Doctor Smirnov
there I was, sprawled in the dim light of my room, bottle half-empty on the floor, the drink going hot through me, and I thought of Doctor Smirnov in the East End, his little practice with the cracked linoleum and the waiting room that smelled of old magazines and fear. I saw those posters on
Mice
I need something else, something other than the low-down hum of silence blowing through my wide-awake bedroom like the ghost of all the roads I never took, the heater dead, the night frozen stiff at six below. I’m lying here in this fever-cabin with the taste of my favourite Mexican place, Las Iguanas, still rolling
Platform 2
stiletto snaps sharp on concrete, ankle caves in with a wet twist of pain. platform 2, breathless and running late for the six forty-five to London, the dawn cold slicing through bones. her lips crack audibly in the frost, Marlboro smoke curling warm and bitter around a flushed face shadowed by a sheepskin hat, arms
Jupiter Outside my Window
2:45 in the goddamn morning, sitting with an empty coffee mug and the crumbs of a biscuit packet scattered like dead soldiers across Shayne and Martin’s kitchen table. three of the bastards, maybe four, I lost count somewhere between the second refill and the third. now my mouth tastes like the bottom of a hamster