Shortest day of the year

...with the longest, darkest night for stories.

So here is the first short story I ever sold. Not first published, first SOLD. Real money, what a momentous occasion. The story is called 'Dawn', written for the anthology 'Read by Dawn II', published in London by Bloody Books. I'm also in 'Read by Dawn III', but that's a whole different story.


Dawn

"Eat your breakfast darling," says mummy. But I stir the cornflakes with my spoon, washing big waves over islands and flicking flakes out of the milky ocean. I'm not hungry. Breakfast doesn't seem like such a good idea any more.

"Aren't you hungry pet? Come on, you've got to finish it." I scoop the soggy breakfast into manageable heaps and shovel it into my mouth, dribbling only a little milk down my chin. I want to go back to sleep, but after last night want just as much to stay awake.

I make the mistake of writing about the visitor in class. Mrs Dunmore reads it twice and wants to hear more during playtime and so I tell her all about it, specially how scary the dark man is and how I can’t move at all, not even to scream.

After playtime my mummy and daddy arrive at school and I'm taken out of class. We spend all afternoon in two small rooms with other grown-ups and the headmistress. I draw pictures of monsters, though I have to do the ones from Doctor Who because I’ve never seen any for real, but the teacher seems to like them, and also pictures of my house and my family. I make those up because I am getting bored and I don’t know what our roof really looks like but it should have a chimney. Then I have to tell stories about the pictures and the grown-ups ask me hundreds and hundreds of questions about the stories, I think. Even though I am too old for dolls I have to play with two, a girl doll and a boy doll, and they have all the bits like real people not dolls, which is really embarrassing and everytime I make them pretend to talk to each other all the grown ups look at each other and frown or write in notebooks.

I don’t know why they’re not listening properly but they keep misunderstanding everything I say like they’re a bit deaf or they think I’m really stupid. I keep saying I don’t know the dark man, and maybe he is a dream, and no, he’s never touched me, and that just makes them all look at each other again and now my mummy is crying again, which is really embarassing and daddy is starting to shout at all the other grown-ups and he makes my teacher cry too. I am really glad when it is time to go home, but am thinking that wasn't drama class and I am in trouble for something and there will be a natmosphere. But the grown-ups stay in one room for ages and I sit in the other with a fat lady who stares too much and says she’s a psychologist so she will understand me when I ask anything. I don't believe her.

When we go home my parents talk about the weather and holidays and food. When my brother asks about the fuss and lateness and what I’ve done wrong now they shush him and say that I have a very good imagination and might write books when I am grown up, isn’t that nice. My brother thinks that’s silly.

The next time any teacher asks us to write about something unusual in class I just write about my budgie and how he likes to eat chips. Which he does. You're not supposed to tell lies just to get out of telling the truth.

***

I wake at dawn, shivering and sweating. I don't want to open my eyes but I have to; I know it has returned. The dark shape is sitting on the end of the bed, half turned away from me, the face in shadow. It isn't looking towards me, but seems to be staring at the floor. My eyes are burning, brain switching off already, pulling me, dragging me down into sleep, my eyelids slipping down as I slip away. As my eyes close I see the head turn towards me. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to fall asleep through a thick fog of terror, but it is. It's like drowning.

The next night I wake as though someone had shaken me from a deep sleep, I think I can still feel it. The shock and confusion takes a few seconds to wear off sufficiently to realise I am briefly awake, in my bed, in my room. And that I’m not alone. The figure is sitting on my bed, but not at the end of the bed. He is sitting my feet. Every muscle, nerve and terrified thought of escape screams to stay awake but loses the battle to the chemicals of sleep numbing me, dragging me down into oblivion. As my eyelids flicker shut the head turns to look at me.

This happens almost every week now. I always think it’ll stop or that I’ll get used to the disrupted sleep, or maybe I’ll break free from the sleep paralysis and fight it but then it happens again, and I’m too tired to think about it until bedtime.

I don't dare tell anyone, no matter how scared I am or how sick I feel in the morning. By my teens I knew perfectly well what the adults will suspect: lies, abuse or insanity. Instead I stay awake as far into the night as I can, window locked, chair against the door, light on; staring at the ceiling until the first light of dawn bruises the curtains. I usually manage to get about two hours of sleep before the alarm goes off for school, but at least the sleep is undisturbed until then. I catch up on the missed sleep in college.

I must have fallen asleep shortly after lying down that night, and my thoughtful parents turning out my light on their way to bed. I don't know what time it is when I slam into consciousness, but the house is silent and dark. My breathing isn't quite under my control yet, body still more asleep than awake, and it is through half-open eyes and a vague mental haze that I register my surroundings. And see the figure sitting on the bed, head bowed away from me. It is sitting by my legs.

I examine the side of my knee in the morning, a faint purplish mark. I can't remember having hit it against anything, but it still aches. The bruise fades fast but that ache lingers.

It is almost year later when I burst out of peaceful sleep into half-waking panic and know it is in my room with me before I even open my eyes. I have to open my eyes though, have to look. It is sitting by my hips. So close I think I can hear it breathe.

Pulling on my pants in the morning I notice a small bruise on my hipbone. I'm not sure why but I immediately check the other side. There is another bruise on that hipbone too. And more bruises on my legs. I dress as fast as possible so that I can open the curtains and flood the room with sunlight and safety.

Winter comes. I go to sleep curled up small against the far side of the bed pressed right up against the wall but I wake up on my back, arms by my side. It is sitting beside me. So close it is hard to breathe, in case I brush against it. As I fall back into the panicked sleep I think it leans towards me. Over me.

When my alarm clock rings it takes me a while to be able to wake enough to reach out to hit the off button. My chest feels wheezy and heavy, ribs hurting from the inside. It has been a struggle to move my arms at all, as though every muscle is injured and weak. I think I see a bruise on my ribs as I shower, but it might have been the shadow from my breast. There aren't any other visible injuries at all this time.

Time passes. I can’t remember life being any other way.

The first time I have sex it is in the hills in the afternoon so that doesn’t count, but the first time I do it indoors at night we fall asleep in his bed. I doze off, so relaxed and warm that I am happy enough to let sleep happen. Almost. I suddenly remember and don’t know what on earth to do, already starting to ease away from the now snoring lump by my side. But as I try to move away he wraps his arms right around me and squeezes me tight, in his sleep, and I am so amazed at this unconscious protectiveness or whatever it is, that I risk settling down with him. I risk sleeping with him.

Almost two months of nights with Michael and the dark figure never arrives. I often still leap awake, hearing a noise or imagining things in my dreams, but the room is always empty, just me and my boyfriend. I think he might be surprised that he’s been made so welcome at my flat so fast, but I don’t want to be alone in the dark anymore. But I am so fed up with that him he gets the message and leaves, and I go to sleep alone. When I wake at dawn the room is dimly lit by the street lamp sodium glow. I am frozen in half-sleep but my eyes are open and I can see the dark figure is on my bed leaning towards me.

In the shower I see the three small cuts across my ribs and one on my neck. I clean them up, get dried and dressed, and phone Michael to ask him to come back, and to move in properly. I loved being married, cuddling up to someone to spend the night safe and warm now. The fear of sleep eventually fades, and I store memories of those bad nights with all the other nightmares, regrets and doubts. If I wake now the only thing in my bedroom is my husband, and that is the way it should be. There is nothing in the shadows, nothing on the end of the bed, nothing in the room at all. I feel as though I've escaped into a better place. As long as his arms are around me, nothing comes near me at night, in sleep, dreams or wakefulness.

I don't know when it all changes. He still seems happy and we have life pretty well sorted out now. But I’m beginning to feel as though I have become my own husband's mistress, an extra to his life. I know he hasn’t been unfaithful, but whatever is his main partner, it isn't me. I don't know if it is his work, his mates, his past or his hobbies, but they are what he is really married to. We don't live life together, we live parallel paths. When he finishes whatever he is doing, he comes home to me, we have a bit of fun, and after a while I can see that he’s looking forward to getting back to it all. Half of his mind is already out there, but any attempt to draw him in and question it is denied with such fervour that it would seem that he at least believes what he is saying. But loved as I am, I know I’m not his most favourite thing, and that sort of downsizing eats away at a person's morale. We bicker, restlessly. By the end of the year I've got rid of him altogether.

It is hard to sleep alone. The novelty of clean fresh sheets and a peaceful bed to stretch out in soon wears off and the room just feels empty. I turn to say something, share something, move closer for warmth and then realise I don't have anyone, that it is just me now. I tried to remind myself it was like that even when he was with me, but my mind is already making him seem more of a partner than he actually was, and I feel the loneliness as though it is something new. Sometimes I think I feel his arms around me as I fall asleep, but when I wake I remember and realise.

It takes a few months before I grow accustomed to the silence, but I’m not as calm as I had been. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the nerves and emptiness at night.

I wake with a jump in the darkness. It is a huge shock to the system to go from peaceful sleep to full alertness and my skin bristles and sweats and my heart hammers as though trying to escape from my ribcage again. It will only be a brief break to sleep though, as soon as I am awake I am already starting to fall asleep again, dragged back down from the panic as though drugged. My eyelids are still open but my body is still immobilised by sleep hormones; comatose, breathing audible and on automatic, slowing, sleepy. It is now that I vaguely focussed on the shape in the room, the figure that is sitting on the bed by my side. It is half turned away from me, the face in shadow, silhouetted against the faint glow of the curtains. It isn't looking towards me, but seems to be staring at the floor.

My heart races faster and hammers harder, breath failing to catch up, eyes burning with the effort of keeping them open. But my treacherous brain is switching off in the background, trying to drag me down into unconsciousness. But as my eyes start flicker closed I see the head turn towards me, and then lean down right over me, blocking out the dawn.

I reach out to embrace it.

Edinburgh knotwork

A strange thing happened in St Giles' at the weekend; I saw it as though I'd never been there before. I genuinely didn't recall it being so breathtakingly ornate. I felt disconcerted by the experience but I've been disconcerted by a lot recently. I took refuge inside my neglected sketchbook.

I was there to hear the Rudsambee company of singers performance, featuring truly rud sam bith idir music as the playlist spanned Nigeria to Korea. Rudsambee is in the talented hands of Ollie Singleton nowadays, taking over from Frances Cockburn, who went on to create the Wild Myrtles - who I went to see tonight.

Alas, at Blackwell's, the Wild Myrtles a cappella plans were thwarted by soprano lurgy, but we still had Cargo writer Allan Wilson, and the founder of the Scottish Poetry Library, the poet Tessa Ransford, to listen to while swigging mulled wine.

You can rely on Blackwell's bookshop for providing interesting evenings, and now I know they can be relied on for excellent homemade lebkuchen too. Danke.

This brings this past month of escapism full circle, back to when I illustrated a short story by Edinburgh playwright Mary Paulson-Ellis for 26 Stories of Christmas. The illustration was of lebkuchen.

I don't feel any more grounded, or inky, but I am now quite full of German biscuits.

speak up, speak out

I have been most distracted for several weeks now. In the process of seizing the day with awesome decisiveness, I simultaneously suffered bouts of being very withdrawn and faffy, which I find irritating in others and of course in myself - if I notice, which I didn't really as I was so busy being. And travelling. No time to process en route, alas. With some irony I wanted more interaction and less introspection. I have noticed now, so I'm back out, slapping self around the head.

The thing is, I had suddenly seen - and felt - in my extremely talented friend's writing the sort of things I should be, could be, wanted to, and had been writing, and realised how far off track I was in myself right now. It wasn't the time to digest and process a crisis of angst in the literary department or aknowledge what it did to my identity as a writer and therefore as a confident person. I suspect that's called denial. Creatives can inwardly unravel at the drop of a black hat (especially when listening to someone else read their work aloud)

I see now that I'm not an inadequate writer, I've simply outgrown what I was writing, have had enough of entertaining performance frivolity for now, and have enormous pangs to get back into what would feed my needs more. Something raw and real to me. So yes, it seemed like a shock to the system, but one my writing needed, as deep down I already knew. After all, I stopped writing The Whale's Pyjamas (a harsh novel) and turned to cabaret stage work with some self-awareness of what I was avoiding. An obvious balance would be to write both, not stay immersed in only one, duh.

In more tangible news I was shortlisted for the Scottish Book Trust mentorship but due to a monumental email misunderstanding, I haven't got an interview, which is a blow. Not sure what will happen about that.

I was published this week illustrating day 5 of 26 Days of Christmas, for a sweet short written by the talented Mary Paulson-Ellis. Speaking of 26, I finally saw the cold carved seacup in the flesh from '26 Treasures at the V&A' in 2010. when wandering round the V&A during the month's strange, challenging but intermittently wonderful travels with my friend East.

I missed the professor's visit yesterday, but her avenue into forensic art has given me a glimpse of something that I might like to pursue. The invitation to help paint the mural for the panda enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo went silent, so either they found another team or they ran out of money for it. There are, however, imminent art exhibitions and literary events anticipating my collaboration, I'm going to meet up with publishers I'd like to work with, and Writers' Bloc is already booked up for February events on both coasts, so I already have targets I don't have to install by myself. The ink, however, must be carved, and it must be carved by me.