room full of angels. short story included in Disco Biscuits; the internationally acclaimed and widely translated anthology of short stories by celebrated young authors.

as my stomach reached my throat i knew the dancefloor was the wrong place to be. i mean no matter what sort of state you’re in you somehow know when things aren’t going too well. and everything had been going so fuckin’ beautifully so far that it was impossible not to notice the difference. everything was moving faster but i was becoming slower inside it. i could stand but my legs wouldn’t dance anymore. i could only just nearly see. se with a suntan there’s two problems. first of all everyone thinks you’re feeling fine and second of all, no one wants to help you if you’re not fine because you’ve obviously been abroad and they’ve not. although if you’re pale and pasty looking everyone thinks you’re fucked up and they’re glad they don’t look as bad as you. buy they do. of course they do. they just can’t see themselves. they presume they look the same as they did the last time they saw themselves in a mirror. and how can i tell anyone anything anyway when i know that if i open my mouth even a tiny bit i’m going to puke all over anyone or anything in front of me. so i keep my mouth shut as long as i can. i’m cool. i know what’s going on. i’ve just got to get to a toilet or a corner or somewhere away from where i am now. and i’m getting past a blur of faces arms teeth scraped back hair and tight tops and i’m almost sure i’m going in the right direction and some fucker grabs me and hugs me and starts trying to dance with me. and she is fuckin’ beautiful man. i know she is and i know she will be tomorrow and i know that if i go to the toilet now i’ll never find her again and if i stay i swear i’m going to vomit down her front so i play hard to get and hope to the god in her pants that she’ll find me again and grab hold of me. i wriggle away from her with a tight downward smile and a two-eyed wind and wish i’d not eaten anything tonight today every. i can hear thumping banging grooving pulsing sounds all around me. i can feel it feel me. i’m inside it as it enters me and if i could have i would have stayed with…….i pass a security man and ask through my teeth, ‘toilet?’ and as he points through the crowd back to where i’ve just come from, i open my jaw in sheer disbelief and watch his face drop as my stomach empties itself over his tight black t-shirt and his massive arm that’s still pointing towards the toilet. i feel so much better now. my head’s about three stone lighter and my face feels fresh even though i’ve just wiped ten buckets of sweat from it on to my vest about five times in the last two seconds. fuck. the girl. where is she? i go back to where i think i thought i hoped she was and i feel myself flying backwards. am i tripping? i have to ask myself because this feels like a true out of body experience and i’ve only had a couple of duff pills. as i bump into people around me i realize that i’m being pulled backwards by a force much stronger that acid. this is not a good trip. this is a journey back to that bouncer i’d just puked on. somehow i’d totally forgotten all about him. and he hadn’t. so what the fuck do i do? first of all i tell him to fuck off and seeing as that doesn’t work i say ‘sorry man it’s the pills in here. they’ve more scag than e in them.’ which brings a smile to his face. he brings me up close to the smile on his face and laughs. the guy’s a psycho but it could be working in my favour. so i try to lose my fear of physical torture and smile back at him with psycho sicko eyes. and thank fuck i pretended that i was about to puke again and he left me to it. now i can feel the rush i’d been holding down. my eyes are popping and my brain’s bursting through the back of my skull and i’m ready to dance like a motherfucker and i see everything nothing at once and i don’t hear music i feel it absorb it sense it become it hold it in my soul and thank it so much for being there. and i’m so glad i’m here and not somewhere else. there is nowhere in the world i would rather be than in this head at this time and si comes bouncing towards me rocking his arms in the air going yes yes d’you want half of this? and i go what? and he sticks half a blotter in my half-open mouth and we are fuckin’ flying man and nothing but death can stop us. and no one tries to make conversation or look better than anyone else and i swear my eyebrows are going to float off my fuckin’ forehead and acid mixes so well with pills as long as you’re totally happy in the first place, and i cn’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t ever be happy anyway. so i’m staying on because someone up in that box is dropping tunes from heaven and i swear this huge hot bright black room is full of angels.

we’re in a car and i’m saying that that was the fuckin’ best best beast of a monster party and someone says that we’ve not got there yet and i’m laughing my tits off and drinking beers with everyone else and they’re all looking for tickets. are we? we are. we are going on somewhere and i’m a i’m i am a amyl. we’ve got amyl and we are filthy and the streetlights join up with each other. liquid light i say but some girl’s screaming her head off beside me and si goes it’s ok mate we’re nearly there and we’re there and someone wants money. i pull my hand out of my pocket and i see a pink twenty in between the fingers and they don’t look like mine but they must be. a thought flashes through my head but before i catch it it’s gone and there’s not that many people but the music’s good. no the music’s fuckin’ hard it is kickin’ and everyone here has everything they want and there’s more rooms full of people on cushions smoking drinking chatting chasing doing lines on the mantelpiece and we are here. every room has a new scene another set of decks another sound and air weighs more than me as i giggle across armies of arms legs lips and eyes. but that big room calls me back for louderharderfasterstronger things than mere social and physical pleasure. fuck knows what but i’ve got to be there really and the others are there and they must felt the same so we drink some vodka that fires through every inch of me until my toes have had some too. i see some guy in the toilet with his hand in his sock and pay twenty, split two pills in half and go looking for the others or trouble or both because no one’s had enough yet. so i go back and buy one more for later. but i’ll definitely save it for later because i’m not doing speed and katy left some charlie at ours last night so i have a wee line with frankie now anyway. frankie has a dedication to medication and proves it with some crystal powder in a bag for fives. we’re wetting ourselves in there when sarah climbs over the cubical with a rolled up note stuck in her nostril. how can we refuse her? the whole place is full when we get out and i realize that i’m in a queue for the cloakroom. no wonder it’s so fuckin’ packed and we’re getting ushered out politely into very bright sunlight and i wish i had her sunglasses so i whip them off her and she chases me across the street. how come you’re still alive i say, looking back at the streaming traffic going in bothe directions. give me my specs back or i’ll shag your best mate she says. did you say that? leave me your specs and i’ll shag you, i say, hoping dreaming that that’s what swhe means anyway. she snatches her sunglasses back and tells me there’s a mad wee scene ten minutes down the road if we’re hard enough, and we’re in someone’s back garden drinking mushroom tea deluxing to some delicious del mar with some very pierced up characters and their dogs. but they are cool as fuck with strangers so we fuck around there till it’s cold and our jackets are on. they ask us to stick around and smoke their skunk but i’ve got to bite that extra opink pierced tongue once before i leave so i tuck a half behind si’s teeth and he’ll wait for a while while we slip out the front upstairs to a shocking blue tidy serene little corner all regency stripes and teddy bears and fuck man this is someone’s little sister’s bedroom and i’m not that bothered now. in fact intimate physical contact seems like the worst idea ever so we lick some of frank’s powder anyway and i bite that tongue of her’s once, just once, because i’ve got to and we go back downstairs and si’s eyes are all over the shop. he just needs beer though so i head straight to a shop and can’t talk for laughing. the old guy at the counter finds it funny for a while but the novelty soon wears off and si’s on the floor tears streaming down his cheeks. i finally manage to hold it together long enough to ask for six stripe red six red stripe please. i know if i look at that guy’s face again i’ll lose it so i keep my head down and my hand covers my eyes because my ribs ache with laughter. we go back to that house but it’s not there any more. but it was there. maybe it’s the other way…where the fuck? where are we anyway? and we’re on the floor again, out of control pissing ourselves in front of a shiny red car sitting at the traffic lights. let’s get a bus, says tanya. and this freaks me out because i didn’t even know she was there. i haven’t seen her all night and yet there she is standing with a tin of red stripe in her hand giggling her wee head off. i’m chuffed to see her and she sort of doesn’t know what i’m talking about but neither of us give a fuck and we jump a bus back to hers to cane the rest of that charlie seeing as we love it so much. anyway there’s more pills back at hers and they’re pink sanyassin and it’s either that or valium and that’s better left till tomorrow. we’ve got six huge lines chopped right across two album covers, si’s found a bottle of jd in the kitchen and i start fancying tanya which is a nightmare because she’s got a huge boyfriend and the last thing either of us needs is each other so i breathe out and follow my nose along this never ending white line till i run out of air and carry on with my other nostril. now my head starts to rattle. all i want is more and more is all i want. my brain is sharpish and the jack daniels takes the edges off. tan slaps in a banging tape and we are all fresh as daisies ready to go again.