Voter Profile: Dave Crockett, Salt Lake City, Utah

no no, i'm really really excited. it's good time of my life

you can't picture

this

the first time i saw my brother sniffing glue

Two or free days after my brother disappeared again, I thought I'd caught a glimpse of him through the trees behind the fence surrounding the grounds belonging to the house.

I went through the hole in the fence and made my way between the trees, towards where I thought I’d spotted him. He was there, propped against a tree, with his back to me, scrunching a carrier bag in his hand, swaying.

I called out his name. He turned his head, still holding on to the tree and looked through me. His long, blond hair was lank and greasy, his clothes grubby. The look in his eyes made my hair stand on end.

I knew what the bag was. I'd seen them before when accompanying my grandmother on her methodical searches of my brother's room. We'd go through all the cupboards, drawers and, eventually, one of us would find what we were looking for stashed inside the ottoman, under a pile of dirty clothes or at the back of the desk drawer. A brown glass jar with a metal cap. And the bags too.

My mother tried to keep it a secret from me but it was impossible to hide the fact that my brother would disappear regularly and no one knew where he’d gone and for how long. From the hushed conversations that would stop abruptly the moment I appeared in sight, I knew he was up to something sinister and one day I asked my grandmother, who was happy to fill me in. She would then take me along on her ransacking missions, believing, somewhat naively, that he’d stop if we took the gear away from him.

Never before have I actually seen my brother at it though so now, eye-to-eye with him and what was happening with him, I was glued to the spot, unable to move.

He turned around and started towards me. His upper body moved forward first, his arms in the air, looking for something to catch, then his legs followed reluctantly, right first, then left, each foot lifted with difficulty and then put down heavily. Suddenly he stumbled and fell over a root of a tree, partly covered by wet brown leaves. He landed on his knees and hands and stayed in that position for a few seconds, before slowly lifting his left hand, palm up, and inspecting bits of mud, leaves and pine needles stuck to it. He then sat on his feet, brushed the dirt off his hands and lifted himself gingerly using the same tree for support. I didn’t wait till he was back on his feet. I shoot through the thin forest, slaloming between the trees, reached the hole in the fence, squeezed through and run towards the back door of the house.

I heard Stefan's laughter coming from the TV room. I went in. The curtains were drawn closed, as usual, the light was dim and the whole room, with its green and gold wallpaper, its heavy, upholstered furniture and thick old carpet was like a warm cocoon in the otherwise cold and airy house. Stefan was sat in an armchair in the middle of the room, my mother on the sofa in the corner, reading a magazine. On the TV screen, Egon was showing off one of his contraptions to the other members of the Olsen gang.

'I saw him! Tomek!. He’s in the forest,' I blurted out.

'Shh,' said Stefan, without taking his eyes off the TV screen, still laughing. Then turned around and looked at my mother, ignoring me completely.

‘Do you want me to find him?' he asked her.

She looked back at him, her dark eyes widened. 'I don't know,' she said. Her face reminded me of a cow’s, her big, sad eyes staring at Stefan pleadingly, helplessly.

‘I’ll go find him,' he said and left the room.

hello. I am a service user

the reason I am starting this blog is that I never finish things. I write constantly while simultaneously doing numerous other things and I also tend to write more than one thing at any given time, adding to the ever longer list of diary entries/ poems/ ideas for short stories/ descriptions/ comments/ reviews. you name it. few of those ever get finished. they do get tinkered with and some get kinda finished though I always think they need more work. I can go on half-baking and forever planning to develop them pieces at some point but not if I have to publish something. it may strike someone as back to front reasoning but that's how it is. publishing as means to finishing. I'm planning to start by posting some pieces that I have kinda finished, then to continue posting more up-to-date stuff. oh and I'll be changing the already finished and posted stuff too, I'm afraid. nothing is ever finished as far as I'm concerned even this first post so