You click on the link to the publication page and move, without hesitation, into the second person. Somewhere offstage, a gear shifts. Oil lubricates. Your mouse finger follows its heart, caressing the pixels of virtual space, in search of an anchor. The metaphors pile up. Your session time now exceeds the average for the part of the world from which you’ve arrived. From somewhere else, deep in a hidden directory, an image is served. Its filename starts off pleasingly enough but then soils itself, excreting an appendage of digits which only makes sense in a certain light: 20200926-4-7ni594. That first bit could be a date, you reckon. One that’s already passed. Parsed? Past. What comes after the first dash could be anything. Literally, anything.
Category: Fiction (page 1 of 50)
Of course, there’s no point writing oneself into a corner or being labelled a one trick poet. So I’ve started writing fiction. Actually, I’ve always written prose. Poetry is for – oops.
Hollywood agent: Hi David, I got your number through LinkedIn, I hope you don’t mind me calling you at this hour.
Me: Not at all, how can I help you?
Hollywood agent: Well, I’ve got a possible role for you.
Hollywood agent: Yes, in a movie.
Me: A movie, you say?
Hollywood agent: Yes, a Hollywood movie, to be precise.
Me: I’m listening.
Hollywood agent: Oh, that’s great. Now, I can tell from your LinkedIn profile that you’ve been waiting for this kind of role for a loooong time.
Me: That’s putting it mildly.
Hollywood agent: And I know you’ll be totally excited by this one.
Me: Sounds great so far. Please, keep going. Don’t let me interrupt.
Hollywood agent: Well, it’s a buddy movie, and you’ll be playing alongside Jack Black, who’s—
Me: Thank you for your time. Have a nice day.
/scene
1.
“I’m a ghostbuster,” my uncle reveals in a hoarse whisper.
“Right,” I say, relieved that none of the other workshop participants can hear us. “How does that work, then?”
“You know, like, I see ghosts. And then I tell them to rack off.”I roll my eyes.
“I’ll tell you to rack off in a minute if you’re not careful.”
2.
The instructor gives us the usual drill about weapon safety and backing up your buddy. I look out the blurred plastic window of the Nissan hut to see muddy vehicles arriving in the carpark, one after another. Diesel fumes drift in through the door. The mud and the grease and the blood get into your skin. Turn it black.
3.
Five prisoners, all of them cuffed and blindfolded, in the corner, their heads bowed. My uncle stares at them, his left eye twitching. I notice his hand has already moved to his weapon.
“Traitors,” he mutters.
“Shut up,” I say.
4.
A klaxon cracks the silence and we’re all on our feet and out of the hut. The first unit loads the prisoners into the open-top truck, while ours piles into the bus. Neither vehicle has windows. The sunlight and wind strafe us without mercy as we careen down the old logging track towards the dam, its surface thick with algae.
5.
“Does anybody know how to switch this thing off?”
It’s the spotter, who’s struggling with the onboard comms installation, a greige tablet affixed to the otherwise empty dash. Every few seconds it emits what sounds like a random string of numbers.
55-63–62–09 . . . 73–02–04–04 . . . 83–02–43–58 . . .
“Maybe it’s next week’s Lotto results,” my uncle says.
Someone guffaws.
“Right, that’s it,” I say.
Unlocking my seat belt, I turn to thump my uncle with a closed fist.
6.
The guards wait by the shore with the prisoners as the barge draws closer. High above us, a sound like fighter jets scrambling, although this is impossible. But it’s the signal.
7.
I clean my weapon in the ambience of the AI’s crackle, and the rhythm of the undulating algae.
You came from a country whose climate rendered screens a necessary part of any house: wire screens on windows, and on front and back doors, but also cupboards, although such things had become old-fashioned.
The sound of the metal frame of a wire screen door screeching against concrete has become lodged in your private sound world — that space which pre-dates the world in which you live now, which might well have never existed, for all the sense it makes here.
The window frame, the window itself made of wood and glass and rope, and the finely etched screen: these three elements worked in harmony to harvest a rain or dust storm as it passed through and around the house in the country. There was another house by the coast, and others, but they blend into one now.
This place where you exist does not care for the sorts of screen you grew up with. For six months of the year all windows here are closed. The spring is laden with pollen, and in summer the spiders cast endless lines of gossamer web into the atmosphere.
Bugs and insects emerge from who-knows-where to invade the trees and fields. And the houses. Grasshoppers, wasps, mosquitoes, flies, fluffy bumblebees.
You can’t understand the absence of screen doors and windows. Perhaps it’s because the season is so short, and intense. No-one seems prepared to block out even one small aspect of it. Your windowsills strewn with corpses of too-slow flies.
Only the grasshoppers are shooed out the screen-free window, as a gesture to your half-hearted Buddhist impulses, or else that former self.
A man travelled to the city to collect his son’s new passport. Leaving the embassy, he realised he had no idea what to do next. It seemed a waste to get on a bus and return to the small town outside the city where he spent most of his days. Surely being in the city provided opportunities to do things he could not do at home. But what, exactly?
He decided to go to a cafe that he knew was close by and which he had been to before. Of course, it could have been interesting to go to a cafe he had never frequented before but that might involve wandering around searching for such an establishment, and he’d vowed to avoid that kind of activity, in cities with which he was reasonably familiar, at least.
The cafe he walked into was not of the modern type. He remembered he had liked going there because it reminded him of a traditional Italian-style cafe. The owner offered to make the usual types of coffee, as well as very simple grilled toasts and filled rolls. There were stools at long benches by the windows but the tiled space was otherwise empty.
He remembered how he liked that emptiness, and the refusal of the owner to accept payment in a form other than cash. But this last quirk had been abandoned, it seemed. He ordered a double macchiato, relishing the chance to say the foreign word, and a serving of grilled cheese toast. Then he tapped a blue card to the reader to pay for his order.
He found a spot by the window, next to another man who had not removed his bicycle helmet before sitting down. In fact, he kept that helmet on for the length of time it took to drink his coffee, which had been served in a French press. The man sat on a stool looking at his mobile telephone, his feet resting on a small shelf at ankle height made of wood.
The man who had travelled to the city to collect his son’s new passport noticed that the other man’s legs were bouncing ever so slightly on the wooden shelf. He had read about this particular type of behaviour, which had even been assigned a name: restless leg syndrome. It was not clear to him who had coined the term, but it hardly mattered.
What mattered was that the rhythm of the other man’s feet bouncing on the shelf began to accelerate. The sound the shelf made as it hit the tiled floor also began to increase. The man himself seemed unaware of it. Instead, he began speaking into his telephone, presumably to a friend or lover, and the sound turned to a banging noise.
After a minute or so, the owner brought the man’s macchiato and toast. As she set the cup and plate down on the bench, she too noticed the noise the other man’s restless legs were making as his feet hit the bench. Without hesitation, she drew the man’s attention to the noise, even though he was preoccupied with his conversation on the telephone.
The man immediately ceased bouncing his legs. The man who had come to the cafe in order to do something meaningful with his time in the city instead of simply catching a bus home sat there in silence and ate his grilled toast. Presently, the man wearing the bicycle helmet got up and left the cafe, thanking the owner on his way out.
The man carrying his son’s new passport finished his macchiato, visited the bathroom and then also left the cafe. He was grateful that the owner of the cafe had intervened to silence the other man’s restless legs, but he did not tell her this as he waved goodbye. Outside, on the street, he walked off in a random direction, past buildings he no longer recognised.