fair.' She smiles and nods, swallowing hard.

'Sorry, did you want to get this one?' She points to the vinyl in my hand and I nod back. 'Ok, just let me get the list- Sorry, I've kind of lost track of stuff, I haven't done this before, it's just that usually I'm in an actual shop and it took me ages to get set up because I don't live here and yeah, you're actually the first person that tried to buy something from the stall today-' She sets down a huge binder of dog eared paper onto the counter.

'No one helped you set up here?' She pulls a strained face as she flicks through the binder.

'Uhh... No, I work alone in the shop. I'm, uhh...' She looks extremely uncomfortable and disappears under the counter again, rooting around for something and dislodging boxes of CDs along the way. She pops up again and I jolt back, her face covered in a thin layer of dust and her wheezing and choking. She hands me a second flyer, this one advertising an actual record shop.

I take it off her and she immediately starts babbling nervously. I can see the blood coloured parts of her eyes and the edges have gotten even bluer.

'Yeah, uh, actually I'm looking for people to work with. Y'know, it doesn't have to be full time a part timer is good too. But, you know, we just need to get one person in at least, because, uh, it's kind of... busy? And, yeah, it's kind of hard. But, not too hard. You can stay in the flat above it it's too far away, and because you work there you won't have to pay any rent... You just need to work a till and be interested in music.' I take a moment to think and she jerks up and quickly affirms, '...but you know if you can't do it, I mean, maybe you have some friends who can, uh...'

'Um, no, it's fine, I uh...' Memories of the dreary grey farm at home come to mind. 'Uh...' ...And the needless summer I would spend there before I actually started work. 'I, uh, well, hm...' ...And how I could at least spend my last summer holiday doing something I would enjoy.

'Well, uh, I'd do it for a full time summer job, if that's any help.' She gapes at me and laughs again, pushing her flowers back over her head.

'Yeah! Yeah, cool, that's fine. Uh, uh, if we swap e-mails I can send you the address and, uh, yeah. I'm Darien..' She bends her arm over the desk in an awkward angle and shakes my hand. She scribbles down her email on a scrap of paper and gives it to me, I tear a bit off and do the same- I swear I feel her shaking when I hand it back to her. There's my good deed for the year.

'Uh, jeez sorry, let me get you that record...' I smile at her and take the bag under my arm.

'I'm Cerise. I'll see you..!' I shout as I back into the crowd. She grins back and tucks my email into her pockets.

Over the next few weeks, Darien and me sent each other a few e mails back and forth. It was kind of awkward at first seeing as we hadn't even talked to each other for more than ten minutes, but I was already working with her and planning to share a flat. After a while though, it got easier to write to her. It was mainly jobs and what was going on around where we lived. Her hometown is by the seaside in Yorkshire, and the shop is on the promenade. She said that it was pretty desolate sometimes but I doubt it's desolate like round here. She attached a scanned polaroid of the sea as well, which looked quite nice. I'm actually getting quite jealous of the place she lives, even its name is nicer than Molehill: Port Clementine. It turns out that it doesn't really mean anything, there was never a place that grew clementines around there, it just seemed like a pretty name for a pretty place.

I open up the webpage and log onto my email, where I have two new messages. One from Darien, and another a spam email from a hacked address.

Recipient: ceriseamy@yahoo.co.uk

From: pictureofdarienowly@yahoo.co.uk

Subject: Store

Hello, again. I thought that before you start working over here you might actually want to get a date? I know that the summer holidays generally start on the tenth of July, so would the twentieth be an alright time for you to move over? That gives you just under three weeks to plan. If not, please tell me when is more alright.

Thanks,

Dari

&n

Darien pointed me towards a shock-haired girl leaning against the rails of the promenade, looking over the beach. She had clunky silver rimmed glasses on and was wearing a black leather jacket and sweater even though it must have been at least thirty degrees out. She didn't look at all fazed by the heat, though, and clutched the bars of the rails while she stared at the sea.

'There's October.' Darien shouted over the fairground music. I turned to her and crinkled up my face.

'October? That's her name? Is it just a nickname?' She looked amused but unsettled.

'No mate, that's her name. Don't ask her about it, though...' She pulled a strained face. 'She kind of goes off on one. She's really nice though, really, let's go talk to her...' Dari nodded and lead me towards October. She turned to face us and her lips went up in a one-sided smile.

'Hey,' she said, flicking her eyes from Darien to me. Darien pulled me forwards a little too enthusiastically and presented me like a prize.

'This is my new flatmate Cerise! Say hello Cerise!'

I shifted uncomfortably as I was shoved nearer the face of this stranger. '...Hi. I'm Cerise, and uh, I'm Darien's new flatmate.' Both sides of October's mouth went up in a grin and she quickly laughed through her nose before it disappeared and she looked almost emotionless again.

'Afternoon, I'm October.' She paused for a split second and I swear I saw her wince. 'So, you work in the shop then?' I nodded. 'Yeah, for a summer job.' She smiled briefly again and ran a hand through her dark, coarse hair, adjusting her glasses and shoving her hands back in her jacket pockets.

'Where are you from originally then?' I squinted and bit my lip.

'Uh... Manchester-'

'Really? Oh, cool.'

'Well, not really, it's just this village about ten minutes train ride away. But I spend a lot of time in Manchester, so, yeah.' This wasn't entirely true. I wasn't actually allowed to leave Molehill except on the weekends, and on Sunday I was dragged along to church and forced to practise the organ and 'mingle' with the church staff all afternoon.

October nodded and looked to Darien.

'Why don't we go get lunch? The fair's giving me a headache.' What was currently blaring out of the loudspeakers sounded like a nu rave remix of row-row-row your boat. I agreed and we started walking back down the promenade.

'The best place around here is Glasseye Cafe,' Darien turned to me. 'One of my old classmates works there, it's got a little book stall in the back. You'll like it.' She smiled certainly and then turned back to October.

'Will Holly be at work? I think her hours are around this time...' I looked at the sea, which was glaring in my eyes, rich with sunlight. I felt kind of awkward and out of place here, where everyone knew each other, but Darien seemed more than happy to welcome (or shove?) me into her social circle, even if October wasn't the most social character. We turned a corner and I snapped back to attention as we came to the lime green doors of Glasseye Cafe.                                                                                                               

October lead us to a booth at the back of the room, a biggish space with posters plastering the grey walls. Even the worn wooden floor had aged images trodden into its surface, and weird paint shaped splashed around. The cracked royal blue leather seats had people's names carved into them and stains which I was hesitant to go near, but overall the place looked cool.

The beach stretches to a massive cliff face on one side, which is adorned with many caves moulded directly into its side at varying heights. On the other side is a dock, with rows of gaudily painted boats bobbing in rhythm with the sea. The tide is high, heaving its weight back and forth against the shore, leaving damp, frothy stains on the beach, barely visible in this hour. By the time I get there, I’m shivering from being drenched in the downpours that are surprisingly short (but no less cold) when you’re running through the town. I amble to the railings of the promenade, first looking down at the froth and seaweed left by the waves on the beach, then up at the night sky, the moon full, peeking out from behind the clouds and outlining them in silver.

Why Do Children Lose Their Balance?

The sea burns inside my lungs and I'm not even drowning. Or am I? I don't know. If I woke up ten foot under water I don't even know if I'd bother to swim to the surface. My legs are kicking out and hitting the ground. I'm on pavement. I'm on the promenade. I'm running, like I always do. Always run towards it and then away. I look behind me at the stretch of shops. The sun is going down. How romantic.

The running begins eight years ago.

The sickly clean corridors and the sweltering lights were too much for me. I kept going. I kept on tripping over my own legs and smacking against the bleached floors. Nurses helped me up by my arms but I scrambled to my feet on my own. My nerves buzzed as I took off down the rows and rows and rows and rows and rows of doors, never ending and closing in on me. The numbers on them didn't go up or down, instead they just blurred and twisted until I felt like screaming from the confusion. And I did. The logic of this place wasn't being fair to me, so why should I have been to the ears of passers-by? I groaned and panted and shook off the cold hands of nurses that tried to direct me. Why would they know where I was going? Where was I going? Why didn't I know? Did anyone know? I collapsed on the floor, half conscious and wailing. A hand clawed with smooth painted fingernails grabbed mine and dragged me along. The white doors on the white walls whirled and screeched at my eyes, stabbing at my brain. I limped behind the nurse and came face to face with a number I couldn't read. The door swung open silent to my ears and I saw the bed. The shape in the bed. It made sense. Everything fell to the ground like jigsaw shaped raindrops.

My mother... In the hospital. Alive. Blinking. Alive. Breathing.

I took one step and the nurse murmured one thing in my ear.

'Don't be startled, she might be a bit different honey, she's just... In... Shock.'

Another step and I could bloody feel her wince.

'Just don't worry, ok, you'll adjust in a bit.'

At this I took yet another step and started noticing things. My mum had a very strange expression on her face, one that I'd never seen before. Her mouth was twisted a bit and she was tapping on her leg frequently. She didn't seem to notice me yet, even though I was less than eight foot away from her. She was sat bolt upright, and her hair was shiny in the pristine white lighting. Not in the healthy way, though, in the slicked back with sweat and grease way. She looked... Very different. And different always made me want to cry. I told myself she reason I wasn't already running forward and hugging her was because I was just confused at what the nurse had said. I took very shaky steps forward, never being sure if my feet would touch the ground. Her mouth was half open and she was staring seriously at the corner of the room. I didn't understand at the time, not really. She was going to be fine. Having a car smash into yours from a moronically placed roundabout, yeah, you'll recover. No side effects.

'Mmm-' I stammered but she didn't flinch.

'Mmm- Mum.' Her head finally turned to me and oh, how I wish it hadn't. Up close, she was so cold, so lifeless. It looked like her soul had been stuffed in a body that didn't fit. Her wrist moved so strange and angular, and my chest was instantly filled with sand.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

I was choking on words and I wasn't even trying to speak. There was so much I could say, but I wouldn’t say any of it. I cleared my throat once. Twice. I erupt in to a coughing fit and try to blink back tears.

I... Don't remember what she said to me in the next half hour, because it's exactly what she's been saying to me for the last eight years. The same ineligible muttering. The same cussing at me and the half-recognition of the worthless, hopeless daughter who still bothers to stay around for whatever reason she has no idea. The same blank, dilated stare. The same shaking. But no, she's not the same. She'll never be the same again.

I try running down the steps but I fall and twist my ankle, ending up lying in a contorted heap on the sandy ground. I unravel myself upwards and thud down the dunes, slipping again and again. Sometimes the sand hits me like a vinyl floor. Sometimes the setting sun scorches like glaring spotlights.

I follow the sound of sobbing down the hall and to the bathroom door, which is ajar and pouring out billowing steam. The sobs have elevated to gasping, shrieking wheezes and thumps against wood, and I lean inside and see Dorian, wrapped in a towel and crouched on the floor of the bathroom next to the running bath. She barely glances up at me, only hiding her burning red face in her hands and snorting up her cries through her nose. I stand there, stock still, maybe because I'm in shock, maybe because I've never walked into the bathroom to see my roommate half-naked and wailing on the floor. So that's why I say the thing that is so stupidly pointless to say but yet so commonly said in situations of this variety.

'Are you okay?' I say, my voice grinding in my throat. She screeches at this and throws her head up, turning to look at me. Her face goes from agony to disgust to pure anger in a matter of seconds.

'I'm- A- Wreck!' She screams at me, her breath catching after every word. She stands up abruptly, her towel getting tangled in her arms in the process. She rips it off and hurls it to the ground, and begins to pace up and down the room and swipe bottles off the shelves, sending them shattering to the ground. I back away but she turns to me and grabs me by the collar and brings her face within inches of mine. I'm being assaulted by my naked crying flatmate. This situation gets more surreal every day.

She looks like she's going to rip my organs out, but instead she just cries harder and croaks, 'Stay.' So I stay and watch her destroy our bathroom, reciting a bawling chant: 'Idon'tcareIdon'tcareIdon'tcareIdon'tcare' but she seems like she cares very much so as she grabs the shower curtain and drags it to the ground, the pole crashing into the water and scraping the paint off the bath. She grips her face in her hands and howls, and then I see the blood dripping out of the cut the falling pole made in her cheek. She collapses on the floor and curls up, her greasy, matted hair sticking out in a way that not even the most pretentious of grunge girls would wear. She groans and shivers, the adrenaline gone and replaced by the anesthesia of hopelessness. I grab a wad of toilet paper and slouch next to her by the bath, draping the towel over her and handing her the tissues for her cut. She gives me a half-grateful nod, presses the paper to her gash and huffs and blows out into the steam still rising from the now overflowing bathtub.

'Agh,' she spits, her hair stuck in her mouth. 'Good thing no one else was home.' It doesn't take me long to realize that it isn't actually a compliment to me, but just a thankfulness for there not being anyone else to make too much of a drama. ///