By Holly Thomas 

Me and Darius went to the pub the other day and we wrote for fun. It’s so nice to get out your head and write something that isn’t for a product or a brand. We wrote a line or two each and swapped the page each time we felt it was time. I hope to do lots more of it over the next few months. We called it…

The Dispensing Department

Did you know there’s a place that I’ve never been? Shonda said it’s called the Dispensing Department. Walls like dead daffodils and pipes and carpet and floral footprints from last Autumn. If you want to get in you’ve got to pray. Not to the God, I worship or the God you worship, you understand me? You have to pray to the God that drives your feet when you’ve had too much to drink. The God that floats you when you start to sink. The God that blows wind at you hard like a hammer on a day you’ve already been hit. I love the dust it makes my eyes soft like when I’m in love.

After Shonda prayed to the God that knows what shakes you when you’re in love they let her in. I’m not sure how long she stayed. She told me she didn’t care if she never left. Because nothing would be the same again. They changed her very taste buds, so much so she thought she was gonna swallow her tongue every time she said hello. It was almost like sick but it was warm and rough. Warm but rough. Not the first and definitely not the last time. She asked me if it was okay to like it warm and rough or if that made her a half-formed thing. No longer welcome in a picnic world of cucumber finger sandwiches.

Facial hair had always interested her in the same way as the second floor of restaurants, invisible pens and the deliberate decor of pubs. But that’s not why we’re here, is it? You want to know about the dispensing department. To tell you the truth I don’t know much.