A new story  has been added on 21st March. It's title is After Violet. I was thinking of listing it as the first story on this page, but as it is the logical continuation of Violet, I had to make it second. Please scroll down and read it. Tell me what you think.
 
 
 

Violet
 

The morning is a mass of light, the night raped by light. The sun came up early, too early. Everything is white, I wish I could say violet. There is this fleeting sensation that if I say "violet" everything will be all right. My tongue is tied and all I can say is: "Fuck". The morning is already infested by profanity, words scorching the face of a beautiful child.
The floor is cold and wet to touch. My bare feet shuffle across it until the soles find a haven on the carpets, laid out by the table. The door is too far away and it suddenly seems that a lifetime of effort and trying won't be enough to reach that distant, mystic symbol of unexpressed wishes. I mumble "Fuck" again. Another rape of reality.
I make my way down the stairs and into the kitchen. It was renovated a couple of weeks ago and I still feel like a stranger here. Everything is too clean, too shiny and it vageuly reminds me of an operating room. Men with no faces, surgeons with no names. Only bright, shiny scalpels cutting away rapidly and efficiently, separating tissues, allowing the blood to flow freely. There is something scary and machine-like about scalpels. They do not seem connected to doctors using them. It's as if they have a will of their own, their ominous clinking in the tray, where they're put after they're used.
I make coffee. I boil water. I smoke a cigarette as I drink coffee. I add milk. I add sugar. I am efficient and exact in my actions. There is something about the morning coffee ritual that makes me uneasy. I find it too personal, too connected to something primal in our bodies. Sometimes I wish I could use two syringes, full of nicotine and caffeine, to saturate every cell and every tissue with harmful substances. I know it is not possible to do it. I am hooked to the ritual and am clinging to it with all my might.
Every drag on a cigarette is a new world of pain. I am slowly destroying my lungs, every cigarette is a prayer to some unidentifiable god, to send the cancer, the big C, to kill me slowly and painfully. My body is my enemy. Every cell in my body is a potential traitor. Waiting to evolve its DNA into new and fascinating shapes, that will procure new shapes, that will slowly escape control and create a cancerous growth. Kidneys and my bowels are prepared to give out, to activate neurons in my body, to transmit pain into my slowly dissolving brain. Your hair store your DNA, and information about all drugs you've been taking lately. For two months there are traces in your hair, indicating that you've smoked pot. Your body is a traitor, just another cogwheel in the invisible structure. Police can identify you as a drug addict on basis of one hair sample. My body is an efficient tool of repression, a secret agent I cannot escape, a private eye, observing my every action.
The ritual of the morning coffee is man's last stance against organised and ordered scheme of the universe. It is a sacrifice, but not to some entity, but a sacrifice of one's own body to oneself. How sweet is the smell of coffe, how dear is the pain that evolves from smoking cigarettes. These are the only things that show that you will die and be free of your body at last.
The morning is still a shining mass of bright light. "Violet," I say in a hoarse voice. "Violet." A truck blows its horn outside, and there is music on the radio. What I say makes no difference.
 

After Violet   (added 21st March, 2000)

I still sit here. I have always sat here. I sit here and wage war on myself. I struggle with the words, the names. It's obvious, it's hidden, the meaning, the naked truth, the bodies of small children bathing, smiling, laughing, splashing in the bathtub.
I sit here and try to identify my feelings. I speak of them, I say ťhateŤ, I say ťloveŤ. Trying to emphasise the meaning I speak too loud. I speak too much. It's the emptiness that scares me, I fear I am not here at all. I use words to describe the fragile reality around me. I scream the words, yell them out, whisper, write them down on a piece of paper. I crumple the piece of paper; the creases on it can't hide the words.
I pronounce the words, I intone the sentences. I nasalize, palatalise. I speak in a hoarse whisper, I shout, I am using irony, I repeat the words over and over again. I elide the words, I am careless, my pronunciation is sloppy, I use every trick in the book to get it right. I use elision and liaison. I even make my glottal stops. I aspirate; I aspirate to know everything there is to know. I know what a choix is.
I want to use every word in the dictionary to get it right. I use big words, I homogenise the meaning. I say ťFuckŤ and ťShitŤ all the time. I curse the reality already created by my harshly spoken words. Je ne sais pas. I speak French. Eppur si Muove. I speak Italian. I drop vowels, I glide diphthongs, I carefully pronounce triphthongs. I speak in Old Norse. I use Old English words to get it right. I miss the meaning.
I read and listen. I refuse to understand. I can't hear myself. Meaning always hovers just outside my reach and the words are just not enough. I draw pictures to illustrate, I make up words, new words, new worlds. Nothing is enough.
Words mark me. I am theirs. They are mine. I am branded. I am a brand. A brand of soap. I am clean. I use dirty words. I am a saint. The prepositional and nominal phrases make my life even harder than it is. I said reported speech. There is no answer. Reasonable. I command. Listen carefully! Imperative mood. I am in a bad mood. I have a voice. What else is there?
My words are real, I am real, my words do not create reality. I am babbling like a baby, I speak in the voice of a tired old college professor, I sermon like a bishop, I cry like a human. Sometimes I laugh, the words are funny, what they are saying is true, it's sad. The words are funny. The world has sharp teeth. The words are funny. I repeat myself. I lose coherence, my cohesive elements do not form molecules. I loathe deictic pointers, I am egocentric, I hate them pronouns, I don’t do no double negatives. Not me.
My grammatical structures are perfect. I use disjuncts, adjuncts, postmodifiers, premodifiers, verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and coordinative structures. My grammar is perfect, I strive to reach perfection, I am perfect. I dream. My dreams are words, and my words are my dreams. I am dreaming, I am talking. I speak therefore I am. I am. I am.
I use present continuous. I use present perfect. I use past continuos, I use past perfect. I use present simple, I use past simple. I use future. I use the future tenses. Future is uncertain. I am perfect, I am simple, I create myself with my tenses. I am perfect, I have always been perfect. I am simple. I am simple. I am talking continuously. I will be the verbs of the future. Future is in the verbs. I am, Have always been, I am being, I will be, I was. I am.
I nominalize, I adjectivize. I use passive. Passive is being used. Overused. It's funny. It's a pun, son. I am unoriginal. I am boring, I speak of myself all the time. Prepositions. Nothing to say. All is lost. Has always been that way. I am male. I have gender. I have sex. I have sex all the time. I like sex. I like numbers, I am countable, I have been counting my blessings.  I have grammatical categories. I am heavyweight. My words are welter.
I read books, I read newspapers, I watch television, I listen to music, I go to the movies, I talk to people, I talk to animals, I talk to trees, I am Shakespeare, I am Thomas Wolfe, I am William Faulkner, I am Dante, I am Michelangelo of words, I am the God.
I scream. I whisper. I talk. I write. I read. I am. I yell. I shout. I drive real fast. I hate. I love. I am. There is nothing else left. Whatever it is, it's in my words. My head has been served on the plate. I copy. I copyright. I break copyright rights. My words are the reality, my words shape the world, my life is in my words. I am.
I have nothing left to say. I have said everything. I still sit here. I have always sat here.
I use dictionaries. I use my vocabulary. I expand my dictionary. I use words like floccinaucinihilipilification. I cannot forget. I cannot recall. I remember Total Recall. I know all about stream of consciousness technique. I shit on that. I shat on that. Count the counteractions. Phrasal verbs and idioms. I am an idiot. I am a few cards short of a full deck. I am. I know not who I am. I say ťShut upŤ, ťStop itŤ, I even use punctuation. Everything is important, the importance of it all is overwhelming.
I sit here and no matter what I say I will still be sitting here. What I say makes no difference. I have always sat here. The coffee is getting cold. I cannot speak. My reality is in my words. I create my own reality. I am quiet. I speak too much and sometimes I do not speak at all. There is nothing left to say. I will sit here. Wait. Cry for me. Cry with me. Tears. T-e-a-r-s. A tear. Countable. Forget. Pray. Forget. Say it all over again. I am not saying anything. Not anymore. If I say something once, why say it again? Talking heads. I will go now.