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