Failure

I look failure in the eye. For all my searching, I've not been able to find the voice. It's eluded me for so long, and still I can't track it down.

I wonder if the voice is my own creation. I wonder if I've created an impossible case. I wonder if I'm trying to solve the unsolvable, to achieve the impossible. I wonder, and discard the thought like a burned out matchstick.

Rain comes. I hope it will soothe me. The rain is honest. I know rain. I can sheild myself from the cold; admire the beauty of the havoc it wreaks; drink in the thudding symphony of percussion. Yeah, I know rain. When it comes to the rain, I'm all set.

But failure... that I've never been able to deal with. Sure, it happens. But I don't carry it well.

As the whiskey drives me to the floor, I give in to failure.

Tap At My Window

The voice still sings at me, still haunts me.

It's beautiful. The most beautiful thing I've ever heard. And every melodic syllable, every perfect utterance, every emotional outcry, cuts me a little deeper. It's the perfect cut, the perfect pain. There's no blood, there's no scar, but it burns anyway.

I wonder if the voice is inside me. I wander the streets, searching for answers and searching for silence, but it's still there. I close my doors, and it taps at my window. It wills me to let it in.

Fighting it is futile. But I fight it anyway. I fight it because it's all I know. I try to find an emotion I

can't deny, and then deny it anyway.

Emotion. She only lets me down. Emotion has no place here. I know every part of the game, and want no part in it. I want to play to my own rules.

I know the dice are loaded, but I try to play anyway.

Old Stone

The voice eludes me.

I still hear it. It sings to me in the quiet moments; the intimate moments; the moments in which I most crave solitude. It calls to me. My siren song. I don't know what it means, but I can't shake it. Sometimes it whispers absolute truths, sometimes it whispers veiled lives. Sometimes it tells me that poetry is the answer, other times it tells me that poetry is my doom.

Tonight, I try to be stone. Tonight I don't need walls. There's nothing inside me now. I can sit here for years, ten thousand years, and be alone.

But still the voice sings. To be stone isn't enough. I need to be something else. Something warm. Something living. I hang my head: maybe I even need to be something human.

Ghosts

Night falls. With a sickening inevitability the day is veiled; buried; hidden from view. And, for most, peace descends: quiet envelops each moment like a thick mist. Consciousness succumbs to the fog. The lady of the night, in her mercy, hides the horrors of the day.

For most.

For me, the night brings terror. It brings to the surface my deepest fears, my rampant paranoia, my unending rage. My walls, which seem so strong against the hard light of day, crumble against the soft touch of night. Walls are no good here - the deamons are within.

I absently stir a whiskey, hoping once more that it will bring me peace, and watch the ice swim. I hold it to a single candle flame and watch the liquid, the glass, the flame, all glow in a ball of viscous orange light. Radiant, it sends tendrils of light dancing across the glass while whispers of shadow caress and soothe my hand.

Then it happens: the voice appears. A voice I feel I've heard before. It's musical, lyrical, strong, but ethereal - vunerable and sad. It almost soothes me, threatening to put me at ease. I don't know where it comes from. I close my eyes and it gets louder. I pace around the office, trying to find the source between stacks of paperwork and missing person lists. But the voice stays the same.

It whispers that I am a ghost, I am a ghost.

I could blame the whiskey. I could blame the night. All I know is that I've got to find the voice.

My other cases take a back seat for this one. The voice is my only client now.

Midnight

I count the years. Meaningless. Blank pages in a forgotten book. But I count the years.

I think about walking. I think about the City, winking at me in the dark. I think about the sneers of the winding roads; the muted mockings of the shadows; the awful stare of the yellow lights. I wonder which I really fear - the anonymity of the shadows, or the judgement of the light.

I think about fiction. I think about reality. I try to find the lines between. But they're not lines like those between the roads of the city. They're hidden, blurred, indescreet - like the lines between the sea and sky in the blackness before dawn.

I think about talking. I play with words, conjour them as I swirl the ice of my whiskey. I shape words as ice clinks, and the whiskey becomes my voice. But the words are like the ice: clear, and drowning. My thoughts are like the ice; melting.

I want something to break, to bend. I test the wounds, prod and pry. I search myself for openings, answers, questions... anything that will rise above the numbness. I search the whiskey for myself, and cower at the reflection dancing in the surface.

I need a story. I need a fresh case. I need fresh blood.

I count the years. Could now be time?

The Road

At least I know what needs to be done.

I rise with sun and head to the office, intending to track down the bastard Scotsman. Today, I will be the hand of justice, and I will make amends. Killing him won't undo the evil he's caused, and it won't get me paid. Will my soul be angry? Maybe. But maybe my hands will stop trembling.

Something is wrong at the office. The door is ajar. I grip Faith silently and prepare myself for whatever is inside.

If it was The Scotsman, I would have been ready. If it was a thief, Faith would have been ready. But the small office was silent, dark, and cluttered as ever. I put Faith on the table and reach for the bottle of Whiskey, my guardian of liquid fire by the phone, and see the note on the table. I'm not prepared for the note.

It's from Charlie. It shows the Insurance Company's head office address, and a time. Underlined at the bottom, it says The Scotsman will be there. And, the big surprise, an apology scribbled across the back. It's a daisy through concrete. She came back for me.

But what does it mean? Ahead of me is a road with two yellow lines that goes for years. I can turn off, or I can keep driving. Charlie's eyes didn't lie to me. She's getting played every bit as much as I am. Times are fierce, times are fine.

Yeah, it goes that way.

I sit in the gloom and let the Whiskey ask all the hard questions.