#laurel stevens

I remember the day that seemed betrothed to rain hitting hit me like an avalanche; New Years has always felt like a day that doesn’t exist. Laws do not apply, everyone walks in a dreamlike state, through a mist up to their knees that I can’t really explain. You met me at a makeshift bus stop and I knew that the day was going to crack with the cold of awkward silences. We got on and off buses in a blur, our breath obscuring the world outside, knowing otherwise the bus windows would be better eyes than ours when it came to which reality we should be escaping; this day made no sense at all. I don’t know why we thought rushing around would change anything - I guess we thought it would at least keep us busy, keep us warm. The day was peppered with occasional laughter, but in truth it was just clawing it’s way to night and to ‘goodbyes’, just as I was. When it finally fell, the sky fell with it, washing away any sense of nostalgia. We went home soaking in regret and any attempt at a rekindle was dowsed in separate showers.

Other people knew nothing about us. When we first met, the world seemed to scream its approval. There was never a transition from friend to more, only more to enemy to back again like flicking a light switch. I wonder why I was the only one struck by this. Other people pushed us together like dominoes as if they knew we would collapse into shapes for their entertainment, and so, knowledgeable as they were, they figured out what you were long before I did. I was the live frog over your slow boil, not realising you were killing me until you chewed me up and spat me out like poison in your mouth. With all these bite marks from head to toe, I started to wonder if it was my fault you had so much hatred in your heart. They tried to tell me that wasn’t what it was, but like I said, I figured they knew nothing about us. It turns out they knew everything, and now everyone does.

You remember everything differently. You think I was stringing you along and determined to ruin you. You couldn’t accept that I was not a liar and so when I said to you that I had no idea what you wanted from me, you just smiled and ran circles around me, like a dog chasing it’s tail. You think in a different language, a language of double meanings. Good luck (I’m feeling sorry for myself), you’re crazy (I’m crazy, and I can’t stand that you know it), I miss you (I miss having an emotional punch-bag), I love you (I own you). Now I think about it, Cookie meant all those things that too. As many times and as many ways as you try to pull the victim card from your deck, it never belonged to either one of us. Your retellings are slurred and reek of alcoholic denial, shine black like your dead fish gaze, every time your bi-polar hit an all time low and your feet took you to dance in traffic. Your friends are all gone now, and so the red eyed bull turns his gaze on me.

The first drama you orchestrated made our friends jar mid-sentence like rabbits caught in headlights, wheels screeching, red-lights screaming even louder. When I called you up I expected to feel your smile through the phone and your voice, always like a child’s when you asked this question, to wonder if I’d made cookies like I promised I would. Instead as I stood in front of our friends, all wide-smiled and sparkly-eyed, you threw words like daggers through the receiver until my ears threatened to bleed. Hours later when my chest was fit to burst with rage, truth you were never capable of spilled from the mouth of a victim so used up her skeleton seemed to glow beneath her skin; your plus-one was not a friend after all. The sky fell from my eyes; it’s become a habit of mine.

This is the scrambled tale of someone who fell in love with the wrong person. Everyone’s story, except I left out the worst parts. We’d all like to think there was a villain in this story, that I have learned from the moral and discarded this twisted fairytale as practise for the ‘real thing’. But people are not mistakes. This not The Truman Show, the world does not revolve around making my life easy and sunshine-happy. There are still rings where his jaw clenched, there are still sore spots in conversation that I can never fully explain, there are still moments where my fist wants to swing skyward to meet him again so that I never have to. My memory comes in pieces, and I do not remember everything.

INT. BEDROOM. DAY.Wide shot of a dark room with clothes all over the floor. There are so many posters, of one band in particular, that there is little wall to be seen. A lamp with a broken stand lies on its side giving off a pink glow into the room. There are shelves of toys clearly not suited to the age of the occupant. The bed to the left of the shot is covered with cushions and stuffed toys. Main character is cocooned in her duvet, not even her hair visible from under it.

An alarm goes off suddenly, too loudly. Camera shot of her eyes opening immediately under the duvet, a look of disgust. A blurry shot of her hands scrambling to find the ‘off’ button on the alarm, and then of her falling back into bed, bundling herself up again. Her mum hears the alarm and bursts in.

MUM: Ok, time to get up.

LAUREL does not respond, but continues to lie with her eyes closed pretending to be asleep.

MUM: Come on, up. UP.

She continues to repeat herself as the camera shot goes in and out of focus, in and out of blackness as the main character falls in and out of sleep. Finally when the camera shot falls into blackness for the longest time yet, MUM’s voice jolts her awake again-

MUM: Laurel! It’s eight, you’re running late, AGAIN.

LAUREL: (grumbles) Okay, okay…

MUM sits down on the bed and throws pieces of clothing at LAUREL who begins to put them on under the duvet. She’s clearly too exhausted and cold to get up, and it’s obvious by the almost cartoonish dark circles around her eyes that she does not get much sleep. Everything she says comes out sounding aggravated and slurred. 

MUM: You need to sleep earlier, I always say this.

LAUREL: Yeah, yeah I get it…

LAUREL lies still because she’s finished getting dressed, but is reluctant to get up. Shot of MUM starting to fall asleep. LAUREL takes this as an opportunity to nap a little longer. Eventually she gets up - shot of her leaving the room, another of her going down the corridor to the bathroom. Closeup shot of her washing her face, then several closeup shots of her in different stages of putting on her makeup, and of the clock as time passes. It takes half an hour. MUM comes around the corner with a bowl of cereal.

MUM: Oh hurry up, for gods sake. You’ve been here for ages.

She attempts to aggressively spoon-feed LAUREL cereal, much to her obvious distaste.

LAUREL: Cut it out! Jesus. I can do it, give it here.

She takes the bowl from MUM seemingly reluctantly, scowling, but the speed at which she shovels the food into her mouth suggests she is actually very hungry. Her DAD yells from his bedroom.

DAD: (distant voice)Laurel, get out of bed!

LAUREL: I am out of bed, you blithering idiot.

MUM: (angrily) HEY.

DAD: (distant voice) What?

LAUREL: Jesus, you are deaf as hell.

DAD: (distant voice) you’re going to be late!

LAUREL finishes the food, and runs a brush through her hair hurredly, starting to make her way downstairs.

DAD: (distant voice) Laaaaurel, are you up?

MUM: She’s up, she’s up, for god’s sake.

DAD: (distant voice) Well how was I supposed to hear her, in the next room?

Shot of LAUREL sat at the foot of the stairs putting her shoes on. 

MUM: I’M in the next room!

LAUREL rolls her eyes and goes down a further set of stairs to the kitchen. The kitchen is mostly white, but with brightly coloured checked floor-tiles. Shot of running tap, water pouring into a cup, LAUREL drinking it in a few seconds flat. Sounds of footsteps coming down the stairs, shot of MUM walking and over to a counter to pick up something. She turns around and hands her a lunchbox, then the camera follows her as she runs through the kitchen and up the stairs to the hall. Shot of her stuffing the lunchbox in her bag and swings one strap over her back.

LAUREL: (shouting) Okay, I’m going.

MUM: You have your keys?! Your oyster?!

LAUREL: Yes yes I have everything, I’ll see you later.

LAUREL quickly kisses MUM on the cheek before leaving.

25th April 1918

Dear Mum and Dad,

I hope you and my sister are well, and that she is not missing me too much; I know she worries, that you all do. I wish I could be as cheerful in this letter as the rest, but I cannot lie to you.

Up until now me and the others have been able to find things to look forward to, to laugh, feel almost normal at times. But now that is almost impossible. We are fighting for Loker, and it is a rough fight. We lost friends today. Friends I have grown to respect in my time here. It weighs on my mind as I write this that some of them may have not written home as often as I do, so sure they would return home that perhaps its seemed unnecessary. I, however, have not always been so optimistic.

I miss my room, sleeping in my own bed, having my own space. As much as I appreciate the company of the others here, I would give anything for all this to be over and to be back home with you. It’s not how they said it would be. I didn’t feel proud of our friends when they fell, I don’t feel pride in firing this gun. I just hope that if something were to happen to me, you would remember me as the son you raised and not the soldier that you didn’t. I don’t feel like one. I feel like I’m not meant to be here, that none of us are. I don’t think soldiers are supposed to be this afraid.

This letter wasn’t supposed to frighten you, though now perhaps I think I should have been less honest. This may sound ridiculous after all I have said, but I do not want you to worry about me. There is still much hope that we will reclaim Loker and be back to safety soon. I am just sad my friends will not be there to see it.

I miss you all and hope to see you soon. 

All my love,

I don’t know how to sleep Sleep in my lonely skull tonight I don’t know what I could dream That would mean anything to you This was never permanent, I knew that from the start But then if only I’d never met you, never wandered this far.

(Somehow, somedays, I believe

if I had kept that glove you wanted

You’d have never stolen anything else.)

That lipstick on your collarbone

I don’t know how to feel I don’t know how to be alone tonight I don’t know what to say Or if it would mean anything to you This was never permanent, I knew that from the start But if only we’d never collided, I would’ve never been this far Down the drain.

Somehow, somedays, I believe if I had kept that glove you wanted

You’d have never stolen anything else.

Her lipstick on your collar

"You want me to say things I cannot say

They left my head long before i left yours

Much less than eloquently in my way

Shattering windows and slamming the doors

You always hated compliments and dates

In foolishness you thought us worlds apart

I knew you better blinded by my hate

You were scared of falling scared of the dark

I made mistakes to you they were gunfire

Flashbacks exploding, a hail of bullets

Your friends kept us ugly, talking through wires

Kept bitterness brewing hatred inside.

Lost in these silences we lost our minds

A lightbulb in my room

flickers.

Day in, day out

One of four in my half-size chandelier

one of only three

that live. (Just about.)

Its light shudders erratically

casting shadows that are

gone and back again

before you can blink. 

Its glass is dusty and, being

the favourite of the spiders, lathered

in cobwebs that I leave to catch

the feeble light left.

It struggles to keep up with the rest

not to fall into the darkness