IMPOSSIBLE GIRL - 22

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12 May…

The sun set is amazing. All gold and toffee flecked. Sweet and gooey just for me. Rowan is asleep in the cabin, he is fully sated. Me too, I haven’t felt this happy - this free I suppose - in a long time. I’m glad Rowan talked me into coming. We needed this and the sea. Like a dark purple blanket of silk before me, its a shot of inspiration.

I’ve been carrying around a weight ever since that first girl. I’m not deluding myself that it won’t come back but for now, here, it’s lifted.

Funny I used to struggle with vegetarianism, righteous one minute, drooling over a platter of chicken satay skewers the next. Rowan was a dedicated carnivore. If the dish didn’t contain meat he would send it back.

Neither of us can bear the smell of animal flesh now. We’re still doing dairy and to a lesser extent eggs but meat makes us balk. The band is pretty disgusted, they think its Rowan’s choice and my influence on him. I don’t care, it makes me feel better cosmically.

We need to feed to survive. I wonder how karma copes with that.

That first time I fed I thought I would choke. But weirdly the warmth of the blood sliding down my throat felt good. Rowan showed me how to make the wound, the sucking motion came naturally.

The girl was wasted when we found her, some dirtbag was trying to get her in a cab. We feigned friendship and Rowan chased off the sleaze. Then we took her home and violated her in a different way.

Afterward we drove her to the address on her license. Rowan used her own key to get into her house and put on the couch. He was in and out quickly and apparently no one else woke up or saw him.

I obsessed over it for weeks after. Wondering how she had felt when she woke up on the couch. All hazy and hung over and weak from blood loss, a bruise and puncture marks on her inner thigh.

Rowan told me not to think about. He battered me with justifications, ‘we took less blood than the Red Cross’, ‘it’s not like we actually harmed her, she’ll be fine’, and ‘maybe we saved her from something worse’.

Maybe… God I don’t want to think about it now, just focus on the sweet sand beneath my toes and the clear beautiful skin of my lover, waiting for me no more than 10 feet away
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Title - 12

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EVINRUD - 11

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Shaking that single missile lock was routine, but now there’s three, a shut down and flare is only good for one. One… three… I’m bleeding like a stuck pig… we are ripping through the sky… whole cloud banks pass in fractions of a second… my knuckles are white like ivory. I feel the panic building in us. Calm it. Compartmentalize it. Tourniquet the leg with your tie… we’ve got approximately 12 seconds to decoy the first one.

There’s nothing for it, we have to disengage a stabilizer engine. Evinrud knows it, even though it must be like hacking off an arm, it’s done. The starboard engine rockets and pirouettes off into the sky beside us. The missile breaks away and we dive, good boy. Bat out of hell, all black and smoking we peel out of the explosion. Only right turns now, it’s a wobbly decent, A-grade turbulence, but that worked.

Timing... timing... if we drop the portside then there is no steering at this speed. Lose the second missile lock and what about the third? 10 seconds…

God we are plummeting… there’s the earth. Beijing’s industrial outer rim. Smoke stacks. Furnace flares. 5 seconds. Be cool honey-bunny.

We have the idea. Set the course. Evinrud knows it. The portside engine spirals off and the second missile detonates on it. I’m instantly sun-burnt everything goes black. We tear through it on a 30 degree pitch. 8 seconds…

It’s drop and pray time. We rocket for the top of a 40 storey industrial fuel chimney. No turning, no dodging, our calculations predetermined, just straight at it. 3 seconds…

We tear over the heat blasting out the chimneys mouth. Evinrud’s paint peels. My suit contracts like fried bacon. Our keel clips the brickwork and we are sent spiraling over the edge. The missile sucks the heat like its mother and Voomph! The whole industrial shit house goes up in flames. It explodes so many times I forget about it.

Evinrud deploys the chute, because I can’t even think. We rip and jerk and careen through the paneling on the back of a moving semi trailer and come to rest with its cargo.

I raise my head. 'Fuck that was close'. And I pass out.

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Sketchbook - 8

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IMPOSSIBLE GIRL - 21

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The truth backfired, that’s the irony.
Conversation # IG (IGirl) RB (Rowan Bark)

IG: It was a good idea.
RB: Mmmmmmm…
IG: Are you happy?
RB: As I can be.
IG: What does that mean?
RB: I don’t know… right now I feel good…
IG: But you’re not happy?
RB: Are you happy?
IG: I suppose its all semantics.
RB: Maybe only stupid people are happy.
IG: And only cowards are content to be unhappy.
RB: I can’t help being afraid.
IG: Me too… but..
RB: I know… there’s nothing more to be afraid of.
IG: Let’s eat.
RB: You don’t feel guilty?
IG: I’m learning to live with it.
RB: I suppose I should be glad.
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Sketchbook - 7

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Title - K

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