Mayhem - Issue One - March 2014
ISSN 2382-0322
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Stephen Henderson
Why I write
You wonder why I write like this. It’s not about trying to bury myself in some sappy
love story, or some high end fantasy. I can’t sit down and write detective fiction. I
can’t touch my keyboard without pouring out a dead rainbow. All of the browns, and
greys, the yellows, the blacks. This is my palate. So let me paint you a picture.
I have a picture on my wall. It hangs there in purple and red. It has greens and
oranges. It is there to fight off the black that seeps between the cracks on the stark
white paint. The black moves in the lines between each brick. The black slugs its way
down the wall. It crushes me. The black whispers to me: “Stupid.” It doesn’t want me
to write. It smoothers me. It tastes like it’s halfway between banana skin and marmite.
It oozes over my hands and forces my nails into my palms. My childhood flashes
before me. Moments of absolute misery, being told that I could be retarded because of
my hands. Why can’t you write, and draw and tie your shoelaces like all of the other
children? Because I was stupid. It slips in between each finger and one by one
undermines everything. Past and present. She doesn’t love you, they don’t like you,
it’s all a game of being polite. It forces my nails down harder and I let it. I let it
because I’m not worth the struggle.
My palms split under the pressure and blood rushes to meet the darkness. The
colours twist together but remain distinct. They weave through my fingers. Red wraps
itself around my knuckles and my soaks into my skin: “Punch.” It doesn’t want me to
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© Copyright remains with the individual author
Mayhem - Issue One - March 2014
ISSN 2382-0322
__________________________________________________________________________________
write either. It flashes me a new way to see the world. The world in all of its fucked
up glory. That keeps my tongue in check and makes me think that words aren’t
enough. It whispers to the marrow in my bones that if I don’t do something if I don’t
cause some kind of violent protest nobody will listen. Nobody will change. The red
hisses and rises through my veins towards my brain. People only listen when you do
something you don’t want to do. When you show them how angry you can be.
The red hisses and slithers away as a drop of green hits the top of my head. It
drips off the stairs above me. Slow, rhythmic drips. It sins directly in though my head
and fights the red off. Because in the end. It doesn’t matter. “Sleep” echoes around my
skull as the green, little by little lulls me away. It doesn’t want me to write. It wants
me to sit in front of a television, playing the latest video game and do nothing. It
wants me to watch countless porn videos and never step outside. It tells me there is no
point going to Uni, or going anywhere. All green does is tell me to sit, and rot and
chase little things of laziness. It leaks onto my brain and starts corroding it. Burning it
like acid. You don’t need a brain, you don’t need to write, you don’t need to do
anything. It twists itself around my mind and wrestles it away from anything I actually
want.
This is why I have to write. These three colours come at me from all angles. I
have to write to prove them wrong. I understand that your colours are different. That
your yellows and your pinks and your blues don’t compel you to do or think the way I
do. You can write about some other world, some other person. You can tell stories that
have nothing real in them, but I can’t. I can’t because every single fucking day of my
life is a struggle. A struggle to keep from going under all of the colours. They threaten
__________________________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright remains with the individual author
Mayhem - Issue One - March 2014
ISSN 2382-0322
__________________________________________________________________________________
to burn me, to smother me, to build up within my veins and make me explode. So if
you dare to ask me why I write what I write, you might find something that you don’t
like. You might find that I smile and joke and piss people off so that they don’t ask if
I’m feeling okay. You think you can put up a good act? One of my “friends” doesn’t
believe me when I tell them that I went through hell and back because I’m too happy.
I don’t have moments where I can slow down, or stop and think, because if I do I
don’t know what’s going to happen. If I do my skin will peel itself off and show you
all of my colours. It will show you what it truly means to be me. Why I don’t choose
to write a nice little story, why I don’t choose what I write at all. I write what I have to
write because if I don’t I’ll get swallowed whole.
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© Copyright remains with the individual author