Hospital For Hurt Boys

I am participating in The Sketchbook Project 2013. In hindsight, I think it would have been better to do collage spreads throughout, but instead, in the first part of the sketchbook I decided to write my short story, "Hospital For Hurt Boys." I'll put the story in text at the end of this post.

I like the way a project like this makes me ravenous to finish it. For me, rushing helps me to make art I like because it means I don't over think things. It might be obvious that the first lot of pages were too calculated. I have to keep teaching myself to find the right balance between thinking about what I'm doing and not thinking about what I'm doing. When in doubt, scribble. You can always cover something rubbish.

I like the gloopy effect created by moving something whilst scanning

Hospital For Hurt Boys

I keep meeting ghost boys with projector eyes and lips that fall apart like newspaper in the rain. They are like envelopes that have been opened too fast. Torn and crumpled and thrown into the breeze. I collect them. I fold them neatly and smooth them over and hold their ripped pulp together in my hands. I fill their backs with tiny notes, written with the tip of my nose.

I illustrate them with empty ink. I kiss them on the forehead and stroke their hair, and leave them a trail of dripping words to melt away into the floorboards. To leave a faint stain.

One presented me with a thick veneer of stability and joy, only to slide over like a melted ice cream and flake into little pieces as the door closed behind him. Words had tumbled from him in the milky night but now not a single one could crawl from his cracked throat.

The second was almost the opposite. I lay motionless as thick and slippery words tumbled from him and pooled around us like a cold lake. He wanted to give me all of his worries, gift-wrapped and embellished with a list of flaws. I wanted to use him as a cushion.

It was then that I realised I was a hospital. I was a warm blanket and a bright light and a clean pair of rubber gloves. I was the place no-one wanted to be, but the best chance of recovery. And they would visit, wide-eyed and longing for a smell that smelled like home and not really knowing why they’d come, just desperate to be discharged. It was never long before they’d race through the automatic doors, hospital gown flapping away merrily in the wind. 

As a hospital, I suppose I’d never want to keep them for long.