— Matt (Crav) Craven's Blog

Stump by Niall Griffiths: Book Illustrations

“Shakin like a shittin dog, one of em is – jactitation, the compulsive twitchin, like altho the holes he’s scratchin in his yellowed arms are more to do with the bile salts accumulating in his skin that his failin liver’s released, turnin him that horrible jaundiced shade. Pigments of bile. Early stages of cirrhosis. Not long to go, poor fucker. Get out of it while yer can, lad. But I know yeh won’t.”

“We admitted that we were powerless over our addictions, that our lives had become unmanageable. And that we would willingly surrender up any last shred of self-autonomy we felt we may have possessed to a judgmental and sanctimonious gobshite in a small smoky yellow room in St Helens and the vast and frightening organisation behind him. And we admitted not only that we were completely worthless but also that if we should ever revenge on this cession then we would become even less; not just shit, but parasites on that shit. The parasites on the shit of the parasites on that shit. But here’s ar white flag, all the fuckin same. Look at us, we’re waving it. With just one fuckin arm.”

“He came down into me garden again this morning, the fox, thee ahl fox with the one eye. Round about dawn, I mean the sky was still more light than day like, still a moon up there there was, an he came down off the mountain an through the hedge an into me garden, sniffed around the rabbit hutch for a bit then ate the cold bits of chip and fish batter I’d left out for him last night. Wolfed them as if he was starving, as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks, then cocked his leg an pissed on me cabbages an fucked off back through the hedge an back up again on to the mountain.”

” -Oh fuck. So strong, that fox stink. Can almost friggin taste it, like. Must’ve caused this only a few minutes ago, to leave his niff still lingerin like this. Squirting his musk everywhere, lettin everythin know that this was created by him, signing this mess an murder with his squirted scent. You left the fuckin hutch door unlocked, didn’t yeh?… I close an lock the hutch door pointlessly then go over to me cabbage run. Two humps; one is Charlie’s head, without face or ears. Thee other is Charlies body, all four feet an tail intact but the body just an empty, deflated furry bag as if all thee insides have been slurped out. Not much spilled blood at all. A bad smell. A stillness.”

“Packed, town is. All the people on their lunch breaks like, an students shoppin or driftin or doin wharrever the fuck it is that students generally do. When they’re not standin at cashpoint machines talkin far too loudly about film, that is. Or brayin like fuckin donkeys in the pubs. A Big Issue seller outside W.H. Smith’s is shoutin out the name of his mag an a couple of doors down, in the doorway of a derelict shop that used to be another bakery, sits the rugby-shirted hulk of Ikey Pritchard. Even from over the road I can kind of sense his presence, the solidarity of him, the volume of air he displaces.”

“Rebecca. Appearing late one night when the arguments were arriving, crisp-fried brains crunching into paranoia and despite the wrung-outness of her face, her face dark with her father’s Somalian blood and the dullness of her eyes and the heavy run make-up, he looked up at that face and just thought yes. And then there was just him and her bag of rocks and a bottle of vodka in some high flat somewhere and they began to think of themselves in the plural and she had many clients regular and trusted and he had a kind of pure acceptance and so there was money and so there was drink and the crate of cocaine from whichever country continued to feed the city’s needs and everything seemed always there so ready to hand, drugs and drink and sex and companionship it was all easy it was all sound but these were the good times and of course they couldn’t last.”

“Deeper, further into this country, lakes the same slaty shade as the clouds above and the mountains granite-spurred ans serrated on the flanks as if gnawed by some massive maw and the valleys between them sucking the eye through the deep troughs to where other swellings equal destabilise greyly the horizon, ripple and peak and spike and sawtooth the grey horizon and beyond that always the same light repeated, repeated to the abrupt escarpment of the sea at which this labouring car and the two inside it are aimed.”