In this You Are Here commission, Ren Erickson takes us for a tense walk through the past, exploring the things we remember and the things we wish we could forget.
You Are Here – peer to peer survivor writing – was Jet Moon’s second survivor writer’s platform; building on the first: Playing With Fire, which took place in 2021. You Are Here offers an expanded series of workshops, a survivor writer’s group, via Spread The Word, and a series of interviews for the Wellcome Collection archives.
Content warnings: this story covers death, loss of consciousness, asphyxiation, mentioned child abuse, homophobic language, implied sexual assault and transphobia.
Listen along as you read
The ritual for it goes like this (C) Ren Erickson 2024
Sit on the floor. This one is nicer than most, plush rug and polished wood beneath it. Wiggle toes to ground the body.
Rub on the balm. Pulse points of the wrists and temples. Tincture of old lush shampoo bar melted down with fresh, real olive oil from auntie, with oregano from Petros’ struggling supermarket plant, with lavender from the park. The smell lingers in your skin, in your nose, in your throat. It should. It’s there to tether you.
Limber up the hands, the neck. Remember the writing on your left hand that says ‘wake up.’
Close eyes. Breathe deep. The air and space of this room.
The planes of her face, the girl from the photo. Ignore the energy around you.
Search the darkness of your eyelids. Past the thrum of your blood. Past light patterns. Into the nothing there.
Feel that dip in the middle of your head. That pulling feeling.
Your head will slump.
You’ll feel the weight of something weightless, formless, pull across you like slipping underwater.
Your heart will beat slower if you have done this correctly. Moving your body will be difficult if you can still control it.
Scan for the irritation, the sorrow, the grief. The rage.
By casting your light on what you find, you offer yourself up as a listener. As a projector.
“Hello,” Peace thinks. “I speak your language, if anyone wants to talk.”
There’s probably nothing. It’s been so long, after all.
The other side of this house looks more or less the same. Same layout, no immediate inhabitants.
Just Peace and his usual company.
“She’s not telling you the whole truth,” his guide offers, like he’s being so helpful. His eyes glint in the darkness. It’s almost a relief he’s here.
Peace had figured as much. “Is there even anyone still here?”
“Damn, kid, you’re not even going to try and do this one yourself?” He’s as flippant as ever, but his presence is a comforting one. He’s sharp angles and stark contrasts, crisper whites and blacks than the space around him.
The shadow man sits on the floor, mirroring Peace, but he rests his head on one hand like a child would. The skin around his eyes, his mouth, crinkle in a way that’s so familiar.
“You’re not taking care of yourself, sweetpea. You’re all skin and bone again,” he fusses, and his hand in Peace’s hair, mussing it affectionately, feels solid and warm.
Anyone else who dropped a cutesy nickname would get cussed out.
This is different. This is someone he trusts.
This is someone he absolutely should not trust.
“There’s a girl –”
“Oh, the girlfriend? Did it work out okay?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he mumbles.
“How’s work?”
“I know you watch me,” Peace mumbles. “You don’t need to preten–’”
The atmosphere shifts. The stable architecture of the room, the living room, gone. Replacing the grand fireplace, there’s a kaleidoscopic explosion of colour and energy, enough to hurt his eyes– but his eyes are closed, he can’t forget, he’s not here, he’s–
Those stretching, warping beams of light look like hands. That faint whistling, steam from a kettle, screams of a thousand anguished souls, those voices are asking for his help. Respite.
Peace.
The un-shape, untethered, un-dimensioned impossibly formed fury edges closer, and Peace swears he can see a mouth in it. A maw opening in the bright-light pitch-black.
It’s trying to talk to him.
“No, we’re not opening that door,” his guide says, and from his tone it’s clear this isn’t a normal occupant of this plane.
“Hey. So what the fuck is that?” Peace asks, ready to pinch the sharpie writing on his hand. To get the fuck out of here.
Christina.
It knows her name. How does it know her name? One of those un-hands, the claws made of everything and nothing, reaches out to Peace and–
dad slumped limp on the carpet
a good hard smack for taking food out of the fridge
be nice and quiet, it’ll be our secret
“I’d just feel more comfortable if the dyke wasn’t using the changing rooms”
another faceless whoever on top telling him he’s “pretty for a boy”
can’t rule out mechanical brain injury, given his cognitive problems
It’s too much. It hurts too much. It knows him. It’s always known him.
He’s struggling to stay up. Things aren’t making sense. The edges of things are too soft, blurred, hard to grasp. It’s all going diagonal, lurching seasickness. His eyes feel sticky. His airways are clogged, as he gasps in bursts of air to calm himself.
How long has he been under? It doesn’t usually affect him like this, this suffocating, this deafening.
“You need to lay down. Here, sweetpea.”
“No, I don’t, I’ll–”
Those hands, strong and hard, on his shoulders pin him and press down.
And Peace falls.
Falls into tar, into syrup, into wax.
Falls into clinging threads of burning sugar, strangling, claustrophobic as they drape across him.
He opens his mouth to fight for air and what fills his lungs feels like dust ground out of scabs. It’s a mistake. He can’t breathe here. Not anymore.
That man’s eyes pierce into him, even through the film of it, through the cloying canopy of melted plastic. He can’t push through it, can’t move a muscle, can’t inhale.
Peace can feel his heart pounding so hard, all the way through him, until all of a sudden it isn’t.
About the author
Ren Erickson is an autistic and gay trans person who grew up in Camden Market. His work focuses on– hang on, this is a bit formal. I really enjoy dark or regressive themes, and surrealism. I find these areas of fiction most useful for exploring my own experiences. My biggest literary influences are Chuck Palahniuk, Terry Pratchett and Allen Ginsberg. The writer’s group gave me the opportunity to develop my upcoming queer horror book and encouraged me to utilise my own disability as a framework for my protagonist Peace’s urban magic.
I have a neurological disability and I’m ferociously political in the way that most disabled people have to be these days. I feed my neighbourhood foxes and crows, and you can find me at my local queer-owned coffee shop writing something atrocious for the next open mic night.