Wind caught catkins stir

As leaf-dappled branches bend

Willow takes a bow

((I fail at the word limit))

Rosebud lips surmount

A mouth deceptively wide

Eyes like summer skies

((I fail to fulfil the word count))

When I broke out of my casing

The air was sweet

For one accustomed to

The cloying putrescence of the earth

Where I had lain buried for many a day

On the blossom-scented dusk of a late spring

I felt warm winds and soared into the sweet air

Scaly wings unfurling, furtively feeling my way

I took to the sky, lost in its leaden hue

So who

Am

I?

The tablets popped out of their shiny cases onto the table each leaving behind a barely perceptible thud. Thud, thud, thud, thud. Soon there was enough for a fistful. I blew on the black coffee and caught its deep, dark scent.

Grabbing the fistful of pills I swallowed as much of them I could manage and drank the water next to the coffee with a glug. Glug, glug, glug. I crammed the remainder of the tablets into my mouth and washed them down, feeling the chalkiness dissipate on my tongue, in my throat. Then I took a sip of the coffee. My last meal. My longest habit. The drug I was most loyal to. Had been most loyal to.

I wondered if it would stop me feeling drowsy. I wondered if I would feel any pain or nausea as the overdose worked its way into my bloodstream. I wondered if I would fall asleep slowly, as if in a dream. If I would have any dreams before my eventual rest. Had I taken enough? Only time would tell.

Time lay before me now like a winter dawn, a long darkness, eventually giving way to pale light. I was not religious but somehow, the sunrise seemed appropriate to dwell on. Not a sunset. This final action in the face of so much inaction was too hopeful to have me reminisce about a setting sun. An eternity passed as I slowly drank my coffee. Is this what it felt like to be immortal? To know that there was nothing more to harm you? To face down time itself?

When Phil invited us to that party I thought it was just that. A party in an abandoned building, too dilapidated to be let out, too well-built to be torn down. Jack knew Ivy and Ivy knew Phil who knew the place and Jack and I were still seeing each other after five months. So we went. I stuck close to Jack because we were already stoned but Jack didn't want to play babysitter.

I lost him in the lobby of the building after we went in. After Phil chatted to the girl on the door with the green hair and the tie-dyed t-shirt, a ring of black metal in her nose. After I lost Ivy talking to the tall guy in the khaki dungarees with the yellow mohawk clutching a bottle of claret.

After we had danced in one of the rooms where someone had set up a sound system. After we drunk of their wine and ate their crisps and smoked their joints and took their pills. I lost him but wasn't going to be the one who panicked so I found a quiet corner and sat down and let the music wash over me. Time had speeded up while I was getting high. I needed to slow down.

The green-haired girl sidled up to me.

"So you know Phil?"

"Yeah, we have some of the same classes."

"Right," she gave me a polite, non-commital smile. "We have the same drug dealer."

"Uh huh."

"You like it here?"

"It's ok."

"Just ok?" She was looking at me as if I was some dork who didn't deserve to be there, which I was.

"It's been cool so far."

"So far," she echoed and kept on giving me that look. "I get it, you need space right now, huh?"

"Yeah." Where the hell was Jack? "I'm just going to chill outside for a bit."

"Ok, take your time." I hated her smile, but couldn't blame her. My hair was that brown everyone's hair is when it hasn't been dyed and it just straggled in my ponytail. My jacket was this blue puffer jacket that had probably never been cool. My make-up was barely there, just a bit of ink smudged at the corners of my eyes. Freckles pasted my face like measles.

"Uh, let Phil know I'm outside if you see him," I managed to mumble.

"Ok."

I stopped thinking of the girl and her pity for me when I got outside and sat on the steps of the building. It was laced with graffiti. Tags and murals. Someone had sprayed on a whole army, pennants fluttering and tall figures with eerily beautiful faces, eyes like jewels bearing swords and halberds coloured like ice and fire. Dragons, red and green, circled the scene, their scales somehow iridescent even on the flat, grey concrete, clouds of purple smoke billowing from their nostrils. I checked my phone. There was a message from Jack.

HEY WHERE R U?

OUTSIDE

I pulled my coat around me and huddled on the steps waiting for my fug to pass. That was it. I was just too wasted. Paranoid and edgy.

WHERE?

OUTSIDE

I was annoyed with Jack. Maybe I'd been a drag but he'd been really selfish going off like that when I wasn't feeling well. Maybe we should break up, I thought bitterly, but Jack did kung fu and liked obscure bands he was always inviting me to and always talked when I called him at 2am and never complained when I smoked his weed and didn't pay him back.

WHERE R U?

PHIL AND ME WE'RE GOING HOME

WHAT?

DON'T LEAVE ME

Total prick. I should break up with him. I waited for Jack and Phil to give them a piece of my mind, but no-one left the building. I felt sick. If I thre up though, I might have a clearer head. Time passed as I recovered. I barged back through the doors and the sight chilled me to the bone. The lobby was empty, still run down with patches on the walls and brown and black stains all over the floors but there was no music, no energy from other people, no sounds of talking and laughter.

"Hello?"

Had I been dreaming? All the other rooms were empty too. It looked like no-one had been in the building for years, but then, probably no-one had been, apart from the party-goers. When I tried the doors in the lobby again they didn't budge. I checked my phone. It was dead. A lonely scrap of paper caught on my shoe. When I picked it up and looked at it my heart almost thudded to a halt and I stopped breathing.

It was a picture of me. My name, age and university printed on the paper and my mum's name and a phone number. "Still missing," it read, "for a year." I inhaled very slowly. Memories began to filter back to me, of a guy with a yellow mohawk and eyes like jewels. Of a girl with green hair and a nosering of black metal and pointed ears. Of wine which tasted like berries and crisps rich with the flavour of soft cheeses or venison or tangy chutney that shouldn't have been found in a sliver of potato.

I felt suddenly, frighteningly sober. I'd read the tales. La Belle Dame Sans Merci. The Sidhe. Annwn. Don't eat of their food. Don't drink their drinks. Be polite. I just thought they were myths. Like the one about Gelert the faithful hound. Or the story about the hairy man who drowned. Or the tales about the giants that crossed the sea to fight a war.

My hand drifted towards the chain around my neck where I still wore a cross in memory of my dad and my fingers curled around the cold iron. I ran up the stairs, footsteps echoing thoughout the abandoned building and broke out onto the roof.

The sun was shining wanly in a dim sky and I could hear birds and traffic and people somewhere down below. I shuffled over the asphalt and spotted a fire escape on the edge of the building. It looked worn down, a ruin of rusty metal but I had to risk it.

When I hit the ground I broke into a run. After a while I had to stop and sucked in deep breaths of crisp morning air, leaning against a billboard plastered with posters for garages and club nights and hardware stores. Then I saw the flyers, stuck up next to the adverts, faded and tagged and forgotten.

My face, Jack's face, Ivy's face, other faces. A jogger passed by on the other side of the road, jogging to the beats in their headphones, counting their steps, jogging to the timing in their breaths. I was holding my breath again. A world away, a car engine stuttered to life. For me time had stopped. Or maybe it had just started again.