Erased
by David Martin
You took up residence on the dark side of things, a bolthole in a wind-flayed right angle of a tower block where pigeons and suicides tumbled blackly on the air currents. You set about drifting off from who you were on a tide of cheap whisky and bad poetry, graduating to recreational chemistry and the rhythms of pirate radio; ghost voices in the night which lead anywhere a sweaty mechanism of moving bodies can be summoned by beats and the burden of being a self surrendered to a ritual encoded in bass frequencies. You dissolve in the music as though someone has sawn off the top of your skull and let the universe flood in. But surfing the grey breakers of morning, you realise you're back in your head, stuck in a bony jar like a dried-out specimen flinching from the light, a metallic residue on your tongue, toxic and digital. The day stretches out ahead like threadbare carpets, the world worn thin. One of those desperate mornings you even cracked and rang her number, but no-one answered.
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Author's Note
Edited version posted Aug 2014. I revised this (slashed considerably!) following some helpful comments from Fictionaut readers, thanks.
I like this a LOT! It's like you're being yanked by the collar and forced to look at yourself.
Easier done than said. To get it "said," one finds ...
Successfully done, here! Fav'd it.
Seeing as you asked...
There is some strong writing here, which I think could be made even stronger by snipping out some of the descriptors. Be ruthless. Get rid of any word that doesn't pull its weight. Leave a little something to the reader's imagination and let the really strong stuff stand out.
Just one opinion, though.
This is pretty tight. *
"The day stretches out ahead like threadbare carpets"
Nice.
Thanks all for your comments, very much appreciated. @Sally - sound advice, cheers, I'll let it lie fallow for a month then come back to it with a magnifying glass and a chainsaw...
Pretty good all right. The tense going from past to present, and the 2nd person, gives it its walk-up start. Comparisons beginning with "like" are normally dime-a-dozen, but yours seem ok. Maybe if the piece was extended you'd have to find other ways of working your similes. But yeah.