CHAPTER SEVEN
“Honey, are you ok?” asked The Mother.
Gavin said nothing.
“I must be the depression” she whispered to The Father.
“Change the channel” shouted Gavin.
“I will do no such thing,” The Father said.
Gavin lurched forwards and ripped the remote from his father’s hands, flicking through channel after channel, from station to station and from newsreader to newsreader and on every channel, he was greeted with the same image; two men dressed from head to toe in pink apparel being branded as Terror{blists}.
What did that even mean?
“It makes sense though you know,” said The Brother. “You spend that much time with other men in close quarters; you’re bound to develop feelings. Uh, that’s what I’ve heard.”
“Swinging on monkey bars, crawling through sand. Pretty gay if you ask me.”
“It’s not gay. It’s a brotherhood and it’s pronounced Terror. They’re saying it all wrong. They weren’t wearing pink. I saw them. They had black pants and black boots and black shirts. They looked mean and tough and manly. They were nothing like they’re saying here.”
“What? You’re saying the news is wrong now?”
“No, I’m not saying the news is wrong I’m just saying, that’s not what happened.”
“Well, it’s on every channel. You know what they’re calling it?” asked The Father, looking over at The Brother.
“Terror{blism},” said The Brother.
“Yeah I know that, but the uprising, the, you know, the explosion of new romantics.”
“What?”
“The Sissy Fountain.”
‘That’s poignant.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
Gavin threw the remote on the ground. The back flung off and slid along the floor and the batteries exploded from their jacket and scattered underneath the sofa. The control itself burst into a hundred pieces, each one shattering into a hundred more. The Brother looked at Gavin with his famed disapproving stare. The Father too turned in displacement.
“That was kind of gay,” he said.
“Fuck this” shouted Gavin, storming out of the house.
As he passed his brother’s car, he remembered the key. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to enter the building. He quietly opened the car door and slipped his hand into his brother’s man purse. There were so many useless things that he kept inside; what he called ‘just-in-casers’. He found the key card and slipped it into his pocket and then he was off.
As he stormed down the road, he didn’t notice the canisters on his chest roughly banging against one another. He didn’t at all care. His mind was on fire his eyes were like two placating suns and on any other day, he might have looked like a raging inferno, trouble on legs and people would part like the splitting of hairs in a heavy wind. And they would bury their heads and they would anchor their eyes until his stampeding feet had long since left them behind and only then would they let go of their baited breaths and lift their sights once more to the greets of other gentle passersby.
Not today.
Today, as Gavin stormed down the street with a low grumble baying from the pit of his stomach, people stopped and they turned and they raised their stares and they raised their smiles and when he passed, they raised their applause. They felt no threat in his merry demeanour, only the thrill of anticipation as they followed his every step, hoping to all god that he would at any moment, break out in dance or in song.
“Get the fuck out of my way” shouted Gavin at a gawking bystander.
“Thank you” The Bystander shouted. “But I don’t swing that way. Good for you, though” he shouted again as Gavin stormed down the road, the angrier he got, apparently the merrier and brightly and splendiferous he seemed.
On the bus, he reached for his phone. He had two numbers. One of which was an automatic detonator for the explosives dressed upon his body. The other was for the girl who promised to bed with him when he had become a man.
He looked at the two numbers and large flooding beads of sweat formed over his eyes.
Which was which? He paid no thought. He punched the numbers of the first number into his phone. His heart beat so fast. He hadn’t imagined dying here, on a crowded bus, only blocks from his real target.
The phone rang.
The vest, it started to rumble.
Panic drew across his chest.
What had he done?
“Hi, you’ve called المغرر, I can’t come to the phone right now but if you’d like to leave a message, I’ll get right back to you. If you want, you can try my other number at….”
“Fucking message bank” he mumbled. “Shit, what’s her name. What the fuck is her name? Hey, uh, ahem, it’s me, Gavin. Listen I need to speak to you urgently. I just watched the news, all of them and… it’s not like you said. They lied. They said nobody was injured, but I could see them carrying bodies off in the background. And they said they were wearing pink, but I know, I saw them, they were wearing black. And they didn’t call them Terrorists. They called them Terrible or something like that. Terror{blists}, that’s it, Terror{blists}. I’m trying to do what you said, I’m trying to imagine to get rid of my fear, but it’s not working. I can’t do it. Not if they’re gonna do the same thing with me. I can’t go through with it. Please call me back.”
Gavin hung up the phone. His hands were sweating. His head felt like it might explode before his hands could even touch the controls. He thought about المغرر and then he thought about the violence and the explosions and the martyrdom and a feeling engorged his loins. He felt warm and encased in sex. He felt capable of anything. He dialed المغرر again.
“Hey, it’s me. I’m gonna do it. I love you. I can’t wait to see you.”
He hung up the phone and put it in his jeans pocket. His eyes were trained and focused and they glimmered like a sharpened knife. As he stared off in an unflinching stare, a group of passengers looked in his direction, giggling and smirking.
Fear crept upon his mind as he exited the bus. Now, the jacket seemed so heavy. The control had slipped from its restraint and was sliding down the inside of his shirt. He could feel his rising stomach, pressing the one button. For every step that he took, he felt as if he could not take one more. It was like the ground was molten and the soles of his shoes were fusing to the pavement.
“I am a man,” he thought. “I am a terrorist. I incite fear and I enact change. Men want to be me, and women want to be mine. I am a man. I am a man. I am a man. I am a man. I and a man. I in a man. Eye on a man.”
He backed against a wall and heaved over himself trying to catch his breath. As he stood upright, finding some assurance in his mind, he looked to see a group of girls passing him with mocking smirks and behind them, a well-dressed young man came closer in his passing and offered Gavin a winking expression.
There was nothing he could do to excuse his fear. He didn’t want to be remembered as anything less than the man he already was. What point would it be if the point were not his own?
Gavin unzipped the jacket.
He threw it to the floor.
He stood in the afternoon light with the black vest and its wires exposed.
The control hanged on a black cord and banged his knee.
Strangers walking by all stopped.
Some took out their cameras.
Most were drawn with a look of glee.
“It’s a Terror{blist},” said one.
“Oh I do hope there’s dancing,” said another.
Gavin took the control in his hands.
He ran his thumb over the red button.
He wished he could erase the day.
“Dance, dance, dance” the crowd chanted.
Was he bored or was he depressed?
Gavin walked into the tennis club.
The man in the Nihil shirt was standing behind the counter.
“What can I do you for?” he said.
“Is the fir
st lesson still free?” asked Gavin.
“Sure is,” The Nihil Man said. “But you can’t play in loafers.”
Gavin looked down at his feet.
He felt enraged.
His finger tickled the red button.
“Hey, no stress, you can borrow a pair,” said The Nihil Man
husband, father, son, brother, philosopher, artist, writer, teacher, recluse
Also by C. Sean McGee:
A Rising Fall (CITY b00k 001)
Utopian Circus (CITY b00k 011)
Heaven is Full of Arseholes
Coffee and Sugar
Christine
Rock Book Volume I: The Boy from the County Hell
Rock Book Volume II: Dark Side of the Moon
Alex and The Gruff (a tale of horror)
StalkerWindows:
BedroomWindow
BathroomWindow
LoungeWindow
LibraryWindow
The Free Art Collection ©2013
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