The Death of Me

‘Will that be all?’ She asked. Her eyes stealing a glance at the book open in front of me.
‘Oh, and a flat white would be great, thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’ She gave me a wide smile before dancing back into the steam and heat of the kitchen. I just sat and stared after her. It’s funny sometimes, you can spend most of your twenties enjoying the quiet solitude life can offer for those who want to find it. Find a balance between connections, friendships, lovers, while all the while avoid getting caught up too deeply, ensnared in other people’s lives and business. Move along at the surface level of everything. I was the type who generally stayed around the periphery, looking in; watching, learning. I liked to think I made things happen that needed to happen, stopped things that shouldn’t be happening, and on top of all that, I liked to think I was exclusively a master of my own destiny. I smiled at the thought, and went back to my book.
This girl though, she was different. Not in any way that I could put my finger on, but just different. The way she looked at me and smiled, the way she walked, the way she had her hair; the way I’d been going back to this café now for three weeks in a row, and would come again next week; that kind of different. Special. And somehow I knew that this girl would be the death of me.

Image sourced from: http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/activity/g/glb-coffee/cup.jpg

The Mists of Chaos

The thing that made it so difficult for him, was that it was the same job, day in day out. A recurring sample, a reel flicking over and over again. Continuous loop. Cycling. The same reality swirling around his neck like buzzards on a hook.
The walls dripped with a blood-red glistening ooze. Its malevolent beginnings cast a reminder of horrible deeds gone bad in its seeping spread as it reached the edge of the carpet.

Image sourced from: http://www.wright.edu/wrightway/workstation.gif

The Last Time

The last time I saw Rachel seemed enshrouded in the mist I now realised had been encapsulating me at the time. The images were hazy, incomplete; the emotional connection felt hollowed out, empty of any true weight. I remember I had been in the grippe of a malaise that had essentially threatened my spiritual health since I had left school all those many years prior. I was lying naked and fearful upon my wrinkled and worn bed linen, writhing and fighting with my consciousness for an answer to it all, this life that we all must lead on our own. The doorbell had chimed once, fitful and furtive, echoing down my hallway and greeting me with a baleful jabbing of knowledge that it must be answered. I groaned and found myself gripping my pillow against my chest, hugging so tightly as though were I to let go I would set adrift from the security of my deep maroon-upholstered and lacquered IKEA-inspired surroundings. I prayed that the caller would go, prayed to all and sundry that would listen… ‘please god, please let this person go now and leave me’, ‘please god, let the person at my door realise they are wanted elsewhere’, ‘let them realise that they know not what they do, but that they must go and leave me be, thus it is done by the power of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost’; make them presume no one was home, perhaps call back at another time; but they did not. The doorbell chimed again, longer this time – an incessant calling of attention, someone is here, you must answer the door, society bids this convention be followed. A deep moan and then I’m languidly rolling to the edge of my bed and then dropping, flummoxed to the floor, the brittle cold of the bare polished floorboards clanging against my bones with a dull, thudding pain that took time to subside. Pulling my bathrobe around my nakedness, I lurch up towards the door to greet a ghost from my memory.

The Art of Work

There is a special art to getting someone off the phone in as quick a time possible. I was nearing perfection. If a call came through that I could answer but if it would take too much of my time then I’d forward it on to someone else claiming ignorance. Otherwise I’d answer lightning-fast and unusually unhelpfully.
That was what was happening lately.
Time was ticking too quickly. Passing me by while I sat in an ergonomically-friendly desk chair with a frowning posture and miserable rounded shoulders. I was slowly dying and no one seemed to realize, let alone care.
And why should they? I mean I didn’t. Or did I?
I found my true train of thoughts constantly interrupted by meaningless phone calls. Half-witted folks droning at the end of a phone line. An old woman who has lost her husband is seeking help with the medical insurance claim. She is out of pocket to the tune of thousands. I am the one who picked up the phone.
I am the one who transfers it to someone who is paid to care.
I am paid.
But do not care.
This thought breaks when I receive a notification I have new mail. The office funny guy sending another chain-email. I would like to break him. Emotionally. Intellectually. Physically. Break him and leave him lying in a cooling pool of blood. Cloying around his ankles.
This boiling thought is broken by a phone ringing at an unoccupied desk where someone has left their mobile on and unattended.
I am tempted to break it.
Yeah so the thin veneer is crumbling down. Collapsing. It took two years. A lot of man hours. A solid regimen of 9-5. Monday to Friday. Two Towers fell. Wars raged and are raging. People fought, lost their lives, people were killed, murdered, planes exploded, trains collided, countries flooded, volcanoes erupted.
Disasters.
While I hacked away at my keyboard.
Bent over a monitor.
Sitting in meetings.
Traveling to work.
But what none of any of it has answered is where does all this go. To battle away at work until I’m comfortably numb enough to accept it? Where I can accept work and this ongoing battle with insanity as merely a means to an end? Where’s the bold dashing anti-hero – who takes me under my wing, shows me the error of my ways. Opens my eyes. Movies don’t do it anymore. I have an opinion but nobody is listening. I’m not listening to anyone else either. No one’s life plan will work for me just as mine won’t work for anyone else. Only I’m someone who accepts that. I won’t ram it down your throat – you must lead life as I do. I’m no shining example of morality. I make a choice not to sleep with someone. It’s not some moral high ground I’m taking here. Maybe it’s a superiority complex. They’re too ugly and cheap for me. They’re not worth the time and effort especially considering it takes a lot to make me feel these days. I don’t fit all the molds. I’m in this world but not of it.
The clichés are no longer fitting. Everyone else feels this way and that only makes the isolation all the worse.
You feel shit. So does everyone else.
But you don’t care. I’m afraid to admit it but neither does anyone else.
Am I being brave expressing this? No. Bravery in the new age is over, a fantasy garnered by big-selling movie executives. They dish out and sell bravery, and romance, and honor, and intrigue as they see it. They own the rights. You can only buy into it.

[extract from the novella The Subversion of Richard by Charles Lidgard, published 2002 by Trouser Books]

Number 57 West Maribyrnong Tram Home

The tram shuddered to a jerking halt on the corner of Victoria and Elizabeth Street. Its heaving hulk strained at the brakes which grunted and seethed at the effort. The doors swung clumsily open on their creaking decrepit hinges and those passengers who were standing were flung back momentarily as they gripped the plastic hand-grips more tightly against the motion.
A group of three males in their mid-twenties swung aboard with all the swagger and bravado afforded to those who move in belligerent groups of drunken powerhouses. They quickly moved to the back of the tram where they welled around the steps at the rear, safe from too many prying eyes.
I looked up from my book and studied them for a moment. One, who was shorter than the others, and with a heavier sturdy build, had three gashes across his face which were glistening with blood, still wet, from what was obviously a recent wound. As I sensed he was about to see me watching him I turned back to my book, alternating between reading and peering out into the damp wet Melbourne night. It was winter and people were scurrying between the shelter of shop awnings and the open unprotected streets. I watched a business man in a grey suit pull the collar of his coat up around his neck to keep out the chilling rain. I huddled back against the warm cloth of my seat and felt warmed by the heat coming up beneath me, generated by the trams internal heating system and listened to the short and sturdy man speak to his friends.
“Fucking bloody junkies, mate. Fucking junkies. Never trust a fucking junkie.” He was emboldened in his inebriated state, swaying with the tram’s motion as the door’s slid shut once more and with a ding of the tram’s warning bell, it shuffled off and turned the corner onto Victoria Street. He was speaking loudly as though to make his point known to all those aboard. Those sitting closest to him were predominantly Asians, families and students, trundling their way home after a trip to the Markets with black wire-framed shopping trolleys laden with all manner of vegetables and produce for the week ahead. The mid-twenties sturdy white male with the bleeding cuts and bravado then knelt down next to one such unwitting passenger – a petite Asian girl, who clutched her bag of University books and plastic bag of groceries closer to her chest for protection as he lent in – and began a didactic dribble:
“Never trust fucking junkies. D’ya hear me? Never. Fucking fuckers will fucking nearer rip your face off than talk to ya. She fucking spat on me when ah went up to grab me’self a fucking beer! Spat on me – all down my jacket and all ‘cos I bumped into her with me shoulder on the way past. Totally fucking fucked. Ah. Fuck. Bullshit. Fucking bullshit!” He looked back up at his two friends. They nodded in agreement. One spoke back, while the other settled himself further down in the back steps adjoining the exit doors not in use on this journey.
“Fucking ‘a mate. Fucking ‘a. Bullshit is right.”
“I mean fuck! Look at me face! Bleeding an’ shit all over the friggin’ place. My face is fucked up man.” He suddenly caught my gaze and I quickly averted my eyes. The last thing I needed was to be accosted by a drunk violent blow-hard Aussie yobbo. I looked out of the window once more and a smile broke upon my face as I thought about the irony of the situation.

Image sourced from: http://www.beluba.com.au/ww3/fotos/m_tram.jpg

The Super

As Richard closed his door he saw a light on in the apartment opposite and as he hovered in the doorway, head craning out a jut, a curtain twitched and then hung slack and then nothing. The light went off a second later. The apartment had been empty for as long as he had lived there.

The Super answered the door on the second knock, dressed in a singlet and wiping food from the corners of his mouth with a dirty-looking tea-towel.
“What is it?” He said.
“My place, 36G’s been vandalised again – someone’s spray painted all over the grill and window into the hall.”
“I’ll attend to it as soon as I can. Probably be the day after tomorrow, depending.”
Richard nodded his thanks, but remained in the doorway. The Super frowned and shook his head. “Is there something else?”
“Has someone moved into the place opposite me?”
“Up on 36? I’ll check the books. Excuse me.” He pushed the door closed again, it stuck in the frame before it thudded closed. It reopened with the security chain on. The Super trundled away into the mirk and Richard could see a small TV playing some game show over in the corner and behind that velvet-red curtains with long dark stains in the folds. And Rosie for 10 points… who am I? I was born in 1938, the son of a famous industrialist… On the arm of a threaded couch lay some glossy girlie magazine. A smell of refried beans and canola oil blew out into the cold corridor. “Yeah, someone’s moved in, under the name Ruanna. Moved in yesterday. Her application was accepted a week prior. Problem?”
Richard refocused from the TV to the Super. “Sorry? No, no problem. I just wondered. I thought I saw a light on in there, that’s all.”
“Yeah? Well that’ll be them then won’t it?”
“Well yeah I guess so.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Thanks. Have a good night.”
“I’ll try.” He said rubbing his neck before the door slammed shut.
Richard headed back off down the hall. Then a thought seized him and he lashed out with his boot against the wall. Fucking wanker. It must be a hard life getting interrupted by actual legitimate fucking work in the middle of jerking off to some mag while a big-titted contestant plays dumb on Sale of the Century. He can go to hell. “Wanker!” He shouted and caught the face of a frightened girl peering out at him through a foggy window, features distorted by the grill before her breath fogged the window further and she vanished a moment later.

Image sourced from: www.everythingnotrelated.com/ 2004_01_01_archives

Fragments from the Abyss

“Did you bring it?”
“Of course I did. But, hey, how are you? Sorry I didn’t come last Sunday – I had a meal thing with my parents, Dad and the Step-mom.”
“That’s okay. Nothing much more to tell from this week to the last. I’ve been here and still am. Taking the meds on time, socialising – sorry – fraternizing even is perhaps better – taking the right routes when discussing my condition. Things are looking good – it’s getting better all the time,” he hummed off into The Beatles tune.
“But that sounds all positive man. Like there’s a sense of progression – the more that time passes the more progress you make.”
“But, I’m still here. That’s what I’m trying to say. You’re here, right now, but in two hours from now, you’ll be Tony back at home, tomorrow you’ll be Tony at work. Tony down at the pub. Tony at the corner store. Tony, Tony, Tony - at all these different places, at different times, and what am I? Where am I? I’m here, all those times, here and now, and here and now in five minutes from now. And here in five months from now. A voluntary admission whose leaving is not at his disposal.”
I just looked down at my feet. He was right. I knew it, but it hurt me to face his eyes and let him see the pain I felt at his being here, at him being in here. I counted the eyelets on my right shoe and let Ant continue.
“I came in and now I can’t go out. Not for another five months. That’s what they told me yesterday at the monthly meeting update. I sit and allow the doctors to become ‘better acquainted with the acuity of my manic depression’. They ask and I reply. And each reply is marked in scrolls of paper they carry in their little brown suitcases. And they are old, learned, wise men and with that knowledge they can pass judgment and deem that I remain.”
“But Ant, things will be getting better… you’ve already come full-circle since when… Since when you first came in here I mean.”
“Oh Tony, thank you. Without that little tid-bit of knowledge I wouldn’t have known.”
“Fuck off.” I said. The rudeness was it. It didn’t become him. It wasn’t him or at least it seemed to amplify one dark aspect that was him. We all have negative and positive traits, but for some reason on the meds, the negative trait was amplified. I thought it was more like something designed to be a protective mechanism. Designed to keep me seeing the pain, and scared man in front of me. I was scared too. I raised my head and looked him back in the eye.
“I’m sorry. But you know that it pisses me off when you speak like that. I know it’s meant to be in humour, but I don’t find it funny. Not now… in this place.”
“Yeah… sure.. Hey I’m sorry. I was just kidding around. Can I have a cigarette?”
I leaned back on my chair and reached into my jacket pocket.
“Here,” and handed him a cigarette. He inhaled deeply and leaned back in his chair and we looked and grinned at each other, conspiratorially, like the old days.
“Thanks man,” he said, the light of happiness suddenly growing in his bright, glistening eyes.
The door opened up behind him and a warden came into the room. He was holding a clip board in his hand and a pen. He looked up for a second at Ant and I talking and then went back into the office. There was no hurry, we had all the time in the world.
“Next time I come will be the third Sunday in March.”
“Oh, okay – what are you doing again?”
“My girlfriend and I – I’m taking her down skiing around the alps down south. We’ll taking a week at her parents, and then another week on the snow.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It will be. I feel bad telling you, as though I’m lauding it over you. It makes me feel ashamed to be experiencing something like that, and knowing you’ll still in here.”
“Hey, hey. Hey. Look, I know what you mean because we talked about the other time. I know, but I like hearing about your trips man. It reminds me of the life that’s going on out there. I see it on TV even. Like even though it’s pre-recorded it’s still almost a global record of what that actor was doing in that time and place. And if you know the schedule date, then you know that right then that was that actors’ mindset. Those images and scenes had that effect, but more magnified and, possibly convoluted, on that actor and they had a similar effect to what you felt when you saw the movie later on. You share a moment in time. I like hearing your stories but it feels like I’m sharing a moment in time with you, when I know what you’re doing and I can imagine you doing it, as though I was doing it. Is this making any sense?”
“Yeah, no, I know what you’re saying. Continue.” I flourished my hand, and smiled and then took a last drag on my cigarette.
“It also reminds me that those things are things I can be doing when I get out of here. It reminds me of what the world can hold for me when I get out. Even if I don’t do any of them, at least the option would at least be there, y’know?”
“Yeah I know. Anyway, I gotta go. I dig hanging out with you man. I’ll write you a bit more about my trip this week and post it to you when I hit the road. This’ll be over soon man, and I’ll take you up there. Find you a nice lady friend and we’ll all head up. I know you’ll love it up there man. It’s one magical place.”
I scraped my chair back and stood up. I left the packet on the table for Ant later on, and slid my cap on, rolling it low over my eyes. I bent my head a little when I said goodbye, it was the most humblest gesture I could think of at the time. I couldn’t just walk out and get on with my life, knowing what was his life.
“Hey, I’ll definitely send that letter man. And maybe a picture or something.”
“Have an excellent trip my friend. Have the best time and enjoy it. You will for sure. And thanks for coming up to see me. It means a lot man, more than you would know.”
“I know. I know man. It’s all good. I’ll see if I can bring up Jimmy next time as well.”
“Sure. Anyway ah thanks man and, until the next time, ‘you take care now, bye bye.’ He imitated Jim Carrey and we both laughed then shook hands and I walked off into my own little life and got on with it.

Image sourced from: http://www.photosapien.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10179/Whitby33.jpg

Hey, come to

‘Hey, come to,’ I said. I shook him again, but he did not stir. His head lolled around listlessly, a heavy bulb on a paper string, I grabbed his shoulders and shook him, hard, lifting his head from the floor, my hand beneath it to stop it striking the polished wood. What to do? What to do? I thought, clicking my fingers and looking about absently. Some water maybe. No, need to get him up. Walk him through to his room. Put him down on the bed.
Crouching low below him, I lift up an arm and slide my head and shoulder in under it. Rocking in circles slightly I am able to wedge in and get an angle to clasp his chest and lift him up using my legs at the knees to lift him up. He is just under a foot taller than me and so I am stretching to get him up on his legs, which drag and catch on the furniture as I stagger with him to his room. He is a dead weight and I’m exhausted with the exertion by the time he flops headlong onto the bed. He moans slightly and immediately goes into deep snoring, stilted slightly every fourth or fifth breath, where the air comes through strained.
I place a glass of water on his bedside table later, and then turn off the light and close the door. He will sleep the deepest sleep. And he’ll make the coffee in the morning upon awaking, and we’ll both sit and stand, talking and smoking, combing our hair and showering, and then the both of us will head off to work.

Image sourced from: http://www.museion.it/download/floyer_02.jpg

Calling Home

The coins drop, clunking into the phone box. There’s silence and then faint clicking sounds as my call is connected, followed by the familiar ringing tone. In my father’s house, some 1200 miles away, all of his three phones are ringing: upstairs and downstairs and out in the double-garage and workshop. I cringe at the thought: I have not spoken to my father in some three years. It’s funny the way parents place all their own abandoned hopes and desolated dreams onto their children, the things that they themselves didn’t attain when at the same age.
Three rings, four. Father will be scrambling in from tending the garden, turning off the sprinklers, putting down his rake, and wiping the dirt from his boots on the rough and tattered mat. Five rings, six. He’ll be methodically washing his hands, rolling them under the faucet of the downstairs washbasin - the smell of Solvol spreading its dim clean cheer. Two hours behind, it must be about midday there now as father dries his hands on the washroom towel. Then smoothing his silvered hair, he will be walking purposefully to the phone. Seven, eight rings. Then a click and a machine whirring, echoing down the line’s scratchy connection. ‘I am sorry but I can’t come to the phone right now. If you leave your name, number and a short message, I will return your call as soon as I can.’
My attention wavers over the Telstra advertisement mounted over the phone set. A new calling card is available: ‘Keep in touch with friends & family with Telstra’s easy-save option. An easy way to keep warm this winter’. Someone has taken a marker pen and added a moustache and goatee to the smiling woman in the photo, who is standing in a phone box, around which is superimposed a large fireplace replete with an antique hearth and grill. Above that someone has spray-painted over Telstra’s logo with the words: ‘Fuck Off and Die’. The last letters ‘i’ and ‘e’ don’t fit on the frame and they have dripped and run over the window of the phone box like rude uninvited guests.
The answering message ends and there is a shrill beep. As I hang up the phone, I can hear a voice down the end, whispering in static through the receiver: ‘Hello? Hello? Is anyone there? Is anyone there? Hello?’ I can’t be sure. I cut it off seconds later by jamming the receiver down on its cradle. I lift it back off again and then jam the phone down again and again, violently, until the thing comes away in my hands. Plastic splinters flying about the little claustrophobic booth. I jam it down repeatedly until just the metal cabling hangs limply from the box: frayed colourful wires, like nerves trying to move a limb that is no longer there; a phantom muscle movement. I kick the booth door open and walk quickly back to my apartment in the projects.

Image sourced from: http://www.clubvw.org.au/images/phone_box.jpg

The T.V. Was Shot

The TV was shot. The video was fucked. That pissed Gregory off. The illicit porno had flashed up briefly - the screen awash with erotic copulating sweating flesh - then it crackled and blurred at the edges before totally disintegrating into a fuzzy storm of white and black dots. Gregory strained his eyes - for a second he thought he could make out a silhouette of something moving - possibly something of humanoid origin...FUCK!!! He threw his tissues down on the ground and did up his pants. This fucking thing was useless. He remembered back to the bespectacled Chinese man at the electrical shop. "See? Work very well. Good picture - see - very good price. You buy? You buy now?" The Chinese man almost attacked Gregory with his predictable verging-on-gibberish pigeon-English ranting. "VERY VERY GOOD PICTURE! VIDEO CHEAP AND WORK WELL! YOU BUY NOW!" "OKAY!!!" Gregory relented and forked over the $50 for the video and another $70 for the TV. As he was trundling them out he caught sight of a video lying on its side on the top of a shelf. "Asian Butt Bangers". Gregory broke speed limits on his way home.
Gregory stood in front of the snow-balling screen. His balls blue-balling. His lips stretched back in an evil snarl and he contemplated beating his new purchase into a thousand electrical pieces. But something caught his eye. There was movement on the screen again. This time it seemed slightly clearer. He peered closer - his face inches from the screen. That was definitely movement - was that a woman's silicon-enhanced breast? Possibly a giant rubberized dildo? Maybe just someone's leg? He peered closer still...
A snow-balling white-static noise of an arm reached out from the screen and gripped his shoulder. He reared back and instinctively tried to break away from its calculating grasp. But the arm pulled him closer, closer, closer into the TV.
Gregory found himself strapped to a bed covered with plastic sheets. The bed was shimmering and covered with a fuzzy snow-ball effect. He was naked - his own body awash in white noise electrical snow-storms. He peered out into the fuzzy blurry snow-balling room. His sense of perception was shot. His optical sensors couldn't get a grip on his surroundings.
He could make out a silhouette coming closer...It was the bespectacled Chinese man form the electrical shop! He was naked and a fuzzy snow-balling appendage hung low from his groin. "VERY VERY GOOD PICTURE! YOU ARE CHEAP AND WORK WELL! YOU WILL BE IN MOVIE - YES? I MAIN STAR - YOU LOVER! I MAKE LOVE TO YOU NOW YES?" Gregory's lips curled back in a silent scream of excruciating terror...From somewhere he swore he could hear bad 70s disco music with a bad guitar solo playing up a storm.

Image sourced from: http://static.zed.cbc.ca/users/e/EricB/files/tv.gif