‘Hey Mo! I got a table. Carried it all the way here.’
‘Where’d you get it?’
‘Other side of the city. Riots going on.’
‘You looted it?’
‘I had to fight another woman off. Like an octopus, all tentacles. She had a chair. She wasn’t getting the table.’
Mo studied the pine table. ‘Anybody else see you?’
‘Everybody was taking things.’
‘The police…?’
‘… were nowhere.’
‘You did good, Saf. The house’s pretty bare.’
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She slides another item into the pile, packing it in like she’s stuffing a turkey. This time it’s a discounted multi-pack of kitchen roll. There is no kitchen to put it in anymore. Nor a lounge. Only storage space, filled to the brim, narrow corridors running through it like clogged arteries. There are already six-packs of kitchen roll squeezed into my bulging cavities.
But to her, these are not kitchen rolls. These are softened sheets of grief, flattened and neatly bound up. They cushion her in a comfort blanket of safety. Her heart empties itself of pain by filling me up.
I heave under the weight of it all. The monster inside me is growing, slowly suffocating us. No light can get in any more. Darkness smothers us, the air thick with dust and the smell of rotting food. Rats scuttle through the cracks, floorboards creaking, threatening to send everything crashing down.
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I was delivered there like a package, now I was expected to go in. I was being watched carefully in case I tried to escape.
My hands felt clammy, and I was rigid with fear.
“Do I have to come in there with you?” I was asked.
I shook my head, this was something I had to do on my own. I straightened my back and took one step forward before twisting the doorknob and entering the room. My eyes darted about frantically, searching for a corner in which I could hide. I squatted down in a chair and tried to make myself invisible. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the ends of the armrests, but there was no controlling my trembling legs. My feet danced across from side to side, much to the annoyance of the other people trapped in the same room.
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The trouble with British Summer Time, apart from it being a misnomer that is, is it takes Joel Bloom nearly a week to catch up with the lost hour. Mornings are difficult: a constant struggle with his body clock, which point-blank refused to accept the evidence of his eyes when looking at his bedside clock.
“Can’t be eight already,” he would murmur in his fractured oddity of a voice. Since Becca said she was leaving, he formed the habit of talking to himself. Good company and intelligent conversation, he joked, but the reality is, he is lonely and affronted by her betrayal. The bloody postman, he thought, how much of a cliché is THAT?
“Maybe it’s time to look again,” said his head.
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His habit on the permitted daily walk was to scan the evening arc of the bay. Today was no different. From the three islands off the rocky headland, the gorse swathed cliffs, the conurbation of Mumbles seafront, alongside the dotted houses at West Cross and the lone pub outlined stark in its whiteness, Gareth panned the curve of the prom, so intent on the visual feast, that the preceding click in his cerebral cortex only vaguely registered. With a whirring like interconnecting cogs, the malfunction embedded. Then came the shock of a shadowy presence occupying his own footsteps recently vacated. Gareth spun around…..and round and round again…. like a tail-chasing dog yet the shadowy outline remained out-of-focus fringing his peripheral vision. The tide was on the turn; the imprints were momentary,-quickly filled and obliterated. Like the “ghost,” no trace.
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Death is one of the few (maybe the only) binary oppositional states we can depend on. It is just inarguable. You are, or you are not (although Schrodinger’s cat muddies the water a little, maybe).
After that, it is a matter of personal and cultural preference. If, for instance, I were asked to describe hearing of the death of a close one (you), it would be something like:
It feels as though a very large, dry log has dropped from a height and landed nearby. Sound and shockwaves reverberate and shake me worryingly. I am stunned to the core. It’s an arid, lifeless log, too big to ignore yet with no discernible purpose but to remind. I curl inwards and try to make sense but the log has sucked up any sense that could be made.
It takes hours to believe in the new state of affairs and to begin to think of the enormity of the loss of you, my dear. If I try to escape these new thoughts, the log lies in the middle of everything as a constant reminder.
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Eve popped in to see how her mother was getting on with an old i-pad she had given her. Over a cup of tea Ann, her mother told her how much she was enjoying the internet and Facebook, catching up with old friends and making some new ones.
One man had seemed so nice, living in America and widowed like her. Eve eyed her mother as she chattered on. Apparently, he wanted to hang out. Ann asked him where he wanted to meet. He explained there was an app for a chat room. Not being sure she told him she was just happy to chat on Messenger.
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The Government had lost its way. No matter which way it tried to turn, the virus has it in a pincer movement. It is just too depressing to watch the news anymore.
When I received the shielding letter, my morale started to go downhill. Overnight my freedom and my independence had been taken away. It had proved easy enough to order food deliveries online and also my prescriptions, but the human element interaction was missing. How I longed to go outdoors, or hug my daughter and my grandson, or see my mates down the local. I felt that my human rights had been infringed.
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They crossed the ancient wetlands before dawn, their feet shrouded in undulant mists diffusing the light from their flickering lamps. Gethin, older brother of his companion, Arvel – led the way with their sister Branwen between them as they trod carefully along the path, its uncertain surface greeting their boots with raised roots and crumbling stones, each impeding their progress as the clock ticked down.
“We need to move faster,” declared Gethin, “in another two hours, the path will shift.”
Branwen, who stood a head taller than her brothers, glanced uneasily at the stocky, leather-clad Gethin, “I’m more worried about the tide. We can navigate a new path, but once the tide comes in, we are lost.”
Arvel bit his lip and stammered, “We WILL make it, won’t we, Bran?”
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Martha Somers was feeling upset again. She’d been talking to her dog, which was sitting in a corner of the room, saying to it, ‘Are you hungry? Shall I feed you?’, when this lady had told her it was a toy. ‘A toy? But I heard him barking,’ she’d told the lady. Then a second lady had come in and said, ‘Time to change you,’ and had laid hands on her. She’d begun to cry, then shout, and said, ‘No you’re not! How dare you!’
Next thing she knew she was sitting in an armchair in a large room, and there were strange faces all around, elderly women in armchairs, reclining or sitting upright. Some were asleep, some stared into space, one was muttering to herself. There was a horrible smell like poo.
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Alan scans the room, bleary-eyed. Where is he?
Why is he in a single bed without his beloved wife, Eileen? As his vision clears, he sees a young woman standing over him, two pills glistening in the palm of her hand.
“Morning, Mr Clarke,” she says. ‘Your pills.”
He must have been kidnapped, his spy network infiltrated. Yes, that must be it. He has to get out of here and fast before he’s tortured for his secrets.
He pretends to swallow the pills. When the woman leaves, he stuffs them into his pyjama pocket. A rustling sound alerts him to a piece of paper nestling there.
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For Kiri, patience had never been a virtue. Never had she subscribed to the view that more haste led to less speed. Her sympathy, when hearing of the fabled race, was with the hare, although she did blame him for a loss of focus during the infamous race.
Loss of focus was not one of Kiri’s problems. She prided herself on completing tasks quickly and effectively. Always diving headfirst into a challenge, she was renowned for her efficiency and accuracy. And yet somehow, she managed to sidestep promotions at work and had gathered few friends – no time to waste chatting in wine bars, she always said when invited for after-work drinks on a Friday night.
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Louise opened her eyes as daylight filtered through the blinds. How good it felt to sleep a whole night. Months before life had been so different. Shuddering she recalled the endless nights of wall-banging, threats through the wall. A new neighbour, who started out as a seemingly nice lady, turned into the witch from hell.
After introducing herself, suddenly she would be popping round as soon as Louise had got up, wanting to go everywhere with her. At first Louise was flattered but gradually it wore her down with work, and her on the doorstep. She had no time to herself. Things went sour when Louise would not take her with her to visit her brother.
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The overnight snow had magnified all the scents. As soon as my lead was off, so was I. With my nose firmly to the ground, I dodged this way and that, circling and backtracking. A new scent, rabbit, I was on a mission, tracking towards the fence and through the bushes, and then the trail suddenly stopped. I pulled up short. Sure enough, there was a rabbit, a dead rabbit on a length of string. I was trying to ponder on this when I felt a sharp pain. My legs folded underneath me. I was thrown over the railings and bundled into the back of a van.
I awoke in a strange environment. Along with about fifty other dogs, I was in a large cage, inside a barn. The smell of farm animals pervaded my senses, but they were all overshadowed by the smell of fear.
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On the toilet pan, straining like a tugboat pulling a liner. Yes! Thank you, God. Father Wexford washed his hands afterwards. iPad on the dresser, set and ready for the Zoom Mass. A small congregation, Covid consequent, but the service would be reverent nevertheless.
He squeezed the door handle. No movement. Was it jammed again? He couldn’t get out! Perhaps a small prayer for the door’s release? No time. Mass imminent. Nothing for it, he’d have to do his priestly duties astride the toilet seat. What would Our Lord make of that?
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Alice wrings her hands together, the scars laced across her right palm glinting silver in the light each time they twist towards the window.
“Let’s stay with that moment,” I say in my gentlest therapist voice, resuming the bi-lateral movement of my index and middle fingers in front of her face. Her eyes glow like fire, tracking the rhythmical movements of my hand as they scan side-to-side in time with the clock on the wall. I’m lulled into a trance-like state myself.
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Wrapped up, Charlie heaved the basket out of the car. Staggering under the weight, he made his way to the castle gates. With a heavy heart, he placed the basket down, placing a note on top. Whispering a farewell to his beloved birds, he walked away.
Charlie had found the birds after a storm had blown their nest out the trees. Taking them home, he had hand-reared them. Attila became his favourite, such an intelligent bird. It was he who started bringing him bits of coloured glass for which he was rewarded with his favourite treat.
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It seems that many of us like, or even crave, attention. Why else would we see grown people on TV offering themselves for mass scrutiny through the eating of assorted insects, or people working their socks off to receive publicly bestowed awards? This is to say nothing of little children who dance and run and play instruments, with the incentive of gaining praise and honour, and sometimes even a certificate or medal or tube of Smarties.
Anastasia (not her real name) was not immune from this human trait but, like other shy and shrinking violets, she needed to think carefully about how to achieve both fame and anonymity. It was an interesting problem.
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An eighteen-year-old male, short, face of a cherub that was partial to a drink, kiss curl, and large succulent lips employed no doubt for kissing the damsels and smacking pleasurably after imbibing. He fancied himself as a journalist, did he? The editor studied the new employee unenthusiastically. Another cub reporter who head-to-toe would prove to be unsuitable for the Evening Post.
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Cuthbert, now twenty-one, had grown out of his gawky youth and now was slightly bordering on the podgy side. This was partly due to the amount of time he spent on the couch.
“Hi Cuthbert, you’re home early?”
“Hi mum, what’s for tea” he replied avoiding answering the question.
His mother looked at him shrewdly, “Did Mr Evans give you the afternoon off then?”
He was rumbled and he knew it. “Yes, this afternoon and every other afternoon,”
“Oh Cuthbert, you’ve been sacked again, what’s that, about the tenth job in a row?”
“Aw mum, let’s not talk about it now, Star Wars is on in a minute.”
“You’re just like your father!”
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