Emotions on paper Forum Get to know eachother.

Ben :)

I am a Bipolar Survivor. Over the last 8 years writing has been my therapy. I am now proud to say that I have been well-published, but this was a big step as for years I showed my work to no one. My writing is often emotional and provides an insight to my mind. I would like to share one of my poems and one of my stories with you (below). I love to read short horror stories and dark satire. I work to raise awareness for mental health.

The Pride Barefoot she climbed grey rock after grey rock. Blood streaks stained her bare legs; she could almost feel the tears, almost. At the peak she peered lucidly over the peak of the mountainous heap to the lions that lay beyond. Long locks of filthy auburn hair clung to her paling cheeks and tears filled her eyes. She was lost. Weakened finger nails scraped, clinging onto the stones and she hauled her slender frame over the apex. Her footing was instantly lost and she tumbled rapidly down, the fall seemed to last forever like a film moving slowly frame by frame. At some points she floated, but inevitably she found herself on hands and knees peering up at a heavily maned giant cat. Paling hazel eyes met the beasts stare and fear filled her. In the distance she could espy the other enclosures. Furious rhinoceroses steamed by high wired fences as hippos clambered along a murky swamp. The threat was imminent. The lion approached accompanied by his mate, both edged cautiously growling in a deep, low voice. She pulled herself awkwardly to her feet and backed away ever so slowly. The King sensed her terror and warped with a hunger caused by the absence of his keeper he leapt forward paws outstretched. Marie woke with a start. Her left cheek burned and she clawed at it with sharp talons. Her flat was cold, the council still had not replaced the broken glass and outside under the smoggy black of night she could hear car alarms whirring away, bottles being smashed up the side of walls smothered in gang graffiti and voices shouting drunkenly. Her face itched and she tore at it in between yawning and rubbing her worn eyes. Damp and cold made her home unbearable. She often laid in bed for long periods hoping that the world outside would vanish of its own accord. Of course that never happened. She had once been married to a successful businessman, had a glorious apartment in the centre of London, but that was a long time ago; a fading memory tarnished by his violence and philandering. The ultimate cruelty came when Marie finally broke down and without remorse he had her committed to a psychiatric unit. The divorce came during her incarceration exacerbating her unhappy constitution. Eventually she accepted the loss and grudgingly submitted to counselling before being rehoused to what could only be deemed as the worst estate on the brink of the city. Nobody came to see her, except the Psychiatric Nurse and her visits had become infrequent. Lethargically she dragged herself to the bathroom. The mirror revealed the extent of the damage. A huge blister splattered gorily down her left cheek, leaking and now painful. Her clothes lay in a heap on the bathroom floor, the same clothes she wore every day; an old black tracksuit stained and torn. She pulled them on with an old pair of trainers and fumbled around inside the pockets for her car keys. The communal back stair well stunk, but enabled her to avoid the mobs roaming dangerously around the estate. She slunk by the side wall and snuck to her car hoping that it would start. The door was slightly ajar; it had not shut properly for some time. The red paint peeled due to the pranks of the gangs. The old Metro banged and knocked as the key was turned, it struggled onto the main road and then stuttered up a back street before dying. Inexorably she found herself drawn to a small side shop. The dimmed light glowed and all else seemed dingy. A bell sounded as the door rattled open. The mark still stung, but she had no way to get to the hospital and hoped someone inside would be able to take her. A miniature train puffed around an expertly set-up railway. Realistic sounds reminded her of the dreams of returning to her childhood in a country village somewhere. Medication clouded her mind; her memories were disappearing, inaccurate. Something in the sound of the train pleased her, something nostalgic. Two old men in grey suits stood talking in the corner. Green paint shimmered on the walls and wood. She felt a voice call her, maybe she heard it. She moved carefully, invisible to the shopkeepers, until she reached a glass cabinet at the back of the small outlet. Three hideous porcelain dolls coldly glared at her, seeing her soul. She could hear their voices growing louder and louder. The hole in her face bled profusely as the unintelligible words streamed through her mind, filling the room until nothing existed, but the voices and a gaping wound in her face. All went black. Barefoot she climbed the grey stones of her garden wall. Blood streaks stained her tiny hands; she could almost feel the fear, almost. At the top she gazed in horror at the pride of lions that filled her parents’ garden. Long locks of filthy sandy manes swayed as they roamed across the ornamental bridges and through the brightly coloured bushes. She was scared. Weakened finger nails scraped at her bleeding cheek. She felt compelled to approach the fiercesome  beasts. Hypnotically she marched on, her girlish pigtails swaying in the breeze as dirt clung to her red and grey uniform. Paling hazel eyes met the beast’s stare, she was in awe of the majestic beauty of the King. In the distance she could espy her parents’ thatched cottage. Furious gusts of wind steamed through the giant willow tree beyond and sent ripples through the stagnant pond. The threat was imminent. The lion approached accompanied by his mate, both edged cautiously growling in a deep, low voice. She pulled herself awkwardly to her feet and backed away ever so slowly. The King sensed her terror and warped with a hunger caused by the absence of her keepers he leapt forward baring sharp fangs. Marie woke with a start. Her left cheek bled and she tore at it with broken nails. Her chaffed hands struggled to leave the sleeping bag and the doorway provided little shelter. No one bothered vagrants here. There used to be an unpleasant housing estate packed with an array of afflicted souls, desperate souls willing to do anything to survive. The project had been closed due to worsening crime levels, all residents moved on.  Silence filled the smoggy, black night only occasionally interrupted by old papers dancing in the wind. Marie once believed in fairies and since her tortured soul was no longer treated with dignity, since she could not acquire an address and as such failed to appoint a Doctor she had started to see fairies dancing in the night sky. The fairies reminded her of her childhood. She vaguely remembered living on the outside of a small village. Perhaps a train chugged through once in a while and merged with the sound of trickling water bubbling through the garden pond. The illness had clouded her mind. Her parents died leaving her an orphan, alone. She felt guilty, but could not recall why. Her mind torn in two, she was incarcerated. She had married and married well, but the nightmares started, the headaches and the paranoia. He could not cope and simply stopped returning home. She envisaged him running away with a younger woman. The lethargy was unbearable. She could not even drag herself to the bathroom or dress. Her skin festered with bedsores and her home became a shrine to takeaway wrappers and leftovers. Loss was painful, she could not face losing anything, not even a pizza wrapper. Her benefits just about covered the takeaway. The rent remained unpaid and the electric was switched off. A neighbour must have alerted the authorities. The hospital stank of disinfectant and urine. It was filled with dangerous souls tormented by their own pathology. She slunk around the corridors avoiding all contact and struggled to engage in group session. She wished that the world would change instead of her, that the world would accept her sadness. The sadness ate away at her insides, hungrily, starved and strangled by fading memories. Inevitably she gave in, but only to give her a chance of getting out. She attended group and individual therapies. Like an automaton she said the words that the medical professionals needed to hear. She was released from the depths of darkness to a living hell. The blister came. It bubbled and burned. Her memories were confused, mixed up and illogical. Night winds howled across her chilling ears. Once there were sounds of sirens, voices, bottles smashing, but now there was only the rattle of the paper fairies bouncing on the breeze. Marie imagined that they were alight, sparkling brightly, burning just like the searing, festering hole in her cheek. Her aging arthritic bones shuffled slowly into the hospice. Varicose veins stained her legs and her empty eyes sank below withered layers of loose skin. The door slowly opened, she had not touched it. Robotic, miniature zoo animals swarmed the corridors. Tiny toys, remnants of a fragmented past busily lived their lives oblivious to her ear and pain. As she forced her way along the corridors using the walls to give her balance and guide her tiny lions yapped at her swollen ankles. The noise was drowned out by the smog of her brain. Briefly she lost her footing and stumbled. Her frayed vocal calls emitted a soft gasping moan and she found her balance using the white-washed walls. Sparsely furnished room after sparsely furnished room passed her by, or she passed the rooms by. Like a struggling steam engine she drifted forwards, sometimes she felt like she was floating and other times falling or sinking. Her own room was cluttered with miniature beasts. Obliviously she stepped over them and climbed listlessly into her bed. The ticking of a clock beat in her mind. The sound slowed until it was a soft pulse thrumming in her head. Her eyes closed and the beasts dispersed. Feeling ebbed from her gangrenous feet and the blister on her face split into a giant hole. Her shaking fingers touched the gape, poking at the insides. The itching had stopped. Light blasted the room, but her eyes stayed closed. She didn’t need them anymore. The fairies or angels appeared and burned furiously as her face had once done. Beams thronged through her soul and cleared the smog from her mind, but then she saw new smog. Skipping lightly over the garden wall Marie dashed across the ornamental pond towards her parents’ thatched cottage. Her parents were upstairs decorating the nursery and she could hear her baby sister gurgling and intermittently crying in her crib upstairs. Marie loved her and had given her three of her favourite dolls. Hastily she rushed into the lounge whipping her jacket off, the one her mum had knitted her after their trip to the zoo. She had fallen in love with the King of the lions and there he was everyday smiling out at her from the knitted wool. The jacket was slung as Marie wanted to rapidly change and go out to meet her friends. In an instant she had dashed to her room, changed and after a brief exchange with her loving parents belted out of the front door. For an instant she looked back to see the lounge curtains blowing in the soft breeze which had entered through a crack in the window. Beyond the garden lay a disused railway and Marie and her friends would pretend to be train drivers or posh passengers. Once at the tracks Marie peered briefly back at the house and the fairies caught her eyes. An amazing bright light, glowing and raging filled her eyes. Flames tore ravenously through the building eating the curtains, clawing at the furniture and ripping through the skin of the roof. Marie froze, for a second she could hear tortured screams, the alarm of the fire engine and glass smashing. Then there was nothing but fire, a huge majestic ball of fire. Smoggy smoke filled up the air as the evening drew in. The assumption was that some garment had carelessly been thrown onto the open fire causing the deaths of three members of the family. The old woman’s face burned with tears as she drew her last breath and headed towards the angelic flame.
Sanguine Fervour You're welcome in! I've seen you....In my dreams, as in life, Echoing the velvet onyx abyss of your soulless heart
and sweetly enshrouded with the eternal stench of history's charm.
The doors, portcullis to my chamber, lay stark wide
permitting pure precipitation to flood the ivory gateway
in readiness for your empowering presence.
I recline as the embers cool....
The oak clock clangs breaking the deftly silence of my creamy satin nest.
The sound ceases filling my body with fear and anticipation.
Momentary ambivalence, A desperate urge to fight the mesmeric stupor, to shut you out!But my desire enforces paralysis and there with aching trepidation I lay.

Nubile and motionless the emerald flecks of my eyes meet your black stare,
Your gaze pierces me as you materialise from nothingness;
Tall, foreboding, pale with a mane of Earthly hair.
As you approach your cognitive grip tightens, our psyches coalesce!
I see your depravities; Death displaces desire and torture is thrust upon idolaters.
Still, I want you! That is your power.
I surrender my life to you even as your deathly, ice lips caress mine,
Unable to overcome the sense of depravity triggered by that loathsome longing,
I hesitate, in an acknowledgement of reticence your eyes.
Your stunning, seductive eyes stare into mine.
In deep swoon I am willed to relax, to fall into a waking reverie
filled with a sense of peace, beset by your refuge.
Then, in a climactic instant your canines penetrate my chastity
draining my life's fluid and my world sinks into an obscure dusk......Sweet sleep excludes the brilliant sun.   My only stirrings emanate from our minds merging.
Locked behind the bars of your malevolence I see victims cruelly slain,
Solely for knowing you and you watch me gazing in.
An eternal parasite cursed; Darkness, solitude and damnation.
An emptiness crying out for pity, the demon within judged for its deeds,
Fuelling its anger and passions, driving a desire that may never be sated.
My soul builds a resistance to the disease and I implore you for a reprieve
with no compassion my sanctuary is denied and once again you appear.
With a Tiger's strength I draw myself from that lust filled place of rest.
Stumbling, dazed and weak my feet tread stone villa floors.
Even in my escape I am drawn to you.
Your whispers tremor through me as I desert on my steel stead.
Your imploring tones willing my return, fighting with memories of the beloved you stole now just us alone in a crowded universe.
Hastily I travel through the mountain pass, mere shapes silhouetted in the dark.
My mind in turmoil and my body hungering for yours
the cool night breeze pierces my skin, I lose control!
In a flash of metal and light my mortal flesh is broken like porcelain,
my skin ripped, my spirit weary bidding me to sleep through the trauma.
I feel you holding me like the lover you can never be, moving me, time passes...
You tend me with a callous cherishing,Healing your prey to make it fit once again for the hunt!
And with gruesome degradation you feed me from your own veins
and with grotesque wantonness I submit to your offering.
Overawed by the eroticism, aphrodisia and sensuality.
Your silent, false promise that you will shield me forever.
In that moment of bliss I give myself to you!
You make the pain stop!
You satisfy your own thirst!   Frozen air sneaks through the derelict boards.
I wake in an abode that has haunted my dreams, slumped coldly on chilled steps,
The crimson warmth of days passed replaced by damp rot and sombre shade.
Solitude perforates my empyrean blood.
Loss of my kin has broken my fire,
A life once so learned, travelled and communal destroyed.
You are all I have, my vengeance quelled by an unnatural proclivity,
To be yours eternally,
To be loved and subjugated equally, but your heart does not beat!
I am here at your will, forced to choose as you wish
punished with desolation and debility,
Infected by your fluids, which dominate my clay.
Timorously I call your name and there aloof at the window crevice,
You materialise as if there you had always been,
I beg for release from your enchantment,
To forget this agonising cry from the depths of my being,
Your numb stare repudiates my appeal.
My choices are narrowed; annihilation or eternal perdition,
Everlasting surrender to your sovereignty,
Lacerated through your necessary infidelity.
An assassin afflicted with immortality's curse
and yet with these apprehensions you still captivate me.
Unable to bear being abandoned in this weakened state I come to you.
I rise as you wish,
I stroke your dreadful shell succumbing to your carnality,
Your claws clasp my soft curls and the kiss you offer blazes.
Gnarled nails trail my throat, easing the silken slip strings from my shoulders,
ivory points encircle my lips, cheeks, hair and throat,
The puncture stings with libidinous relief ebbing with each gulp. My senses heighten, I energise and in a moment of clarity I draw from you,
Night escapes leaving the scarlet sun dawning slowly,
Before the last trickle of humanity evades me I break away....
Away from aeons of emotional emptiness,
I throw myself at the mercy of the burning sun,
Exquisite burning relieves me of mortality and immortality,
You howl, you love, we should have been one.
With regret for what could have been I return to dust.........