work in progress

running away

It was five am and the entire house was silent. It was a dark heavy exhausted silence. No-one would wake for a long time from the sleep of the damned. Only now for the first time, wonderingly, did Cait notice that the house smelt. It smelled of hash and cigarettes and alcohol and of something chemical and nasty. Somehow when it was bursting with revellers and hot and noisy, Cait had not noticed. The drawing of Jim Morrison engulfed by flames on the wall looked like graffitti too in the cold green light of early morning. It usually looked decadent and thrilling. Morning was different. In the kitchen bodies and plates were scattered everywhere. There was a smell of cat. Next door, Ramona was chanting in her sleep again. Cait could just about hear the monotonous drone. Maybe the prince was right and it was a sign of divine possession but Cait thought it sounded demonic. The girls dressed hurriedly in silence. The two others in the room slelpt on. Unwakeable.

No-one must catch them, they had decided drunkenly last night. They would tell no-one. they would just run. Cait was a bit amazed that Niamh was still into it in the morning. She wanted to go, it was true, but run out on Krissy? Ok, she wasn't Krissy any more. She was this strange mystic sidekick to the prince. Still they had come over together and vowed to stick it out together. When Cait and Niamh had left home to live in the squat they had never guessed that they woul end up running away from there too. MInd you, when they had all solemenly sworn to stick together, they had also sworn never to touch any drugs except hash and alcohol. Krissy had broken that vow.

Cait was still tying her brown leather sandals around her feet when Niamh stood up and put her pack on her back. Ready? Cait scrambled up. They still had to make it down the stairs without falling through any of the holes and out the triple locked door. She took her eyeliner out, did her eyes and paused. Niamh nodded and swept out of the room. Cait went to the wall and with the eye pencil wrote "got to keep on keepin on, love corrina and marie". then she hurried out after Niamh. All the way to Kings Cross all Cait thought about was Ramona realising they were gone and turning back into small, fragile Maeve.