My Girlfriend's Got A Kamagotchi

She was named Fall after the American season, but I faded into her. Slowly. Scented grip. Laundry detergent and damp umber. Then it was winter. Rosemary, fish curry, lentils, sprouts and whiskey. I shouldn’t have admitted I needed someone to break my fall — yet I did reveal I fall rarely so when I do, I fall hard.

Let’s meet on an Indiana Jones bridge over water; where the darkness meets the light; and I’ll pull you back into my night

Radiohead’s No Surprises was playing over the PA in the varsity bar yesterday. Until that moment I realised I had completely forgot one of the first things I loved about. A Fake Plastic Tree moment – when you revisit something so amazing yet has rested for so long you senses tune in, arrested by what feels like a new discovery.

Patrolling the oesophagus of her temporary new home, Laurie would be feeling more ashamed if she wasn’t already feeling so sorry for herself.

The Anarchist Crab mindlessly watched a fog bank roll across a distant and uncertain sun. Through the distant roar of waves and whisking winds it could hear the Bipolar Jellyfish passionately explain its common and concerning happenstance of being beached.

A Tale of Winter and Samsara on Sullivan’s Island: The Anarchist Crab scuttled back and forth in a fury of panic. This occurred daily. Yet, it never altered or dented the vexation and venom with which the Anarchist Crab put into the monotonous task of digging a new home – because it was a job, and a joke, (which many of us can sympathise) to accommodate something out of its control.

The rain stops as suddenly as it starts. The sky clears and the Grand Basin quickly turns dry and brown and crusty again. A familiar cycle sloughs in the leaves with the warm breeze, wafting into the joints and hearts of all creatures.

The Morose Blue Gorilla appeared at the beginning of the wet season. Scattered showers rode indiscriminately overhead and the long, dark green grass quickly returned. Its copper tinted stems glinted in the sunlight. It was said to be caused by Mt Thirsty – some claimed alchemy in the soil.

The Tedious Giraffe wasn’t to blame. She was taller than most giraffes and covered in big, brown, woolly oblong patches. She was well beyond the sharp pinch of loneliness that compelled other creatures of the Grand Basin into complex arrangements of company and elaborate communities based on caste and status.

In the town I grew up people combated the daily heat and ennui with unremitting talk about the weather and weekend sports results. It would be considered a feat of phenomenal endurance to outsiders if the remote, coastal palaver didn’t bore them deaf. Then, one day a monstrous blue house was built on a hill by the beach.

Dale visited Flossmans sporadically to see or pick up his girlfriend. She worked in the lingerie department. It exuded erotic and dark flavours and charms – spiced sandalwood, chicory and sweet chrism brightened by infusions of pomegranate and rose petal.

Why Dale stopped talking to Genevieve and lost interest in her and her mother he would never recall. He broke his leg coming off old Salzerac, his father’s harness horse and missed the end of term and graduation. At the end of the holidays he was sent to board at a mediocre private Agnostic school in the city while the rest of his friends and class remained in the township and attended the local comprehensive.

By the end of winter the saddler’s son had in fact made the soap factory girl fall in love with him. He abandoned the school playground at midday recess and occasionally skipped class to see her on her lunch break, or when she was working a split shift.

She started working at the soap factory when it opened in autumn. He walked her home through the butterscotch and peanut brittle leaves. He was the son of a saddler. It seemed right to Dale when he told her he would make her fall in love with him.

Many people deride pity. Like an allergy it incites discomfort and queesiness from any number of causes – often its a case of inflated pride and insecurities. To these people I say, ‘Damn you – Damn you all the way to the Pity Monster!’

The following Monday Josphine wrote a review of Finn’s birthday movie night in the double-sheeted weekly newspaper Lieb had just launched. It was titled Amateur Perfectionist Projectionist.

Duston and Russell grew frustrated and tired missing or letting lizards slip through their fingers. They deliberately flattened their hands and began indiscriminately smacking the walls. They squashed one accidentally and were satisfied. Then Duston pinned a straw lizard against a hot brick.

The plane soared upward like a ballistic Phoenix until it was a splinter in the sun and everyone squinted and turned away. They missed it curl around. Then it swooped down to a choir of hoops and screams that lifted and fell when it appeared gravity would smite its cavalier defiance.

Gonzalos swims in the light sleep of morning. He dances in his dreams to a bolero of unrequited love Rosita is humming. She had started singing boleros the day before, with her head drooped over the starboard aft, her gaze lost in the shimmering water like she was singing to the ocean itself.