26F – Gelato

I peer through the frosted glass, unconvinced.

“Happiness?”

It sounds like a tall order, but there it is. A bright, lemon yellow mass, softening and melting around the edges.

“Happiness.”

He says it like he’d say Chocolate. Or Rum and Raisin. Or Banana. He reaches all the way into the freezer with huge, hairy arms, sleeves rolled around the elbows, the shirt stained behind a spotless apron. In goes the spoon, and he gives it a twist, like he has a sale.

“One scoop?”

“What flavour is it?”

A curled lip. He makes a play of reading the label, leaning all the way over the glass counter, those arms draped across it.

“Let me see… Yes, it does appear to be…  Haaappeeeeness”.

I look across the other tubs. A sea of bad names. Vanilla has to be “Joy”. Banana becomes “Bliss”. Jesus. What’s wrong with Lemon Sorbet?

Why do they have to make everything so goddam complicated?

“No, I’m asking what’s the actual flavour? What’s it taste like?”

He looks up at me, shakes his bald head. He snatches up a little tasting spoon, a clear, plastic, disposable thing, and digs it into the Happiness.

“Flavour, flavour, its all the same. Is happiness! Here, try some!”

He thrusts the taster forward, but not to me. To my right, to a woman, sixty-odd, shrunken. She’s wearing sandals and socks, thin brown socks that collect in lumps around her ankles. I take a half step away from her without quite knowing why.

“Oooo,” she says.

He waves he taster with a little flourish, hands it to her.

“Happiness”, he says.

“Oooo,” she says again.

She snatches the spoon, holds it for a moment in front of her face. In an instant the little yellow mound is gone. In its place is this huge idiot grin, a mouth of uneven teeth.

And she’s giggling. Really giggling. There’s something disturbing about the sound, like it doesn’t quite belong to her.  She’s got a hand over her mouth now, and those little stolen schoolgirl giggles keep coming.
And she’s beaming.
“Happiness”, he says, a touch unnecessarily.
She orders, hands over a shaky twenty. He scoops out the Happiness into a little foam icecream bucket. Eventually the giggling stops, and settles into this wistful look, a half smile that tries to resurrect itself but looks worn, tired. She grabs her bucket, what’s left of her change. The stuff’s not cheap. Not that she’s worried – it’s obviously a setup. What a scam.  She’s been hired for a gold coin donation to pop into the shop, sample the merchandise and melt in rapt satisfaction. A bit over the top, really.
Meanwhile, I’m not falling for anything that might be there to be fallen for. I slide down to the end of the counter, pretend I don’t see her walk out. I ignore the tiny little sigh she makes as she steps out onto the sidewalk and into the night. I start to study the other flavours intensely.

Happiness. Joy. Revenge. Revenge? Surely that’s a little dark for gelato. Lust, now that makes sense, a deep chocolate drizzled with some decadent looking sauce, but Revenge?

Revenge is followed by Rage. Depression. Disappointment.

Loss is an icy blue concoction with blueberries on the side. Entanglement is a swirl; some kind of pink berry mix.  Trauma has a wafer spiked into it.

I give the server my considered opinion of the house naming scheme.

“Now this, this… is fucked up.”

His hands go slowly to the sides of his apron, which he tugs gently, deliberately. He walks slowly down the counter, shoes clicking softly against the tiles.

“I mean, who wants to eat Depression? Or Rage?”

He draws level with me. Doesn’t say anything.

“I mean… well, do you actually… sell any of this stuff?”

He looks down at the tubs. There’s one in the far corner. It looks almost black, glistening and icy. It has no adornments; no blueberries, no wafer.

He looks up at me.

“This one is our most popular.”

Oh look. He’s pointing to the Abject Misery. What else would they call their most popular flavour? And suddenly I get it. This is some sort of post-modern faux intellectual product naming concept, something to suck in the uni students, the professionally ironic. Dispense with preconceptions created by labels. Don’t let the flavour be contaminated by your expectations of what lemon sorbet “should” taste like.

Or something.

“One scoop?”

It sounds more like a dare than an offer.  A challenge.

I’m left standing with one small scoop of Abject Misery, served on a tiny plate that makes my hands look huge. I dig my spoon into the black stuff.

All I really wanted was lemon sorbet.

I realise he’s watching me, waiting for a reaction. I suck in a mouthful. It’s not bad, actually. Sweet without being sickly. Nicely balanced flavours.

And then I feel the slightest twinge. My toes curl.

“Oh,” I say.

And suddenly all the blood is draining from my arms, my head, my chest, sucking down into the base of my gut.

I double over.

My face feels wet, and everything is lost. My chest stretches, like my ribcage wants to swing open, let all its useless contents tumble down on to the floor. I drop to my knees. My head rolls backwards, and this sound comes out.

I think I’m wailing.

I’m on my knees, grabbing at my ribs, desperately trying to hold them together, rocking back and forth, choking on something that’s rising up out of my chest, suffocating.

And then, it’s gone. The last of the flavour dissolves, and I’m back to normal.
Except normal isn’t normal. Normal explodes in my fingertips and rushes back up my spine. Normal makes my arms glow, my thighs tingle. Normal is a stomach that no longer twists round in attempts to devour itself.

I start to laugh uncontrollably. Normal feels ridiculously good.

I’m touching my chest, feeling my hands. I’m here. I’m fine. I start to calm down. I’m normal, everything’s normal. Even feeling normal is back to normal. Not rushing, not glowing, just…

He’s still watching me. He doesn’t ask me anything, just raises one eyebrow slightly.

I snatch up the spoon and swallow another mouthful.

25F – Train

He was wedged in the corner of the carriage, arms folded, head rolling, dipping in and out of a half-imagined sleep. He’d drifted off, mouth open a touch, when the sway of the train nudged his elbow against the carriage wall, the surface tacky with some unknown filth. He jumped. Alert for a moment, he looked down and nudged his backpack with his foot. No, the bag was definitely still there, still holding his books, his paycheck, his self-authorised “bonus”.

He looked down the rows of blue seats, tagged and cut sporadically, some draped in unwanted papers that shuffled slightly with the heavy rhythm of the train. To his left, someone had scratched “deadshit” into the glass.

He was too tired to argue.

He returned to his corner, tried to settle back in, shut his eyes. The train rattled, and an empty can rolled out from under a seat, beating staccato against the floor. Overhead, the yellowed neon striplights flickered.

And then went out.

His eyes snapped open. The carriage was all darkened shapes now, lit only by the windows, and suddenly he could see the outside world. Endless rows of houses, fences, railings, all coloured black, all moving with the train.

The lights stuttered back on, bright and welcoming.

He exhaled a long, slow breath, forcing the air out over his bottom lip. He turned, and his reflection looked back from the window – tired, he couldn’t remember ever looking so tired, the wrinkled shirt, the dark under his eyes that blended into the world behind the glass. He stared, absorbed, looking at himself, past himself.

There was a sustained electrical buzz, followed by a loud crack, and the lights were gone again.

He glanced up at the window.

For a moment, he thought it was his own reflection, only paler, somehow older. But as he stepped backwards the face in the glass didn’t follow the movements of his body. It just stayed where it was, dull, punctured eyes trailing after him as he tumbled and ran down the length of the carriage.

The thing stood somehow, raised itself up, whitened fingers hard against the glass. And then it began to follow, jumping from window to window, slowly at first but then more deliberately, drawing level with him as he reached the stairs.

He cleared the stairs in a single leap.

He turned in the stairwell and it was standing there, trapped in the glass of the doors, mouth wide and black, an open palm beating against the pane. He fell backwards and it seemed to grow larger, the hands crowding the glass.

There was a flash, and he blinked madly, groping until his eyes readjusted. The lights were back on again.

He looked up. It was gone.

He shook as the adrenaline began to wash out of him and tried to stop gulping air, stop the drumming in his chest. There were doors here, doors that led to the next carriage, that would let him move, escape. He slapped the door release and watched them slide open, and stumbled through, and for a moment he was between the two carriages, the sounds of the track louder, more hollow. He stepped into the next carriage and the soft rubber door seals squished shut behind him.

The train pushed onwards. Outside, huge stone walls had crept up on either side of the track, that grew closer, tighter, until they were in a tunnel. The windows darkened, became solid black.

And then the lights were gone again.

He was running before he saw it. It was back inside the window, watching him from the doorway. He ran to the next carriage, and recoiled from the door, half expecting to see it staring at him from the doorway. But it was gone, nowhere, and then he was through the next door, already running.

He was halfway down the carriage when he noticed it was built differently. No back doors. He was in the last carriage. He turned and the thing was in the window, gaping, beating against the glass. Something cold and black turned over in his stomach. He ran.

He came to a small seat at the end of the carriage and threw himself under it. Overhead he could hear scratching noises, scraping at the glass. He pulled himself in further, braced, his hands tight around metal.

The sound stopped. Everything was perfectly still.

Then something exploded.

There was a metallic roar and the whole world shook violently, tearing itself apart. Glass shattered above him. Wheels squealed against the tracks, unbearably loud, and the whole thing leaned, stretched, wanting desperately to roll. It held there for a moment, uncertain. Then it thumped back on the tracks, and with a final tooth-jarring shake, it was still.

He stood up, pushed slowly past the glass shards scattered across the floor, and stumbled to the doorway. He hit the emergency release and felt the night air suck into the carriage, smoky and acrid. Somehow he was on the ground, following the line of the train, staggering alongside the tracks. His head was light. He could hear something. Voices? Excited yells trailing off in the night. In the distance he could see where the two trains had collided, where the mangled forms twisted into one another. He walked past the distorted carriages, bent columns of metal. Through one shattered window he could make out a small flap of shredded fabric, impaled in the glass.

It took him a while to recognise it as his backpack.

24F – Manhunt

They keep asking me questions. They ask me questions because they’re looking for my dad. That’s why they’ve brought me here. They’re worried about him.

They took me out of school. There was a panic, and lots of angry faces. And I got asked to come along and help them out. I didn’t want to go, but they really, really wanted me to go with them, my teacher, and the principal, and the detective.

Nobody was angry with me, they kept saying, but they didn’t sound happy. They’re just worried that something bad is going to happen. They’re looking for my dad.

Here’s my teacher, Mrs Tanner. She’s asking me about where he is. She’s sitting down in front of me, looking right into my eyes. I don’t want to look at her, so I look down. Which is why I end up looking down her shirt. I don’t mean to, but its just there when I look down. There’s pale skin in there, pale and round.

She asks me again. She sounds angry. Maybe she caught me looking. My head feels hot. I tell her I don’t know where he is. She makes this little sound, a sigh, like she thinks I know something else. But she doesn’t understand. I’m not supposed to tell her anything.

I try to pull my arms back into my jacket, try to shrink. The jacket is too big, and it’s itching me.

This room has a weird ceiling, like tiles, but full of holes, like a hornet’s nest. Over in the corner is a big water container, with a little tap at the bottom, so you can pour yourself a glass of water, if you want. Whenever they stop talking to me, they all go and stand around the water thing, and talk to each other really quietly. But nobody ever drinks the water.

They don’t say it, but I know they think he’s a bad person. I can hear what they say down the corridor, loud words followed by quite ones. But they’re wrong. My dad’s more good than anyone.

Another man appears. I look at him carefully, like I was taught, but I don’t recognise him. He shakes my hand. His hands are sweaty and he hurts my hand a tiny bit when he shakes it. He asks me what my name is. He starts asking me questions, and uses my name a lot.

He says, “Caleb, it’s really important that we find your dad”.

He says, “Caleb, you dad needs help. And we’d like to help him, Caleb. But we can’t help him until we find him. Caleb, can you help us find him?”

I think he’s worried he will forget my name. I tell him he doesn’t need to practice so much. I tell him that I used to forget it myself sometimes, but that I learned how to say it backwards – Belac. That helps me remember it.

He looks at me with a smile, a smile that sort of isn’t one, and then he stands up. He rubs my hair quickly, and then he leaves the room.

I hear an argument outside, in the corridor. I hear “just a kid”. I hear “running out of time”. I hear yelling. I sink into my chair a little bit.

When they come back, they come back in a group, and they’re all really upset. They want to know where my dad is. Did he say where he was going? Even the smallest thing? Did he do anything unusual? What did he say to me today? What was he wearing the last time I saw him?

I won’t cry. My dad doesn’t want me to cry. He told me I was strong. He told me I was a lion. I made a big roaring sound when he told me, and I thought he’d laugh. But he didn’t. He just said, that’s right. He said, you’re my lion.

And that’s why I won’t cry. My eyes are stinging a bit, but I won’t cry.

I kick at the floor with my sneakers. The ones my dad bought for me. I’ve never had ones like these before. They are special. He’d let me buy any ones that I wanted. And it didn’t matter how much they cost. He said he wouldn’t be able to see me for a while, so he wanted to get me the sneakers as a treat. Which made me sad. But the sneakers were awesome. They make you feel like you are walking on cushions.

I kick at the floor, and the floor makes squeaky noises. Like when you’re at the basketball, and the real players jump around, you can hear their shoes.

There’s more talk in the corridor. And then the man from the photo walks in.

He walks up to me and starts talking. He has a different voice from what I expected. He sounds nicer. Whenever he talks, other people around him stop. I guess he’s important. I guess that’s why he was in that photo.

He looks at me, really calm. He asks me about my dad.

My dad knows who he is. 

My dad said people like him are like keystones. That if they go, then everyone else tumbles around them. My dad said some other stuff that I don’t really remember. But I know that this man is important.

My dad said I would find him. That it was my destiny. My reason-something. That’s why he’d shown me the photo. So I would recognise him. That’s why he gave me the special name to learn. That’s why he made me the jacket. That’s why he gave me the button. That’s why he did everything. My dad is really good at planning ahead.

I put my hands in my pockets and feel around for the button. I’m not really sure, so I look up again. It’s definitely the man from the photo.

So I press the button. 

23F – To Do

So I’m reading this productivity blog, all ten steps to a better this, that and the other, when I find it. It’s just a to-do list, a program that lets you record everything that needs doing. With little check marks that you can select once a task is done, to give you a tiny satisfying thrill of completion. Simple. Nifty. And, according to the website, absolutely lifechanging.

I’m sold.

Reading the promotional text is like hearing weighty life-lessons from a respected friend, and I’m just nodding along. Yes, I am constantly forgetting to do things! Yes, I am forever writing things down on pieces of paper and losing them! I stand before it as a wreck, trembling, helpless, yet ready to become the very example of dynamic efficiency.

I am ready to embrace change.

So I download it. And it’s amazing.

The tax bill. Gone. The electricity bill, that has so many times threatened with third, final notices, power cuts and worse – history. The article for Surveyors Digest – started. I make more progress in four days than I have in four months. My whole life has completely changed. All thanks to one, simple little to-do list.

And then, I start to notice this odd phenomenon.

Every time I cross one item off the list, another seems to appear. Making a dental appointment should be a cause for celebration, a satisfying tick; instead, it leads to more appointments, white waiting rooms, condescending child-receptionists and x-rays. And while I now know exactly what I need to do, it’s getting harder to keep track of the when.

The list is good. But it’s not enough.

And then I find another program – a calendar. No, not just a calendar, but a comprehensive online date and time scheduling system. It records not only everything I need to do, but exactly when I need to do it. It subdivides my day away from unmanageable Thursdays and bewildering Fridays into sharp-edged little fifteen minute increments.

And it’s colour coded! Orange for work. Teal for personal. Dark grey for paperwork. Pale blue for medical. Ordered. Coded. Fantastic. But…

But some things just don’t fit into either the calendar or the list. Trying to get more exercise – well, that’s more of a weekly goal. I tick it off the list for one week, and then immediately have to write it back in the next. Worse still, I can’t find a place in the schedule for the Surveyors Digest article. I used to have a little spare time mid-week, but now this is taken up with yoga, and the cooking course, and self-empowerment meditation.

For two whole weeks, the article sits on my hard drive, mocking me with its haughty air of incompleteness.

So I find myself a new program.

This one pulls the data from the calendar and the to-do list into a single active desktop, or something. It also comes with birthday reminders, goal orientation tools and a handy numerology chart. So now I’m buying my nephew a birthday gift while resetting my five-year plan in accordance with my birth name and tracking down the current state of my superannuation. Multitasking. Brilliant.

Unfortunately, the to-do list has grown a little. Now I  have to scroll down the screen to see the whole thing. For some time. For a moment I wonder if the four thousand, three hundred and eighty nine things on the list are the cause of my sudden irregular heart beat, my shallow breathing. But then I do a quick web search, and a very helpful website gently lets me in on the fact that I am actually a visually-oriented organiser, and my existing tools aren’t supporting the natural way that my brain processes information.

Aaaaah. Of course.

So I sign up for another program. My hands shake as I fill out the registration form and desperately try to think of another password with at least eight letters, two numbers and one special character. A small price to pay for access to a website that can suck in the data from the list, and the calendar, and the reminders, and the numerology chart, and my latest purchases, and upcoming birthdays of nephews, and parents, and sisters, and estranged aunts, and public holidays, and random photos from strangers, all into one place. With instant messaging. And email alerts. And best of all, my lists and calendars and everything else are now visuals – pie charts, and graphs, and diagrams, and coloured folders. All on one screen. Neat.

I’m breathing. I’m in control. I am ready to start getting it together.

And then a short, tuneless ping heralds the arrival of an email. A simple note from my nephew, written under duress or threat of pocket money being withheld or similar. The program recognises the email address, and my nephew’s badly written fourteen syllable message is neatly tucked away into a “family” folder. This auto-generates a new list item, a reminder to send a reply email, which is picked up by the calendar (giving me a due date for writing the reply) and forwards a string of extra reminders through the system – an alert, a final alert, and a really very final alert, just to make sure.

Unfortunately the final alert clashes with a scheduled life goal re-appraisal. The calendar tries to move the life goal thing to the following day, but that’s is a public holiday. This triggers a reschedule warning, and automatically forwards a reminder to my mobile just in case I’m on the road. My phone, however, is switched off, so it sends back an unavailable notice that sets off a reminder in the system to follow up the missed message. These reminders are picked up by the calendar, which alerts the to-do list while the to-do list tries to force its data back on the calendar.

Now the to-do list and the calendar are desperately updating each other, locked in a battle for domination, scattering alerts, and warnings, and emails as they go. The pie chart becomes a kaleidoscopic spasm on screen, widening and contracting, flashing bright purples, bright pinks, bright yellows, bright blues. Folders open and shut. Twelve thousand things to-do race up the screen. And in the intense, epileptic flicker of the monitor, something pops inside my head.

When they find me I’m still lying here, my eyes open, reflecting the blues and reds of the endless warning messages that are still flashing up on the screen. A small patch of drool has escaped my mouth and spreads slowly out towards the keyboard.

22F – Carpe Diem

Today, I have a spring in my step. I know, can you believe it? Me, of all people. I’m intoxicated, drunk on a sense of purpose. And you know why?

I’ve been surrounded by the most depressing, morbid bastards for such a long time. The quiet, awkward ones that don’t know what to say to you. Won’t even look you in the eye. And they’re nothing compared to the totally upbeat, never say die, I believe in you types. Ready to tell you some unbelievable crap, about self-worth, and belief, and love, and the power of the mind. And they come armed – out of nowhere, they produce books. Thousands of books. Entire libraries. Popular titles that focus your internal energies and harness your positivity and embrace your spirit animal or something. It’s like they’ve all subscribed to some literary pyramid-scheme, dooming them to push books on hapless patients for all eternity.

Hang on a second. See that woman over there? Didn’t she just drop something? Let me just go see if I can help out.

No. She’s fine on her own. She doesn’t need me.

Anyway, yeah, these people will go on and on, and really – I just didn’t need it. I was quite comfortable where I was. Well, comfortable for me. For someone who regularly spends nights in screaming pain, drenched in sweat. For someone looking down the barrel of extended hospital visits, and tests, and more tests. For someone dealing with an ever increasing stream of unanswered questions. For someone who – well, I don’t have to get that obvious, do I?

It’s not a great place to be. But at least I was calling whatever shots there were to call, and that was something.

And then it happened. One of them got to me.

One sec. Hey, you ok there? Need a hand? No? Ok. Well, have yourself a good day then.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. This happy person got to me. I think I let her talk to me for a little longer than I normally would (like, at all) because, well, she was actually pretty cute, and I thought, hey, who knows what a little pity can do here?

Turns out not much.

Anyways, I was just getting ready to tune out whatever drivel she was spouting when she puts this gentle, caring hand on my shoulder and looks me right in the eye. She says, you know, none of us ever know how much time we have. Yeah I say, but I’ve got a better idea than most. And then she says this thing, this weird thing, like all the other encouraging stuff, but different. But she sucks in this little bit of air first, this tiny breath.

And then she says: every moment of your life is valuable.

You’ll laugh, but hearing that was like all the clichés at once – heaven opening, light shining down on my head, a troupe of angels with O faces. Every moment of my life is worth something? Why didn’t someone tell me? Here I was, thinking it was all downhill from here, and that my whole existence had just been some kind of joke. A shitty clichéd walk-into-a-bar joke with a slurred ending that no-one can remember.

And all along, somebody just needed tell me that one simple fact.

Look here. There’s something I can do. Poor guy’s overloaded his trolley, and there’s cans of coke rolling everywhere.

Hey mate, can I give you a hand? Want me to lift these back on to the trolley for you? Well, I’d love to help you out. That’s manual labour, and I can do that for you for fifty-five bucks an hour. Cool?

What’s that?

Ok, I’ll put these down then, shall I?

Hm. He wasn’t too keen, wasn’t he? But this is the revelation I’ve had. I’m on limited time. Every last second I have is worth something. So why not charge for it? See, I’ve got this rate card here. Everything’s listed, itemised.

Helping people across the street is three bucks a crossing, flat rate. Holding a door is a bargain at a dollar twenty. Running to make a lift? I’ll keep the door from closing for you for a mere fifty cents.

Wouldn’t you pay fifty cents to not have to wait another eight minutes for a lift?

Chasing down items that have blown away in the wind will run you fifty-five cents a minute. ‘Cause you never quite know how long that will take. Of course, when you return the item and start discussing rates can get a bit heated. Am I holding their things hostage? That’s a matter of perspective. But you can’t tell me it’s not good value.

Passing tissues I keep down to five cents a sheet. I’ll give you my train seat for two bucks, three in peak hour. Spare change is something I’m still working on, but I’ll offer that once I’ve got the business model sorted out.

But like any fledgling business, you have to think outside the square. I made twenty bucks the other day helping out at a café. You know the one down by the park? I spent two hours there making it look like they had more of a crowd than they did. I showed the manager the rate card, and explained what the go was. Really, it should have been eighty, but they weren’t budging and then mentioned something about calling the police. So I though, ok, I can settle for a twenty.

At this rate, I can keep myself busy all day. This is my job, my purpose. I always thought people who did this sort of thing were a bit lame. But I never thought of doing it professionally. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Christmas is just round the corner, and that’s well within the eight months. That’ll be my real growth opportunity.

Anyway, I can see you need to get away, so I won’t keep you. Let’s just clear up the bill shall we? That’s been fifteen minutes of quality engaging conversation, which is down here for… yeah, fifteen minutes will run you a hundred thirty-five dollars. Cash ok?

21F – Handouts

It’s cold, it’s damn cold and my toes are curling into themselves and I’m walking right on my toenails, grabbing my sock edges around for warmth. But it doesn’t do any good. There are too many chinks in my armour, where sleeve meets pocket, where neck meets collar, too many places for the cold to get in. I just have to keep moving, keep the blood pumping. I like to hear it in my ears, even if it means braving the cold. Tells me I’m alive.

I keep my feet crunching into the pavement. I’m almost at the station. I can see the stairs that lead down to the arcade, the subway, the comfort of the underground. I step faster, clearing the last few paces before the entrance.

And then one of them is standing in front of me.

I’m a little embarrassed. Normally I’m a pro at dodging these guys, stepping neatly out of the way of their outstretched hands, their plastic wrapped magazines. My favourite move is a lateral side step to the left and behind a fellow commuter – let them get trapped while I slide away unhindered.

Not this time.

He must have been hiding behind the newspaper stand. He steps in, blocking the entry to the stairwell, and he turns and looks at me. Well, as much as these guys can look, if you know what I mean. He’s standing there, not exactly in rags, but his clothes are starting to blend into his body, so that skin, hair and fibre seem to be gradually becoming an unwholesome whole. I pull my nostrils back too late as the odour hits me, prickly and more than a little offensive.

I hate these guys.

He reaches forwards to offer me a free magazine, hygienically wrapped in a plastic film. I look at the publication in his hands – there’s some kind of residue between his fingers and the plastic – a thin, transparent membrane that keeps the cleavage of some famous type safe from some unidentified gelatinous substance.

I’m not taking the magazine.

A grey lip curls back from some yellow non-teeth, and he groans slowly, a tired, breathy sound. He pushes his unwanted gift forward again.

You’d take it, wouldn’t you? You’re one of those people who says, well, at least he’s doing something useful. At least he has a legitimate place in society. Well, you know what I think? Find something else for them to do. Something out of the way. Everyone felt sorry for them and now they’re everywhere, handing out magazines, waving around signs so they get noticed, giving away tissue packets… They’re inescapable. They’re everywhere.

And so you’ll meekly take their offering, wont you? Because you’re supposed to. Maybe you give them a nod and a smile, maybe you make a quick grab and keep walking. And then, first chance you get, the magazines are discarded. You throw them on the pile and jam your gloved hands back in your coat pockets. No one really wants to touch the plastic any longer than they have to.

But everyone acts like we all get along fine.

I take a short step to the left, look for a way past. The magazine somehow remains in front of me. He pushes the publication inches away from my nose, and groans again, and the groan ends in a higher pitch, almost like a question.

No, I don’t want your damn magazine. Okay? I’m sorry you’re dead, and it sounds like a really bad deal, but it’s got nothing to do with me, and me taking your surely fine publication it isn’t going to change too much of anything.

There’s nothing for it – he’s blocking the way. I push roughly into him, careful not to contact any bare skin. I’ve got gloves on, but still – he’s decomposing, right? Surprised, he slides off to one side with what I guess is an expression of alarm, or something, and I tumble my way down the stairs.

Look, I’ve got nothing against the undead. I just don’t want the magazine.

At the bottom of the stairs the tunnel opens up into an old shopping arcade, all tiles and metal grilles. I take a few clattering steps forwards.

There’s another groan. I look back up the stairs and he’s following me. They don’t normally come down this far, I mean there’s no law against it, but its like an unwritten rule, it’s not their turf. I watch him awkwardly hobbling down the stairs, still holding out his magazine, gurgling with the effort.

I start to walk faster. I start to panic.

I hear him pick up his pace as well. No, more than that – he’s running, a grotesque half shuffle, sliding across the tiles, really moving. I break into a run, but he’s already right behind me, and he lets out a cry, not a groan, more of a twisted yell, and his hands are on my back, and he pushes and I’m on the ground.

I look up. He’s standing above me and suddenly he looks huge, massive. He leans down towards me, stares at me with those dead, yellowed eyes. He reaches up a hand, and I shrink away, flinch, shut my eyes.

He roughly shoves the magazine into my hand. And then he slowly shuffles away, leaving me curled up against the tunnel wall, amidst a pile of discarded magazines, holding a crumpled starlet wrapped in plastic.

20F – Fortune

“What do those things do?”

“Don’t touch!”

Her hand snaps out across the table, striking his fingers, and he’s surprised by how quick she is. Obviously a lot of life left in her. She looks at him reproachfully.

“You do not touch anything here, ok? No touching!”

“Ok, ok, no touching.”

What a con. What an absolute con.

He looks over at her magic rocks, worn river pebbles covered in markings and scratches.

“So, how’d you end up in this line of work? I mean was it a graduate diploma, or more of a trade?”

“Foolishness. If you do not open your mind, you will learn nothing.”

“And what if I do?”

A tiny pause.

“You might be… surprised.”

She grabs the pebbles in her bony hands, holds them up to her forehead. She starts to mumble to herself. His nose itches from the incense. He sneezes.

She looks up for a moment, then continues to mumble. Suddenly she shrieks, a wild, insane cry, and the pebbles are scattered across the table with a theatrical flourish. She continues to mumble as she waves her outstretched hand, her old, bony, wrinkled hand, over the pebbles.

Her eyes snap open.

“Not everything is good for you. I see a great deal of conflict. A troubled relationship…”

He coughs, excuses himself.

“I’m not in a relationship.”

She looks up.

“It could be a family conflict…”

He shakes his head.

“Only child. Both parents dead.”

“Ah, the loss… That is what I can sense…”

“So the stones say that I am suffering from the loss of my parents, eleven years ago?”

“That is what they say.”

“Smart stones.”

She clears her throat, spits into a small handkerchief. Then she gathers up her dress, this impossibly large, layered concertina of a thing, and drags herself forwards.

“Now, you have been seeing someone… a lady…”

“Ah… no.”

“She is beautiful… you are close to her, yes?”

“Uhn…”

“Maybe this is someone you do not realise you have feelings for?”

“Well…”

“This lady, she is known to you, you have desired her, but she…”

“She what? Just wants to be friends?”

“Yes! And you, you feel so much more…”

He clears his throat.

“I don’t think so.”

She looks up at him, eyes glassy and earnest.

“You cannot deny your true feelings for her! She is…”

“Ah… not my sort of thing actually.”

“You may not even…”

“I’m gay.”

A quiet, tiny pause.

“Of course, it is a… a special other, I have just assumed, because your feelings were so strong, that…”

Her voice trails off.

“Sixty bucks, for this? This is what it is? I mean, at least give me the illusion that there’s something…  something insightful going on here.”

She scowls at him now, and folds her hands roughly into the folds of her strange dress.

“If you do not believe, then I cannot enlighten you.”

“Believe? When you’re doing this?”

He lunges forward and scoops the stones up in his hands. She shrieks again, and pounds against him, scratches him, but he’s holding the stones to his forehead now, doing his own mumbling, and with an overwrought flourish he flings them across the table. She sits back down, crying softly to herself, rocking back and forth.

“You’ve ruined them. They are ruined!”

“There about as good as ever, from what I can see. Now lets see what I can make up about you. Lets see, you’re about to come into a lot of…”

He goes to say money, given that it seems pretty unlikely. But his brain switches a gear, and he says something else instead.

“Jealousy. You’re going to come into a big old pile of jealousy.”

“You have defiled the stones!”

“A sister.”

He stops for a minute, and then gets some traction on the thought. It snowballs.

“You’ve got a sister. Lets get specific and say it’s a twin.  I mean you’re probably an only child, but I can always say she was abducted at birth and you’ve never met her, right?”

She looks up at him, silent now.

“But no, I think you knew this sister. You used to play hopscotch together.”

This is easy for him. Its like writing, back in school, the images just floating into his head. All he has to do is walk past and pick them up.

“And you used to cheat.”

She’s staring at him, watching him, saying nothing, her mouth drawn to a narrow line.

“She knew you were cheating, but she still let you win gracefully. That shamed you. That made you hate her even more.”

He looks up. Her head is down. She isn’t moving, crying, isn’t responding at all. But he’s got a head of steam up now. He scratches his head for a second, and looks for a twist to the story. He looks at the stones, and an idea pops into his head. He imagines it perfectly, sees the two of them years ago, the sister watching from the sidelines.

“She was the gifted one of the family, right? And you? You were the supporting act. And these things? They were hers! You could never make them speak to you, but she could!”

He looks up, stops. He’s gone too far. She’s crying, shaking, shrunk into a tiny ball.

He goes to apologise, realises it would be feeble at this point. At least he stopped where he did. She hadn’t stolen the stones. She never murdered her sister. God, he was getting morbid. She hadn’t spent the next twenty years trying to get the stones to talk to her, hearing nothing more than the clatter as they fall to the table. She was just an entertainer, just trying to make a living.

He decides it would be bad form to ask for a refund.

He glances one last time at the stones, and he thinks of a old knife, and police tape, and blood. He shakes the uncomfortable images out of his head and turns to go.

19F – Airport

Somewhere in this building there’s a pipe that sucks out all the atmosphere. It’s the opposite of warm. The stale air that seeps out of the air conditioning. The strange green hue to the lighting. The chairs that are never quite comfortable, no matter how you contort your body. The carpet that makes strange, swirling patterns if you stare at it too hard.

I feel sick.

Let’s be honest, nobody really likes to fly. When somebody asks, oh, did you have a good flight, they don’t think for a minute that you might have actually enjoyed yourself. It’s more a question of whether you made it through relatively unscathed. The best you can hope for is accidentally falling asleep, only to wake up on the other side, the throbbing in your neck a welcome trade-off.

Not that sleep is an option for me.

I catch myself watching the early flights go out, and I find the little finger on my left hand is quivering. Slightly. The sight of the large metal birds makes something heave in my chest, but I can’t stop looking at them. Each one hurls itself into the sky, and I can help but wonder how they stay in the air. Ok, obviously I know how it all works, but I also see everything that’s trying to bring them crashing to the ground. Gravity. Drag. Headwinds. Powerful forces. To anyone else, the planes look smooth, graceful, elegant. Perfect miracles of engineering. But I see a struggle. A desperate scramble to be airborne. Engines whining in protest, straining.

You can’t hear how desperate they are.

I watch them lurch upwards and all I can see is details – a small wobble of a wingtip here, a tilt there. No cause for alarm. Nothing that would get written up. But to my eyes, each one is an omen. A sign of impending disaster.

Don’t give me the road safety comparison. I know all about the statistics. I have, as they say, done my homework.

Before I know it, I’m walking down the corridor. Past the faint tang of burnt coffee that’s just everywhere. Through the strange, familiar tunnel of beige and grey. I feel the outside air, the fresh air, begin to wrap itself around me.

And then I’m at the door. This metal hatch that’s supposed to keep us from being sucked out into the sky. I start seeing stress fractures everywhere.

This never used to happen.

Before I know it, I’m in my seat. I look out the window, watch another plane taxiing down the runway, and a small pool of bile forms in the back of my throat. All the way through the pre-flight, I can hear my own heartbeat, feel the blood swirl through my head. Something feels too tight.

I look next to me, and Dave’s sitting there, waiting for word back from the tower, like I am. His face is calm, serene, utterly professional. How do I look? I don’t know. Nobody has said anything.

I grit my teeth and slowly suck in air. My lungs are screaming for more and more but I hold it. I have to hold it. My breath hisses like I’m sucking up steam.

I flick a switch and speak into the microphone, expecting my voice to catch, tremble. But the high-pitched chatter in my head comes out low, controlled, even. It’s not me. It must be someone else.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we apologise for the delay, just some traffic ahead of us. We should be underway shortly.”

I’m promising them something. The words don’t say it but I am. They believe me. Right now, someone is sitting back there, breathing out the bad air, comforted, relaxed, embracing the nothingness. Letting go of their fear.

I want to go back there. I want to give them some of mine.

18F – The Night Dentist

The old rough leather belts held his arms to the chair. They felt out of place in the room now – worn, cracking at the edges. Everything else was clean lines and stainless steel. He flexed his arms beneath the bindings and looked up.

“You’ve upgraded.”

The dentist was picking over a series of metal implements. They seemed smaller than he remembered.

“Been a while since you were here. How long since your last clean?”

“A year.”

“No, I mean your last real one. Like this. When did I see you last?”

He tried to count.

“Would have to be at least eleven years. Maybe twelve.”

The dentist rattled around the metal tools, pulled one out, held it up in front of him. Like he used to, when he was just a kid. To stop him from being scared.

“This other dentist, did he try for an x-ray?”

“Tried. Managed to talk him out of it before it got awkward.”

He nodded, and slowly approached the chair.

“You’d better be careful about things like that.”

A gloved hand grabbed the edge of his lip and twisted it outwards, not too gently. He saw the eyes, more sunken, huge behind the glasses, peering in at his teeth. He wasn’t just older, something else about him was different, his voice a little colder, harder.

“You been behaving yourself then?”

He caught the inference, ignored it.

“Been working on farms, mostly. Middle of nowhere.”

“Uh hunh… Oh. What’s this then?”

The spectacled eyes leaned in closer, squinting. He selected a small metal rod from his tools and gently tapped one of the raised incisors.
His jaw exploded with pain. Everything went vague, and he felt his muscles and nerves instantly tense. When the haze cleared, he looked up. The dentist was at the far end of the room, watching him cautiously.

“Quite a racket you’re making there. Thought that might be a bit tender.”

He felt a tiny burst of anger. He shut his eyes and forced it down. A few deep breaths and he was himself again. He looked up.

“What’s going on?”

“Hard to say. It looks like one of your… what do we call them? One of your other incisors has been damaged. What have you been eating?”

He didn’t reply.

“My guess would be an abscess, probably at the base. When the teeth retract it gets pushed deep, right under the jaw. Might explain the headaches you were telling me about – your body just can’t localise the pain.”

The dentist began picking through his equipment, holding up one implement after the other while he spoke.

“Normally we’d be looking at a root canal, but you have to understand, your whole physiology is a complete mystery to me. I don’t even know what will happen once the tooth retracts. And we’ve only got a few hours until that happens.”

“So… what can you do?”

“I can try to pull it out.”

He sat there for a minute, tried to think.

“What happens if we leave it?”

“I can only assume that the headaches will get worse. The infection could spread – it could become life threatening. You’ll need antibiotics. At the very least I’d say there’s a good chance you’d end up in hospital.”

No hospitals. No blood tests. No x-rays.

He could wait. But waiting would mean another month. Another month for another moon.

“So it has to come out then.”

The dentist looked over, needle in hand, and laughed nervously.

“I suppose I don’t have to point out that I’ve never done this before? Not on someone like you, anyway.”

Then the old man leaned in and injected something into his gum line. A sharp stab of pain gradually receded into a faint, fuzzy sensation. His face went numb.

“That’s a little more than the usual dose. You’ll be needing it, too.”

He watched the gloved hands carefully select a short, metal spike. The dentist began to tap the inside of his mouth, tentatively at first, but then with increasing force. He could feel nothing, no but his head shook, jostled with the effort. He watched the old man’s face, tight with concentration, but excited, too. Not the kind of operation he’d get to do every day.

His jaw began to throb, softly at first, then growing stronger, beating out a deep, solid rhythm. He could taste blood, and when the dentist backed away he could see it as well, on the metal and a small spray on the dentist’s smock.

The dentist leaned in with what looked like a pair of sturdy metal forceps, and clamped on to the tooth, gently wiggling it backwards and forwards. And then, bracing himself against the edge of the chair, he tensed his muscles and yanked backwards.

The dull throbbing became an uncontrollable rush of pain. Every muscle strained against the bindings that held him to the chair, until the metal arms bent and the bindings themselves gave way and snapped. A foul tasting liquid rushed into his mouth and he spat violently on the floor. In the same moment he was up, the hair on his arms and his back standing upright, his whole body awash with blood and adrenaline. He roared.

When he came to it was the early hours of the morning. His bare skin shuddered against the cold metal doors of the cabinet. His chest was sticky with blood, and there was a faint metallic taste in his mouth. He forced himself to look over at what he’d done, even though it twisted him up inside, even though it made it difficult to breathe. He wanted to remember.

He walked over to the body and gently pulled the tooth from the forceps. His tooth. Two inches long, a sharp, evil looking thing with a strangely curved root, bloodied and soft. He slipped it into his pocket and stepped quietly out of the surgery.

17F – In The Future

In the future, I think things will be worse than they are now. Ms Phillips says I’m being negative, but I think the future is bad.

Last week, Ms Phillips told me that I was “catastrophising”. She wrote the word on the board after class, and I copied it down. She said that it means that I only imagine that things can get worse. So she told me to write something positive about the future. About something good happening.

But I wanted to write about the ocean.

I’ve been reading about the ocean. It’s fucked. I’m allowed to use that word, because that was the word used in the magazine I read. Ms Phillips told me that the magazine was for older people, and that people who use words like that only use them for shock value, and that they use them because they aren’t very good writers, but I still think it was a good article. I read it with my brother, and he says it’s a good article, too. Anyway, the ocean is fucked and it’s all our fault.

The article was about someone sailing for fourteen days to visit the biggest garbage dump in the world, where the ocean is fucked. The oceans have lots and lots of currents, like rips but not just on beaches, they go all over the ocean. And any time someone puts something plastic in the ocean, the currents take it to the same place. And lots and lots of people put something plastic in the ocean. So this place is like a big plastic floating garbage dump.

The article says that the garbage dump is the size of Texas. I looked up the size of Texas on Google. It says that Texas is 268,820 square miles. I don’t know why they didn’t just say that the garbage dump is 268,820 square miles big – I think that sounds bigger. But I didn’t know how big Texas was, so maybe that was why.

Anyway, I already knew about the currents and the floating garbage dump, because my brother knows about that stuff. But while I was reading the article, I learned new things, too. I always thought a juice bottle would always stay a juice bottle, but they say it breaks down and becomes lots of tiny bits of plastic, little chunks. These tiny bits stay in the water and get eaten by jellyfish. And when other animals eat the jellyfish, the plastic stays with them. And eventually we eat things that eat the plastic, so we get the plastic too. Only tiny bits, but they don’t go away. Ever.

Ms Phillips was quiet after I told her about this. Then she said it was good that I was thinking about such serious things, but that I should not forget to be a kid. I said, but I am a kid, and the ocean is still fucked. She asked me not to use that word, and told me to say “polluted” instead. Then she went and had lunch.

The next day she came up and told me I had to write something.

She told me at the start of the class, first thing in the morning. She said that it was a very special creative writing project. I had to write what would happen to the oceans, but I had to give it a happy ending. She said it was important to have hope. I had to write how the oceans would be fixed. I didn’t want to, but she said that it might be my job one day, to work out how to fix the oceans.

So now the oceans were fucked, and I had to write five hundred words on how to save the oceans without saying “fucked”.

So I asked my brother.

My brother knows stuff. He won’t let me write his name here. He says that people can find him if he does that, that’s how smart he is. Anyway, he told me that no one ever does anything about stuff like this until it does something to them personally.

So I wrote about the President. He’s not just a President of one country, like the United States, he’s the President of a group of them, called the Group. I’m allowed to do that, because this is creative writing and I get to make stuff up. My brother asked me if the Group is a multinational corporation, but I don’t know what that is. Anyway, the President of the Group has a son, called Billy. Billy eats a fish with lots of plastic in it, gets cancer, and dies. So the President hires a team of scientists to fix the ocean.

Ms Philips asked me if I had help with the story, but I don’t want her to find out about my brother, so I say no.

Anyway, the team of scientists try out some giant filters, like the ones in fishtanks, only big enough for 268,820 square miles of plastic. But they don’t work, they get clogged and then the scientists can’t work out where they will throw them out to.

And then one of them makes a thing to eat the plastic, using genetic engineering. I found out about genetic engineering from my brother, and from Google. The thing they make is like coral, which I saw on TV and I like a lot. Coral is alive, even though it looks like rocks, which is cool. Anyway, the scientist makes something that looks like coral, except that it eats plastic.

And the plastic eating coral sits in the ocean and eats up all the plastic. And gradually, all of the plastic gets sucked out of the ocean and turned into coral, and people go diving on it, and it becomes a holiday resort. And the President of the Group, he gives lots of credits to scientists (because they have credits instead of money) to invent something better than plastic. So the scientists invent plastic bags made of vegetables, that you can eat after carrying stuff, so there is no more plastic in the ocean.

And the oceans are fixed.

And then there’s no more plastic for the coral to eat. But the coral is still hungry.

So the coral swims to California. It takes it a long time to get there, but when it gets on land the coral finds so much plastic that it eats the entire city and lots and lots of people die, and this is why the future is bad.

Ms Phillips didn’t like the story. But my brother said it was good.