Sin... Lady Luck...

Luck.

Is she a lady? She's called as much, and I wouldn't want to besmirch her good name by suggesting otherwise or by calling 'her' a 'him' or 'she' a 'he'. But, IS she a lady?Female, perhaps, but would an actual LADY, all grace and goodness, be bad?

Let's face it, luck can be so bad you'd think it had the devil in her. You'd think a little case of demonic possession was going on and Luck was sneering at you with red eyes glowing and sharp teeth gleaming.

So, a Lady or just female. Not that I'm saying women are demonically possessed, of course. We're talking 'luck' here, not the 'fairer' sex. I'm just saying, Luck is generally referred to as a her. Same as a ship.

"God bless her and all who sail in her!" the Royal Highness or Mayor of Wotsit would proclaim whilst wasting a perfectly palatable bottle of bubbly by smashing it against the side.

Naturally, no-one sails in Luck - you'd sink. And there's no way to steer. But, by the same token, a ship can't help you win the lottery. I suppose they chat about that over a glass of wine on a Friday evening. Oh, no, they can't. Some dignitary smashed it against the brow of the boat! Oh well. There's some cans of Apple Tango in the conservatory.

Anywho. Luck. Bless her, and all who get swept along when she's in a good mood, or smashed over the head with a bottle of Bad when she's not.

We've been on more than nodding terms, her and I. In the past, of course. Almost on speaking terms, no less. I've won numerous competitions - money, holidays in fabulous hotels, computers and so on. I met a wonderful girl. Luck and I were getting on great.

Then I had to jinx it.

What is a jinx? Is it a creature that hides in the shadows, waiting to trip up Luck when she's skipping along? Is it the last train from Happiness Station, with no stops till midnight? Either way, see a penny, pick it up...

You know how it goes. 'And all day long you'll have good luck.' Well, clearly Luck didn't want to be tied to me in that way, especially when that penny was a TWO pence. Especially when that TWO pence was jealous of my fraternisations with Luck and decided to let the Jinx juggle with my juices. Especially, in fact, when the two pence let the Jinx smash me over the head with Luck.

Well, a lady is bound to take offence at that, isn't she?

Take a look at me now. Someone should write a song.

In an asylum. Escaping the screams. And the pain. If only the pain was my own, though, the fact that it isn't sort of makes it more so mine.

Luck. Lady or not, she's turned her back on me.

Maybe she won't on you. Maybe you have my luck. Be careful with it. Treat it 'like a lady'. Try it out! Here's a perfect opportunity!

I'm told, by Jeremy - the only orderly to at least treat us like people - that there's a competition. A giveaway. You can win an Amazon Kindle Fire, amongst other fabulous things. I've put a link on the right hand side of this blog and there's a page for it on that Shaun Allan's page. He's a writer or something. He's called his website www.shaunallan.co.uk which, I think, is genius. no, really. Wouldn't have thought of that myself...

Anywho-be-do. Try your luck, before someone else does. You've got to be in it to win it. Being stuck in an asylum, I'm unable to enter.

Win one for me, won't you?

Sin... Spring and the shadow...

It's the first day of spring today.

Whoop. No, really, Whoop, with a capital 'W'.

Can you hear the sarcasm in my words? Does it drip like the acid blood of Sigourney Weaver's Alien, sizzling as it eats through everything it touches? Does it slice like a knife, causing the indescribable pain of a paper cut - that most heinous of wounds?

Or did you think I was being serious? When have you known that, hmmm? No, that's not true. I can be serious, when necessary, but even then it's with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

Everyone needs their defence mechanism, don't they? Some huddle on down inside themselves, peeking over the mental sofa they hide behind to check if the coast is clear. Others sort of project themselves about a foot in front, like the Wizard of Oz bearing down on poor Dorothy, feeling small but trying to appear larger than life, the universe and pretty much everything.

One might be agitated, snapping and sniping like a cranky crocodile whilst another could be a Humble Herman, sitting quietly, hoping he won't be seen, or heard, or even slightly noticed.

Bernard was like that. The latter. The shrinking violet. The breath on me I may turn to dust.

Oh, and it was BernARD, not Bernerd or Bernud. BernARD.

Not that he'd get up in your face angry, or even raise his voice. He wouldn't even flicker a freckle - but you'd know. You'd feel his disappointment, his sadness. Sadness, not just at the fact you'd pronounced his name wrong, but also at the fact that he was how he was. Wouldn't say 'boo' to a ghost. Wouldn't even argue with his own reflection.

It wasn't that he was afraid. He didn't cower, exactly. He just didn't... It was as if he stood behind himself, but in doing so he took the interactive parts of his identity with him. The Bernard that you saw was a cardboard cut-out and served as a barrier to the world. Bernard 'proper' didn't hide, he just wasn't totally visible. You, maybe, caught sight of his shadow if the sun was just so.

I liked Bernard. He was unassuming. He didn't bother anyone, even if they wanted to bother him. Sometimes I imagined him as an empty crisp packet, one he himself would like to screw up and toss in the bin.

He left yesterday. I don't know that he was cured, but then I wasn't sure exactly what was wrong - if anything. Perhaps he was here for a break. Some respite. I hope he found it. Whatever the reason, he was here yesterday and today he wasn't.

Today, it appears, is the first day of spring. I hope Bernard can step out into the sun.

Sin... New Faces...

Mission Impossible. Good films.

I like the gadgets. And the fake faces. How they have those latex (or whatever they are) masks that they just peel off. You could be whoever you wanted to be.

Tonight, Matthew, I'm not going to be a caged lunatic, I'm going to be Brad Pitt. Well, I don't have the figure for Angelina Jolie...

It's much more extravagant than Clark Kent's specs. He just needed to half his number of eyes and he was a new man. I suppose people were more looking at the fact that he wore his pants outside his tights to notice he was exactly the same person. Plus he hasn't made quite so many films as Tom Cruise.

Of course, you are still yourself, whatever mask you might wear. You're still a superhero in a suit and glasses, or a secret agent in a latex mask. A mass murderer as a teacher or child molester as the quiet man who helps the kiddies cross the road.

A madman in sheep's clothing.

Although I keep telling you I'm not, actually, crazy.

In Total Recall, there's a girl casually tapping a stylus to her fingertips to change the colour of her nails. In Surrogates, you can sit at home and live your life as someone (or something, considering it's a robot) completely different. And in Aeon Flux, a girl had her feet replaced by hands.... Now that's, clearly, more permanent, and it means you'd have a hell of a time getting shoes to fit. Would they all be a size ten...?

You'd be all fingers and thumbs tying the laces.

Then there's Face/Off. Swapping faces with a criminal only to have him do the same to you. How weird would it be to look in the mirror and see... not you. It'd fair tenderise your brain, and no mistake.

Anywho-be-do.

Given the chance, would you be someone else, if only for a short time?

What if you had to? What if you didn't have a choice. Your identity, everything that identified you as YOU, stolen? You had to fight back. You had to get the artist to spray on a new facade? Would that be ok?

You shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I said that the other day. But people do. It's not what's inside, it's what APPEARS to be inside.

I, myself, don't believe that, but some people can't help themselves.

Well. My face was stolen. Not by orderlies or psychiatrists. Not by some sinister surgery. Not by the ghosts on the machine of my mind.

By interlopers. By the 'Them' we should all fear.

My face was stolen.

Prepare for the new face of Sin...

Sin... 30 days hath...

February is a funny month, don't you think? It has to be awkward.. Has to be different.

"I don't want all those days the other months have. I want to be younger. I want 28. Oh, hold on.... no. I want 29. No, wait..."

Is it the child? A petulant teen that has to go against the grain and not fall into the nice ripple of days. Well, apart from July and August, of course, who have to throw it out of sync. But that's Roman emperors for you. Each wanting to top the other, or at least be equal - just more equal. Oh, no, that's the pigs...

But February. Why be a pain in the posterior? At one time you didn't even exist! Mars, the thunderous god of war kicked of the year with a bang. It wasn't until the second Roman King decided to juggle things about and chucked a couple more months in to line things up with their all important lunar cycle that you were even a twinkle in your daddy's eye.

Ah, lunar. Of course. 28 days - the time it takes a woman to turn into a werewolf. Or something like that.

But even then, you couldn't be first, could you. Relegated into second place by Janus, god of new beginnings and all that. But... I wonder if it's because he has two faces, so he was talking about you behind you back whilst being your best drinking buddy to your face.

July and August have their emperors. April, May and June are in league with January to be named after gods. September through to December sit quietly at the back, knowing that they were just named for when they fell in the year back when Mars was in charge.

Then there's you. When Caesar (Julius, that is) scattered some extra days around the months to copy the Egyptians and bin the old lunar year to honour the sun (I've been to Egypt, and it IS sunny), where were you? Busy with your purification rituals? Nursing the hangover from you night out with your new best friend Janus? Is that why you missed the boat?

And it takes you four years to risk leaping out to grab an extra one for yourself, eh?

So, really, you're not being awkward at all. You're not throwing a tantrum every quarter decade. You’re fighting for survival against gods, emperors and the quiet ones at the back (it's always the quiet ones...).

Well, I blame the Romans. I mean, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Sin... Cindy of the Harp...

Don't judge a book by its cover.

That's what they say. What you see is not necessarily what you get. 'Cos he looks like a slob, doesn't mean he's a yob. 'Cos she looks like a tart doesn't preclude her having a heart. Because he acts like a prick doesn't mean he's got a small problem with over-compensation.

But it also doesn't mean that he hasn't, he isn't and she has.

The slob could be spending all his benefits on alcohol, cigarettes and drugs and could wake his son in the morning with a slap and send him to bed at night with a kick. The girl who dresses in skin-tight skirts with an identity crisis over whether or not they're belts and heels that a Sherpa would fear scaling, could quite easily be the estate bike who pays for her slobbish husband's alcohol, cigarette and drug habits by allowing all and sundry to park in her.

And Dr. Connors could, quite easily, be an eminently professional psychiatrist who believes the needs of his patients are paramount.

Well, yes. Indeed.

Jersey, the orderly who's so oily he could be an ecological disaster, is a slimy upstart who thinks all should bow down before him. Or, in the case of the female patients, kneel. Jeremy has kind eyes and a kind heart.

Mucous Mickey is mental - to be blunt but honest. Caroline had the grace of the lead in Swan Lake and the temperament to match.

And Connors likes to use a syringe. Enough said, no?

But, they do say, don't judge the book by the cover. Them's dangerous words.

Cindy, so she told us, liked to play the harp. When young, she wanted to be an angel. When older, a harp was the closest she could come without sitting on a cloud and growing a pair of wings. Given that we weren't allowed musical instruments other than pretending, in some cases, that the floor was the drum and the head was the stick, this was an unproven fact. But Cindy had an air about her that lifted you when you were in her presence. You were almost enlightened around her. If she actually did strum the strings of a harp, the notes would positively float.

As such, people gravitated towards her. She was the sun to the vacuum of the asylum and bodies not so heavenly were drawn to the way they felt when they stood next to or orbited her.

Though some would call it stalking.

It seemed that nothing could faze this ethereal being. She held her poise whilst crowded by the patients who couldn't help but want that drugless lift only she could give. She didn't flinch when Jersey pawed her and tried to have her kneel before his mighty sword. Total calm emanated from Cindy the harpist at all times.

Then Jersey called her 'his chick'.

He needed three stitches to his left eye. To my knowledge, the middle finger of his right hand was never straight again. And Cindy lay in a heap on the floor with blood pooling from her nose and bloodshot eyes staring at the ceiling.

She hated crowds. She hated to be touched. She couldn't bear to be within five feet of any person. She lived alone and had food delivered and left at her front door. She didn't go out in case someone bumped into or touched her. Contaminated her. Tainted her.

Apparently. So the orderlies said to each other when they thought we weren't listening - which was always. They said she was a hermit. A weirdo - fitted right in here.

In here, they didn't say but I knew, she didn't have the luxury of solitude. She only had the contamination she was so afraid of. So she turned inward. She pulled her fear inside and locked it away. Cindy's whole body held its breath, and her aura of tranquility was the result. Her collapse, her death, was nothing to do with me, I know that much. I do believe, however, that it was her escape. Her brain cried out just as she should have done long ago.

And it echoed out through her nose and the bood vessels in her eyes.

You shouldn't judge a book by its cover. You really shouldn't. I thought Cindy was the eye of the storm. I thought she was the calm before the calamity.

I was wrong.

Sin... The Swing and the Roundabout Went to Sea...

Swings and roundabouts.

They make me feel sick. Well, they do. Put me on a rollercoaster that drags you up to the stratosphere before letting go so you can drop like a stone back down to earth, just being caught by the loop-de-loop before you can smash into the ground. Swing me this way and that, bouncing like Steve McQueen’s solitary baseball, and I'm fine.

Put me on a roundabout and I'll be fully prepared to vomit. I don't do roundandround. I've come off a rollercoaster and not been able to walk in a straight line due to my body still thinking there's one more turn to fly into. But a roundabout makes my head spin and my stomach follow suit.

And if the roundabout is the jacket to that suit, the swing is the trousers and matching waistcoat.

Back and forth, back and forth. I'm not a pendulum, you know. I'm not a pocket watch to hypnotise the masses. My body is not tested, to my knowledge, to withstand g-force and impact like a hard drive is.

I'm just me.

Look, forget about the strains a rollercoaster puts on your body, ok? I never said I was consistent.

Swings and roundabouts. Back and forth and round and round. I'm almost moving my body to the way of the words as I say them. Catch you on the rebound, as Luck would say, when she's not (well, she is a Lady) off picking Lottery numbers. What you don't gain on the roundabout, you get back on the swing.

Yeah sure.

So, if I have bad luck one day, eventually I'll have good luck another? Oh, really?

See a penny, pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck. See two pence and... you end up in an asylum, haunted by the cries of the people who are dead because of you.

I almost said 'that you'd killed' - but I didn't. I know what I've done, though I don't know how. I'm, at least, pleased we don't have pockets in here. Nowhere for a sly two pence piece to hide.

But, hey-ho-daddy-o, it's off to Purgatory I go.

Swings swing and roundabouts go around. It is what it says on the tin. A bit like me. Name's Sin, remember? Sin-sin-siree, there's no luck for thee, as my dear old dad might have said.

He didn't, but he might have. Substitute 'luck' for 'place' and you're getting hotter.

You might think I'm often on what you could call 'a downer', but I'm not, not really. But if you spend so much time with nothing to contemplate other than your navel, you're bound to feel blue and... fluffy. Usually I'm one of the more upbeat people in here. I keep the peace and the pieces. Fixing the fragments of fragility. Everyone is allowed an off day, but I don't think this is mine.

I'm not down, I'm just chatting. Chewing the cloth. Unfortunately it's wool so it gets to my teeth.

So. Swings and roundabouts - they make me feel sick. But at least the bucket I throw up into would be half full.

Sin... Valentine's Day...

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day.

Lovers everywhere will be exchanging gifts of love and card in which they pour forth the words their hearts wish they could speak - except if a heart could speak it'd probably just gush blood, which would get messy, so it's potentially a good thing they actually can't...

Others will be buying cards and gifts for their other halves because they feel they have to, writing:

'Love

Me x'

and putting all their effort into doing only that.

The lovers will be feeling bubbles pop like exploding candy on your tongue whilst the 'others' will manage, at most, a perfunctory kiss. The first, in some cases, of the year. Cupid's arrow hit them years before, but the wound has healed now, leaving only scar tissue.

But still, tomorrow is Valentine's Day. The supermarkets and card shops will be resplendent with red as they try to thrust the seasonal gifts down your throat. Not, of course, that's it's entirely commercialised now, oh no... Some people, I know, refuse on principal to buy anything. They still show each other their love and don't need a piece of card or tat to profess such things. So many, though, will. Just because it raises a smile.

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow. Did I mention that? I think I did. Whether 'they' are lovers, 'others' or neither, they still have someone to share or not to share with. Out there they have that luxury.

In here, I have the orderlies. I have Connors. I have Bender, Mucous and more. I have myself.

I did have, almost, Caroline. Slush, grit and gristle put paid to that, if, indeed, there ever was a 'that'. Outside, once upon a time, I had my fiancée. The love of my life. My soulmate and best friend. But, she liked to take the bus.

The Number Five.

Love is... something dangled like a carrot to the donkey. You can stand at the window and see it peeking from beyond the horizon, a distant dot that you want to run up to and embrace, but you know you'll get a prick and electro-shock treatment if you do. For one such as I, who dances with the devil but has two left feet so keeps standing on his toes, love exists only to tantalise and tease. It haunts you in your padded cell, echoing your cries as if there was someone in there with you, sharing your pain.

But there isn't.

There's you.

And there's the pain.

A match made in... well, not heaven, that's for sure.

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow. Just saying...