From here to there was an alarming distance, especially straight up and down, a fall as opposed to a stroll. One was much more fearsome, given that gravity and not perambulation was the driving force. If gravity worked sideways, he thought, we’d really be sin trouble.
Not that walking in a straight line wasn’t beset with difficulty. Far from it. There were all kinds of obstacles to be negotiated, from brick walls to other people, hundreds and thousands of them, each attempting to get somewhere, in the process occupying space you yourself wished to inhabit, but couldn’t, as that volume had been usurped.
Timing came into it. Measuring, too. Wisps of steam issued from his ears as he concentrated, making a series of adjustments in both speed and orientation, leaning one way then the other in an effort to maintain direction. The least deflection the better.
He started with something simple, the half mile to the supermarket as the crow flies putting in his path only one major road, four lanes of potential disaster, but otherwise just houses and gardens, bushes and fences to scramble over and wrestle through, utilizing doors and windows where possible, gates, ignoring the TV watching residents whose surprise at his appearance and subsequent passage through their living-rooms and kitchens, downstairs toilets and gazebos left them momentarily paralysed and disbelieving, sufficiently so that he could be on his way in seconds and they might return to whichever soap opera, film or documentary had previously occupied their attention. Dogs were more of a problem. He had to accelerate away from those. But he made it to the supermarket via roofs and embankments, and was so pleased with himself he took a taxi home, after first purchasing beer and pizza.
What he needed next was a challenge. Distance alone was insignificant. It was terrain that mattered.
He took his shoes and socks off and considered his toes.
Essential to every journey. But his toes looked unconvinced.
If it had been possible he would have built a bridge. But bridges required materials and advanced engineering know how. So a tunnel it was, requiring only stubbornness and the crudest props. Covert as opposed to brash, no Roman general conquering Europe would have approved. Generals though, Roman or otherwise, had tax payers to back them up and politicians to impress. He had only himself, his two hands and what sat between his ears, swelling and shrinking like a sponge, aching and disposed to falling asleep.
Getting started, as ever, proved the toughest. Once underway the excavations made good progress, hampered only by subterranean watercourses – natural and man-made – and a lack of geological information. Obviously there were rocks, but which kind and what degree of difficulty they posed, i.e., how hard and thick ran the seams, was unknown. Soil, loam, these were easy to dig, yet prone to collapse. As much time and effort went into shoring up the soft earth as digging through the igneous intrusions and sedimentary strata.
Maintaining a straight line was nigh impossible.
He had tools. His imagination. He had a destination in mind, what he called reality, there over the hill through which he drove his shaft, wide and narrow and dry and wet, a land not so much pleasant as occupied; for the place he left was his alone.
Anticipating diversions, he packed a few items he thought might be useful, and toted them in a sack.
Expecting adventures, he kept his pencil sharp, much as his pick, and wrote a diary of events by the light of a pocket watch.
Wishing to minimize the risk of accidents, he told himself not to get carried away; something which proved difficult the farther he dug, the tunnel stretching behind like a memory voided, expunged of past events.
Mushrooms grew under his fingernails.
He repeatedly banged his head.
The tunnel collapsed at some point, its rumble suggesting no turning back. But he was determined, controlling his breathing to conserve his air. The temperature rose with each passing mile.
He sweated buckets, his body replenished by frequent streams.
Sustained by the image of reality, he continued beyond track of time, the tunnel a shrinking space, a capsule, its walls closing behind, tightening like a sphincter as he no longer shored them up. The rocks grew softer, yielding to his spade. He didn’t need the pick. The refuse became less and less, the subsurface stretching open to accommodate his form, which had begun, like its surroundings, to lose its shape.
He swam in lava.
He was heat.
The steam he generated found its way up to the world, powering geysers that rejoiced in fresh air, his spirit released.
Reality was invaded. The tunnel a success.
His soul drove the wind…
He stole to feed his drug habit.
It sat in the corner and slavered, making a mockery of its leash, a tether much longer than it appeared and made of some extraordinary elastic.
His habit painted and wrote prose, blinding him with imagery, its capacity for beauty its defence. But what if his eyes were wrong? He went to have them tested in the hope of a cure, a means of ridding himself of his nemesis. The prescription he was given turned out to be a curse, however, as the lenses provided simply accentuated the lines and intensified the colours.
Okay then, he needed to replace the drug, supplant it with another, one less sociologically damaging.
But what? What was legal and strong?
There was no substitute for alcohol. So he continued, stealing dreams and turning night to day, leaving confusion in his wake.
Furious for no obvious reason he punched the wall. The inevitable pain was almost enjoyable; its echo at least, once the agony had ceased to leave a throbbing like that of blood in loins. Sexy. There was a connection, he saw. He moved his fingers carefully, testing for breaks. The knuckles were slightly swollen, inflamed by a passion he could not control.
Curious, he decided to experiment. On himself at first, sticking pins in his knees and burning the soles of his feet, then to masturbate, substituting pleasure for pain in a medley of small wounds.
It left him breathless. He considered a victim, another to practice on. Preferentially willing, but…no buts. He’d get them to sign something, a contract. They’d use a word that meant stop. That was how it worked, he was sure. Only who? A girl, necessarily; he wasn’t that adventurous yet. A stranger; had to start from scratch. Literally. The choicest of cuts.
He cruised the supermarket. His favourite haunt, home to single women with single shopping-baskets. But which of these would quiver at the touch of his Stanley knife?
Impossible.
He thought of personal ads.
Too slow.
A prostitute?
Too conservative, somehow. Not intimate enough.
Had to be a girl with a light in her eyes, intelligent and dignified.
He wandered the streets till it got dark, hanging around bus stops and criss-crossing the park.
And found her under an umbrella, anticipating rain.
Then.
Under the influence of automation.
Gear lever and steering wheel like erogenous zones, drunk and stoned, he lost several hours in the country, not recognizing the roads. Dark, fields and trees blank cut-outs, silhouettes through which he glimpsed stars, steering via instinct, weaving more than he thought; not much traffic to hazard and no police, blue lights ablaze, to challenge his course. It was like he dreamed. Far from home, too far to walk, he’d staggered to his car with the idea of sleeping there, only waking sometime later at forty miles per hour.
Lost, in time and space, fences, bushes, gates scraping doors and mudguards, wheels thumping curbs and bouncing from ditches. Too pissed to fully comprehend his predicament, yet sober enough to be able to continue, having no idea of direction, he drove, sideswiping undergrowth, the gap in his memory of an uncertain length. How was he here? Where was that? It was too bright in the car. He thought about turning the lights off, but didn’t. Squinting, he followed the road, made a turn, doubled back and followed the road once
more. The lights faded. He breathed a sigh of relief. He saw a sign, a name he knew, a village. His bladder stung. Lights again, on poles. Good sign. There were houses now, occupants sleeping. He couldn’t read the clock in the dash.
The houses faded behind.
A blue shape sat on the bonnet. Another, green, had attached itself to the rear screen and was busily gnawing the wiper blade.
There were people in the car. He felt their presence, silent and cold. They were colourless, yet solid. They didn’t move.
He didn’t move his foot from the accelerator. Didn’t glance aside. Not afraid, he followed the road, turned, turned, and found himself on a dual carriageway.
The blue figure reclined, hands behind head, its foot tapping just above the grill. Its green companion had disappeared. But no, he could hear it pacing on the roof, the metal popping, indenting and springing back under its ponderous weight. A green face appeared at the top of the windscreen. It waved, then breathed on the glass, misting it before writing a reversed HULLO with its flat finger end.
Like a sucker, he saw.
Someone sneezed in the back and someone else handed them a tissue.
He tried to keep a straight line, but felt the car rise above the road, floating like the rubber had worn away.
The green face spread its lips on the glass and blew, inflating its head like some weird toad. He could see right down its throat, see its luminous innards behind a flapping pink tongue. Shaking his head, he peered round it to where the blue creature squirmed, curled now in sleep and in danger of sliding off the bonnet altogether. He pointed, holding green’s eyes. But green was unconcerned, unsticking its face only to smile, jaws full of piano keys and fingers playfully striking chords.
He was passed a lit cigarette. His surroundings looked suddenly familiar. The passenger door opened and he was alone.
In a manner of speaking…
The words came and went in a great swathe, hundreds of them overlapping about a bar stuffed with bodies, faces working, pumping sound, issuing smoke that billowed and was shaped by the conversation, the laughter and derision pouring from mouths, buffeting walls and rebounding in earlobes. Some words were solid, delineated in a number of sizes and styles and affixed to paper. Both machine printed and hand written, letters arranged and juxtaposed. He tried to take in as much as possible, but it was impossible to concentrate on any one strand. He’d listen to the person talking to him, yet another’s voice would overwhelm; or a poster over the first speaker’s shoulder would grab his attention and he’d focus on that instead, jerking himself back, realigning his mind and vision before the person addressing him realized. Only by this time he would have lost the thread of what they were saying and be unable to reply in kind, mumbling something vague and smiling, drinking, whatever, filling the gap in the hope they’d reiterate. It was hard work, concentrating on one person. His eyes slid off. He was drawn aside. They smeared on his glass and faded from his attention, which switched without cause, slipping at random as if sampling flavours, tasting the variety of words that occupied this audio realm.
They thought him rude, perhaps. Or just preoccupied. He sat in silence – his own, with no-one inclined to talk to him, their voices bouncing round; through him, but no longer directed at him. He melded with the furniture and peered at wrists and fingers, attempting to decipher their language, that of knee and hip, gestures controlled and accidental, a whole other level of conversation outlined in trousers and skirts. The audible world faded as he stared, and he became immersed in the subtle interplay of lit cigarettes and adjusted seating positions. The way a glass was raised or a lash fluttered, a beer mat was turned or a pool ball struck fascinated. A more beautiful language it was difficult to imagine. Secret though, like the accompanying odoriferous undertones of flesh and hair, smells natural and artificial lingering in the smoke-filled room, hovering midst the throng of intercourse, spoken and postured, the contracts forged and transactions made.
A girl waved a hand in his face, bracelets jangling hello. He articulated a smirk and shrugged.
She wanted to know where he’d been.
Was he going back again?
She crossed her legs in his direction and turned her shoulders, the swell of one breast pronounced toward her chin.
He wasn’t sure how to answer.
He’d forgotten his dictionary.
No matter, over the coming hours he deciphered her in a number of way, lapping at her vulva and nipping the soft skin of her breasts, tonguing her as she him, their spoken words few, their gestures many, odours multiplied and heady, a dialect both rough and smooth…
I don’t have a big penis
but it’s an interesting shape;
though oftentimes slow to rouse
I’ve a tongue to compensate.
…like tarmac…
Accelerating and braking, negotiating obstacles, tunnelling and clambering over, unfastening gates and moving hinges, communicating with the outside world through an interpreter, her body the conduit, the garden and the living-room, both empty and occupied. Spelling her name a thousand ways. Along vistas and aisles. Driving blind and with your eyes wide, through light and dark, in the presence of warm flesh and almost understanding.
Via woman, alive.
AFTER ~ EXAGGERATION: as things heat up and cool down in Hell, a triumvirate of men and machine engage in complicated thought and action.
Fifteen: The Adjudicator