The Budding Roses

Mono and the movies

Monday 18th August

Why God, did you send me such a remarkable gift, only to take it away so readily? Michael and David have left. Gone. Departed. They have finished school and have gone on holiday, and when they get back they go straight to University. Is this my punishment for losing Mrs Woodhouse's parrot or for my vigorous, clandestine, masturbation?

Whatever the reason I'm devastated; and what about Natasha, how is she going to cope, especially since she struggled so when the band split up. I worry that this latest heartbreak may be the tipping point. But at least we can take comfort from each other; we can share our hurt together.

'You've got to remember that they'll be back during the holidays,' Natasha is stronger than I'd imagined, 'do you like this colour?' She flashed a claw of talons dipped in fountain pen blue, 'it's Hard Candy and really rare. I practically had to sell my grandma's ass to find it.'

'But the next holiday is so far away,' I ignored her, unable to concentrate on trivialities such as nail polish or the illegal trade of one's family members, 'and what if they get girlfriends at University? What if they have sex with them? I can't bear to think of another girl being lucky enough to touch either Michael or David. I like to think that they're saving themselves for us, just like I'm doing for them.' I thrust my head in to a plump pillow, kicking up a mess of Mark Owen's head, the centre piece of her neatly ironed bed sheets.

'Do you know what we need?' How can she smile so excitedly at such a fundamentally awful time?

'What?' I fail to imagine that we need anything other than the safe return of Michael and David.

'We need to get out there.'

'Out where?'

'Out there, in to the big bad world. It's time to go and meet some other boys.'

Tuesday 19th August

Natasha persists with the belief that we should take our minds off things, or "get over it and move on", as she said rather cruelly. But at such a low ebb I have relented, an easy target. Still how can I have let her bring me here, to this tentacle riddled abyss, to the hell mouth of the teen night at Brambles nightclub?

'There are gonna be so many hot boys, you won't know which one to choose!' She had announced confidently.

But walking in to that sweaty rotten hole, a cesspit bearing the name of a disco, it reminded me of that most sordid of scenes in Dirty Dancing, you know, when Baby is about to enter Patrick Swayze's secret party; outside it's a safe tropical paradise - okay in our case that meant standing under a rain drenched canopy outside Thurstons - but inside it's the underbelly of the earth, a black hole of lurid debauchery. So foul watching all those greasy bodies writhing together, the humidity only further fuelling their animalistic tendencies, and like a praying mantis, waiting to bite off her partners head lurked Natasha. This is what she had planned to do. It's what she meant when she said it's what we "needed". Well I can tell you right now that I do not need to bite off anyone's head in order to dig myself out of this hot boy black hole, and especially not a head belonging to one of the spotty, snotty weasels that had filled the room.

I sipped at my straw, gulping down the bottle of Dandelion and Burdock which relieved the parched acrid taste of my mouth, and watched.

Driven by what can only have been her most primitive instinct, Natasha had taken to circling the room, pointing at every fifth dweeb she set her swirling eyes upon, summoning them to her lair. Her laser beam glare reached Liam Payne, kerpow! As his blood drained he mouthed the word "toilet".

'Go fast if you want to live,' I laughed as he ran. He had made a lucky escape. But just what did Natasha plan to do with all the ugly specimens she had collected, all trapped like helpless flies meshed within the sticky web of their doom, waiting for the spider to appear? As she curled her index finger upwards the first lemming stepped forward.