Olivia's Diary Finale

Read Part 1 here.

Part 2 here.

Part 3 here.

Part 4 here.

Part 5 here.

Part 6 here.

Part 7 here.

Love is making me soft.

Sex isn’t so fucking exciting anymore.

Blood Sappho, an explosion on the internet, a phrase becoming stale.

I am baking fucking bread in Cassie’s flat and wondering what the fuck I’m supposed to do now.

Mum.

I forget and forget. Visit and forget. Wrapped up in day to day bliss, honey I’m home and Olivia is here and smiling.

The money is slowly running out. Harold the Jew has stopped calling, and I’m still paying rent on my stupid ugly place in London.

You can’t ever fucking get away.

Cassie comes back and fucks me against the wall and we smile and wonder how the fuck this happened.

I just hope she’ll ask me to move in.

****

Is this how it feels when the war is over?

The soldier comes back home to his sweetheart and finds love, warmth and peace after so much blood and death. Silence, perforated by kisses and trips to the supermarket.

Sometimes I panic and wonder if I can survive here.

Perhaps I’m not nosediving out of heaven, but landing on the runway, children and women waving and cheering.

The pilot from the train texts me, and I ignore him, mostly.

Temptation is a bitch.

I have visions of him burned, at the bottom of a pile of bodies cut down by some lunatic Arab drone operator dreaming of total death.

Maybe I should fuck him once, just in case he doesn’t make it through.

What the fuck are these thoughts about?

Guilt creeping in, cleaning the apartment, Cassie out at work and wondering about my pilot.

Nobody deserves this.

****

Overflowing love doesn’t fit into a human body.

Sending him a picture, nothing explicit, just a smile and a wave and a “Hey how are you?”.

Cassie doesn’t know.

Mum is dying.

He texts back, says he’s off next week, do I want to meet?

Throw away the phone.

Yes let’s meet.

What am I doing to my little pax of peace?

I kiss Cassie passionately that evening but I know something is wrong.

She knows it too.

“Olivia, can we talk?”

Of course.

“Are you staying here? I don’t know and it’s making me afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“That you’ll disappear and I’ll be left on my own. Or you’ll stay and I’ll have to space to breathe. It’s been 3 weeks and it’s gone so fast and…”

She pauses.

“Don’t take this the wrong way.”

“What?”

“Sometimes I wonder if this is just convenient for you. And the moment your Mum dies you’ll be off on some new mad adventure.”

Silence.

“Fuck you.”

“Olivia!”

“Seriously? How could you think that?”

Sitting in bitter shade.

Cassie shaking.

“I’m scared, Olivia. You show up in my fucking life like a blade, all sharp and stained and ready to draw blood. I’m utterly in thrall to you? How could I not be? I know you, ok? I know you’re dangerous. You burn your way through people’s lives, and justify it all as art.”

“Fuck you. How do you know that?”

“My God, I could stare into your pictures all my life. But I’m not some dumb kid or yuppy fag you can just waltz in and dazzle, you know?”

Fist smashes into wood.

Get up to go.

“Sit the fuck down. I’m not done.”

White eyeball blares.

“Sure, I’m not all high flying like you. I’m a nurse in a provincial hospital. I sit at home making pretty clothes and I have two friends I drink with sometimes. And every now and then I go home to Ireland to see my family who are glad they don’t have to deal with me. You know how that fucking feels? But I’ve opened my doors to you. Because I’m a fucking idiot. But not a stupid one. I’m just willing to take a risk when I see something beautiful. It’s easy to chase freaks and then burn us when it doesn’t suit you anymore. It’s harder to stick around and love a fucking monster that reminds you of yourself.”

Silence.

“I’ll show you something, then, eh?”

A glass smashes into the wall.

Shatters everywhere.

“You don’t want to see what I can do.”

She’s sobbing now.

“I asked you what your plans are. I’m not throwing you out! Do you get that? I’d never throw you out! But I need to know! This isn’t a hostel for the families of my fucking patients. It’s already fucked up what we’re doing, alright? You’ve got to fucking choose.”

“Cassie, what the fuck is going on? You’re scaring me. Where is this coming from?”

“From in here.”

“It’s not like you!”

“Oh, you’ve known me for what, three fucking weeks?”

“It feels like longer.”

“Don’t fucking tell me that you know me.”

Crash.

Slap across my face. Bruise, bleeding, back against the wall, alarm bells firing.

Locked eyes, raging fire, tears and pain, my heart is crying.

“I’m sorry, but you fucking deserved that.”

Falling onto the floor sobbing.

Where the fuck am I supposed to go?

Broken down, tears and snot,

Fuck fuck fuck this can’t be right.

“Olivia?”

Please go away.

“Olivia? Oh Jesus baby.”

I groan and collapse and cry out loud, God hear me, I just want somebody to hold me.

****

Head is spinning. Worlds of pain.

“Jesus Olivia, please say something.”

What the fuck can I say?

My sweet little bird, all battered against the wall.

I didn’t ask for this.

Nor did she.

“Shit.”

She’s pacing now, lighting up a cigarette, lights out.

“I didn’t want to do it. I panicked.”

Pulling myself up to my knees. Hugging them and shivering.

“Look at you. Look what I’ve done. Oh Christ forgive me.”

“Stop talking,” I mumble.

Glaring at me, fire in her eyes.

Then it subsides.

“Imagine a photograph with all the colours in negative. Can you imagine a world like that?”

Fingertips gone cold.

“It’s like being underwater. The surface is just up there. But the deep…”

Hands frozen.

“I had to get away from home. I was mixed up with the wrong gang.”

Veins slowly yielding to ice.

“I was working for them. Cromwell and his boys. You understand? Someone like me – people will pay a lot.”

Nodding. Lungs screaming.

“I just want to live simple. Away from trouble. You understand?”

Just hold me, please.

I don’t want it to hurt.

****

Night on the hills, shivering and cold.

Full white moonbeams needles to my soul.

Beaten track up the downs, all behind the hills.

Sticks crunch, shadows curve, eyes in every hollow.

November cold blows ice down to my bones.

Lost along the way, whispers in the dirt.

How many lovers meet here? How many secrets buried here? Deep beneath the dirt.

Cresting on the hill, waiting like a ship, will the tides and wind take me where I need to go?

Whispers in the dirt, somebody got hurt.

Open sky is purple swarming steel, abyss gaping wide and ever clear.

Far below the gods.

Digging in the dirt.

Italy is a long way away now.

Gina’s Madonna, warm, earthy, swollen, swathed in cloth, yields to the fox and owl, twitching in the dark.

Fingertips on leaves, crawling under the skin, all beneath the dirt.

Heaven open and cold, howling and whispering.

London is a long way away now.

And good fucking riddance.

I’m out here on the hills, rousing for war.

It’s better like this. Me out here alone.

No Cassie, no Gina, No Mum No Dad.

Shadows mark the heavens, bear witness to me.

****

Footsteps on the path.

A familiar shadow.

Winding through the night.

Lady Cassandra.

“Hello”.

“Hi” she whispers, standing next to me.

Time around us, open gaping dark. Whispers on the hills, all alone at night.

We stand and watch the darkness for black eternity, me and my battered love, all throned with thorns.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

Howling and howling.

Shadow calling dreamers to the dance.

“Do you want me to go?”

Singing in sadness.

“I’ve always been on the run. This is new.”

“I know.”

“It’s always been a war. Swollen tongues. Bleeding thighs.”

“Believe me. I know.”

“Shit.”

Broken Cassie, pretty Cassie, war against existence Cassie.

“And I don’t fucking cry about it.”

I look at this shaded bird of paradise.

I’ve spent my whole life turning thorns into photographs.

I’m going to make her one of the immortals.

Venus flies on strange wings.

And the ocean is a mystery.

Gina.

Thank you.

“I did something bad today.”

“What did you do?”

“I texted a guy. A soldier. He wants to meet me.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Hi.”

“I don’t mind.”

Cold in the air, breath is still.

“You do what you need to, Olivia. Look at me.”

We hold each other there in the frozen silence.

“You’re mine.”

****

Mum dies and we’re all there. Dad, Chloe, Milo, Olivia, Mum.

And the weird nurse who helps her passage over.

****

We show ourselves at the funeral. Two shadow-dykes dressed in corporeal black.

Pale fingers intertwined and painted blue.

The eyes wonder and whisper and we watch.

****

I spoke to Harold the Jew today.

He told me he understands completely.

He’s off to Lisbon with some new boy lover.

Says there’s always work for his little Foxxie.

And fuck London, they’re all a bunch of talentless overpaid cunts.

****

Gina asks after me eventually.

I bite my tongue and tell her about me and Cassie.

She says she’d love to host us both sometime.

But right now she’s off to work in India.

****

I guess that about wraps things up for us. I’m shacked up with my angel and out of the jungle. At our little hospital for souls outside the wreckage, we sit and we tend the darkness peacefully. Cassie has visions of crows on gallows, squawking and crying helplessly. She tells me stories of Ireland, and Cromwell the ganglord running the shadow trade. A maimed wing flutters limply in the dirt.

In London, the war machine grinds onwards, blind and numb.

****

And in the mirror, naked for their eyes

It’s Blood Sappho, red crosses on my thighs.