I have been trying to write fiction for many years, but it only ever seems to exit my body in fragments. Last year, a small chunk ended up in 3049, a zine that patten made with a bunch of contributors. I’m posting a couple of other scraps here because it feels good to let things out, even if they’re not really going anywhere.
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The weekend tasted of nectarines. That sharp sweetness, that perfumed wetness, that taut moment of resistance before the flesh gives way.
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Pure green. Fresh, wet, alive. It swarmed her nose, knocking her back in her seat. With each inhalation, the scene in her head grew clearer: a house, a garden, and the sound of a lawnmower over which someone called her name. She was laying down, and the grass tickled her arms as the sun warned them. The green filled her lungs, coursed through her veins. It danced inside her. Then she coughed – fuck, the bag she was sucking on was empty. She panicked, snuffling deeper into it like a dog with an abandoned crisp packet but there was nothing left. Instead, her nostril hairs gripped another, more familiar scent: it was damp and it was rotting. This is the world she knew, and the world that knew her.
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A sign that reads Gentle Dentistry on a bruise coloured building.
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Ruth Saxelby 