On Mental Health & Writing

 This week has been a bad one. I've struggled with my mental health since last weekend - anxiety, depression, all that lovely stuff. I won't go into any details, but I've just felt surrounded by death, by endings, and the state of the world right now has fed into all that darkness and negativity and pushed me down into a big black hole. 

On the plus side, I feel a lot better today. I feel as if I can put last week behind me and push forward. And I think I know the reason why.

I wrote.

I wrote my way out of that big black hole.

It sounds simple, but it isn't. Writing these days doesn't come easily to me. When it does come, though, it's like a gift.

I've never really excelled at anything in life - always been a bit of a plodder, "just about good enough" at most things but never quite mastering anything. I'm good at my job, I think I'm an okay husband and father (I have my flaws, of course, as we all do), but I'm not "excellent" at any of those things. Just decent. Okay, Unexceptional.

Then there's the writing.

Writing is the one thing I feel I am good at - an area where I have excelled. My work isn't commercially successful, I haven't won any major awards, and it gets ignored in most general discussions of horror literature. But none of that matters. Writing is my attempt at making sense of the world. My writing has integrity, and, to me, that's the only thing that matters. Art has to be honest or it isn't art at all. Which is fine. I enjoy mindless a bit of pablum as much as the next person, but even though I consume it (and love it and champion it and need it in my life), I don't want to create it. 

So last week, I managed to write my way out of a bad place. The story I came up with is incredibly fucking dark, but it means something. It's valid. It's personal. It did not exist in the world before I created it. That means something. It's valuable.

White Rabbit Story - June 2025

 

I Am Always Hungry; I Must Always Be Fed 

 

 This morning when I woke up, my smartphone had a mouth.

The device was where I always left it at night – on a small custom-made stand on my bedside cabinet, the charging cable trailing to the wall socket. Where the screen used to be, there was a pair of thin, gaping lips, two rows of small white teeth, and a fat, wet tongue. At first, I thought the mouth was open in a silent scream. Then I realised it might simply be hungry.

I got dressed quickly, not bothering to shower, all the while trying not to glance at the thing on the bedside cabinet. It didn’t have any eyes but I could feel it watching me. I’m not quite sure how that works, but not much of this situation made any kind of sense.

                Downstairs, I fed the mouth a spoonful of my breakfast cereal – the expensive stuff I like but can’t afford to buy very often. The mouth closed and slowly began to chew. After a short while, it stopped chewing and opened again, as if on a hinge.

                I wasn’t quite sure what to do next, so I started washing the dishes and putting away the crockery and utensils, pretending that this was just another normal day.

                Later that morning, as I sat in front of the muted television, trying to come to terms with this new reality, the smartphone began to slap its lips. It was a horrible sound, a thick, wet smacking that began to irritate me. I ignored it for as long as I could but it didn’t take long before I needed to do something.

                I picked up the smartphone and looked closely at the mouth, inspecting it properly for the first time. The tongue was fat and pale; the lips were working away as if it were some kind of nightmarish battery-powered children’s toy.

I went through into the kitchen and opened a bag of popcorn. Cheap stuff, a couple of months past its sell-by date. I didn’t think the smartphone would mind.

                Back in front of the television, I flicked popcorn idly into the open mouth, watching in silence as it wolfed down the snack.

                In hardly any time at all, it had consumed the whole bag.

                The meal kept it quiet for a while, but eventually it began to make more sounds – a weird, inchoate whining, as if it were trying to formulate language and speak to me. Panic gripped me. The last thing I wanted was for this thing to start spewing out words.

                I went back to the kitchen to look for more food.

                It was the end of the month. Pay day wasn’t until another few days. The cupboards were poorly stocked. The fridge was near empty. I managed to grab a few things: stale bread, half a tin of baked beans, a couple of raw sausages. Not enough to satiate the smartphone but, I hoped, enough to keep it quiet for a while.

                Now, as I sit here writing it all down, I can hear the smartphone singing. This has been going on for hours. Its song is wordless; it is a song of perpetual hunger.

                I’ve stuffed it with every edible scrap I have in the house, but it isn’t enough. It won’t ever be enough.

The smartphone hungers for something else; something I’m not sure I even have left to give. A thing that I probably ran out of years ago, after a lifetime of watching screens, and having them watch me back: the television that acted as a babysitter when I was a child, the screens of the videogames that stole my teenage years, cinema screens, computer screens…and now this, a smartphone with a mouth and a terrible agenda of its own.

But I have no choice. I must try to feed it or this horrible song might never end. The secret song that plays behind the screen – behind all the screens in the world.

                I have no choice at all.

                Because the mouth is hungry; it must be fed.

 

 

© Gary McMahon,

3 June 2025

 

White Rabbit Story - May 2025

 Rear-view

There was a time many years ago, when I was still searching for some kind of purpose in my life, that I'd often drive long distances late at night. Coasting along in the darkness with no direction in mind. Letting the world and the darkness pass over and through me as I travelled unfamiliar routes and weird little side roads.

Sometimes, if there was no other traffic and the road was long and straight, I'd switch off my headlights and think about nothing. Close my eyes and see how long it took me before the nothing became a something and the fear and the panic kicked in to make me open them again. It always took longer than I expected. 

Those moments - eyes pressed shut, hands gripping the wheel, the blacktop hymn of rubber tyres on Tarmac throbbing too-loud in my ears - felt holy somehow, as if I was nearing some kind of grace note in the ongoing symphony of my life. 

My little journeys into the Greater Darkness, as I thought of them, served a purpose, but I was never sure what it was. Afterwards, I'd feel richer, more alive; a fuller person than before. Mouth dry. Palms sweaty. Legs cramping. Strange images were burnt onto the back of my eyes: bleached white animal shapes, the silhouette of a solitary dancing figure, a spinning black hole like a whirlpool inside my head.

The experience was overwhelming in its purity.

Last night I did it again.

For the first time in decades.

When I opened my eyes, there was blood on my windscreen. I had not felt an impact; the ride had been smooth and quiet as I coasted along the empty night-time motorway. The blood was smeared; it ran slowly down the glass like thickened rain. I didn't dare look in the rearview mirror to see what lay behind me.

 © Gary McMahon, 2025

White Rabbit Story - April 2025

 

The Geology of Chance

 

Once he had been stone but now, he was flesh. He had no memory of the transformation, of moving from one state to another; just a sense of having been inert, solid, for centuries.

This pliant new body moved with ease, if not grace – not yet. He slithered on his belly along the dry riverbed and then up the bank, slowly rising to his unfamiliar feet as he approached the tree line. His legs ached, the muscles quivering. He flexed his fists as he walked, feeling the hidden strength of the bones in his hands.

It would do, this body. It would suffice.

          Birds sang; small land animals darted through the ferns and the between exposed roots of trees. Insects shimmered in the sunlight, rare jewels to be prized but never taken.

          He walked deeper into the dense forest, enjoying the shade, looking up to see the sunlight making bright patterns in the dripping canopy above. The sounds, the smells, the sights…all were new to him in this form.

          After what seemed like a long time, he came to a small clearing. A single large rock sat at its centre. He approached the rock and stood before it, caressing its cold surface with open hands and an open heart. He thought about how long he had sat there, half buried in the earth, and how it felt to be free – to be able to move from place to place, point to point, and never have to be immobile again.

          How it felt to be able to leave.

          The rock twitched.

He smiled.

          He felt some of his lifeforce leaving his body, flowing into the rock.

          The rock turned, squirmed, and sat up, unfolding long limbs and a slender torso. Stretching upwards, reaching towards the light, she smiled and nodded in greeting.

He took her hand. It was warm; so much warmer than stone.

Together they walked deeper into the rainforest in search of their children.

© Gary McMahon, 2025

White Rabbit Story - March 2025.

Let's Pretend

South Shields is a coastal town in the north east of England. There is a street there renowned for its Indian Restaurants. Ocean Road, it’s called. The locals are proud of this street – it has been at the centre of Indian cuisine in the area for decades.

Let’s pretend there is a small, nondescript restaurant half way along a side street off Ocean Road that nobody can ever tell you the name of. This is either because the name changes too often, or perhaps it simply doesn’t have one. The place is rarely open; its hours are random and unknowable. I don’t know anybody who claims to have eaten there.

Let us agree, you and I, that at the rear of this restaurant there is a small cobbled yard, enclosed by high walls topped with daggers of broken glass set in concrete – an outdated, and now illegal, security method.

Let’s also imagine that the yard is full of fly-tipped rubbish: old, damaged furniture, obsolete-model television sets with their screens smashed in, rusting bicycle frames, mysterious tools with vital parts missing. The detritus forms a loose circle, almost a barrier, and at its centre there lies a dirty mattress covered in dark stains.

Something else to consider; another little flight of fancy:

At night, the mattress moves. It gently inflates, then deflates with a regular rhythm, and if one were to lean in close, one might hear what could be described as the sound of air passing through clogged pipes. If one were to examine the mattress closely, it might be said to have a peculiar shape: like that of a giant human lung.

I’ve heard that one night many years ago, a homeless man somehow managed to enter the yard. He lay down on the mattress to rest. He wasn’t there the next morning, and the stains on the mattress were darker, and wet. One of them resembled a bearded face, not unlike the mark on the famous shroud of Turin.

This is what I’ve heard, but I don’t like to listen to rumours.

Stories like that can get a person in trouble.

The guy who told me this story hasn’t been seen for sixteen months. I’d like to pretend there isn’t a new, somewhat familiar stain on that mattress, but I’m willing to bet there is.

Not that I’m prepared to go and look.

Oh, no, not me.

Not that.

It’s enough for me to walk past that glass-topped wall, listening to the sound like phlegmy breathing that comes from the other side. Keep on walking; never stop. Wishing that sixteen months ago my brother hadn’t told me what he suspected. Hoping that he didn’t really see it for himself. Imagining that he’s safe and sound, on a long trip somewhere, and he’ll be back soon. Very soon.

Until then, I’ll go on pretending.

 

© Gary McMahon, 2025

Change is Good

Not that anyone noticed my recent absence from Facebook, but lately I've made a few lifestyle changes that are greatly improving my physical and mental health: 

Eliminate sugar and ultra processed foods from my diet, eat clean, reduce calories, increase protien; focus on exercise (weights, karate, HIIT), cut back on alcohol; spend increasingly less time on social media and eventually quit, read more, write more. Be more present in the real world.

I'm keeping my Facebook account going, but only because it's often a great resource for book and film recommendations. I plan to remain active on Instagram for the time being, and will continue update my film diary on Letterboxd.

June Already?

 A few weeks ago, I caught covid. It was my second time (the last time was just after the second lockdown, which feels like a lifetime ago). This time it hit me pretty hard: a week in bed, and 4 weeks later, I'm still recovering. 

So the writing has stalled yet again. 

I'm hoping to get back to it this week. I have two stories to polish and send off to editors, a novelette to finish, and another story to give a final read through before it's ready to email to the editor who commissioned it.

I also need to get back to the novel. It's been so long since I finished my last novel that I can't even remember when it was. Again, it feels like a lifetime ago. I still have the urge to write, to create stories, so I'm hoping that will sustain me through to the end of this project.

As always, we'll see. We'll see.