Category: WORDS

I do tend to rattle on…

The Slow Burn

Chris Theo

My goal with The Slow Burn was to explore the idea that a seemingly innocuous, everyday event, can have far reaching implications on the psyche of a maturing boy (or girl). The protagonist’s perceptions are changed and with them, his world.

 

 

The Slow Burn

Repeated mental probing would eventually lead Seb to some kind of personal truth. One he’d buried under years of cumulative neuroses so thoroughly, that each session with Mary, his exceptionally well-qualified psychotherapist, was a battle through labyrinthine pathways—beasts littered within, snarls and hot breath around each corner. Together they would chip away, Mary arming Seb like Jason to his Theseus, to face something horned, dark and familiar. Each weekly therapy session like a war to reclaim and understand the past, one memory at a time, peeling back beast-flesh to reveal those forgotten things around which muscle, skin and teeth had formed. On and on this would go, week in week out, Seb squirming and sweating, interchangeably acquiescent and resistant when confronted with each gnarled mnemonic; driven by Mary’s desire to lead him to the genesis of his persistent dysthymia. He’d put in the hard work, he’d scarred shirts with brackish residue, he’d cried, mostly out of a sense of relief or realisation above any real trauma, hell, he’d shown up, even on days when he’d rather have been in bed, front door bolted, mobile off, duvet right up there over ears and eyes, hopelessly inviting sleep to take hold and never let him go, as though light itself were the agent of his pain.

There were no guarantees that isolating this switch, petrified within folds of grey matter, would unburden him, but he’d summoned his last measures of hope, years’ worth rationed and accrued for a final plunge. Like a human cannonball hooking one leg after another into a wide, light-swallowing barrel-mouth, he could imagine no future beyond the muffled hiss of the fuse or the rush of blue towards him. For there to be some future, he would unearth the past…

… It was two twenty-six PM and a fourteen year-old Seb was fighting that post-lunch, carbohydrate funk, mustering his last reserves to maintain the appearance of studiousness in Mr. Dodd’s physics class. He looked around, well placed as he was in the far right corner to take it all in, but saw nothing of interest. His pencil was now blunt. He’d scrawled and sketched his way through the last half an hour, his attention flitting between Mr. Dodd’s attempts to summon enthusiasm in a period that gets passed between teachers like a hot turd come scheduling at term’s commencement, and the large, flaccid penis he’d drawn on graph paper between the two neatly labelled axes, Energy and Time. Seb lightly etched a drip of semen at the bell’s end and then another mid-air, below it. Finally, he made playful use of two-dimensional space by pooling the already-dripped semen on and over the horizontal axis (Time). It made sense, he thought, that this cock be in a post-coital state given its exact positioning on these axes.

“…the word for this is entropy.” Mr. Dodd’s voice rises briefly above the apathy. “That is to say that the universe is entropic. It will age and decay until it reaches its terminus, inert. What is known as ‘heat death’. Everything is subject to entropy, everything moves from a state of order to disorder, from one of complexity to simplicity…”

“Except Brian, sir!”

“Why’s that Timothy?” Very obviously sardonic in tone.

“Cuz he can’t get any more simple, sir!”

Raucous laughter from the group of boys (primarily) whose sense of humour seems almost ectropic, formed entirely out of the wasted dead mass of those whose physiognomy or character thought not to cut mustard. The beginnings of a sociopathic, almost cyclical, shadenfreude at play, where the pain and suffering inflicted upon the pimpled swot, or athletically inferior teen, or Daisy, whose body claimed all hope of a happy childhood when it decided the optimal time for expulsion of menstruum would be in the communal girls showers and since then, when they all pointed and went “urgghhhhhhh, gross!”, she’s been deemed unworthy of inclusion in said group—well, that pain and suffering fuels the cackle. And the cackle’s raucous laughter, that hurts Brian all the more. Really, Brian’s done nothing to deserve being singled out, except maybe he’s just flavour of the month, and maybe Timothy spotted that Brian wasn’t listening in class and figured that Brian would come off a complete dunce if his head snapped up with ears pricked to find everyone laughing at him. Well, it’s worked, and Brian’s cheeks have reddened in some fist-clenched mix of anger and embarrassment. Timothy’s trailing laughter is renewed as he points at Brian and feigns constipation to bring his entire face to a rosy hue in imitation of the poor boy. The class erupts and even Mr. Dodd struggles to maintain a straight face—the ultimate bollock-kicking for Brian here: the beginnings of a smirk from the one adult in the room.

Seb looked on and realised that today’s lesson was effectively over… Order to disorder, he thought. Yep.

And that was it. That was the moment everything changed, when class appeared to descend into feeding-time at the primate enclosure.

In Seb’s bag, an uneaten banana, promised an end to his lassitude. It’ll have to wait until break, he thought, assuming it hasn’t blackened by then of course. Warm classroom; his bag, partially filled with still-sodden gym clothes—given enough time decay might be possible. He peeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth and tasted sock-sweat, cotton. Gross. And then the bell rang. Class was over.

While he waits for mum at the gates, to pull in and take him to Coding Dojo, his phone begins vibrating. It’s June and the late afternoon dry heat makes pink crackling of schoolchildren with tardy parents. ‘Stuffier than Minnie’s cleavage on Sports Day’, as Timothy’s been heard to say, and it gets played on repeat in Seb’s head every time it pushes 40C. Minnie, incidentally, is a year younger than Seb, yet fully-developed enough to engender a no-guilt response when it comes to sexual thoughts in which she might feature. But Minnie and his sister are classmates, and that’s always tainted things for Seb. Back pressed hard against the school wall, under a six-inch band of diminishing shade, he imagines one of his classmates rubbing one off to the image of his dear sibling. A classmate who, unlike Seb, had been picked up on time and was home already, tummy full of tea, dick in hand, the idea of semen emerging from prick still new enough to be novel. No-guilt quickly becomes so-much-guilt. It’s mum on the phone, and Seb has answered with his not-uncommon “What?!”—a prayer that his sister’s suitor’s willy might just entropy and drop off pre wank’s-apex cut short. Mum wasn’t going to make it—the car’s engine had failed to start. He’d never make it to Coding Dojo now.

Seb began the long walk home, the sun at his back becoming slowly neutered by cloud. He’d only walked the three miles home once before, when dad had ensconced with the family Volvo estate one afternoon and thenceforth vanished. It dawned on him that as a passenger in mum’s car he’d failed to absorb much in way of street names or building facades, and his frustration at having his plans dissolve hollowed his abdomen. The sky was overcast and to his right cars were trailing dust in both lanes. Some had engaged their headlights, illuminating the interplay of tail and headwinds. Miniature dust devils came in and out of existence, flashbacks of a sandstorm that had passed through town last week.

Angular cumulonimbus darkened and promised rain. Soon the dirt would wash from the cracked streets, packing and blocking the subdrains, leaving the roadsides arroyos, running fast and opaque. The rains were a great thing here, infrequent but monstrous, and Seb’s heart would still dance when lightning cracked. He’d count in threes tracing the storm’s approach—one of the few nuggets that Mr. Dodd had managed to impart. The dry air brought attention to his thirst and he swallowed an absence of saliva. Seb was tired, his glutes burned from the morning’s game and his shoulder ached from the strap of his bag. He had no choice but to keep moving…

Seb had walked two-thousand strides or thereabouts, unsure as to whether he was closer or farther away from home: that decaying place that lay fealty to his father’s phantom, still, years later. Choked by incessant fumes and dust clouds, which seemed to intensify as he approached a vaguely familiar intersection, Seb veered away from the pavement into an adjoining field and cut across its diagonal, parting the noxious air one rasping cough at a time. A handful of side roads had to be traversed but there were enough clearings between them to fuel him with a sense of progress.

He trudged for a whole hour at roughly the same pace, seeking refuge in his calculations: he’d walked almost three miles, his gait being what it was. He hoped some vestigial inkling of home remained by the time he returned; the home within home. Mum was likely sat in the kitchen, swirling a dully-clinking iced gin in decaying orbits while she waited for a mechanic or tow. The image of her smoking a cigarette, legs crossed, smoke rising into the room, wrenched at him. Waiting, as she had done for so long, for the uneven purr of the Volvo in the drive to terminate with a croak of handbrake.

Seb took the time on his walk-come-trek to absorb his environment. Almost meditatively he’d try and match the thing upon which his gaze was fixed to a memory. Maybe he’d been here before somehow, on his bike, or maybe it had washed passed his eyeline as he sat in a car’s passenger seat, but beyond recognition there was also distraction. Seb was a ponderer, a dreamer, and something even fans of his art failed to understand, was that he did his best thinking when capturing the light-play on tributaries of a veiny shaft, or when rendering shadow within configurations of clitoral hood and labia minora with a freshly sharpened 2B. Distraction was a pastime for him, and he found he could get some real quality rumination done when investing in a good set of genitals. He’d tried faces but they required a degree of concentration in their execution that detracted from his Zen. So he’d stuck with reproductive organs in their endless variegation, too oft maligned in adolescent abstraction: etched into cubicle walls of the boys’ loo or scribbled in thick permanent marker on Brian’s textbooks.

As he walked deeper through this unknown suburb, worms wriggled through his nervous system. He rubbed his upper arms to relieve them of gooseflesh, aware that the sky’s darkening could no longer be attributed entirely to cloud. It was getting late. Around him, Seb took in the array of off-white buildings smattering his periphery: the occasional low-rise apartment block, the odd shop whose metal-framed doors were closed, windows thick with dust. More prevalent were the one- or sometimes two-story houses that could almost be heard to sigh in relief as Seb walked by. Here, unlike the busier strip of his original route, the sense of defeat was pervasive, as if the entire neighbourhood had capitulated to the desert winds and taken in lungfuls of sand. Only the scratchy, abrasive quality of his steps on the dirt challenged the silence between breath-like flurries. Lengthened, ill-defined shadows overlapped like hazy Venn diagrams and the world took on a dim, dusk-blue iridescence that tugged at his tangled viscera. The gapped, inconsistent grin of the horizon teased no end to the alternating misery of decrepitude and voided lots. Distraction was in short order in this part of town. Everything had this eerie homogeneity that lent it an irrepressible futility and absence of meaning; and at that moment Seb believed that he would be always lost. He would become a vagrant, forever wandering back-streets, penniless, mouth full of decay, teeth simply plinking to the ground as he walked, trailing these macabre enamel breadcrumbs, too few and far between to be of any use.

Seb’s laced, soft-leather moccasins were pooling dirt in their recesses and he’d taken to shuffling, almost carving through the dry, weed-rippled earth. At the brink of immobilising fatigue, Seb caught sight of an intact, but no doubt brittle, snake-skin. Some part of him felt very much like that honeycombed skin, hollow, prone to breaking, a memory of a former, younger self.

Then the sky flashed white.

Before Seb’s learned response could fire in the neurons up there to start the count, a jowl-shaking crack rattled his chest, and he palmed his ears shut at the riotous peal that fractured the air. To his left he caught the trailing of sparks in the middle distance. Mouth agape, almost stupefied, he watched something glow pale blue and angry. Heartbeats were spasming in his chest. He stepped forward, with hesitation at first but then with purpose, eyes sanpaku-wide, fixed on this column-like shape that spun a haunting effulgence in the wind. That one crisp burst of white blindness had cleaved reality in two: from a dusty, haunted, cerulean-washed suburb to a featureless Prussian-blue nightmare, a spectral reality with Seb its sole inhabitant. His mind was ablaze with terror—the kind one only ever experiences in a dream, because only the mind in its REM-induced malice can invoke with such precision the architecture of dread.

This was not the world he knew, its purgatorial vacuity broken only by that middle-distant flaming sapphire, a beacon in the ever-darkening twilight. With each step closer to this brilliant thing his stride lengthened, harried by the gloom at his back and seeking refuge from its villainy. His pace quickened, fuelled by the fear he was being chased. Seb knew he was being irrational, but a subdural surge drove him forward on legs whose lactic-acid sting had somehow remitted. He was running, faster than he could ever remember running, and yet that crepuscular menace, invisible, inescapable, hung in the air. It gnawed at the buildings leaving their fascias bubbled and paint-chipped; it left timber frames porous and brittle, good for nothing but tinder; in driveways it wormed into car engines; and at home it yellowed mum’s fingernails, it siphoned her of joy and calcified her melancholia. It was everywhere. Except maybe whatever this thing that Seb was running towards, maybe it wasn’t there. And maybe, just maybe he could outrun the blight and find aegis within its penumbra. If only his legs could sustain this frenzied pace, feet thrumming the earth, heart promising to burst.

It loomed larger in his view now, trailing hazy phosphorescence with each shuddering footstrike. As the distance between Seb and the light narrowed, he noticed its blue was streaked with sulphurous yellow. It was starting to take shape, this thing. He was able to make out its hard boundaries for the first time, and as he barrelled down upon it, his mind raced toward cognisance. But then, a moment of doubt as the form became less vague; what he saw, what he might see if he stopped running and eyed it more carefully, was no saviour. It was altogether mundane. Too real to be any relief from the malevolent soup the air had become, now thick and deoxygenated in his lungs. He could hear it too, it was emitting a sound, loud enough to be audible over the shock waves rumbling his inner ear as he dashed through the night: a noise, persistent yet unrepeating—intense as an ocean. Fire. The scent of smoke had begun to coat Seb’s nasal cavity. In some unobserved recess of Seb’s mind he knew the origins of what shone—what burned—but he could not access or understand it. The surge within him, and the dying at his back drove him on; his mind void of reason and alight with adrenaline alone.

… A stone’s throw away and closing. Reality would not wait. Even if Seb chose to stop right that second, inertia would carry him beyond the point at which denial was an option. In a neural sub-routine somewhere that very thought popped and fizzled just as he blasted through it—no return.

… Flames two-stories high, or so it seemed to Seb, though he had no context for the fire’s size against this pelagic night. Sparks washed the sky in turbulent, striated arcs, in existence for the briefest of moments before they were gone, as though they’d never even existed at all, birthed from some sprawling, upturned parabola of rippling citrine and white gold, converging down into an angular, white-hot column that terminated deep in the ground like a gnarled trident.

… The air roared and steeped his head in pink noise. His eyes stung, the smoke opaque and rich with glowing wisps, drawn up in whorls by the heat until they opened out like ferns and became lost beyond the fiery ceiling under which Seb now found himself.

No longer running. No memory at having slowed or stopped. Just there, at this terminus, a trailing cloud of dust at his feet catching up to obscure everything below the knee. He stared at this hellish Disneyland, where the suspension of disbelief in the fantastic was somehow inverted—the curtain pulled, the veil lifted, a sudden, terrible loss only ever hinted at and altogether, until then, concealed.

The air was charged, a scorching ion vortex of bone-dry convection that billowed his shorts and shirt; his hair was tousled with static. He perceived a deep sadness here, and immediately recognised a universal truth—it was as if the fire’s intent was not to destroy, as if it mourned what it devoured, knowing that the death of what burned signalled its own demise to carbon and smoke. Yet it could not stop, ensnared by its own tragic rage.

Seb shielded his eyes from the blinding canopy and drew his gaze downward. He recognised it, this tree, despite the trunk’s molten craquelure. It was the towering, ancient olive tree he’d cycled past before (on one of those occasions where he’d been compelled to leave the house and go precisely nowhere as fast as his hairless, skinny legs could manage). The angle of its trunk was unmistakable, tapering up and to the left at an acute angle from the ground, terminating at a vertex, the point of creation, an umbrella of foliage and bitter fruits spilling up, out and around. It struck him as painfully familiar, this tree’s trunk, but beyond the memory of a lost, sunny afternoon and the clicking of pawls there was nothing. Deep ridges in the bark’s patterning had become gulches to flame, infernal blue and pale yellow rapids, rising like a double helix and blossoming into the tree’s fiery crown.

There was no safety here. Seb knew that now. The fire was one with the night, and there was nothing to do but watch it burn.

 

“So how did you get home, then?”

“Once it was light… I found my way back. It was a whole production really, mum’d called the police, had my uncle prowling the streets in his Toyota flat-bed all night. Fog lights on, shouting my name… Later that summer, he died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“On your father’s side?”

“Yea, dad’s. Andrew. Mum had got her hopes up for the funeral y’know, to corner dad. That’s how ill she was. Wasn’t to be. Missed the funeral, didn’t even bother to come back to get the truck that Andrew left him… What are you smiling at?”

“You, Seb! I’m happy for you. I think you’ve done well. Made progress as we say.”

“Well, it doesn’t feel like it. Honestly, it feels pointless now.”

“I think you should give yourself more credit. You’ve stuck with it.”

“I was scared, so what? Mum liked the odd tipple, so what? About the tree? Just a tree. I don’t care about the tree.”

“Don’t you? Didn’t you?”

“Hmm, I don’t think so. If I had I would have tried to put the fire out or something. But I think I just didn’t want to.”

“The tree sounded old.”

“Yeah, no doubt.”

“And you watched it burn.”

“Mm. All night.”

“Until it went out.”

“Ummyea.”

“It sounds like perhaps… you enjoyed it?”

“…”

“Perhaps just a little?”

“…”

“Fire can be beautiful.”

“I don’t know why I stayed. I think I regret that. Not leaving sooner.”

“Before it burned out, you mean?”

“Mm.”

“I remember Guy Fawkes’ when I was young, I loved watching the fire in the back garden. I’d beg my parents to keep it going and going. I think if I’d had my way I would have grown up in a house with no furniture. Something primal about fire, don’t you think? Our ancestors even sought divinity in the flames.”

“I think I threw my pencil case in there, before it went out completely, when all that was left were the fiery embers. Pretty sure.”

“…”

“Huh! Don’t think I’ve really drawn since then if I think about it y’know. Not sure why even, guess it just seems, seemed, pointless.”

“Hmm… think it’s important to remember what brought you here. When your mother passed away you took it hard, as is normal, as is right, grief is a process, I certainly believe in the need to properly grieve. By your logic would you say that grief is pointless also?”

“Yes! It is pointless. That’s my point, I think.”

“Your point is that it’s pointless?”

“Tsss.”

“You have resisted grieving.”

“Because … It’s pointless.”

“You may tell yourself that, but it’s your mother we’re discussing here. You wouldn’t be human if you were able to detach entirely from that. You need to grieve.”

“I grieved that night, the night of the fire. And I saw nothing divine. No visions in the flames.”

“Didn’t you think the fire was beautiful… on some level perhaps?”

“But it went out.”

“…”

“…”

“Seb, you told me the story yourself, even if you’d forgotten it for a time, it was there somewhere. You remembered it, right? That’s worth something. ‘Everything’s pointless, everything dies’, okay, I accept you might believe that, so but where does that get you? Transience is the very essence of beauty for some.”

“You’re asking a lot of questions.”

“Ha! That’s kind of what I do, Seb. And I’m trying to make a point.”

“Not sure I see it, ‘everything’s pointless’ remember?”

“Okay, Seb… What do you remember of your mother?”

“Ouf!”

“Indulge me. Please.”

“Not a lot. A lot of nothing, a lot of inaction, waiting, doing ‘mum things’, but never really moving. Even when I try to picture her, she’s like a painting, never in motion, like everything around her can move but she’s there immobile, statuesque. Like those moving waterfall pictures you get in crappy Chinese takeaways, alive but without… life.”

“She had her own struggles and you saw them as a child. Not easy for anyone, let alone a young boy.”

“She didn’t do anything with her life… and then she died.”

“But you remember her. Her life was not pointless, was it? Not fully realised perhaps—”

“Understatement.”

“—and you came here to avoid the same, uh, inactivity. But she loved you from what you’ve told me. You loved her.”

“And?”

“Everything’s fleeting. But you can still remember her. Doesn’t that make her life worth something?”

“Even memories fade, Mary.”

“Like your memory of the fire?”

Seb smiled.

“Mary?”

“Yes, Seb?”

“The fire…”

“Yes?”

“It was the last truly beautiful sight of my life.”

Keep The Fire Alight

Chris Theo

A 500-word short story I entered for the September CultOfMe competition – I didn’t win. I know, scandal.

The brief was to write 500-words or less inspired by the accompanying image. I really enjoyed writing it, and it was a challenge to keep the word count down. I really recommend it as a great writing exercise, every word mattered and the result is, as you might expect from the picture it inspired, a dark and atmospheric story.

I hope you enjoy it.

Artwork: The Space Inbetween by Luciana Nadelea 

 

 

Keep The Fire Alight

Marjorie’s thick hood protected her from the rain, but the soft thud of drops battering echoed within its dark aura. They let her know it was raining hard. Even with her face covered and her body cloaked, she knew that tonight was no night for adventuring. Yet she battled on through slicks of muddied, sloping moorland with graceless fervour, distancing herself from the sweeping torchlight at the old manor’s edge. She dragged a well-fed burlap sack behind her, carving the wet earth. It still smelled of old potatoes. To a girl of nine these hills were mountains, this storm a hurricane.

Gentle folds in her black, patchwork cagoule distorted the moonlight and she shone – a beacon of hope for the girls that crowded the manor’s frost-crept windows. They vied for clear lines-of-sight beyond the craggy perimeter, edging and shoving gently, with a respect that comes only through the marriage of shared hardship and malnourishment. These glassy-eyed girls had chosen Marjorie, the strongest of them. They’d sewn sheets of black polythene, liberated one strip at a time from a roll which was used to line the greenhouse floor, and made a garment to shield her from the elements. Bare skin on plastic, a collage of ether dreams, now crystallised. And as Marjorie’s form diffused the light, their eyes followed, up and down, tracing her fight with what seemed like endless peaks. But then their pinprick pupils dilated as the polythene torch became muddied and heavy.

“I can’t see her anymore.” A girl at the window said, it didn’t matter which, for they were as one.

Seconds passed before another offered kindling to the starved flame inside them all, “If we can’t see our Marjorie, then he won’t be able to find her!”

“Let’s pray for her.”

And they did, for it was all they could do – frail luminaries casting last bursts of incandescence into some skyward plea.

As Marjorie fought over the final peak, inhaling stabs of icy air, the clearing before the forest’s edge was revealed to her. Two saplings stood just ahead, in defiance of the ancient trees which marked the sharp forest line – the point at which nature had appeared to decide: nothing beyond here lives. We do, she thought looking back one last time. Knowing then what must be done she stepped toward the left-most sapling, opened the sack and reached into the dark with blistered hands, feeling for those hard, familiar reminders of their keeper’s wrath. Through the assortment of stale offerings her sibs had gone hungry for, she removed the first skull. Staring into the voided eye-sockets she began to cry, in sadness and profound relief. “Rosie…” She mouthed, weeping as she threaded it through the uppermost branch. Tears and names flowed as each skull was woven into these two young trees. All faced the manor.

“Watch over them for me a while, sisters.” She said.

And she fled into the forest, the torchlight dying at her back.

Snowmen

Chris Theo

Every city, a constellation of sufferers,
As if some artist in the sky
Flicked a paint-soaked brush across the map marking each spot damned.

Down every alley and up and through every high rise
The sound of stomachs grumbling,
Rationed voices croak: Not today, I’m saving that tin of something.

Well, winter’s gonna be a cold one this year, or so they say
And pure white snowmen,
Shaped gleefully by mittened hands,
Dotted around house-fronts,
Will stare from dead-coal eyes into empty insides,
Passed dreamless trails of ketones.

 

Image “Snowman” courtesy of Javlr on Flickr in accordance with Creative Commons

A Human Crisis

Chris Theo

The Jungle in Calais, the island of Kos, the border of Macedonia and Greece – these are all points at which refugees have converged, seeking a better life. Yet our (UK) government’s rhetoric remains unchanged. “We need to protect our borders”, says David Cameron, an excuse to ignore the problem. We’re not advocating letting everyone in, but we’re asking for policy to be based on compassion. Instead of “How do we keep these people out?”, we should be asking “How best can we help these people?”

People. That’s all they are, they are not migrants, they are fellow human beings, yet the media, much of it, until very very recently, until images of drowned children washed up on shore reared themselves on social media, has been negative. So let’s see this as an opportunity to help our fellow human beings and give them the first true glimpses of hope they’ve seen in a long while.

Guaranteed, these people will pay this country back with hard work, gratitude and add to the beautiful cultural melting pot that is Great Britain.

Featured image from Greens EFA on Flickr in accordance with Creative Commons

A Human Crisis

Cameron would have us believe they’re a swarm
Come to camp out on our lawns
Taking food from our children’s mouths
Invading in thousands from the south.

“People know what I mean”, he says,
Not like cockroaches, rats or locust plagues,
These people who have travelled far
Across the choppy waters in the dark
Having already worked harder than we ever will
Toiling against oppression, violence, and endless ills.

They are strong, they have proven themselves worthy
They have mustered these last bursts of strength to make this journey.
Children in tow, dead left behind,
No time for tears, they’ve had to survive.

Meanwhile we: Latte’s in our laps or ales in our glasses,
We discuss bringing in the army,
To tackle these most desperate hordes
That sleep in tents pitched out of doors.

See, the discussion has been set, we argue within defined parameters,
We think we know it all, are smart and informed but we’re amateurs.
Arguments bounce between ones and zeros
Each choice a brand of fear though.

And so our brave leader says, “privilege for all”,
It’s a choice, didn’t you know? Be rich or be poor.
“But we need to protect our borders”
(From rampant migrant scum sewing seeds of disorder).
Well, hasn’t that attitude worked out well
For these poor souls who’ve been through hell,
Makeshift toilets dug in the ground
Injuries sustained along the way abound.

So I say “fuck you, Cameron” and your heartless narrow band,
You’ve traded empathy for some ideology you’ve picked up from Ayn Rand.
It’s that “there’s no room”, “appeal to the lowest common denominator” politics of fear,
The same shit Farage spouts while drinking beer.

I want us to grasp those last dying fragments of compassion in our hearts
And Instead of capitalism vs socialism vs Corbynism endlessly debated, let’s just make a start.
Come up with a plan, scrap that hundred billion quid of nuke
And prove the Great in Britain aint some fluke.
Put people right up front and call on wisdom
Not on a predatory, misinterpreted sense of Darwinism.

Tories, neo-whatevers, Blairites and tax swindling scum,
Let’s wipe those lines in sand we’ve drawn and be said and done.

A European Tragedy

Chris Theo

I’ve been following the Greek crisis in the last few weeks with an almost religious fervour and If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the EU (ahem, Germany) is committed to austerity. To witness these politics has been nothing short of revelatory. More than ever we’ve been witness to the tussle between some of Europe’s biggest players on a single issue. So what have we learned?

Ideology is stronger than rationality

I suppose we should have known this all along, but many of us had hoped that the Greek crisis would force some EU states to admit that austerity doesn’t work. It’s evident, however, that we are so committed to the lie, so entrenched with the banks and so deep in the pockets of the wealthy elite that we will commit an entire nation to damnation in its name. It needn’t have been like this, but the likes of Schauble and Merkel are so committed to their ideology that even prolonged human suffering at its hands cannot sway them. In fact, deep down, they welcome it. Their commitment to this brand of fiscal policy resonates with them in a very particular way. It does so because it aligns closely with how we’ve been taught to manage personal finances (more on that later).

Your country is a theme park

alton-towers[1]

Theme parks are are fun, they thrill and when everything is working well, no one dies. For theme parks to run well, however, they need money – a lot of it. The rollercoasters need safety checks, someone needs to ensure the teacups are secured well so that centrifugal forces don’t toss patrons into the air like a sprinkler system. It needs new, fast rides, year after year and it needs a lot of staff. To run, to stay profitable, to grow, a theme park needs investment much like a country. What we’ve seen in Greece over the last few years is what happens when you close down the theme park’s Burger King and forget to grease to rollercoaster carriages. People are thrown off into oblivion – hungry (see: Alton Towers).

In Greece we’ve seen young and old alike cast from the economic wheel in an increasingly spectacular fashion. And in the context of the newly agreed deal (as of Monday 13th July) we’re promised a lot more suffering.

Lessons can only be learned through suffering

Greece_pensioner_s_3367633k[1]

But suffering is good, we would be led to believe. Even as Greece comes apart at the seams as a result of austerity, George Osbourne (the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer) is content to ram billions of welfare cuts down the public’s throats while subsidies for businesses eclipse the total savings from those cuts almost ten-fold. You see, the idea of austerity conforms to a very compelling narrative, succinctly: “Oops, we’ve overspent, let’s stop spending so much.” Makes sense right? Well it does for you and me, it aligns with the common experience of examining your bank balance a week before pay day and switching to Pot Noodles for lunch. But it doesn’t make sense for a theme park. In that last week before pay day, as we shovel rehydrated noodles into our mouths we tell ourselves that what we’re doing is right, that this suffering is good and that we’ll soon be eating gourmet soups and sandwiches for lunch if only we can get through this. Tightening our belts makes us feel frugal, it makes us feel efficient and with the promise of reward on the horizon we come to the conclusion that this suffering is for our own good. We must suffer to prosper, we are told, and we believe it.

I’m not going to go into what we should be doing fiscally in order to grow, because this post isn’t about that, however, I will briefly mention it. To me, overspending, up to a certain point, is merely the misallocation of funds to areas that yield little/no return. In the UK you could probably say this of any IT project related to the NHS! In order to “get back on track” we need to examine what we’re spending and start being smarter about where the money goes. What investment will generate more jobs, at a basic level. Now, whether you fall to the left or the right of the nationalisation/privatisation side of the debate is irrelevant, because ultimately you believe that money, well invested is good for the economy. By that logic, Greece is being strangled.

Dear [Insert country here], I don’t care what you voted for

an-official-picks-up-a-a-ballot-at-a-polling-station-during-a-referendum-vote-in-athens[1]

We’ve seen what the EU do when faced with political dissent. Syriza, a far left party, have been hammered into submission due to their anti-austerity stance. At the EU summit last week Alexis Tsipras made an speech that stated that democracy itself was under threat. He’s right.

“It is the sovereign right of a government to choose whether to increase taxation on profit-making businesses and to not cut the benefits to the lowest pensions, the EKAS, in order to meet fiscal targets. If it is not the right of a sovereign government to choose in what way it will find equivalent measures to cover the required targets, then we must adopt an extreme and anti-democratic view. That in the countries that are in a program there must be no elections. That governments must be appointed, technocrats must be appointed and that they assume responsibility for the decisions.”

And now, a week later, we find that Greece’s national sovereignty has indeed been assumed in the interests of a deal. The “NO” vote meant nothing, the vote that brought Syriza into power almost six months ago means nothing. The EU refuses to tolerate the anti-austerity stance of any government, something that Spain’s Pablo Iglesias should take note of now if he ever hopes to get power within his own country and steer his nation as he sees fit. To Europe, austerity beats democracy every time. Fall in line or suffer the consequences.

Clinging to austerity dogma in spite of the damage it causes is worrying beyond its immediate effects. When applied, it benefits only very few, worsening inequality and marginalising the voices of the weak. It’s the kind of behaviour we’d expect from an organised and hierarchical religion circa The Dark Ages. It is truly worrying that for perhaps the first time we see that Europe (and especially Germany) cannot be reached regardless of how impassioned the plea. They answer to a higher power. Austerity has now become Europe’s holy fiscal weapon and it has launched a crusade on the less fortunate. Greece is its first true victory.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts – Book review

Chris Theo

This novel has been around a while; originally published in 2001 it has since sold over 4 million copies. This is a wildly successful book. I should have heard of it, but I hadn’t. Not that I feel bad about that, not until some time last year when I realised that a lot of people I knew had not only read it, but also loved it. As if that wasn’t reason enough to dive into it, a few Google searches revealed that its long awaited sequel “The Mountain Shadow” is out in October this year. That sealed it, what better time begin? I made a promise to myself that I would finish this doorstop of a book and though I wavered on one occasion I can proudly say that its pages are now tattered through turning as opposed to through some kind of industrial accident.

Shantaram is an unusual book. For me it is one that is greater than the sum of its parts, but because I actively disliked many of those parts you may be surprised to hear that I actually enjoyed the book overall. There are moments of brilliance and beauty in it, but often those moments are peppered and punctuated with disappointment. At its core though, once you strip away what doesn’t work, you are left with a rollicking adventure story – and ultimately everyone likes a good adventure story.

This novel is based on the life of Gregory David Roberts (referred to as Lin throughout the book), it charts his escape from an Australian prison to his subsequent life in India, where the vast bulk of the story takes place. However, it is listed as fiction and as such, the reader is often left wondering “how much of this actually happened?”. That may not be a problem for some but for me it introduced a niggling thought that stayed with me during my reading. That niggle surfacing when plot lines converged and tied themselves into a neat little bow or when conversations took a philosophical turn, with major characters often discussing plainly and directly the major themes of the book. The latter seemingly a cheap and easy way to bypass the “show and not tell” rule of writing. “Did this really happen?” I asked myself, again and again and again. I would have been better off believing that this was purely autobiographical – as I had done for the first third of the book.

My other major problem with the book was that with the exception of a few characters, I found that most of the novel’s inhabitants were simply just not very nice. I don’t expect to like every character in a novel, but when so many of its pages are dedicated to conversations with these characters, characters which our protagonist himself seems to like, the desire to carry on through a 930 page tome can evaporate quite quickly. My foremost grievance in this respect is Lin’s principal love interest – Karla. She is beautiful, yes, but she is also cold and distant and in spite of this Lin continues to pine for her whilst failing to recognise that she isn’t particularly pleasant. In fact, it’s that failure to recognise that may very well be at the heart of the problems with the novel. In the same way that 90s sitcom Seinfeld adhered to the mantra “No hugging, no learning.” in many ways so does Shantaram. Seinfeld did this in the name of comedy so that comedic plot lines were not slowly lost to soap opera but Shantaram does it due to an inherent character flaw in its protagonist. It crossed my mind that perhaps this was intentional, a comment on the futility of change, that one cannot cast aside their essential nature by running away. After all, addiction, prison, violence and crime are all facets of Lin’s story in India and they seem to have followed him across continents, from the life he supposedly left behind. If so, then it could have been done in a way that the protagonist actually recognises. As it stands it seems as if many of Lins’s failings manifest as a result of a pattern of behaviours that he is unable to change, and any growth experienced is merely in Lin’s mind. Meanwhile, he continues along the same path, dragged down by the unsavouries around him. Worthy of a special mention is the character Prabaker who seems more richly drawn than many of the others, he is also very likeable and contributes to much of the humour of the novel.

Characters aside, my main problem with Shantaram is with how seriously it takes itself. This novel seems intent on trying to make a philosophical point for everything Lin experiences. Almost without fail, at the beginning and end of every chapter Gregory David Roberts shifts his focus from the events taking place to reflect on what his experiences teach us about humanity. Whether he is writing about morality or love or death he makes a habit of projecting his own feelings, his own thoughts on these grand themes outward to the reader, swapping “I” for “you” as if he is addressing the reader directly. Personally, I found this self-aggrandising rather than revelatory and was responsible for weighing down the plot unnecessarily. Others may find that this insight offers them something (and the numerous five star reviews abound seem to suggest this) but I am not one of them and I felt like it should have done without it. In fact, it’s this philosophising in tandem with my final complaint – Robert’s overtly descriptive writing style, drenched in simile and double barrelled adjectives – that contribute to this book’s greatest weakness: it’s too damn long! Robert’s really went all out on this and it is evident on almost every page. I can’t help but feeling that a good editor could have reigned him into understanding that he was trying to do far too much. Don’t get me wrong, there are moments where the writing works, it’s poetic, vibrant and apt, and in those moments my hopes for this novel were restored. But like an overcooked sponge cake some parts were easier to swallow than others.

In spite of its problems this novel’s saving grace is its story, it is great, it takes you places you don’t expect and presents Bombay (before it was renamed to Mumbai) in an honest and multifaceted light. Roberts loves this city, and not just the nice parts, he loves it in its entirety. This Westerner’s adoptive view of 80s Bombay is one of the main successes of the novel as a whole. Forget Karla; Lin & Roberts, if they are indeed different people, are in love with the city most of all and ultimately it’s the story and the setting that kept me coming back to Shantaram’s pages. But there were oh so many pages. Had the writing been condensed and the attempt at a philosophical underpinning repressed I believe there is a five star novel hidden amongst these pages. At one point I wished I could give editing it to a more tidy and well-paced 600 pages a go myself. As it stands it is hampered by Robert’s attempt to give his own life meaning beyond its merit. So will I be reading the sequel “The Mountain Shadow” (whose publisher lists as it being 976 pages – longer than Shantaram itself) when it comes out in October 2015? That depends. If it is indeed man’s propensity to reflect more deeply on his own life with age, and considering nearly fifteen years has passed since Shantaram was published, I’m inclined to say no. However, if Roberts has become more critical, wizened and perhaps even given George Orwell’s essay on writing a glance then I may very well do so.

threepointfive
3.5 out of 5

An Open Letter to Snap-Happy Gig-Goers

Chris Theo

Dear Gig-goer,

Does you smartphone burn a hole in your pocket? Do you itch to snap a quick shot of your favourite artist as they jump, sing, shout and scream on stage? Maybe you prefer video, after all there’s nothing like re-living the moment after the fact in perfect aural clarity, is there? If so this is directed at you…

First, a disclaimer. Before you take this personally I want you to know something, I once did as you do now. There was a time when I would think nothing of removing my phone from my jeans’ pocket mid-gig, lifting it to the sky in the hopes of capturing the eternal, wondrous moment of one of my favourite bands smashing out one of their hits, or struggling to snap a brief cascade of coloured lights that shone through the smoke filled venues.  So I’m not judging you, I’m merely offering you an alternate viewpoint, one that I’ve come to adopt over time.

Let’s face it, nowadays the world is stuffed, packed, jimmied and rammed with distraction. Billboards, banner ads, Buzzfeed lists, clickbait tag lines. Boobtubers, chuggers, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the inimitable smell of Subway. Crowds, cars and pools of vomit that line bus stops on Saturday mornings. We are inundated and the natural human reaction to this abundance of stimulus is to shut down. And who suffers (besides those struggling to sell The Big Issue)? We all do.

But to say we shut down is an oversimplification, we still connect with what we see, it still registers somewhere in our minds but that connection is superficial at best. We’ve learned to live broadly, not deeply. If ever there was a moment presented to you that demanded your attention, vied for your consciousness then it is “the gig”. That intimate and unavoidable blend of sights and sounds; the music deafening and the bright lights momentarily blinding; the warmth or hostility of the crowd into which you’ve been consumed and that moment when you find yourself singing along to one of your favourite songs, your voice lost to the room.

A good gig will linger in the memory longer and be accessible more readily than a video or image. I still remember gigs I attended 15 years ago, I remember how it felt to be there and to really exist in the moment – those were good days. The number of gigs I remember that viscerally are few and far between but not every gig is worthy of remembrance.

By all means, take out your phone or tablet, take a photo or video of yourself at the venue as some social proof of attendance but once the music starts and the lights dim to black, put it away and actually absorb the experience. Trust me, you’ll remember the ones that count and you won’t have had to resort to the wholesale outsourcing of your memory to the cloud. Plus, there exists no privacy policy (as of yet) for memory.

Yours faithfully,

Chris Theo

 

Image used under Attribution licensing. Cropped to 1:1 ratio
We Are In The Crowd by Harry Thomas Photography https://www.flickr.com/photos/waffles10/9057925046/

Boy in Blue

Chris Theo

One brief moment was all it took,
Unburdened abandon in this brown boy’s look.
He and his friend crossing the road,
First left then right and over they go.
A skip in their step on this Friday afternoon,
They wear baggy t-shirts both shades of blue.

But my stare stays fixed on the boy to the right,
The sun in his eyes a measure too bright
But he won’t bat an eye, no, he won’t look away
‘Cos the world has no hold on him this glorious day.

Then a spark, brief and pure and connected
To some memory the world’s since tested.
A recollection of a boyhood hope,
Before the knots, before the rope.

And just like a spark that sears behind the eyes
This briefest moment lingers and I’m made to realise
That I once was this boy, young, sun-drenched and free
But I lost my way to the weight of all that’s unseen.

Spoiler

Chris Theo

This story was inspired by Game of Thrones (the TV series). Specifically, a Facebook “friend” thought that spoiling revelations in the show was a just bit of fun, rather than the deadly serious matter that it in fact is. We are no longer Facebook “friends”…

[WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILER FOR SEASON ONE OF GAME OF THRONES]

Please find below some download options for this story or simply read on!

PDF PDF – For desktop reading // epub EPUB – For eBook reading // mobi MOBI – For Kindle reading

 

 

Spoiler

My name is Michael Harris (otherwise known as inmate number 44628) and its from here, my dank prison cell, that I intend to recount the exact set of circumstances which led to my incarceration. Just to be clear, this is no ordinary prison, this is a psychiatric facility for the criminally insane. While I write this I’m in the process of emerging from a twelve hour semi-catatonic state, courtesy of this facility’s pharmacy. I have a small window of about two hours to tell you my story before I’m sedated for the second time in twenty four hours. So I’d best get on with it. But first a title, something snappy, let’s see, “The Murder of Caden”. Too simple. How about “The Inevitable Murder of Caden Borwick”. It certainly has something, and let’s face it, if I didn’t kill him someone else would have got round to it eventually. He was a monumental git after all. Now, I’m a little conflicted about using the word “murder” in the title, after all I had no intention of killing Caden prior to my arrival at the office that morning but it makes for a better title. So for the purposes of this story, yes, I murdered the motherfucker.

I first met Caden Borwick formally in 2010 when he joined the company I worked for. Despite my workplace at the time being one comfortable with casual dress no one was prepared for what walked through the door that day. Caden was a goth. He was the kind of goth other goths would give funny looks to in the street. As he walked into the office on his first day, with a confidence inappropriate for a new hire, heads turned, jaws dropped and someone sat amongst the sea of open plan desks broke the silence with a “What the fuck?”. What the fuck, indeed. I stared at Caden, completely unable to look away, his corpse painted face and black lipstick like a slap in the face of normalcy. He wore black PVC trousers that reflected the fluorescent lights above him as he walked. His head was barely six inches from the ceiling thanks to the most enormous black platformed boots I’d ever seen. He was a monstrous black giraffe of death. In a cape. I was so torn on this point, I almost wanted to shake the guy’s hand for wearing a cape to work on his first day but there was a solemnity in his face that made me and every other person in the office wary. Caden approached Colin Schwartz, his new boss and the man responsible for hiring him, and said “Hello, Colin, I hope I’m not too late”. Colin spun around from his desk having been fully immersed in the same spreadsheet the whole morning. He found he needed to angle his head upwards to an unnatural degree just to make eye contact. Poor Colin, I thought, his first direct report ever is ninety minutes late on his first day and looks like that. I could have sworn I heard a squeak as his testes receded into his body. Poor Colin.

“I didn’t recognise him at all”, Colin told me over a cigarette later that day. “The guy wore a suit for his interview. He had olive skin and eyebrows!”

“Jesus,” I said confounded.

“Listen, he’s hot-desking right now but when Mike leaves your pod I’m going to have him sit there so you can keep a little eye on him for me.”

“You don’t need me to do that man, you’re his boss remember, you can keep an eye on him all by yourself.”

“Well, I’m hoping sitting near you will rub off on him.”

“Fine”, I said. I really didn’t mind, I always worked best with my headphones on anyway. I could just ignore him if I had to.

A week later and Mike was gone, the cleared desk opposite me beckoned Caden over and I formally introduced myself. “Hi Caden, I’m Michael. Let me know if you need anything.”

“I don’t need anything”, he said without hesitation. I couldn’t quite infer his meaning from the inflection but I thought it was odd. I let it pass.

I noticed he carried a very large book under his arm but I couldn’t see the title, out of curiosity I asked, “What’s that?”

“It’s a book”, he replied with disdain.

“Well yea, obviously, ‘what book?’ I mean.”

“Here”, he thrust the book at me. It was a weighty tome called Helliconia, thirteen hundred pages long but technically three books in one volume. I had read them a few years ago.

“What do you think of it?”

He glared at me and snatched the book out of my hand.

“Whatever, man” was all he said before he sat down and stared at the screen of his already booting laptop. I guess he thought I had never read it and was just being patronising. Fine. Whatever yourself, Caden.

Sitting across from Caden was very unsettling. He was slumped low in his chair and he stared at me from across the desk, his gaze finding it’s way through the panoply of crap I’d accumulated on my desk during my tenure at the company. I found that after a couple of months I’d strategically moved most of the items on my desk as to obstruct his penetrating glare. One day I went to drink from the bottle of water on my desk and one black eye was staring out back at me. I lost it. I jumped up from my desk and looked down on him “What’s your deal man?”, I said, loudly enough for others in the office to turn around. He ignored me. “Hey, Caden!”, he looked up, “yeah I’m talking to you – what are you fucking staring at?!” He looked back down at his screen. I wanted to scream but resisted, “Listen you cape-wearing fuck. Keep your eyes to yourself, if you have something to say, say it. Otherwise don’t look at me.” He just kept looking forward, tapping at his keys with his pointy nails.

As you can imagine I got a stern warning from my manager later that day but the whole thing was dropped in lieu of “keeping the peace”. I was made to apologise to Caden and then shake his hand, my stomach knotted as I was reminded of having to do the same thing at school with one of the resident bullies many years earlier. Caden was a man-child and I’d been brought down to his level. I felt like a complete idiot for having let him win in such a way. So I vowed not to lose my temper again.

Over the course of the next few months I kept my interactions with Caden to a bare minimum. During that time Colin would give me the inside scoop on Caden’s work performance, he’d received a couple of verbal warnings but was doing just enough to get by. It didn’t look like he’d be going anywhere any time soon. There was a growing undercurrent of dread that carpeted each moment of every day and I had to force myself to keep it under control. The best days were the ones where Caden was sick at home, I could stretch my legs out under my desk without accidentally kicking him. I could talk with other colleagues without his oppressive eavesdropping. Most importantly I could take my time on “Cake Tuesdays” without having to rush my selection before Caden started fingering all the pastries. This, only moments after I’d spied him picking his nose at his desk. Personally, I would have thought the pointy fingernails would dissuade him from pursuing such an activity but perhaps he valued precision over safety. I found myself dwelling on many of his flaws and I spent a lot of time, an unhealthy amount of time, pondering over the ones that bothered me the most. I guess the item that topped the list for me would be, let’s see, his entire fucking personality. And I wasn’t alone. In fact many of my colleagues bonded over this shared hatred and it was a source of comfort in an otherwise hostile environment, like a complimentary hand-fan handed out at the gates of hell.

It’s at this point in my story where I feel I should mention the catalyst that led to Caden’s inevitable death. A casually arranged work gathering at the local pub was getting messy, I was on my sixth whiskey and Colin was on his fourth pint. Mike was also with us, telling us about his new job and reminiscing about times gone by. I put my arms around both of them and pulled them close, “Fuck, I miss this!” I said enthusiastically. I turned to Mike, “Mike, mate, come back man, I’m fucking lost without you son. I’m sitting opposite this fucker now” I motioned towards Caden who was sat in the corner alone staring into space. A straw was planted between his lips and he sucked periodically from a pint of Guinness. I guess he didn’t want to smudge his black lipstick.

“Which fucker?” Mike replied.

I motioned with my head to Caden again, more vigorously this time, “The one in the PVC man, that’s Caden!”

“Shiiiiit, that’s Caden? I thought Col was exaggerating.”

“No man, how can you exaggerate that?!” I said.

“True”, Mike nodded thoughtfully.

Colin jumped in, “He could be carrying a sword, he loves his fantasy doesn’t he. He’s always got a massive book under his arm.”

“Well, let’s be thankful for small mercies, that’s all we need, a seven and a half foot, black PVC clad, sword carrying misanthrope with a personality disorder.”

Mike took pity on him, “Ah, I’m sure he’s not that bad! Each to their own and all that.”

“Nah, I forgot to tell you what happened,” Colin said, about to refute Mike’s statement. “He gave away the ending to Game of Thrones. We were having our monthly one to one, it used to be weekly but it was like getting blood out of a stone, and anyway I guess he was pissed at me for having given him some extra work, and he must have heard us talking about the show, and the bastard told me what happened.”

“What the fuck!” I said.

“Yeah, I guess he’s read the books and he was trying to get back at me.”

Mike and I looked at each other and in unison said “Motherfucker”.

“Well don’t tell me anything”, I said “I’m only up to episode five, got two to watch this weekend.”

“Nice, don’t worry, I won’t say a word but man, I wanted to knock him out when he told me. Literally as he was walking out the meeting room he turns around and tells me, before it could even register he was gone.”

“This guy sounds like a complete cunt”, Mike said sympathetically.

Colin and I looked at each other and said as one “He is!”.

The next morning I rolled into work a half hour late with a moderate-to-severe hangover. I figured that the others must have had a messier night than me as the office was practically deserted. Armed with a bacon sandwich in my pocket I sought out the first available dispenser of caffeinated beverages and jabbed at the buttons like a primate. The coffee machine clicked and buzzed and began to pour black nectar into a paper cup. Caden sidled up to me and looked down at me with towering contempt, his mouth a half-formed snarl.

“I hear you and your mates were slagging me off last night…”

The small, intimate, but non consensual orgy between small mammals taking place in my head prevented me from forming a cogent response. “Huh? You mean… What? In the pub?”

“Yes in the pub, you and Colin and that other guy. Slagging me off.”

“But, who? Who told you that?”

“All three of you were casting evils at me all night!”

Rumbled. “Caden, honestly, sit down man, I can’t have this conversation… I think… I might be sick.” I squatted to the floor having already broken into a sweat and steadied myself on the coffee machine.

“Pussy.” He kicked me with his massive boot like he was checking a car tire. “Oh, and Ned Stark gets his head chopped off by Joffrey!”

The nail in the coffin. I began to retch as he walked back to his desk, his cape trailing behind him.

“Oh my God”, I mumbled to myself. Saliva dripped from my mouth as I continued to fight the vice like grip that had taken hold of my stomach. Thank fuck it was Friday.

I gathered my strength and made my way to my desk. I was hunched over with my hand clutching at my abdomen. By the time I sat down the cold sweat had subsided and I was now experiencing a hot flush, rage had conspired with the hangover to trigger the male menopause. The fan behind my desk was blowing gently and I cranked the knob to maximum. Heaving a sigh of relief I entered my password on my computer and set to work. A loud tutting noise struck me from Caden’s direction, I peeked over my screen and caught his eye. Again I saw and felt his schizophrenic gaze upon me.

“The fan”, he said.

“What about it?”

“Turn it off.”

“Man, I’m hot, let me cool down.”

“It’s not my problem if you can’t handle your drink”, he looked away from me dismissively.

“Says the bloke who sipped a single Guinness through a bloody straw the whole night!” The thought of Guinness made my stomach heave and bile squeezed its way to the back of my throat.

“What I do is none of your business!” His tone was getting more aggressive and I was not thinking clearly enough to try and bring the intensity of this most ridiculous of conversations down.

“It is my business when it affects me! And why the hell would you choose to act like such a dick to me and everyone around you? ALL THE TIME.”

“D’you call me a dick?!” He stood up thrusting his chair backwards and it rolled away before tipping over. I was incensed. I was as angry with him as my digestive system was with me.

“Yes, Caden. You are a dick. A mammoth, dripping, syphilitic penis.”

Caden’s fists clenched and his cheeks reddened. At that very moment I knew I’d crossed a line and I regretted my actions immediately. But part of me was immensely proud that I’d managed to spur a reaction so strong that it was visible through layers of corpse paint. For the briefest of moments I revelled in ambivalence but was quickly forced into adrenaline induced readiness. Caden was coming for me. He made his way around the desk with resolute purpose. The unrelenting roar of the fan on its maximum setting had his cape billowing and flapping behind him. Before I could catch my breath and decide on a counter move to his inevitable attack he was upon me. Like the demented bastard child of a super-villain and dominatrix he pounced, bringing me to the ground with such force that I thought I heard a car backfiring. The first thought to enter my mind as he straddled my pelvis and throttled me was that his dominatrix mother would be ashamed of him, for there had been no mention of a safe word. I felt my tensed neck muscles weakening as I flailed and clutched at his face, the white paint rubbed off on my hands leaving his face smeared. He moved his head left to right reactively and managed to dodge my aimless attacks. I was starting to lose consciousness. Through the muddled, swirling colours beginning to overwhelm my eyesight I glimpsed haggard and pale-faced Colin careering towards us – that brilliant bastard had made it in! A moment later Caden’s head whipped backwards as the collar of his cape lodged underneath his Adam’s apple. Colin was pulling Caden off me by his cape. I felt Caden’s grip on my throat loosen and I managed to take a stunted half-breath. The psychedelic blotches in my vision began to give way to the real world. I can only imagine how ridiculous we looked; Colin garroting Caden via cape and Caden desperately trying to strangle me. All of our faces a different red-ish hue. I took advantage of the reprieve and brought my arms under Caden’s which were still gripping at my throat. I used all my strength and simultaneously thrust both my arms into the soft skin of his inner elbows. He buckled slightly and I heard a tearing sound as Caden’s cape began to rip from the tug-of-war Colin was engaged in. Suddenly Caden let go of my throat and reached quickly for the cape at the base of his neck. He moved with panic and desperation but managed to grip it tightly. He pulled forward and moved his body with it. The cape ripped completely and the immediate loss of tension brought his head down on mine. I turned to the right and he smashed his nose just above my left temple. There was a squelching and crunching accompanied with a fine red spray of blood as his nose exploded against me. I pushed a disoriented Caden off me and saw Colin slumped on the floor a few meters away. He must have hit his head after the cape tore.

Caden managed to make it to his feet and he steadied himself on the nearest desk. He wiped the blood from his nose and mouth with his hand and then looked up at me. Any remaining disorientation had lifted and his stare was now seeped in malice. He was about to make his move and I was still helplessly sprawled across the floor. With very little forethought I crawled backwards on my elbows as fast as I could, but within a few strokes I’d hit my head on the far wall. I was trapped. Caden exploded into motion. He roared at me with his arms in the air like an angry Scot going into battle and I scrunched my eyes closed. I was sure that I was done for. But nothing happened. One, two, three… I started counting, I got all the way up to ten and still nothing. Was I dead? I could still hear the commotion around Colin, I heard a mechanical whirring, some tearing and in the distance the repetitive clunking of our office printer. I couldn’t be dead, not unless I’d made my way directly to Hell. The thought of an eternity of office work forced my eyes open. Caden had not moved, it was as if he’d entered suspended animation the moment I closed my eyes. But then his towering stare faded into one of confusion because despite all efforts to cross the small distance between us he was actually moving backwards – one shuffled mis-step at a time. His outstretched arms which only a moment ago were flailing for a place on my neck were now clutching at his own. His red complexion gave way to purple and his head began to tilt backwards. He took one more half step backwards but in doing so scraped his platformed heel against some grey office equipment. It was an industrial shredder and his cape was already two-thirds swallowed. He tried to drop to his knees but there wasn’t enough slack in his cape, instead his neck was forced farther backwards and he let out an almost inaudible choking sound. It was only once his back had arched to an impossibly acute angle that I realised I was out finally out of danger. Caden, however, was not and within moments his cape had disappeared completely. The back of his neck was pulled tight against the shredder and his collar was successfully asphyxiating him. I sat and watched while my stomach rumbled. Note to self: a fight to the death really works up an appetite.

I noticed a small smattering of my colleagues had amassed around Colin and they had just succeeded in bringing him round. Just as the sales guys, Alan and Nicolai, pulled Colin to his feet they spotted Caden’s predicament. They rushed over to free him but immediately began to panic. They shouted for help and frantically tried to switch the shredder into reverse but instead of spitting out the chewed cape the power died leaving Caden anchored at the neck and without breath. Panic descended into hysteria as others huddled round the unresponsive shredder. Even Harry the perverted IT guy was getting stuck in. The only other time I’d seen him in the vicinity of a piece of office equipment was when Nicolai swore on his brother’s life there was a dick shaped hole in the finance printer. Caden disappeared from view as more people moved in to try and help. I angled my head left and right trying to spot him through a sea of legs but gave up almost as soon as I’d tried. My stomach rumbled again and I smelt bacon. The sandwich! I knew that once my stomach had settled the salty meat and fat soaked bread would cure all ills. I heard someone shouting for a pair of scissors but my attention wouldn’t be swayed. I’d earned this. Carefully I removed the still warm sandwich from my pocket and unwrapped it from the foil-lined paper. I began to salivate. I tried to take a bite but opening my mouth was agonising. Caden had inflicted some serious damage to my neck and throat. Without thinking I licked the bread. Admittedly, it wasn’t entirely satisfying but it was better than nothing. There was a lot of shouting but I only picked up a few words… “ambulance”… “scissors”… “help”… “suffocating”… “hurry”… “dead”. I licked the bread again, almost convinced that I could polish the whole sandwich off in this manner. Then as quickly as they had amassed, my colleagues dispersed and formed a wide broken circle around Caden’s sprawled body. By now I’d moistened the bread enough to pull some off with my teeth. I swallowed but the piece of saliva and fat soaked bread became lodged in my throat. Panic broke my stupor and I hacked up the obstruction in one sharp exhalation. The mushy ball of bread was airborne, it arched beautifully and came down with a wet slap upon Caden’s crotch. All heads swung towards me, mouths agape while police and paramedics piled through the office door. Caden was declared dead on arrival and I never got to finish my bacon sandwich.

The rest of what happened was a blur, a collection of images and sounds. The click of the handcuffs. The looks of disbelief as I’m hauled away. A feint trail of HP sauce connecting my shoe with the lonely bacon sandwich, my thinning tether to reality. The slam of the police car doors. The smell of urine in the interrogation room. My lawyer’s face as the police explain to him the state in which I was found. I’ll never forget that face because I knew then that I was completely, utterly, royally fucked. Apparently, nonchalantly licking bread while the man whose nose you just obliterated chokes to death doesn’t go down well with a jury of your peers. And that, ultimately, is what let me down. I’ve got to hand it to the prosecution, they took the facts and painted a fantastically macabre picture of what made me tick. By the time I was called to testify they’d made it look like nothing I said could be trusted. My attempts to convince the judge and jury that the whole thing was self-defence were blown apart by opposing counsel’s secret weapon: Caden’s diary. This warped tale littered with expletives was a rich fabrication. Every interaction we’d had over the course of the year was twisted to make me look like a psychopath and him like a victim. Of course, I wasn’t the only character to feature in his diary, Colin was there too, referred to as an “epochal wanker”. Nicolai and Alan were described as “a pair of masectomised tits floating down a congealed river of protoplasm” and the girls from human resources were, well, they were just “sluts”. Ever the charmer. But he saved the best for me. There were many, many insults that I won’t drone on about but my two favourites are worthy of mention. One: “Michael talking was like watching someone gargle the contents of a colostomy bag”. Two: “His fat fucking cunt of a face continues to squawk incessantly”. Not sure why I like that second one so much, but it’s probably to do with the imagery it conjures up. For me it’s Igor from Disney’s Aladdin genetically fused with a vagina.My lawyer did his best to get the diary removed from evidence, stating that it presented a biased view of me. But he failed. It seems that people put a lot of credence in the words of a dead man. Even Colin’s testimony couldn’t help me, his was a lone dissenting voice in stark contradiction to the already cemented opinion that pervaded the courtroom. When asked to describe me almost all of the other witnesses said that they really didn’t know me well enough, that I kept to myself and that I was generally a bit of a loner. My lawyer was over his head and despite his efforts to regain some control of the courtroom and shift the jury’s perceptions I think deep down he knew he’d been dealt a losing hand. By nine-thirty AM on most trial days he was already dripping in sweat and I can’t count the number of times he asked for recess. Those requests were usually preceded by bouts of the most putrid silent-but-deadlies. These five days were some of the most important in my life and my hopes rested on a man that was literally shitting himself throughout the proceedings. So I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that the whole self-defence angle didn’t pan out.

My lawyer was the dumbest smart person I’d ever met. His education was impeccable for a public defender, he had a strong chiselled jaw and the white wig all the lawyers wore in court looked fantastic on him. Everyone else looked like a imbecile but Gordon Letts, my lawyer, looked like he was born to be in the courtroom. Within the first minute of meeting him I had thought to myself ‘this isn’t the kind of bloke who has a father, this man has lineage’. I thought he was a class act. For the first time since my arrest I felt safe and the knot in my stomach eased. I should have known better. He was the guy that showed up because I couldn’t get someone good. He’d always been that guy and that safety I felt was drained from me each time the buffoon opened his mouth in court. And every time he broke wind. By twenty passed nine on the first day of my trial I’d abandoned all hope so you can only imagine my state of mind on my trial’s penultimate day when, during afternoon recess, my lawyer sat me down to “have a word”.

“What is it, Gordon?” I said. I was (justifiably) irritable.

“Michael, allow me to be honest with you here.”

“I’m listening.”

“I must admit what initially appeared to be a simple case of self defence has spiralled into something I was not prepared for. Not in the least.” No shit! “Let’s review the facts briefly. First and foremost, we have a history of tension and disagreements between yourself and Caden. Now, regardless of whether Caden’s diary does indeed paint a biased view of those interactions is, at this stage, wholly irrelevant. The man is dead, he cannot be questioned and the validity of his assertions in the diary cannot be challenged. The jury will always side with the victim in these circumstances. Secondly, there are the character witnesses. Colin was the only one of these whose testimony was actually convincing, and it would have done you some good had Colin not been involved in the altercation, but as it stands the prosecution have done a marvellous job of casting doubt on his integrity. Thirdly, and finally, there is the matter of the bacon sandwich. You eating a bacon sandwich as a man died in front of you has… has made you appear a callous sociopath. If we do not deviate from this path, tomorrow you will be found guilty of murder.”

“But…?”

“There are no ‘buts’ I’m afraid, you will be found guilty and you will spend a decade, at the very least, banged up.” I found it strange that he’d used that colloquialism. Almost immediately my mind conjured up a prison rape scenario and just as quickly I suppressed it. “The best we can hope for now is damage control…”

Gordon had been speaking to opposing counsel for about fifteen minutes and I’d been left in a holding cell gasping for news. When he finally returned he was beaming. His smile was ear to ear and he looked supremely chuffed with himself.

“Brilliant news lad!” He was trembling with joy.

“What! What!? Tell me!”

“We’ve made a deal, Michael. We will change your plea to guilty by reason of insanity and the prosecution will be lenient with sentencing. They’ve agreed to 5 years in a state-run facility.”

“What are you so happy about then?”

“It’s a good result, Michael. We couldn’t have done any better.”

“You mean you couldn’t do any better.”

“Now, Michael, you know I’ve worked my damnedest to get you off. Considering the circumstances you’ve… well let’s just say there’s a good chance you’ll get out sooner than that and these places… they’re not that bad. You’ll have your own shower, en suite. Three squares a day. Regular visitation privileges. You can’t say fairer than that!”

I was just about to protest but the buzzer sounded indicating that my trial was due to resume. My time was up. The guard’s keys jangled as he unlocked the cell door. I was escorted out and in a moment of absolute resignation I looked back at Gordon and let out an unconvincing, “Fine.”

I realise now I had no choice but to go with Gordon’s advice, but there was a time, probably the first six months of my incarceration, where I looked back at the trial and felt nothing but rage. Surely I could have done something. I could have fired Gordon or represented myself or thrown fecal matter at the judge and jury. I could have done anything. I should have done something. But what gets me now, more than the anger, is the regret. If I had to spend the next few years in semi-catatonic isolation for murder I should have at least given myself the pleasure of choking Caden to death rather than letting a piece of office equipment do it for me. But it becomes hard to hold on to the hate and the regret when you’re in a place like this. Everyone who works here is on a personal mission to calm you down. One wrong word is all it takes. Even less, a right word delivered badly can get you put you on the ‘naughty list’. And there’s one thing you do a lot of when you’re on the ‘naughty list’. Sleep. I still dream though. Sometimes I dream of Caden, his face, the fight, the blood. But more often than not I relive those final moments in the office, a lone bacon sandwich staring back at me as I’m dragged off by the pigs.

THE END

Carriage

Chris Theo

This is a really short, bleak poem. I suppose I was feeling pretty weary when I wrote it. I didn’t even intend for it to be short at all but the words just stopped coming. I re-read it later and realised it didn’t need anything more as it summed up how I was feeling at that particular moment. You may have felt the same way…

Image: Donne nebbia ferrovia

Carriage

I look into her eyes and she looks into mine
Knowing what I see and knowing she sees it too, in me.
Tired eyes in an expressionless void. Drained dry.
Too sleepy to resist, too empty to care,
We are the collective sum of tired promises we made to ourselves and each other.
I’m sure you hate it as I do, trying so hard to fail.
There’s a world out there but these tracks promise a destination
And so we carry on, opting for the known over the unknown.