Samuel Poots is a writer from N. Ireland who communicates primarily through Pratchett quotes. He works as the content editor for the tabletop gaming website OnTableTop and assures everyone that playing board games is a real job, really.
Samuel Poots
See Me
Look at me. For the love of God, please just look at me. I see you walking past: talking, laughing, living. Not one of you ever stops and looks down, down into the river where he left me. Would you even see me? I don’t know, but would it hurt you to look?
It still hurts, which makes no sense. There’s barely anything left of me, except for my bones. There’s still life, crawling, wriggling life that strips me away in slivers. But those things aren’t me. They just live on me. So why does it all still hurt? The wire he wrapped me in cuts into skin and muscle I no longer have. My neck still feels bruised from where he crushed my throat; lungs still burn for air that will never come. And it’s cold. You, up there in the sun, can’t imagine how cold. Colder than the grave. At least sunlight might fall on a grave.
You’re so close; just look down. I’m here. I’m still here! So close to you that I can see the tread of your shoes overhanging the path, can nearly smell that cigarette you just lit. What’s out there that is so damn beautiful that you can’t even spare a moment for the river inches from your toes?
The Glass-Eyed Girl
* Winner of the 2018 Story of the Year Award *
When was your first? That is always what we ask one another. When and what? When in your life was that moment, the time that revealed the world to you and sent you scurrying under the bed sheets? When I think back, the thing I always remember is the house. Not the inside, where the shadows gathered and hid. Those memories came later. I remember the front, the black and white Tudor facade with roses growing around the door, and the crunch of a gravel driveway under car tyres. God only knows how my father afforded such a place, although I suspect the Devil might have a better idea. Not a grand house, but beautiful and caught in my memory in a moment of eternal summer. Memory can be an ironic little bastard when it wants to be.
We moved there when I was about eight. I don’t remember much before that, which is odd as eight is old enough. I know some people who claim to have memories of their time as babies, of flashes of food upon their tongue, the smile of a mother’s face. I don’t have any of that. Mother never really smiled much in any case; she never seemed up to the challenge. Father laughed all the time, a laugh which echoed around that house and bounced from basement to rafter. The days there were full of laughter, though I didn’t join in.
My room overlooked the garden, such as it was, fenced in on all sides by the encroaching houses of modernity. I liked to watch the moon shining on that small patch of grass. But soon I couldn’t see out the window. There were too many handprints on it. Father got very angry about those. He said I was being naughty, that I shouldn’t make such a mess, and didn’t I know how much it cost to clean windows? Then he would laugh and raise his fist. I said nothing, through the tears. I hadn’t touched the glass. The hands had just appeared.