‘LISTLESS’ by Neal Darken Trellis.

BOOK EXTRACT

‘LISTLESS’ by Neal Darken Trellis

And it’s a story you might find tedious because God knows it’s tedious to me, but maybe a magazine will tell you to buy it and the magazine will be hype and cool and glossy with photos of young, six packed men in sailing hats and blazers and fake tan torso T shirts and like whatever, like I care, as the marijuana I exhale blows across the face of a girlfriend I just slept with and out across the freeway, heading for the sea and I look at her, trying hard to remember her name as the music it was cool to listen to in 1982 plays in the car and the girl I tell myself is called ‘Gel’ turns her blue eyes toward me and says something I recognise as language but instantly forget and the guy I want to have sex with calls about the drugs I said I’d sell him at the party and I get a creeping sense of unease as we drive into the Hills because nearby there’ll be a serial killer dismembering someone in a garage and I’m weirdly fascinated by the idea of it happening to me but none of us care or maybe we’re just teenagers pretending not to or maybe the malaise is deeper, more disturbing as Gel or is it ‘Hel’ asks ‘Who are you going to the party with?’

‘I’m going with you’ I tell her.

She nods, lights some heroin, takes a book I’ve been reading and throws it out of the car.

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