Excerpt: 'In Their Arms' by Thomas Moore

From 20:

• Leonardo DiCaprio circa Romeo and Juliet, wearing a Hawaiian style shirt, loading a revolver.
• A gif of the words DON’T BE FUCKING RUDE, written in purple bubble writing, floating on the page like they’re balanced on a wind.
• An anime character with big sad eyes, with pink petals falling around her face.
• A grainy photo of Kathleen Hanna, taken from an old fanzine, superimposed onto an animated background of floating kisses and love hearts.
• A picture of a watermelon.
• Re-Blog if you’re accepting anonymous asks from anyone about anything.
• A bottle of prescription medication that has been Photoshopped so that the label says Ketamine.
• Anonymous: I wish you lived closer because we could totally hang out.
• Dreamlifeofacutter: We need an escape plan! I wish I could just vanish!
• A photo of a stationary black butterfly.
• A film still: two people in the shower, what looks like a mans hand wrapped round a woman’s back with subtitles that say “If you don’t love me, you can still fuck me.”
• Cara Delevigne on a catwalk.
• Someone holding a Chanel bag.
• A close up photo of two pieces of sushi.
• A bitmap ice-cream cone.
• A photograph of a boy with a tattooed neck and a sweatshirt with a Nintendo logo on it laughing in front of a hazy city sunset.
• The words EPIC FAIL written in bitmap.
• A picture of the band Crystal Castles.
• A gif of the old MTV logo from the 1990s, with changing colours.
• Some tarot cards.
• A picture of a Vans skate shoe.
• Lindsay Lohan leaving a restaurant with friends.
• A stylised photo of cup of Starbucks coffee next to a Krispy Kreme donut tray.
• A sunset.
• Capital letters that read: MESSAGES PLEASE?
• A girl with lots of red lipstick, in an oversized grey sweatshirt with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it, leaning towards the camera and pulling an expression that looks like it’s meant to be half cute/half sexy and is/isn’t depending on whoever looks at it.
• A photograph of a Japanese woman with orangey/blonde hair. Someone has edited a rectangle of crass purple/orange/blue/green Spectrum style graphics that keep changing, and put it across the picture so that it blocks out her eyes.
• A close-up photograph of some pink Prozac tablets.
• A $100 note with a black and white photo of Nicki Minaj pasted over where the president’s head usually is.
• A picture of Tyler, The Creator holding a skateboard.
• A photorealist painting of a wolf and a waterfall.
• Tiny writing in italic red lettering that says: you give me goose bumps.
• A photo of a teenage boy with a floppy fringe pretending to be scared of and cower away from a life-size model of one of the ghosts from Pacman.
• Two teenage punks with heavily tattooed torsos, fucking, in black and white.
• Three inverted crosses.
• The words: DESTROY WHAT DESTROYS YOU superimposed onto some clouds.
• An animated gif of Bill Cosby. Someone has edited it together so it looks like he’s mouthing the words: DIE, CUNT.
• A shot from Beetlejuice, when Geena Davis’s character has transformed herself into a monster by stretching out her mouth and putting her eyes on her tongue.
• A photo of a cherry blossom tree.
• A renaissance painting.
• A stylish looking Japanese girl wearing huge headphones.
• An elaborately drawn Guro drawing of a girl whose face has been cut open down the middle so that her skull is exposed and blood is exploding out. Flies buzz about in the wound.
• A fried egg with the yolk Photoshopped green.
• Alice Glass from Crystal Castles wearing a Smiths t-shirt.
• The boy with the rabbit ears from Harmony Korine’s film Gummo, sitting on a bridge smoking.
• A photograph of Lindsay Lohan that looks like it was taken to promote the white jacket that she’s wearing. She’s standing side on and she’s holding the collar of the jacket and her mouth is open. She’s pouting a little and you can see her teeth.
• A gif of a nude bitmap woman sitting on the side of a bitmap bed smoking a cigarette and looking away from a nude bitmap man who is lying and trembling.
• A painting by the queer artist whose show I forgot to go to.
• 2014 SUXXX sprayed on a brick wall.
• A photo from a cruising bar under which someone has left a comment comparing it to a level from one of the DOOM video games. Someone else says LOL.
• Weeds growing round a punctured car tyre.
• A gif of a house burning down.

Excerpted from In Their Arms, by Thomas Moore, forthcoming from Rebel Satori Press, October 11th, 2016.