The Pure Life of Dreams

June 24, 2025July 31, 2025

The Blue Ink Woman

We’d split off from the main group of students, myself and a scrawny woman with lanky black hair who looked like she was underfed—a thin woman with the reedy body of a bird.

The two of us had gotten separated from the others when we were searching the restaurant that we’d booked—when we’d taken a path into the medieval quarter of Paris thinking it might be there.

When the whole group had first gotten lost I’d gone into an Irish pub to ask directions and the people in the pub had told me it was the other side of town. I walked out and down the steps to join the group outside to give them the news.

It was then that I saw a bundle of notes by the side of the steps on the ground. I picked the notes up and saw that it was a bundle of 500 and 200 Euro bills.

“What shall I do with them?” I asked the others.

I wanted to hold onto the notes though part of me felt guilty. No one would know if I held onto them, surely?

“You could ask inside?” One of the students responded.

So, I went back up the stairs and circled the bar to ask the barman. The bar was a small room with dark wooden panels, and quite old fashioned, but the barman was not available so I didn’t wait. Besides I felt like I was in enemy territory, the place being Irish and all.

I came back outside and that was when the scrawny woman and I split from the rest of the group to search for the restaurant.

We wandered down some dark brick lined streets which had tall walls either side of us, and which were deserted and not a little threatening.

We could have called ahead and cancelled but for some reason we didn’t do that because we didn’t have phones or because it was before the days of cell phones.

Instead we went to the woman’s townhouse and climbed the steps to go inside.

The woman stripped naked in front of me but she wasn’t attractive given her bony frame. Her shoulders were covered in blue ink which glistened under the pale white bulb of the living room.

I wondered if she had a disease or had just covered herself in ink for the sake of it.

“How about we have a bath?’ I suggested.

We went to the bathroom where there was a white claw foot bath tub and we got in under a pile of bubbles from the soap and I lay with my head at the bottom end while she lay with her head at the top.

She held her foot up for me and for a moment I thought to suck on her toes but they too were bony and they had little hairs on them that did not make her toes attractive. Under the knuckles of each toe was more blue ink—it seemed to spread from within each toe—and it made me realise that I would need to clean her toes too if we were to sleep together.

Main photo (recurring) by Lil Artsy via Pexels.

July 25, 2024September 14, 2025

Sexual Assault by Highway Robber

I was in a marketplace in England, a huge wooden covered structure which sold vegetables and fruit. I was trying to get out but somehow I was stuck behind a chain link fence that surrounded the perimeter of the marketplace. Ivy covered the chain links and made it slippery and hard to climb.

As I climbed, I saw police cars with Baltimore markings screech to a stop across the road. The road was on the other side of the fence. Detectives got out from their cars and stood next to them. They were looking for something or someone, I wasn’t sure.

I climbed it the fence a couple more steps and saw a gap in the ivy, although it was small, no larger than my head. I could not easily see my way out through it but perhaps it marked a way to get out that I hadn’t quite worked out.

It was then that I saw the woman who ran the market, a bossy square boned fleshy woman with blonde hair and white lacy blouse.

I watched the woman through the gap in the ivy, but what happened next was the shocking part and I couldn’t tell if what followed was for real…

On the other side of the fence, towards the perimeter of the market and in front of a display of oranges, a man with a black cape and a highway robber’s mask, his back facing me, pushed the manager down onto the stone floor.

~~She lay with her legs closest, her head closer to the oranges.~~

With his right hand the robber aimed a long green garden hose at her and sprayed her with water by pressing his thumb to the hole, until her jeans turned dark blue and her blouse became wet through.

The woman screamed and fought, and rolled side to side, to avoid the force of the water.

The robber leant over her as she lay face up and flat on the ground, and with his left hand he yanked at her blouse, pulled it up over her head; pulled it so that blouse, undershirt, even her bra came off in one go, and she was naked from the waist up.

Her breasts, flat against her chest, jiggled with the force of the water hose.

Then the robber tugged at her soaked jeans.

The jeans stuck to her tapered legs and they were difficult to remove, but finally, with both hands, he was able to force down her jeans and panties so that she was now fully naked but for her pink plastic sandals.

The robber then unbuckled the sandals, slid them off her dainty feet and in one aggressive twist he pushed together hands and bare feet above her belly and he bound her limbs, tied them together using the buckles from the sandals.

I pushed aside the ivy to make the hole bigger, and squinted to see past the robber, to see better what was going on.

The naked woman was tightly bound in a ball. Loudly she squealed, even though, from my vantage point, her head was out of view behind her bindings…

In my hand was a DVD and the cover of the DVD showed the masked highway robber and the blonde woman bound up the same way, with her sandals.

The highway robber was facing the camera and her flighty brown locks flowed over her shoulders, for she was a woman after all, not a man.

The robber’s mask covered her eyes but not her eyebrows, and whimsically she curved and flicked her thick dark brows up and down several times to suggest that the whole thing was a prank, that the scene was a set up. A set up that the woman who ran the marketplace had staged for her, for their sexual pleasure.

Photo by McKay Savage via Flickr. But oranges are not the only fruit?

June 29, 2024July 8, 2024

Are You A Sane Person?

“Are you a sane person?” she asked.

We walked up the dirt path away from the lecture hall. She had straight blonde hair, a cute pug nose and an open smile. To the right of her was a tall bamboo forest.

“Only on Sundays,” I replied and then uncertainly, “Do you want me to be?”

I noticed that her shoes were black and round, like horse hooves, with a buckle strap to hold them on to her feet. Shawn told me she wore loafers, or was he referring to a different girl?

Shawn and I had been sitting at the back of the lecture hall. I’d been with him most of the time. In front of us, kids were sat at trestle tables which lay scattered across the parquet and not aligned in rows.

When the lecturer, like a quarterback, threw a rubber football at the kids they threw it back. Each throw was to illustrate a point. But one time the football travelled further and Shawn had thrown it back.

The kids in front were bunched up to the left of the lecture hall because of the direction of the previous throws. And when the lecturer threw it the next time it landed with me.

I thought to give the football to Shawn at first but he wasn’t going to take it. I’d never thrown a football before, or I hadn’t thrown one well, at least. I could throw it back, as if it was a soccer ball or, it being small enough, I could treat it like a cricket ball and put spin on it. It would be more convenient to throw it with my right hand given that the kids in front were to our left, but I was left handed and my right hand was lousy at throwing. I threw it back anyway with my left hand… As normal as I could throw a football with my wrong hand anyway.

A man passed in front of our trestle table just as I was about to hold Shawn’s hand. The man wore a shiny lavender pink shirt. And it was then that Shawn mentioned the girl’s loafers.

“I like that boys shirt,” I said, as Shawn and I got up to leave.

I thought he’d think me gay for liking the shirt but I wasn’t.

“The lavender pink one,” I continued.

“You mean the shiny one?” Shawn replied.

“Yes,” I said.

And then I left him and caught up with the girl with the cute pug nose and blonde hair and the non-loafer black shoes.

After I’d responded to her question, she’d looked at me and smiled back with an open smile, and the bamboo forest was green behind her.

Photo via Picryl.

April 14, 2023April 14, 2023

Floating towards the End of Days in Guatemala

It was our last day in Guatemala and it was clear we could not carry on.

Alexis and I had argued for most of the holiday and we would split up upon our return. It was a fait accompli.

That day I decided to go off by myself on a two-hour walk to the next beach over. We would have one last dinner upon my return.

I headed out through the mall, passing first through Harrods, and I thought it a shame that they had these same stores here now, that the world was becoming so homogeneous.

And at the end of the mall, I came out onto a rocky beach and realized then that I was barefoot and maybe I should have brought my shoes. The rocks were hard on my feet but it was too late to go back and fetch them. I would have to manage.

As I continued on I thought back at how we had agreed on Guatemala. We had spent many evenings at the hotel restaurant but even though she was a good traveler we had always argued about some such unimportant thing or other, and we knew we couldn’t continue.

I stepped up and over huge flat beige boulders buried partially in the sand. Pools of seawater collected in the natural dips of the rock. It was a shame we were splitting up but there was no way we could continue.

By then I had taken off my shirt and was holding it along with a spare pair of shorts in my hand and to make climbing more efficient I bundled both into my back pocket. Even so, by the time I got to the end of the path, it was getting towards dusk and it had taken a bit longer than I expected.

And at the endpoint, I found a small red house, far end of the path, and next to it lay a short boardwalk that followed the line of the water’s edge. The boardwalk lay out to sea a few feet as if stranded by the low tide. And the path was now reduced to a bland dusty road that split a promontory of small rocks and gorse. Alexis would say it didn’t look like much, but that would be just like her, right?

The clock on the house said quarter to five and I would have to hurry in order to be back for dinner. And I could imagine her getting cross, so I set off immediately back.

As I neared the mall, the crowds started to thicken and I knew I would have to push past them.

Inside the mall I found myself stuck behind two people who were especially slow. They were young and at first, I did not recognize that they were together. The girl had a condition, a long spindly arm that required she hold onto the rail of the steps. I was back in Harrods and I had to duck under her arm to get past, and only then did I realize that they were a couple, or a brother and sister.

Still, I pushed on at a frantic pace. I waved my hands, palms together in front of me so that I could slice through each group I crossed. Speeding now, I came to a full flight of stairs in a dark ornate oak hall with curled gold finial posts at the top of the bannister, and I grabbed one of the posts and used it to launch myself in the air.

I floated high over the steps, just as the post buckled under my grip and I thought that it could not have been made of gold after all, but must have been made of some cheap plastic instead.

And I floated over the crowd, over all five steps, and gliding steadily to the floor, it was then that I thought I stood a chance of returning on time.

Photo via PxFuel

December 2, 2022February 17, 2023

Unloading on High School and its Consequences

I sat at my desk but Rebecca Farmer suggested we go get some ice cream . It was unusual because I had never really spent time with her before.

“Sure,” I said and we went down to the lunch hall, but when we got there there was a long line of people with trays.

“We must have hit the lunch time,” I suggested. And instead we returned our desks and talked a little bit. We sat face to face and Becky, as she preferred to be called, propped her feet up on the chair next to mine.

Only we did not have much to say to each other. Until she asked me about my high school.

“I went to St. Pariah’s,” I said, “only it was very difficult for me.” I struggled to find the right words. “Because I was… was slightly darker than the other kids.”

And she looked at me and said, “It can’t have been that bad.”

“No, you got to realize this was in the eighties.”

After our conversation I decided to leave the office and take a ride on the train.

I got on the overland and it clanked out of the station. It headed through unfamiliar stops into the Bangkok suburbs and snaked across the rusted rail tracks of a major railway intersection.

We passed tall buildings either side of the train that I did not recognize.

We passed a big white sign with the train stop written in green lettering. Underneath, it said “Sponsored by the Thai Democratic Party” and I thought it strange that they would sponsor a railway sign.

I was depressed, so I decided to take the train to the end of the line because I could always just take it back again.

And the route map above the window looked like it would return the same way, and wouldn’t fork in another direction, though I couldn’t be sure.

I put on my headphones and called Elaine.

“I just unloaded on a colleague,” I told her.

We tried to talk, but the screeching sound of the wheels against the rails made it difficult to hear her. Then we hit a dead zone and she went silent for a bit.

And when the train hit the end of the line I got out and there was already a train on the opposite platform so I stepped right on and settled into the last cabin by the door.

As it set off, I looked around at the other passengers and they were all locals. I could see a family with babies but though I looked across at the seats the other side they were not there. Instead the family was a green tinted figment mirrored in the glass. They must have been behind me, or on a parallel train passing by.

It made no sense, but just as I thought I had figured out the illusion, and seen where the family was actually sitting, a young woman smartly dressed in a matching pale pink jacket and shorts walked up to me.

I was taking off my headphones at the time. I remember the warped mouth piece, and she got real close. Too close for comfort. She stood directly over me. She grabbed my wrists with both hands, before sliding one hand under to grab something from my inside pocket.

It was an object I had not seen before, half oval, flat and black but smooth and no larger than the woman’s fist. Like a blackened Venus shell~~, or one of a pair of castanets~~.

Photo by Bernard Spragg via Flickr