Life is no longer for me, mused Howard. One of the students serving behind the bar sported
a ponytail and a bright pink shirt: he strutted and crowed. Howard lit a cigarette,
jetted the smoke downwards with acidic bitterness, knocked back the vestigial
remains of his beer and approached the bar. The early rush for beer was over
so it didn't take long to get served.
'Hey, Pinky! Another plastic beaker full of Grobbish,' Howard
decreed to the ponytailed student.
'Eh? 'Ere, are you taking the piss, like?'
'Yes. I'm taking a pint of it.'
The barman snatched a plastic glass from a shelf and the
requested beverage was discharged from an electric pump, slammed unceremoniously
on the bar. The price was uttered threateningly.
'It's my birthday, please, let me pay.'
Howard turned to find the speaker to be a short, bearded
man of about thirty with heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles, dressed in corduroy
trousers and a lumberjack shirt.
'No, in that case let me buy you a drink,'
said Howard.
'Thanks, but the prerogative is mine.'
'Oh! Thank you very much indeed, happy birthday!'
'Pinky,' burbled the bearded man, 'a pint of the same piss
you gave him please!'
The pony-tailed barman glared. 'Are you taking the - er,
forget it,'
Howard took a deep sip, believing his sorrows best quenched
by dunking them in oblivion-forging brews. He and the bearded man left the
bar and leaned against the wall near the glass doors.
'Cheers! The name's Howard.'
'Cheers! Zed Harris! What do you do?'
'I'm reading astrophysics.'
'Sounds fiendishly hard. I'm a lecturer in socio-economics.'
Howard frowned. What was a lecturer doing hanging out at
a student disco?
'All alone on your birthday?'
'Well, a birthday is not a big deal is it? Not at my age
at any rate,' chuckled the lecturer, his stained teeth glistening through
the round gap between his lips. An uncomfortable pause in the conversation
ensued and endured.
Howard took a swig of his pint. 'You're not going to believe
this, but this time tomorrow I will be decomposing on an antiseptic slab with
a ticket tied to my big toe with a piece of string. I will be a stiff statistic
in some bastard's notebook.'
Howard studied the look of confusion on Zed's face and laughed
bitterly. He felt more melancholic than ever. 'Why do you look surprised when
I tell you I'm going to die? Death is not surprising. Most things are dead.
Even living things are dead. The only surprising thing is life. Life is
surprising. Surprising in its capacity to be shit. Today is your birthday.
Today is my deathday!'
At that moment Karen tugged on his sleeve.
'Howie! Hey! Come and join us, we're, like, over there!'
she summoned.
'Farewell, Zed. Happy birthday.'
'Yes, well, erm, goodbye now,' mumbled Zed sourly.
Howard obediently followed Karen through the raucous crowd
to her table where Dominic sat and pulled up the spare chair Dominic was reserving
by placing his feet on it.
'I'm going to murder myself.' Howard announced with gravitas.
'The only reward I can bestow on people is pain, so I'm going to murder myself.'
'Oh! Howie, don't be silly!' chided Karen impatiently.
'I say! Must implore you not to do that, my good chum,'
said Dominic. 'After all, if it wasn't for you, Old Banana, I would never
have met darling Karen here.'
'Oh, you're so sweet, darling Buttercup,' squeaked
Karen. The couple grinned serenely at each other. Karen placed her hands into
Dominic's. Howard cringed at this unashamed display of affection.
'I am too emotional about life,' sighed Howard. 'I think
it stems from feeling too much. I try to bottle it up but it pours out of
me like torrents of screams. In Hell.'
'Yeah I know what you mean,' enthused Karen. 'Life's kinda
frustrating for me too actually, because I don't really seem to be
able to sort of channel my artistic creativity. I chose art out of a kind
of passionate urge to be a work of art myself and to find
myself! I'm lucky really. All the stress could have absolutely dulled me like
ditch water and really, you know, taken the edge off my aspirations. It is,
like, the worst thing ever! Totally over the top! I will come out of
this stress thing really strong actually and so will my art and everybody
will love me for being like so cool under pressure!'
'All I can say is,' said Howard lowering his pint from his
mouth, 'well, all I want is to break free from it all, it's weighing down
on me like a rock. All I see in my life are devils and demons funnelling me
down into Hell'
'You know, I was like really thinking the same thing,'
said Karen. 'You know, only yesterday-'
'Thing is, great things happen when strange
things happen, when bad things happen.'
'If I may make a point here' said Dominic, 'nothing, naught,
diddlysquat can get us away from everyday existence, well, aside from blowing
your deuced brains out I suppose.'
'If you ask me, the best thing to do is be reckless,' stated
Howard, 'and turn our backs on common sense. Common sense is shit!'
'Yeah, art is like that, sort of unreal, about elevating
one's consciousness above everyday drudgery and shit,' said Karen.
'Blighters!' cried Dominic addressing Howard, 'I'd say you
were anything but a chap possessed of common sense. Top man!'
'Actually, I think you've got sense, Dommie-babes!'
gushed Karen. She caressed her lover's cheek.
'Bravo! And I do so admire the fact that you're common,
Squirrel Pie,' replied Dominic.
'Hang on a moment, what do you mean by that?' snapped Karen.
'Mean by what, sweetness?' asked Dominic innocently.
'You know, what do you mean by saying I'm common?'
'I say, then what are you, deuced aristocracy or something?
I thought you awfully pernickety arty ladies loved being perceived as common.'
'Well, yes, trendy, chic common is cool, but not
common like, sort of, common common!' gasped Karen.
'Quite right, my dear. I take it you are uncommonly
common,' said Dominic, sporting his laid back grin.
Karen frowned and yanked her hands away from Dominic's.
'Don't be a complete and total wanker Dominic! That's completely over
the top! Personally I blame Greg over one hundred percent for your totally
out-of-order misbehaviour!'
Dominic stopped grinning and looked sheepish.
'The real thing that drives us to do creative things like
Mozart did,' interjected Howard, as the beer slurred and slowed his speech,
'is the urge for power over whatever it is that we're doing or lusting.'
'That is perfectly true. That is the battle - perfect creativity
begets the perfect tottie,' said Dominic.
'Well, goodbye!' Howard sprang out of his chair and left
them.
He stood alone outside, feeling the night air rasp at his
lungs. Nearby a couple snogged, blissfully oblivious to his presence. Why
did women routinely reject him? It no longer mattered. Now he would never
discover what it was like to get laid. These things no longer not matter when
you don the black cloak of oblivion. He trudged the uphill pavement along
the Chillington Road back the house in Napoleon Terrace. The drink that wet
his mind compressed the journey and in next to no time he stood in front of
the front door. The familiar door was deprived of its distinctive blue hue
by the shade of the night. He leaned against it and turned the key. The door
flung open and banged against the hall wall. The house was dark. He flicked
on the light and, swerving, wandered down the hallway and into the lounge.
The lounge was much the same state of neglected magnificence
as when he had first seen it back in the autumn. He remembered on that occasion
reading a women's magazine while Gallie watched Friendly Neighbours.
The stack of magazines was still there: it had now grown to a more impressive
height. Inebriated, he knocked into the pile and magazines spread like lava
over the floor. Near the bottom of the now-collapsed heap he found the very
women's magazine he had read on that first day: 'Cosmopolite'. He found the
article he had read. The photograph seemed so memorable to him: the trio
of people with deity-like looks. The unobserved woman in the red dress looked
on jealously as her blonde 'best friend' smiled into the smiling face of her
square-jawed lover. To Howard the picture had a new significance. He saw
the blonde as Gallie, the man as Dominic and the woman in the red dress he
saw as himself: not in the gender sense but in the emotional role of the jealous
third party. He realised he could never love Gallie because he felt guilt:
he had wilfully engineered the split between her and Dominic. His disgust
with himself had boiled away his passion for her. He gazed at the photograph
in a slow meditation.
Jolting himself into action he wondered to his room, sat
at his cramped desk and wrote on a lined pad of A4, 'Farewell Mum, Dad,
I am just not cut out for life. Hope you don't mind. Bye. Sorry. H.'
He tore off the sheet and left it on his desk, then wrote
on the pad once again. 'Dear Gallie, I have betrayed you and Dominic. Do
not bear me a grudge fair friend, Farewell. Very sorry. Howard.' He sniffed
miserably.
Turning in his chair he caught his reflection in the full-length
mirror on the wardrobe door. He hated mirrors, mostly because they had the
audacity to remind him of who he was: that which he hated even more than anything
else.
He stood up, knocking his chair over, and rummaged through
a heap of clothes until he grasped his dressing gown, which he hauled from
the pile. He gripped the tie rope, yanked it free from the gown, and tugged
it in both hands as if to assay its strength. Seemingly satisfied he stepped
down the stairs as lightly as his intoxication would stand for, ventured outside,
opened his car boot and retrieved a weighty iron spike from a toolbox.
Entering the hall he pulled the telephone away from the door next to Marlon's.
Padlocks fastened both Marlon's door and this
door - the door to the cellar. Carefully
Howard inserted the tip of the spike into
the hoop of the padlock and wrenched the bracket
from the doorjamb. A long shard of wood came
away with it. He pushed the door. It yielded.
He returned to his Maxi for a torch and descended
the steps into the darkness. A dank, musty
smell filled his nostrils. The beam of his
torch reached into the cellar. He gasped.
Everywhere were amassed white computers
the size of fridges, with cables and monitors
scattered around. They hummed like a hive
of mechanical bees. Tucking the torch under
his chin, he took the bathroom robe tie that
was slung over his shoulder and tied it into
a noose. It was too short! He looked around
the cellar in frustration. He unplugged a
power cable connecting one of the
computers to an extension cable socket.
The humming reduced in amplitude. One of the
computer monitors that had displayed scrolling
green text went black. He took the power cable
and tied a noose. This cable was more than
long enough for the job! He scrambled onto
one of the computers in the centre of the
cellar and precariously balanced upon it.
He tightened the cable around his neck. Standing on the computer on tiptoe he knotted the loose wall plug end of the cable and hooked it around a thick wooden peg that protruded from the large wooden ceiling beam. His breathing quickened: he felt the
blood drain from his face.
He contemplated how his parents would grieve at the loss
of their only son. The thoughts did not disturb him. His death was simply
meant to be. Greg would tell exaggerated funny stories about him as
his way of paying his respects. Karen would trouble over what black fashion
accessories should be worn at his funeral. She would not be able to mourn
him well if she were not decked out in fancy, sorrowful clothes. Dominic would
tell his future girlfriends all about him and would lie generously about how
he had been a fantastic friend. And Gallie! Back to Gallie! Lovely Gallie!
It was awful that he would never see her again, never hear her babbling giggle,
never touch her soft flesh. She was a distant angel stranded in the world
of the living, out of reach, out of reach. How sorry he was that she wasn't
here, cradling him in her arms. Perhaps she would mourn him. She would pity
him his death, until she wearied of pitying him. Her cheerful nature would
then overwhelm her instinct to grieve and her feelings towards him would fade
away altogether. That was what he wished for. He was a failure and he did
not want to be remembered. His thoughts about Jacintha were barely coherent:
they manifested themselves as wordless agonies.
'Oh Shit! This is it! Fuck off, cruel fucking world!'
he muttered.
Life was too much. He couldn't go through with life: it
was so much effort. Life was so hard, so very difficult. Life was nothing
but exertion and stress and hassle. It would be nice never to worry
again, to forget about ever having to lift a finger ever again. He would take
orders at a palace of peace and serenity and numbness, and life would be a
distant experience never to be recalled. How comforting it would be never
to have to face the grinding chore of living. Ever. How painful life was.
How weak he was. How feebly he was equipped to handle the rigours of survival.
How ruinous was the burden of having to live.
He smiled at the prospect of no more pain and hurt and effort
and humiliation and hassle. And no more fear. No more grating anxiety. Just
- nothing! That wasn't such a bad ambition, was it? Nobody would begrudge
him that. It would be perfect to exist only as retreating images in people's
minds; to sink into obscurity; to be forgotten and to have no one judge your
life because you had chosen not to live it. It was a proactive, positive act.
There was comfort to be found in the anticipation of starting out on an adventure:
this would be his first moment of an infinite, dreamless oblivion. His life
was an echo in just a few people's minds such as Gallie's. The echo would
distort and decay. Not a trace would remain of his being.
He dropped his torch. The cellar became pitch black. There
was nothing! It was as if the cosmos had winked out of existence. He was suspended
in a limbo between substance and emptiness. He felt dizzy. Unbearable, exhilarating
terror seized him. He had never had a rush like this in his life. Still balancing
on tiptoe in the blackness every muscle and sinew was rocky with tension.
As he subjected himself to his ultimate fate he felt his insides wrench with
fright. His balance expired. He swooned through the air. He seeming to linger:
frozen in a dancer's leap. His head shook madly. His eyes rolled, his mind
flew in tempestuous insanity. He lunged forward. As he fell there was a blinding
light.
 | | | | |
| From: |
The Crumbler | Subject: | 2002-10-09 12:06:18 |
| | | | |
| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2003-01-02 15:08:58 |
| | | | |
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