01 Fructidor 224 / 8:31
Crows have been leaving you gifts all week.
‘You're very beautiful,’ says one, sitting on your windowsill.
I patiently explain that this is mathematically the most banal sentence in English, but you just laugh and stroke her breast. Her eyes gently close.
‘I'd be honoured if you'd join me in the kingdom of crows,’ says another, perching on the bonnet of your car as you heave broken dishwashers into the landfill.
I swat at him with a hairless broomstick, and you frown at me as he hops screaming onto your shoulder.
At first they only brought useless trinkets—laundrette tokens, plastic bottle-tops, used towels from the gym—but lately they've become more lavish, breaking into jewellers’ shops after dark and scooping uncut diamonds up with their beaks, working in teams to hold bank tellers at gunpoint.
It's not long before jealousy has taken hold of me. I scan the trees for suitors with my powerful telescope. Jealousy takes the form of a white mink.
‘I could take care of your problem for you,’ he says, lolling over my desk one evening, ‘if you'd only scratch my tummy.’
And I swear, this isn't what it looks like.
01 Fructidor 224 / 8:04
I compress your body into a disc which will play in any dvd player. It's region-free, and understandably I'm really excited to fly around the world and play back all your favourite memories.
‘I hope there's an interactive menu,’ I say. You don't reply, or maybe you do, but in a language I can't hear.
29 Thermidor 224 / 7:10
we're bored on saturday. it's sunny but there are no riots planned and the government is simulated in some kind of fungal substrate now anyway. at the hardware store we buy some dog seeds, or rather i buy some dog seeds and you fill a basket full of tools with blades and then abandon it near a display of paint cans stacked into a pyramid which you push over when you think nobody's looking.
‘some of that paint's going to stain the floor forever, you know’.
‘that's the idea, yes,’ you nod.
in the back garden, which is really just the edge of the forest behind our house, we turn over a small patch of earth. you eat a worm on a dare.
‘i'm not going to kiss you now,’ i warn.
you stick out your tongue at me, and there are pieces of worm dancing around on it. each one of them is a new worm, and each one is already miserable to be alive. you run after me with threats of wormy kisses, and then we switch over and i try to catch you, but you run into the forest and pretty soon you're out of sight.
only minutes after planting the seeds, dog embryos begin to push their heads out of the soil, soft pink half-formed things that remind me of your tongue which i'll never see again now that you live in the forest.
at night you tap on the window and growl until i wake. your face is covered in dirt and there are leaves in your hair.
‘are you coming back?’ i ask. ‘i have the dogs now, but i much preferred you’
‘no. i'm a mammal now,’ you say, ‘maybe i was always a mammal’
i suppose maybe we both are.
29 Thermidor 224 / 6:94
pete walks into the kitchen sweating from his run and sees you with your bionic leg up on the table. his eyes near pop out of his head
‘wow,’ he says, ‘that's an amazing leg... i'd love to be kicked to pieces by your leg...’
he takes a beer out of the fridge and sips at it gingerly, trying to lean against the breakfast bar and look casual.
the breakfast bar is made of railway sleepers that we stole on a midnight raid. they sent helicopters after us, but we spiked our boots with helicopter poison, leaving a trail of frenzied rotorboys destroying local businesses and severely affecting the city's morale in the upcoming football tournament.
later when pete is dead the surviving helicopters feed on his body. you lift up your shirt so i can perform basic maintenance on the liminal region where your flesh meets the machine.
‘i guess it's all part of the circle of life,’ you say.
29 Thermidor 224 / 6:31
i killed the comsat by tracing powerful kabbalistic runes all over your body during sex. i used one of those hybrid fibre-tip calligraphy brushes with an inkwell built into the body and a microengineered system of bearings and gimbals that ensure a smooth flow of ink at all times and from all angles.
there was a man yelling in the street.
‘you wretched art students will never take the planet from us,’ he screamed.
i remember you closing the sash window over your body so you could lean out into the yellow air and blast him with kandinsky