28F – Inspiration

He cowers in the front row. To his left and right there are noises, hooting, people on their feet. On stage, a lone figure stands amidst a thin dusting of dry-ice smoke. Tall. Upright. A saint with a microphone. A guru. A teacher. A bringer of words of wisdom.

“I want you to stand up!”

The voice booms from speaker cones, radiates outwards. He feels it flow through his body and, for an instant, desperately wants to obey. But just as he begins to separate from the seat cushion, another sensation kicks in. Something is wrong. This isn’t right, not for him. He can’t do this.

He sighs, and his shoulders sag forwards. He is beaten already. Others here may benefit from surges of positivity, from confronting their true selves, but this stuff is not for him. He is a waste of time and money.

A spotlight peers down into his row, settling on his chair, his shrinking head. He raises a feeble hand to ward off the light, the attention.

“Sir, I want you to come up here!”

He looks up. Gordon is talking to him. Directly. And every eye in the room turns to him, to his seat. He can feel them scrutinise his mismatched jacket; knows they are looking at the coffee stain on his trouser leg.
He doesn’t move. An uncomfortable rumble rolls out through the audience. What’s he doing? Isn’t he going to go up there? What’s wrong with him?

He sinks further into his chair. The voice seems displeased.

“Sir, I want you to come up here!”

There are aides next to him now. A gentle tug on his elbow, and he slinks upright. He walks awkwardly towards the stairs. His hand reaches for his hair and finds a disorderly tuft protruding upwards. He tries to pat it down, but it springs back, resilient.

He approaches the stairs, stumbles, trips. Another murmur from the audience – a touch of shock, a fragment of pity but mostly laughter. His jacket now has a fine coating of stage floor dust from elbow to wrist. Slowly, he picks himself up, adjusts his thin cotton pants, revealing a worn pair of mismatched socks.
Gordon doesn’t mind. Gordon deals with this sort of thing every day. Gordon is beaming. Gordon has never seen anybody so in need of his help.

“Come over here. What’s your name?”

The amplified voice is gentler now, full of warmth and understanding. The microphone leans in expectantly. When he finally speaks his name comes out thin, thin and airless.

“Walter”

“Walter. Everyone – say we believe in you Walter!”

A roar from the crowd. They back him now, they have hope in the disheveled little figure up on stage. Because if Gordon can turn someone like this around, imagine what he could do for them.

Walter doesn’t know what to say. He just stands there, blinks rapidly. His hand reaches absent-mindedly for a tissue in his pocket.

“Walter, I can see that you’re not a confident person. That you let too many things in life pass you by.”

Walter withdraws the tissue. Loose change clatters out across the stage. He lunges to rescue a coin, and the sudden movement tears a seam in his trousers. The coin keeps rolling slowly, outpacing its owner until it finds the tiny gap at the edge of the stage, and drops neatly inside.

The crowd is losing it, laughing and hooting. Gordon is unimpressed.

“Enough!”

The crowd stops. Their instant obedience gives Gordon a little tingling sensation at the base of his spine.

“Do you know why they laugh, Walter? Its because they can remember a time when they’ve been in your position, and they’re thinking, well, I’m glad that’s not me!”

Something else can be felt in the auditorium now, something like a sense of shame. Gordon feels something else, too. It’s like a warm treacle that spreads through his chest.

“What they don’t realise, is that right now, you are stronger than them. Because here you are – coping, dealing with something that they themselves are desperate to avoid!”

Walter looks up at him. His vacant look is mistaken for an expression of grim determination.

“Now, what I want to know is – Walter. You’ve shown us you have strength. I believe you have strength. But what I want to know is…”

The audience takes a collective breath, and bodies strain forwards in anticipation. This is what they’re here for. What they paid their $179.95 for. This is The Moment.

“… are you ready to transform your life?”

Gordon offers him a hand. The crowd roars in approval. The crowd seems to like Walter again.

“Walter?”

Gordon’s hand is outstretched. Walter looks at it like it’s an unfamiliar lever on an incomprehensible machine. Then he shakes it.

Their hands touch. Gordon can no longer hear the crowd – the cheers have become muffled, distant. He even forgets for a moment that Walter is there. All his senses can tell him is that he’s touching a moist, fleshy hand. An oily, sweaty film slides between the two palms. Feeling the slightest squirm of revulsion, Gordon jerks his hand away.

“I’m sorry” says Walter.

Gordon looks up, wonders if anyone has noticed. He wipes his hand unconsciously on his trouser leg. The crowd lets out a tiny, almost inaudible gasp. He looks up – notices for the first time just how many faces there are in the auditorium. How many puzzled looks. How many patrons murmuring to each other behind their breath.

His mind races. I do this every week. It’s just a minor hiccup. Just need to keep talking. He raises the microphone. The words come out strained and stilted.

“You see, uh… Look …”

“Walter”

“Yes of course, Walter… the thing you have to do is…”

How many of them are wondering why they paid to see him? How many of them will be at the ticket booth in the interval, demanding a refund?

Gordon’s mouth drops open a fraction, but he can say nothing. Everywhere he looks, people are staring at him, mocking him.

He drops to his knees, shaking.

Inside his head his speaking schedule, his book deal, daytime tv appearences all implode, sucked into a yawning emptiness in the centre of his chest. Tears sting at his eyes.

An angry buzz starts to roll through the auditorium. A few patrons make for the exit.

Walter takes a half-hearted step towards him. He repeats himself under his breath.

“I’m sorry”

Then he walks softly back down the steps, and returns to his seat.

27F – Copies

The doors slide open for me.

It’s always bright when I step inside, like a second daylight. My feet skid on the floor, making satisfying squeaks as I work my way past the endless rows of binders, stationery, discounts, all shiny, hard plastic. And waiting just round the corner are the machines, humming, quiet and patient.

Which of the regulars will be in today? The artist with the painted fingernails, who spends her time copying exposed breasts and detached limbs?  Or how about the university student, the one who duplicates entire textbooks, saving a few bucks while breaking just about every copyright law under the sun? Or the old guy who talks under his breath, and asks the attendant the same question every week – but how do I make it come out longways?

I make my way to the far corner where the machines are waiting. No regulars. No art projects, no textbooks. Just a lone figure standing there, watching a neat and orderly stack of papers suck slowly into the machine, sheet by sheet. Words. Words, and words, and more words. An author?

I watch the green light wash across his face and retreat. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move. Like a…

Like a sentinel. His eyes alert, ever watchful, quietly observing the emerald dawn.

You see, I have words of my own. I sit down to my machine and carefully take my papers out. My manuscript. My words. While others may come here to duplicate forms, or textbooks, or their nether regions, I have a higher purpose.

I pick up the manuscript, and feel the collective weight of four hundred and eighty seven sheets, and something else too – the heft of the thing itself, the life of it. Six painstaking years are captured here, caught forever between fibre and verb. I roll my wrist gently and the pages fan out, inhaling, exhaling. Each word, every comma beaten into submission until the whole thing has surrendered. And now, at last – it’s done. Undeniable. Complete.

I take my words, my pages and gently lay them to rest in the feed tray on top of the copier. A long, slow breath slides gently into my lungs. Committed now, I hit copy, and the machine winds up. Where will these copies go? To publishers, agents, interested parties. Overseas? Perhaps. My story will duplicate, like a cell dividing. First these few, seemingly insignificant in number, but each with the hope of propagating itself, spreading out into hundreds, thousands, touching every corner of the globe.

My fellow author at the corner machine stands, stretches. He lopes over to the coffee machine. His copier powers on diligently.

A pang of curiosity tugs at me. What manner of writer could he be? I find myself moving closer to his machine. Page after page slides out, and in between the sliding sheets I can pick out slivers of sentences.

She turned to him and…

It dawned on her that…

The blackened tower…

Strange. A blackened tower sounds faintly familiar to begin with, but what coincidence! That two manuscripts in the same shop would…

She stopped. Paused and breathed

Paused and breathed?

Somewhere downstairs the phone gave out a brash, mechanical shudder.

Wait. That’s my line. My exact line. My heart boils, trembles in my chest. I look up. He’s still busy with his coffee. His spoon scrapes against the Styrofoam wall of a coffee cup, and I hear it like a tear in weathered fabric.

I snatch a sheet of his story.

He’s stolen it. Word for word. Comma for comma. Its all here – the girl turning away slowly, the hand dropping the letter, the silence that feels like a – yes! – like a vast, unending emptiness. Word for word.

“Hey!”

He’s watching me now. Do I see guilt flicker across his face? I raise my hand and I point at the plagiarist, the despicable character. Shouted words tumble from my mouth.

“Thief! Thief thief thief thief!”

He screams at me to put it down, his face red, glowing with madness. And he’s running for me. The offending sheet is snatched away from my hands, and he does his best to bury the evidence back into the sheaf of papers. But I’ve seen it now. I know. He has my story.

He pushes me roughly away.

“Get back to your own machine!”

I look over at my copier. My manuscript is still passing through, sheet after sheet. The green light snakes back and forth. I look at the output tray. Every second a new sheet emerges from the machine. Fresh, and warm. And blank.

I run to the controls, hit stop. The machine complies, shudders, slides out a final, almost-pristine sheet. I take my manuscript gingerly from the copier. It feels lighter.

I skim through the pages. Blank. Blank. All of them are blank.

I look up at him, and a sound comes from somewhere deep inside of me. Not my own voice, but rage itself, rattling forth from my very insides.

I leap blindly for my stolen words.

The security guard is behind me. He tears me away from the pages, and I’m howling, wailing. The plagiarist recedes, indignantly brushing at his sleeves, tidying the pages of his story. My story. My feet squeak and slide at the heel as I’m dragged past those same endless rows of binders and stationery.

The doors open again, only too willing to eject me into the wintry air.  Icy fingers are already clawing at my shirt, looking for a weakness, a way in.

At the counter a disheveled sales girl looks up, pouts, gives me a disgusted glance.

“Shit, him again?”

The guard shrugs, throws me out into the night. The air is cold. Cold like a…

And suddenly I can’t think of anything.