• Velvety blackness smothered London as it lay asleep on this cold, autumn night. The only light was that of the moon and the stars mostly hidden by wispy clouds, and the burning tip of Kitty’s cigarette as she sucked the sweet poison through its filter. The numbing of the coldness that had slowly crept down the sleeves of her coat and down the back of her neck made her shiver. It was strangely cold for the middle of summer. She glanced at the dismal face of her watch to check the time, and thought about how she’d got it in the first place. It was hideous; with a face almost as big as her wrist, the shape of a square with no digits and no way of really reading the time, dripping with crystal-shaped glass droplets- most of which had fallen out years ago and were just jangling around under the glass. The frame was 20 carat gold, and had green daisies with emeralds for petals littering its surface. No wonder she wore long sleeves, she thought.
    It had been a present from her mother eight years ago, and kitty knew she’d have been happy to see her wear it, since it was probably the most expensive present she got from her mum since the rocking horse when she was six, which she still had even though the weakened wood had collapsed in the middle. Her dad had stupidly left it in the damp loft and it had rotted. She still insisted on keeping it. Kitty still remembered her sixth birthday; she remembered smoothing her tiny hands over the slick white horse, the smell of the new varnish, how it felt against her face, and the hollowness inside its chest.
    Whenever her mum went on a long school trip with her pupils for a few weeks, or for teacher training, Kitty would go into her room, close the door, and stroke the horses face until her mother returned, saying things like “There there, she will be home soon. She’ll be back, don’t worry.” Eventually the paint on the horses face began to peel off, and no paint could ever fix the scars that ran deep into the horse’s cheeks from where she’d scored her fingernails down its perfect skin with fury of her mother’s late returns.
    But when Kitty’s mother fell ill, her dad put the horse in their attic and told kitty that her mother was going to be away for some time and when she came back he’d give kitty back her horse. A few years after that, when Kitty’s mother died, she ran to the attic and fetched the horse. She discovered that all the beautiful white paint had cracked like chapped skin and that the horse’s body was rotten from a leak in the roof. Its body was stained with black rot and her main was falling out. Either pretending not to notice or being too distraught to care at all, she carried it to her room and sobbed into the horses main. She stroked her face on its jagged body and splinters slid under the tender skin on the palms of her hands and on her cheeks. She kissed its neck until all the paint fell off like white rose petals, and carried on kissing until she caught her lip on so many splinters she couldn’t carry on. Her dad spent a long time picking all the splinters out with a pair of tweezers. He shouted at her saying that her mother’s death was hard on all of them; her dad AND her two brothers. He told her it wasn’t always about her and he said “I wish you’d grow up. You’ll get nowhere from being clingy like that. I don’t want any more drama out of you tonight. Understand?” As he glared at her, she felt something inside her change. She stood tall in front of her father, the man who she had always found so intimidating, and said “I wish you’d shut up sometimes.” She didn’t need to wait for his reaction. As far as she was concerned, this conversation was over. She turned around and went up the stairs and to her bedroom where she tucked herself under the duvet and cried until she was so weary she could hardly keep her eyes open. “I hate it when you know that nothing is ever going to be how it was. I can feel it changing,” She thought whilst drifting toward unconsciousness “the world is shifting under my feet. I can’t balance, and I’m scared. I miss you, mom.”
    Kitty shivered. She’d gotten carried away with her thoughts. Her mind was such a dangerous place full of boundaries and restricted areas. She hated thinking about her mum. She pulled her sleeve down and took another drag on her cigarette. She didn’t know what the time was, but she didn’t want to look at her watch again; it made the hollow void in her heart ache longingly for her mother’s voice and her beautiful smile. Thinking about all the things she missed about her mother felt like salt in her gaping wound and made it hard for her to breathe at all.
    She buried her hand deep into the deep pocket of her black coat and pulled out her mobile to check the time in the top right hand corner – 3am. s**t. The last bus went four hours ago. It was a long walk home, and she took a final drag of her cigarette and flicked it into the fast flowing river, and it made a satisfying “Tsss...” noise as the hot ash was swallowed by the thick, viscous water which looked like tar in such dim light. She stood up from her wooden bench by the river bank, and followed the blackness for what seemed like endless nights stacked side by side to an eternity. She wondered for a moment if the sun had burned out, and felt great relief when the horizon lightened and the friendly light of dawn cracked and coloured the dark velvet sky to a silky pink. She reached home just after five thirty. An array of birds were singing their sweet songs, but at a point there were so many that their noises turned bitter and she was scared she would burst and pluck them from their branches, one by one, and chew on their small heads until they stopped making any noise at all.
    She finally reached her street. It wasn’t one of the friendliest looking places in London, but it was home. And she felt a wave of tiredness finally reach her at the thought of her falling forward onto her warm, spongy mattress and being swallowed by her blanket, sinking further and further into comfort and inner peace. Her eyes half open and with a dopey smile on her face at the sight of her front door, her mind buzzed with emptiness like a blank TV screen and the idea of sleep made the soggy biscuit of her brain dipped in the tea of promised sleep become more and more likely to just fall into the mug of unconsciousness. Only then did she realize how none of her thoughts were making sense... and she pulled the key from the left pocket of her tight white canvas trousers and slipped it smoothly into the lock and twisted. The smell of Cinnamon and the detergent that her mom had favored oh so much smacked her in the face as she oozed through the front door, her body only a mass of putty, like her bones had melted into nothingness. She sighed with a mixture of relief and distress of being in the house haunted by memories she dared not touch. “Home sweet home” she whispered to herself and she closed the door and made her way up the stairs.
    She entered her bedroom and closed the door behind her; she sat on her bed by the window and glanced at her rocking horse, and admired how the imperfections made it so much more beautiful. She smiled a blissful smile to herself and lay down on her bed and forgot about her mother, her horse, and even how uncomfortable sleeping in her heels was. Her biscuit brain welcomed the ocean of unconsciousness with open arms and sucked it all up as she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.