THE QUEER PRAYER BOOK

Tag: fantasy

  • THE BIRD MOTHER

    We rushed through the overgrowth of thorns, our torches burning in the spill of night. This wasn’t our first time trying to escape the orphanage, so we knew how to stay quiet and had to hurry.

    “They won’t be far behind,” Sebastian whispered.

    The orphanage was by no means a wicked place; it was, of course, where we all met. The three of us spent every waking moment together. And truth be told every good memory I own belongs to the times in the orphanage with them by my side.

    They told us of the beauty of the outside world, the flowers in their many colours, and the green grass that stretched far and wide. How one day we’d see it for ourselves, but not until they were ready to accept us. For you see, this was no ordinary orphanage; this was an orphanage for monsters.

    We made it to the surrounding walls, the furthest we had ever come. Sebastian reached his fingers into the mud, and the stems started to pull up from the ground. They chased up the wall in a cross-hatched pattern, forming a ladder for which we could climb. He heaved over, baring his teeth.

    “After you,” he huffed.

    I handed my torch to Nori, and I scaled the wall. When I reached the top, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The fields were dry, and the trees were without leaves. It was as if a forever winter had come to haunt the land.

    “Guys,” I yelled.

    But before I could get their attention, the howl of dogs filled the quiet. They had found us. Nori caught hold of the ladder and quickly made her way beside me. She grabbed my shoulder and let out a giddy laugh.

    “Close one,” she smirked.

    We jumped from the wall and down onto the dry fields. We fell heavy on the ground, and it left our knees bruised and bloody.

    “You okay?,” she asked, dusting herself off.

    “I’m fine,” I said, wiping the blood with my shirt.

    Atop the wall, Sebastian stood looking at us with a cheeky grin. He gripped the side with his fingers, and he kicked himself to the ground.

    Suddenly, the orphanage gates swung open, and the hounds were on us! They were terrible creatures, vicious, crawling skeletons with searing red eyes. Their yellowing bones sparkling in the halfmoon.

    “Stay behind me,” she squeezed my hand, as she said it.

    Nori was a girl who appeared like a lark. As she swanned her wings and furled her back, there was little space for anything to exist. But in the middle of the blur, the scarlet flare of torchlight flickered. My
    eyelashes blinked as she burst the sky open with fireworks of magic. She grabbed my arm, and before I knew it, we were hand in hand, soaring through the fields and away from the orphanage.

    “Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about,” Sebastian shouted.

    The hounds scratched against the barrier of fire magic but couldn’t penetrate it. THE BIRD MOTHER looked on as we fled into the distance.

    Even though I had seen this all before, every moment and every detail, holding her hand and running beside her was like a dream that never ended. I wished to live here in this place, in this memory, with her, forever.

    “We did it,” she squealed.

    “This isn’t how they told us,” Sebastian said.

    A darkness was growing like a plague, turning tree barks into blistering shards, blades of grass into pools of mud, and causing the flowers to wither and die.

    “Did you know?,” she frowned at me.

    “No. This is new”

    I had the power to see into the future. When I was born, I saw how I died. When the nurses wrapped me in a muslin tarp, I saw how the rats would eat their bones and how their children would mourn at their death beds. I was cursed with a wickedness that I couldn’t understand.

    Up to this point I had known how everything would happen, but I never saw this in my visions. A great well of sadness took over me as I wept at what I saw, for the feeling of not knowing was too much. The tears in my eyes made my sight blurry. When I came to, it was her face that I saw.

    “It’s okay,” she said with a warm smile.

    “We should keep going,” Sebastian called out.

    We all turned to face the orphanage, the home in which we found each other and where we grew up. It was small from this far away. And even though none of us said it, we were sad to be leaving it behind.

    For hours, we walked through the dry fields, with no idea where we were going. We kept our heads down so as to not stir up attention, but no matter how long we walked, we didn’t come in contact with anyone.

    “They really wanted us hidden away,” I joked.

    “Knew we’d be too much trouble,” Sebastian laughed.

    Eventually, we came to a broken-down farmhouse. The porch was covered in larvae spooling out of a dead horse carcass. They circled around the dry blood like a marching band. I watched as their shiny bodies glimmered in the last of the sunlight.

    “We should take rest in here,” Nori kicked down the door.

    The floor creaked as she stepped on it, and the wood snapped in front of her feet.

    “Careful, watch your step,” she warned.

    Underneath the rotten exteriors, there lay a beauty unlike anything I had seen. Picture frames with family portraits, patterned wallpaper, and a golden brown spinet piano in the corner.

    “What is this place?”

    “Looks like it’s empty,” Sebastian drew open the piano hood.

    The keys left out an untuned cry as he hit them hard with his fingers. He quickly jumped to his feet and rushed towards the kitchen, and pulled open the drawers.

    “Ha! Enough tins here to feed us for weeks,” he yelled out.

    I bowled over onto the bed of the upstairs room as the night fell. I couldn’t help but feel scared, for I had no idea what was out here and what kind of future awaited us.

    Nori knocked slowly on the open door before she came in and lay beside me. We stayed in silence for a long time until she spoke.

    “I wish I had some place like this growing up,” she said.

    “You had…me,” I let out a short laugh.

    “You know what I mean,” she was serious.

    I leant in and faced her; we were so close that our foreheads were touching. I pushed my thumb into her chin, and she shook her head and smiled.

    “What are we doing?” she asked.

    “If there’s a house, there has to be people” I tried to be hopeful.

    “But, what if…,” she stopped.

    I swept my hand through her hair, and I looked down at the top of her nose. I was so scared that she might be right and that we could be the only ones left. Our whole lives, we had been lied to, and my powers had betrayed me. This was the only thing I knew that was real, being here beside her.

    “Never let me go,” I said softly.

    She placed her hands on my hips, and she held me. And I knew that everything would be okay.

    THE BIRD MOTHER would come looking for us; there was a reason she kept us hidden so far away from everyone! I had seen it the day I was born, the reason why she’d stop at nothing until we were found and taken back to the orphanage. For monsters were not welcomed in this world.

    Nori looked into my eyes, and it was true, love is the most ultimate monster of them all. For when I was born, I saw how I died.

    I saw her kill me.

  • ALL WE DO IS CRY

    AUTHOR NOTE:

    I wrote this 4 years ago.I adapted this story into a TV pilot that BBC and LA Productions both really loved called ‘Children of Milk’. It’s something I’m very proud of, and a good introduction into the kinds of stuff I write. Maybe one day soon, you’ll see it on TV.

    There’s a petunia plant screaming in the middle of a rainforest and not one poor fuck knows where it is. I wonder if the plant cries when it’s alone, or does it just scream loudly like a toddler being pulled into a hurricane? The petunia is stuck in a pot of muck, destined to die, a poor dwindling mess.

    Aunt Maude (from the chip shop days: when you were little and used to squirt ketchup on your chips. You don’t like ketchup anymore) moves your hand from twelve to six and scowls at you. You try and concentrate on the road, but your eyes are so tired.

    You’ve been learning to drive for the past six years, but this is the first time you’ve properly said ‘I am getting that fucking license’, well this time and of course the first time when Philip Crusoe told you he’d wank you off if you had some wheels. But you were young then, and now you’re older.

    You swerve a left, perhaps too frivolously, but you stay sharp-eyed on the road. You say something like ‘I won’t do that on the test’ followed by one of those ‘obviously faces’ you always make followed by you saying ‘obviously’. You’re driving, and your hair furrows in the breeze of the open window, and Aunt Maude smiles.

    She looks proud of you, for once someone looks fucking proud of something that you’re doing. You think back to something someone once said about this feeling, but you can’t remember it word for word; it went something like, ‘Now I see you, well-done bitch, now keep driving’.

    The highroads are being painted, so you stay low on the ground-level roads. No high flying today. You stare up at the winding roads and at all the strange people painting the yellow lines on the black tar.

    Philip Crusoe was a good painter; he painted you naked one time. You were spread out on his single bed with coffee stains on the bed sheets. His eyes were potholes that you tripped in, and he watched your folds of fat swivel in a gay panic. You remember feeling free and also feeling trapped.

    “Pull over for gas maybe soon” she said.

    She gets out and sticks the pump in, and you wait, biting your fingernails. This aloneness feels like an old friend. You want to learn to drive, ‘Cus what else is there, like no jokes, no fucking about anymore, like seriously, what else is there?’ You wanted to be a fisherman when you were a kid, but you had never even gone fishing back then. You went with Uncle Tom last Summer, but he spent the whole time carving pinecones and telling you all about different sex positions you should be doing to lessen the chance of back pain.

    “You gotta try the Alternative Otter” he says.

    But, now that you are twenty-five, you just want to feel more normal, and the first step (you think) is learning how to drive. Imagine the possibilities, the freedoms, the open roads. You could go anywhere. Why the fuck are you still here, in this place, feeling like a sausage covered in mustard being thrown into a soggy bin bag. Does this ever get easier?

    Aunt Maude slurps at the bottom of her empty can of worms as you turn the gear into reverse. You want to say ‘I think it’s gone’ but you stay silent. You nail the parking, and she gives you that same look, she’s proud of you, parking is hard. You open your door, and you step out and she crosses over and gets into the driver’s seat.


    It’s silent for the drive home. She knows you don’t want to go back there, so she takes the long way. When she takes the third exit past the second butcher shop, you smile because she knows, and you know, and you both know. And it’s just so nice when you both know, you know? She pulls into your drive.


    “You did well today” she smiles wide.

    You want to tell her everything, like fucking everything, like pin me down to hell itself, because I’m gonna be here a while. You want to explode, like an atomic fucking thing. You want to tell her about your body and how it hurts when you look at it. How you have convinced yourself that your eyes are silly mirrors. You want to tell her that you have been hearing a voice inside of your body and that most people hear the voices in their heads- but not you.


    When you open the door, it’s super quiet, and you take a breath, as if to say, ‘This won’t last. ’ You creep up the stairs, and you collapse into your bed, and you pretend that you’re miles away from every little thing. This is the same room where you promised yourself you would be something. It was here on this bed that you would stay up all night and say ‘I’m gonna leave this town’ over and over in your head.

    One day, you will drive wherever you want to go, everything will be better, and you will finally be happy.

    But life feels like this: A milkman drops bottles outside your door, but they forget to ring the bell, so they curdle in the heat. And by the time you get to them, they are all sour and warm. You open one and you supple at the tip. It’s gloopy and roasting hot. But you drink the whole thing anyway, and afterward, you puke into the toilet bowl. You rinse your mouth and behold that same face in the mirror.

    “Why did you drink it?” she says

    You want to say ‘I drank it so I’d feel more alive than this dreaded nothingness I feel inside me twenty-four seven’, but you don’t say anything.

    The highroads are open today and you look at her old wrinkled face and you have that ‘well, like fuck, shall we? ‘look and she winks at you with her ‘Oh, so you think you’re ready?’ face.

    “All right, but be careful,” she says

    You start ascending. The breeze is churning through the open window, and it gets colder and colder. When you get to the top, you look down at the specks of cars. ‘That was once you‘, you think to yourself. You close your eyes, and you feel the skidding of the wheels. You take your hands off the wheel, and you feel like you’re flying. She leans over and squishes your foot on the accelerator.

    “What the fuck was that?”

    You don’t know what to say. Something felt right when you were propelling backward toward the edge. You have never had a suicidal thought before, and while you take the next turn and start your descent, you try and figure out if this counts or not.

    This time she takes a short way home, and when you open the door she pulls off coldly. You don’t blame her, you understand.

    Before the test starts, you wipe your eyebrow with your crinkled shirt sleeve. The instructor is a skinny thing with blue eyes and a melting nose. He looks at you, pale white skin, and he gestures with his index, and you start the engine. You try to calm your anxiety by thinking of anything but this. You clear your mind from any colour. It’s just you and the road. Red light: stop. Speed Limit: Maintain. Pedestrian: Smile and don’t knock over.

    He points up at the high road and grins. You take a breath, heavy and with restraint. You can do this. The car drags up the road, and when you’re at the top, he looks impressed. You try and ignore his note-taking; it’s probably just doodles of old-school crushes boobs. You focus on the road. Suddenly, and before you know it, you’re back in the testing facility. You’ve done it.

    The water’s burning your back. You squirt some shampoo on your dick and you start lathering. The bubbly foam seeps into the opening and your eyes burn like fucking hell on fire. This damned glory bursts your soul into new things – if you could see your insides now, you’d fucking bawl your little stupid eyes out. You turn and grab the shower head, forcing it against your slug penis.

    You piss into the toilet after the attempted shower. And the shampoo makes your pee look bubbly. And it stings. But you clench your teeth and thank the lord above that you’re here and feeling it. You think about the time he ripped the skin off your dick with his stud piercing. And how the pool of blood made you faint, and when you woke up, the doctor was laughing at you, and he said:


    “Cat bite your dick?”


    And you didn’t find his joke funny but you laughed anyway because this was the fool who had to put your peter-pan back together.

    You remember his huge hands and his odd ways. The way he would say ‘seriously’ like ‘sersly’ and the way he would grind his teeth at night, and the way his mam would always text you funny pictures, and his dad’s bowel cancer. You wonder if his dad survived. For a moment, you hope he didn’t, but then you feel bad, and you do that thing in your head where you say ‘I didn’t mean that, that was stupid’ and you don’t ever think of it again.

    How he grabbed your body and hurled you in circles like a sad ride with every seat empty. The way he pushed you up against the walls. The way he looked into your eyes was like he was peeking into the microwave to see if his hot pocket was done.

    And in the reflection of his eyes, you see your cracks and the open wounds. You squeezed his hand, and you laughed out of nervousness and because you needed the silence to stop, or maybe you just wanted to let him know that even though you were just two people after many glasses of wine, you liked him.

    So, with your mind like a fire and your chest full of scratches, you leaned closer to him- knowing too well that this wasn’t love. This was destruction. It’s all you ever knew..

    One day, I’ll go far from this place and never come back. I swear it.