Him
“You
cunt. Your’re fucking dead. Dead. Cunt. Dead. Next time you see me will be your
fucking last. Yeah, run away. Cunt.” The screamed words echoed in the darkening space that lampposts invaded with orange-tinted light.
Sun
shone around the gaps in his blackout-lined curtains; the corona illuminating
the bedroom. He lifted his head from his mass of pillows and looked at the
corona. It would be the last he would see, he was sure of it. He looked around
his bedroom at the tangled mass of t-shirts, jockey-shorts and socks in the
plastic boxes; the television and DVD player placed on their respective mini-tower
on plastic boxes; the mountain bike besides the clothes wrack and the pile of
books strewn next to his bed. His gaze lingered on the books, all bought
through an obsessive compulsion. He’d lost count of the number of books he’d
read, many many thousands. They’d given him more pleasure than any other thing
in his life. He was proud of what he had read and bought. His collection, well
mini-library, showed, to him, a sign of good taste; a thirst for learning too,
albeit a meretricious and hollow thirst, if he was being honest, which, on this
day, he knew he had to be. That was something he had to be today: honest, deadly honest.
The
urge to coil up like a foetus inside his duvets and pillows surged through him
as he thought about the acts of honesty he would perform before the evening. He
wanted to go back to the warmth and comfort of his amniotic past. To go back
and start again. To, to, to… It was a lie, he knew that. The warmth and
security associated to the past. A trail of rose-tinted memories and feelings
which time tampers with as they fade into the depths. The past is a foreign
land as Hartley had said. It was also, he thought, a film projected onto a
screen behind soundproof glass, which tints and obscures at will, only showing
glimpses of what has been. It was gone. She was gone, the person he loved
most and was in his blood. Nothing would change that.
Reflex
actions kicked in and he walked to the kitchen to make a coffee and a pot of
tea. The phrase ‘killing two birds with one stone’ came to him as he passed the
sheet covered mirror at the end of his hallway, filled the kettle and switched
it on. This he thought, was one of the reasons why he had to do it. He’d become
conditioned by his inner voice to try and perform tasks as economically has
possible, no wastage of time or actions. The contradiction of this impulse to
the way he still acted in so many ways made him smile to himself. He’d said to
himself and other people at times over the years that he was a pragmatist who
tried to do things in a way which best suited his current need. For some of the important needs in life he's been as practical as rubber knife. He knew or felt that he could be
practical about it, but he never had been. The question which bugged him about
this lack was simple: why not? The answer also seemed simple to him too: fear.
He
was afraid. He may have been born afraid, but he had no way of knowing that as
he could never prove it. He’d certainly felt like he’d been afraid for his
entire life so far, but he thought that there must have been periods when he
wasn’t just because of the law of averages. However, fear was so familiar to
him that it felt like a constant shadow illuminated from within. The kettle
clicked and steam poured from its spout; he spooned a teaspoon full of freeze
dried coffee into the mug, added the right level of milk and poured water up to
an inch from the top. He then emptied the two used teabags from the pot into
the sink and added two new ones before filling it up. He stirred in the residual
of the coffee grains that floated on top of the mug a few times to make sure
that it would be consistent and walked back towards his bedroom. He always left
the coffee in the kitchen to cool for a while and then add more water once he’d
taken a few sips. He was tempted to give into the sentimentalised thoughts of
‘it won’t change what happened to her, nothing could,’ but, he didn’t want to
be sentimental. If he did think that way, he would not be able to go through
with it. That cunt deserved it, pure and simple.
He’d
got away with it for far too long. Sentimentalising would lead to the pushing
in further of the stopper and not freeing of the genie; the black, hate-filled,
self-pitying, angry essence that bottled itself up within him. The freeing
would probably make his actions desperate and messy, he knew that or paralyse
him to inaction as the tempest raged within. Paralysis had happened too many
times in the past and when he next saw him he wanted the stopper to fly out and
shatter the frame of this world. Paralysis wasn’t an option. Not this time.
He
picked up his copy of Hemlock and After by Angus Wilson and settled back into
his pillows the finish the final forty odd pages. Wilson’s prose sang to him as
he read. He’d always been drawn to this style of writer since he’d started
reading Waugh in his late teens and early twenties. It took him to a place
where people lead golden lives-to him, anyway- and characters who were rich and
textured, and more appealing to most of the people he had met during his adult
life (he couldn’t remember many from his childhood) Hemlock, he thought, would
be ideal for his purpose.
Poison made him think of lying in the
suicide ward, white gowned with charcoal stains around his mouth. The pink livid scars he'd happily scored into his arms and body contrasting with the gown that covered his saved self. He didn’t
want to use that method again. It would, ironically, be too certain. He knew that many people would say that this meant that
he wasn’t really serious and that he didn’t really want to do it. Was that
true? Today, he wanted to escape the futile reflection of his
thoughts and feelings about the deed and just act, but their weight as they built up in mass daily and
hourly over the last seven months was too much. Enough, though, enough. Once he faced him, looked into that hated
gaze, he’d know for sure.
The
bitter taste of the coffee went well with the buttery taste of the digestive.
He had simple tastes, almost peasant like. This was probably due to a
rather crude palate, he’d thought, but it could be down to just liking basic
tastes. Although he loved eating, especially when he was younger,
he’d preferred to spend his money on other things, books, DVDs, CDs and cycles.
His current need for parsimony had come in handy in over last few months as it had helped him
to shed weight and and spend more time running or cycling, using the dark matter inside to be better prepared for what he had to do.
He
was obsessive about exercising. Actually, he was obsessive about many things;
buying books, especially the works of authors he loved; films with his
favourite actors or by his favourite directors, as his Woody Allen and
Hitchcock collections confirmed. Once an idea about a book or a DVD had come to
him, he’d had to get it. He’d had to have it now and not wait. He’d always had
to have things now. Waiting was a torture.
Time
was his enemy as it could snatch away his prize by some careless action of any
of the people in the chain of him ordering it though Amazon, ebay or any of the
other sites where he’d spent his way to some ersatz form of happiness during
the past few years, and him receiving it through the letterbox. The wait had
felt excruciating sometimes, pregnant as had been with the dread of loss. He
was happy when his prizes arrived, but only for a few seconds or minutes. Once
they were his and couldn’t be taken away, they’d been placed on shelves or
chucked onto existing piles of new purchases waiting for his attention. At least they didn't end up like the tennis rackets, snooker cue and other one loved possessions from his youth that were smashed to pieces in frustration-filled rage at losing or just not getting his way.
Anticipation
is often said to be the best moment, the perfect moment too as it is a time
which doesn’t contain any stains of disappointment only possibly, the seeds of
it. His anticipation was so high now the act could only be a disappointment, a
shadow of what he desperately wanted to think and most importantly, feel as he
did what that man deserved. It would be a shadow light by the flame of his rage
and disgust. He remembered he first came across the Plato’s Theory of Forms
whilst at university, or was it when he was reading Sophie’s World? Whichever
it was, as he’d continued to exist and read more, listen more, watch more he
couldn’t help but realise that, for him, he would always expect the Plato’s
ideal and feel let down by what he actually experienced. This perpetual
disappointment was not uniform; it was true, especially when it came to books
films and music. It did apply to people and their affect on the world around
them. People were a stain.
He
should get things ready, set the ball in motion and shed the mossy thoughts
that would slow him down.
They let you down by saying and showing one side and then delivering an impoverished other. Anger suffused disappointment ate at him when this happened. When he was younger, he wanted to understand why. As he aged and ricocheted his way through his life, he
had made connections between the ideal and the actual,particularly when he’d read about
structuralism and Saussure’s idea of the signifier and the signified, and the
idea seemed to him to underpin all advertising with it’s promise of a fantastic
life if only you brought that particular product. It was all the stuff of
fantasy. It was also prevalent in books and particularly television programmes
and films. It seemed to him that people liked to be deluded, to be presented
with a version of life that had a certain verisimilitude, but also had a
sprinkling of pixie dust/ fabulation which made it so attractive. Although he
recognised this intellectually, it still didn’t stop him from lapping up all of
the idealised characters and lifestyles presented to him through the screen or
page. He
was a sucker for the ‘will they won’t they’ relationships as it struck a chord
with some need, or sense of relationships within him. He always rooted for the
characters to finally get together and he always felt that extra sense of
warmth and excitement when they did. He had never achieved that feeling with a
woman, not when there was a chance of his liking of them becoming concrete,
real.
Returning
to Wilson’s prose he tried to shake his thoughts away like mist dissipated by a
strong breeze and concentrate on the characters and plot; a thought he didn’t
want to dwell on as it would start a longing for the unread books on his
bookshelves and the unwritten novels by his favourite writers that he hadn't got
round to reading. Literature was his lifeblood. It
had brought a world of people, places and events to him and animated the grey matter neglected by his school. He flamed for the world while sitting in a chair of lying on his bed. Still, being contrary was something that he
had been the master of for most of his life.
His
eye danced across the page without leaving a trace of what it saw in his mind.
He’d lost his concentration. He put Wilson’s novel down next to
him on his crumpled duvet and gauged the strength within him: a full-bass hum that vibrated events ahead. It was strong like the noise tracks make in anticipation of a high speed train that thunders past those kept safe by the level crossing barriers. He’d felt the strength many times before,
but not with today's shakily-bridled intensity.
Filthy,
droppings littered straw came to him as he thought back to the time when the
pet rabbits he and his siblings shared had became ill and the kindest thing was
for them to be put out of their misery. Tears had been hot on his cheeks and flowed
freely. The knot in his stomach was part the feeling of loss and part guilt
over the neglect he had shown towards them which meant that they’d die at the
hands of their next door neighbour, Harry, who said he’d take care of it. The
tears were a sign of his sorrow at the neglect he had shown that had brought
Sandy, Penelope and Benny to their pitiful state but also a salve to the post
fact, avoidable, guilt festering within him. The guilt process would remain a constant
presence within him, like a port wine birthmark on the inside.
He’d been marked
as a nuisance from his very first week as secondary school, a legacy, no doubt,
passed on by the ‘concerned’ teachers in his junior school. He was a pain; he’d
known that even then. He could talk the hind legs off of a donkey, horse,
giraffe, elephant and any of its other quadruped brothers who’d happen to be in
the vicinity when he was in full flow. The words were connected to volcano of
energy inside, the lava spewed out in a stream, often chaotically. His unfiltered chat and
silence his teachers his teachers insisted upon - mostly to his angry annoyance and sometimes bewilderment - were not compatible, like a 99 with an uncooked sausage
instead of a flake. Funnily enough, he’d probably have gobbled that down when
he was in full flow, chomping down the bites of vanilla ice cream and pig’s
foreskin without any thought.
The
need to talk was still there, especially when it was a subject that interested
him or he knew enough about to make his contribution to the discussion worthwhile.
Giving the thoughts he had about what he’d seen, read, heard or experienced was
what truly made him fell alive. He buzzed with them. Vibrated. The high he
felt when reading about Freud, deconstruction, abstract expressionism and other
ideas exceeded the high he had felt when he spent most weekends fucked out of
his mind on ecstasy, speed, cocaine or very occasionally LSD. He’d taken drugs
to fulfil the role he’d given himself within his group of friends as the hard
man who would not lose control, no matter what amount of narcotics he’d taken.
He had to take more than his friends to prove that he was superior to them in
some way, as he was not as cool, relaxed or at ease with other people. He’d
also, he knew, taken them to block out the pain, guilt and fear he’d felt since
his her death. It worked too, for a few precious hours. But, they didn’t last.
What they left behind was an even deeper pit of bleakness where his fears could
fester and grow.
Sound
filled the living room as the DVD player automatically played the tracks on his
red Sony mp3 player. Cate Le Bon’s Me Oh
My began to play as he walked back out of the room to pour himself another
cup of tea. The hall was filled with light. His bikes were organised against
the wall, waiting to be taken out and used. They would be again, he hoped, but
not by him. He’d never really used them anyway. They were, like most of the
things he had bought, objects of obsession; things that he had to get at the
time because he thought he wanted and needed them. The desire he’d felt for
them was so strong that he was a man possessed. He certainly couldn’t feel at
peace until they were his. The hope would begin with each new purchase and would expire as the item was listened
to, watched or read and then realisation, soon followed by disappointment would
return and the gradual slide into that person he was.
The
tea tasted good, of the way life should have been. He loved to
drink pot after pot when he’d gone alone to visit his nan. She refused to use
tea bags and the ritual of adding the mild and using the strainer help over the
cup became part of the peace of the visits. She’d told him time and time again
to lay the strainer on the rim of the cup – never a mug – but he would play the
pouring-without-spilling game whenever she in her bedroom or in the lounge
secretly drinking her glasses of sherry and pretending that everything was
fine. Pretending worked for many people; ignoring the unwanted and heading for
the wished for or desperately needed. The early morning cup of tea was best,
given after spending the night in the spare bedroom and having the space to himself.
The time was jarring, but the sound of Classic FM coming from his granddad’s stereo system in the lounge and the orange-tainted street light that beamed
through the kitchen window and along the hall into the single bed he’d sleep in
made the energy coiled inside vibrate peaceably. Peace would be his again soon.
Orange-tainted
street light formed the frame of his curtains now. Day had passed and the
evening was here. Thinking, he now saw, was done. Over with. He opened the
bottom draw of his bedside cabinet and pulled out the old and faded Tesco’s
carrier bag. Holding the handles, it unfurled itself and he widened his arms to
look at what lay at the bottom. It still had the stain of her blood on it, he knew, he bore the scars of that. The handle felt cold and familiar.
Naked
he walked out into his hallway and stopped. The orange-tinted frame from his bedroom was
replicated by the curtained window running most of the hallway's length. He turned and
looked at the lilac sheet hanging from the wall, covering what he must now
face. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Took a few more. The
stopper, he had to release the stopper. Piercing blue eyes and pale freckled skin stained by fear filled his vision. The stopper was out, his world in pieces
around him.
Four
calm strides and one sweeping arm movement and he was there, staring fully at
him.
