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Extracts from the Journals of a Coward

There was a time, during the folly of youth, the halcyon days of my studies in the humanities, where I became a ruthless social determinist. I believed I could be reduced completely to my circumstances – to my history, my culture, my language. These beliefs gave me comfort and satisfied a certain masochism within me. But, for a reason I would not understand until far too late, they also inspired anxiety and ungovernable rage. My journals at this time read: When I look in the mirror I do not see anything worth seeing. I do not see a kind man. I do not see a brave man. I do not see a joyful or happy or good man. I do not even see a human. When I look in the mirror I see another mirror. I see a collection of points bound together by physics and history. Aleatory fluke. By a process that is not in my control. I see flotsam in the flow of time. A particle dancing on the shafts of light. I drift unwilled to the ground. I see a man determined by his circumstances. The flow...
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A Crowd

A group of sexless, androgynous individuals, featureless, white-skinned, in white cloth, bathed in selenian light, huddle together under the cover of night. They murmur, they mumble, their words a muted minimalist music, an arthritic cello in a broken church, a violin bowed on the moon, they shift, undulating, dust on a moonbeam. There is a mood of worship. They pray to lonely gods. You come across this group on the empty streets of your city. An inexplicable mass of people. At night, silent. A sight unseen in the metropolis. A crowd of uncertain purpose, unstimulated, quiet, directionless. In a sense, free. A mass not under the cover of protest or money or entertainment. A kind of white terror rises in your chest. None of them turn to look at you. A rustling of their clothes, mass-produced in a South Asian factory. They are dressed like ideas and dreamed into being. You approach the group, fascinated and fixated, despite your anxiety. You feel nausea, vertigo, inertia, motion and moti...
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Step-Siblings

When Matthew returned to a pornographic website for the first time in over a month —a visit he justified by insisting it was a “reward” for his weeks of ascetic restraint, a period of abstinence undertaken to “increase his dopamine,” “max out his masculinity,” and “fight his depression”—he was startled to recognise the face of a young woman in a trending video near the top of the website’s homepage. “ Hot Girl Fucks Her Stepbrother ” was its title. Its star, much to Matthew’s shock and admittedly, arousal, was his stepsister, Alice. Matthew’s urge to masturbate was overwhelming given his long period of self-control. But now he immediately closed his phone and tossed it across his bed. The dark undulated before his eyes and he flinched away from his phone, as if the slab of black glass had become cursed and dangerous to touch. On his back, his underwear around his ankles and his eyes fixed on his wall, Matthew’s mind raced with erotic and horrifying thoughts. His step-sister was a porn...
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ICE Application Letter

To who it concerns, My name is Hudson Jameson and I am a 25 year old male from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I am a high-school graduate and a full American by birth and descent. For my whole life I have aspired to be a true patriot. It’s how my mother and father raised me. I believe in the high ideals of our country, and I know we must defend them. That’s why there is nothing more important in this day and age than our President’s “ Mission to protect America from cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety .” Our country is under attack from forces working outside and inside its borders. The danger is right here on our doorsteps. Today I know I can best serve my country by working for ICE as a Deportation Officer. Keeping America safe is a great honour. It would be my life’s privilege to serve in this role. Writing Proficiency , I saw, is essential for applying to be a Deportation Officer. So I’ve decided I would tell you my story, st...
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A Writer is Interviewed on the Eve of his Death

 " When I was young I hoped to be a war poet. But then there was no war, so I was fucked."   Q: … A: Writers today live in a melancholic time. Postlapsarian is the word. Nothing is more common now than the writer who believes literature has worsened in recent decades. It has not. Instead literature’s influence on culture has declined. Writers —we are invariably obsessed with power and approval— believe this signifies a decline in their craft’s quality. They wrongly assume the quality of their texts gave them influence. So they fetishise the days of “great” writing that could “change” culture. Really, they yearn for writers to become celebrities akin to “influencers” once more. Ultimately the problem is not one of quality. Relevant writing is not good. It is useful. Useful things do work: they exercise force across distance. Writers do not understand their irrelevance because they refuse to recognise the nature of their craft: they deny the fact that writing “changes” peop...
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Joseph

It was on his eighteenth birthday that Joseph’s parents said he could no longer live at home. They had no savings and no wealth. And as lifelong renters they planned to move to a one-bedroom unit now he could support himself. Joseph did not love or hate his parents and knew he was entitled to nothing. This was a fair decision. Without complaint or protest he moved into a flat in the city’s south with five other strangers. The flat was small and, from a certain perspective, depressing. Two of these strangers slept in the converted living room. The others Joseph rarely saw because they worked night shifts. Joseph illegally sublet the flat’s smallest room, originally a utility cupboard. At night Joseph would breathe dust and sweat into the mattress used by an unknown number of previous tenants.         Joseph got a job filling packages at one of the large warehouses encircling the city. The multinational company that employed him paid minimum wage and his commute t...
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When the Bird Sings

I realised something had changed—or rather, ceased to change—when, on my twelfth day of lament, I sat in my living room, a lark singing on my windowsill. Unable to work that morning, I sat motionless in my chair, gazing at shafts of sunlight tracing their way across the wooden floor. To fight the dark grief enshading my heart I watched the burn of ordinary beauty, light doing its work of making lambent days that would otherwise be black or grey. If I could only be like that, I thought—the light raking across the ground, a melody unfurling from a lark’s mouth, something that was without justification—all would be okay.           The future disappeared that day subtly, gradually. I suppose the cars that trawled the highway first went quiet. Maybe the sylvan sounds of the nearby forest—leaves shifting as they reach after the wind that comes and goes too soon, the coos and cries of creatures traversing, entering, leaving life—were then silenced. But I noticed...
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