Bleed It Out

Date: 12/25/2025

Ash has bagged herself a new boyfriend, so it seems. He’s tagging along with us on one of our adventures. I can’t say I’m enamoured by his presence. He’s more of a non-presence. A ghost hovering at the edge of the frame. A background extra who wandered into the wrong film. A mere speck in the corner of my vision. It surprises me — genuinely — how a woman as luminous and charismatic as Ash could ever end up with someone like… well. I’ve already forgotten his name. Let’s call him Dave. He looks like a Dave. Beige. Forgettable. A human sigh, slightly damp. We walk along the beach, the wind whipping our faces raw. “Isn’t this just breathtakingly beautiful?” Ash sighs, full-bodied, cinematic. I take it in. Brown sludge. No sea to speak of. Just a long stretch of sodden despair. Your standard British beach: industrial grief with screaming seagulls. The kind of place postcards apologise for. Nothing worth shouting from the cliffs about. I’ve always admired Ash’s ability to extract beauty from the uninspiring. It’s one of the many things I love about her. She sees magic where I see rot — or maybe she just refuses to look too closely. Dave lags behind, dragging his feet like a spare limb he hasn’t learned to control. That’s when I notice it. I have two left feet. Literally. Two identical left feet. Wrong. I try to walk, but the sand resists me, forcing me into loops. Every step curves back on itself. Progress becomes parody. Even my body refuses to move forwards. “Keep up!” Ash calls, bright and distant. We pass a toilet block. The stench is indescribable. Bars on the tiny windows — prison-style. Dave stares at it longingly, reverently. He’s desperate for a piss; I can tell by the way his whole body folds inwards, like a man trying to unexist his bladder. We walk straight past. His sigh dissolves into the wind. Unheard. Unacknowledged. He can piss himself. The thought tickles me. It also ignites something — a spark, a compulsion. A sudden, reckless urge to be seen. “Is it okay if I film you guys?” I ask. Now I’m a semi-famous film director. Obviously. The camera hangs around my neck like proof of worth. Like a trophy. Like a shield. Like something to hide behind. “That’s fine, love,” Ash says. “You shoot away.” We reach a seaside town — pastel houses, striped bunting flapping overhead, seagulls screaming over dropped chips like savages. It’s picturesque in a way that feels dangerous. Too clean. Too curated. Murder-town vibes. Another toilet block appears. This one is nicer. Less prison, more leisure-centre purgatory. Ash nods to Dave. “You may go wee-wees now!” He sprints off, dignity flapping behind him. As soon as he’s gone, I ask what I shouldn’t. “What do you see in him?” Ash throws her head back and laughs. “Oh, it’s only to piss Aksen off.” Aksen. Husband. Ex-husband. Schrödinger’s spouse. I notice she’s changed clothes. Now she’s wearing a top that barely negotiates with gravity. Her cleavage spills forwards aggressively, like it’s trying to join the conversation. My eyes keep falling there — traitorous, automatic. I hate myself a little for noticing. I’m suddenly unbearably thirsty. Parched. Desert-level thirst. My bottle holds only a few apologetic drops. “I’d better refill,” I say. “Go ahead,” Ash replies. “If you want to catch herpes.” What? I refill it anyway. Inside the bathroom, two men are showering together, soaping each other with exaggerated tenderness. Suds cling to them like whispers of modesty. I feel like I’ve walked into a low-budget porno with dodgy lighting and no exit sign. I grab my water and flee. When I return, Ash is gone. Her cleavage too. Vanished completely. Dave and his bladder have evaporated as well — though I can’t say I mourn either of them. In the middle of the road, a Royal Mail van squats at an impossible angle — half curb, half chaos. “Must be Charlotte,” I smile. Great driver. Criminal parker. She’s inside, face lit blue by her phone. Probably texting her boyfriend. I tap the window and she nearly jumps out of her skin. “Didn’t mean to frighten you.” I sit in the passenger seat while she narrates her day — work complaints, minor dramas, nothing that sticks. My brain checks out immediately and boards a shuttle to another galaxy. “Amanda?” she says. “Are you listening?” “Guilty,” I giggle. She knows I drift. “I’ve been planning my next short story.” The scene shifts. Not physically — spiritually. The way dreams do when they decide to sharpen their knives. I’m home. Mat is wrestling with the TV aerial — one of those old-fashioned wired contraptions — swearing under his breath. The screen flickers, then stabilises. White text scrolls down a blue background. My stomach drops. It’s my story. The one I wrote. The one I sent him. The one I assumed he’d ignored. “Watch this,” he says, eyes bright. “I turned it into a manga!” Curiosity curdles into horror. He’s butchered it. My story is unrecognisable — gutted, rearranged, sanitised. The characters are wrong. The tone is wrong. The heart is gone. It’s been skinned, hollowed out and paraded as improvement. “What have you done?” I whisper. “It’s better now,” he says. Calm. Certain. Menacing. Something caves in me. You’re not good enough, the air whispers. Maybe he’s right. Maybe this — all of it — is embarrassing. Maybe I should stop. Hang the camera in a dark cupboard. Let it collect dust. Let the wanting die quietly. The screen rolls away, taking my tragic story with it. I’m in a canteen. The air smells like microwavable punishment. Two coworkers laugh together in the corner. I don’t belong over there. I have nothing to offer that wouldn’t feel like an interruption. An intrusion. I sit alone. Empty table. Empty hands. I didn’t bring lunch. I didn’t bring money. I didn’t bring myself properly. I mean, I’m here. But I’m not. A man approaches. Relief flickers. He offers me a brownie. “It’s your birthday.” It isn’t. It was a month ago. But I take it anyway. Gratitude feels safer than correction. It’s perfect. Soft. Rich. Chewy but not too chewy. Exactly like mum’s. As he walks away, he clutches his stomach, groaning. Oh Great. Food Poisoning. The pain starts small, then spreads like wildfire. Something inside me kicks — furious, unrelenting. I stand too fast. The chair collapses. The table follows. Every face turns. I’m exposed. Humiliated. I want to disappear — to become like Dave. Peripheral. Unseen. My vision fractures. Faces blur and fall away like credits at the end of a bad film. They’re laughing. Chanting. You’re nothing. You’re no one. And Mat’s words return, sharp and final: “You’ll never amount to anything.” I look down. There are holes in me — neat, deliberate, like they were always meant to be there. The blood isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t rush. It seeps. Slow. Patient. Honest. It stains everything I tried to keep clean. They can all see it now — the wanting, the hurt, the part of me I kept hidden because it was too soft, too earnest, too much. No one reaches out. No one even flinches. For a moment, I consider pressing my hands to the wounds. Saying something clever. Making a joke. Apologising for the mess. For a moment, I consider acting like this hasn’t reached me at all. But I don’t. I let my arms fall to my sides. I let the blood do what it’s been trying to do all along. If being myself costs me safety, then I stop bargaining for it. I stop softening the edges. I stop pretending I’m unhurt. If this is the cost of being unseen — of loving something enough to make it — then I pay it in full. I don’t stop the blood from seeping out of me. I bleed it out.