Insanity - or forbidden love?

I touched the loom, ran my fingers over the dusty surface. The varnish was cracked and rough, but I could tell the wood underneath was still as fresh and hard as ever.

That loom had been my best friend since childhood, but also somehow more than that. We had something - an undefinable bond that we knew would never be broken, even by our enforced separation.

Of course, once my parents found out about what I was getting up to with the loom, they packed me straight off to boarding school, despite the fact I was 23. They said it was to further my education, but I looked into their eyes and saw deep, bitter disappointment. Later I discovered they’d told their friends I had died in an improbable skiing accident.

I suspected from the start that the Boarding School was not actually a Boarding School. The orderlies that locked you up in straightjackets were the first clue, along with the sign that said “Cuntshire Cunty Asylum”. The area was Countshire County, but the Boarding School housed several women who frequently fought over the affections of the letter “O”.

I stayed there for six long years, but my parents could never throw the loom out. Apparently my Father frequently tried to set fire to it, only for my Mother to stop him, shouting that the presence of the diabolic device was their punishment for letting their only child stray so far from Godliness to the point that he had begun an indecent relationship with a loom. A cheap, dirty loom.

There were many weeks of work ahead of me to restore the loom. I grasped the sandpaper tight, feeling it scratch the soft skin of my palms.

“This is going to tickle,” I said.