The golden web

Trigger content-contains content concerning domestic violence and stalking.

It was a dark and dangerous day. The rain bulleted down in pellets. The rain is aiming at my brain Siouxsie imagined. Rain ammunition, firing, firing right inside my skull. Or maybe God is crying. I wonder?

The water thrummed on and on and Siouxsie sat there drowning in its waterfall cascade. She didn’t care and wondered if she could be washed clean inside.

Drown out the noise-ping a ping ping. Ding a ding ding ring a ting ting. There it was sat inside her pink backpack like a bomb. Tick tick tick. What would explode today?

Delete delete delete her mind splayed that message loud and clear.

And suddenly there he was, walking towards her. He came and sat down. Whisky sour his breath poured out. “Hey Siouxsie what are you doing?”

How do I say it. I want it/don’t want it to stop-delete as (in)appropriate. Will anyone love me if you don’t? Could you stop? Will it ever stop?

I want you to talk me round, I don’t want to be found.

His voice was thick and syrupy today. “Come on you don’t want to get pneumonia”.

But I do do do she insisted not out loud.

He reads me like a book. Read me then

"Do you want to hold onto my arm and we can walk together"?

“Okay” Siouxsie submitted blithely

He swigged from his amber liquid vial all the way home. He swerved along as she gripped onto his arm.

"I want you to stop following me" she said methodically as they neared her door.

He smeared a smile on his face, lightning quick then smashed her mouth with his fist.

Sprawled out Siouxsie knew this was why she had entered the rain corridor. She saw him swaggering off and went into a dream where all was clean and sunny. A huge winged creature softly stroked her face and wiped away tear upon tear upon tear. "I understand the pain" she said and held Siouxsie’s hand. It felt feather bright and light.

She awoke several hours later. In a hospital bed. The usual. A nurse came by and asked how she was doing. I feel really sick she said. The nurse who had a magnanimous kindness enfolding her, gave her painkillers.

Meanwhile, in a kingdom not so far away, on a grey pavement slab, lay Leonardo. He overplayed that punch as he lay sobbing. I can’t stop, I won’t stop following. It is my quest to woo this fair damsel.

He drank until he obliterated himself and entered the land of sleep.

In hospital Siouxsie understood that she needed to run. In a fairy tale, a fair prince would come and whisk her away. However Leonard was never the prince. He gaping teeth wound was a great reminder.

Siouxsie took the painkillers, saw the kaleidoscopic rainbow of her face and made no decision. The police came and went under the duress of a broken pane of shattered glass with no voice or desire for justice.

After several days Siouxsie returned to her flat. She found her phone and unfurled the avalanche of texts. He wrote powerfully, poetically. He was a Byronic bad prince poet of pain. The obsession as always drew her in. Whose obsession was fuelling whose? She knew he would hurt her when she hurt him by telling him to stop. The pain was part of the game. No pain no gain she mused.

Leonardo meanwhile was outside waiting and watching. He had taken flowers to her door. He knew she loved him and she was his. Every waking moment his mind raced with thoughts of her. Her crystal blue eyes, long beautiful hair, her ethereal grace and poise.

Siouxsie was the most perfect woman, who made everything sparkle. And she knew him so so well. When he was angry she understood and she heard his sorry and wanted to fix him. Only Siouxsie could make everything okay.

Siouxsie hid for two weeks. She read the messages over and over, mulling them like wine. Then the day came and she emerged into the light. There he was sat on the bench, with a feather in his hat. She looked the other way and walked to the shop.

When she returned home, there was a red rose outside her flat door. She picked it up and twirled it round and round then went in. She put it in a vase and sat staring at it.

The days went by. No more violence came, just the waiting, following, watching, flowers. Siouxsie embraced this. Noone knew, nobody cared. A life lived in the shadows.

Then one day something changed. Leonardo decided to leave. He walked to the local station and jumped on a train heading to Glasgow.

The silence ensued. Siouxsie waited and watched the window-nothing. An icy feeling gripped her heart and then a searing fiery pain like nothing ever known. She remembered all the encounters-replaying them over and over.

Siouxsie knew he would return. He loved her and she knew it. She started to pine like an alpine fir waiting for snow. Raw ragged pining.

The days turned into months and he did not return. Siouxsie made her way through life like this shuffling through. Staring at the texts helped-just a little. And so Sioxsie's world became a never ending story of he who would (never) return.

And what of Leonardo? Siouxsie was never to know that he found himself on the paved golden streets of Glasgow. A chance encounter with a similar soul led him to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where he told the tragic tale of his despair in loving women who never returned his love. Somehow, telling his story over and over seemed to break the wicked angry spell and he fled his prison.

Slowly the landscape changed and he threw away the fire bottle. He wrote a poem, tucked it in and threw it into the sea.

The message read: "Darling Siouxsie, I will always love you. You will never know how much. But I had to leave you, because I am a bad man. I am so sorry for all the hurt. Leonard".

I wish I could write a fairy tale ending but it isn't to be. Leonard's bottle never reached Siouxsie's eyes. She was trapped on her hamster wheel for the rest of her days.

Leonard's bottle message did reach someone though-a woman named Angel, who happened to be walking by the sea.