Balance

The devastation is not immediately obvious, the change in the landscape is not certain. We stand, clutching our bags, in fron of what was once as solid as a rock, and look, ruminating on what we are leaving behind.
The Pole Star of the family has shifted. We two are drifting off-course.

Sadder than I thought I was, I take the last bag and stare one last time up at the bedroom that used to be mine, that will soon have someone new in it to tolerate the cracking plaster, the south-facing windows that turned the room into a summer sauna, the view and the cupboard with the heating pipes that my mum, the Christmas before I was born, had to sit by with a hairdryer, defrosting the pipes in the kind of cold December that doesn't happen any more.

The time we got burgled. The constant fear I had of a tree falling and destroying the glass roof of the conservatory, and the confusion as to whether that did happen, whether my young mind muddled it out. The much-loved pets buried in the back garden. The falls down the stairs. The parties and the stains on the carpet. The time that the handles were removed from our doors so we couldn't close them.

As the Pole Star lifts and takes root within each of us and we go our seperate ways, the house seems to shift, giving up the ghost. Like the mythical lightening of the body when the soul leaves it, the insubstantial but also so heavy memories bank themselves in us. The house stares, glassy-eyed, back, offering nothing any more.

Taking a piece of the Pole Star each, he and I split, depart. I feel in my back pocket for my keys, and feel a jolt to my heart of panic when my keyring only has one key on it. The key to my flat back in London. The keys to this place are gone. The chapter is closed. The day is ended.

A rented flat. A series of rented flats. A series of bin liners and boxes and my trailing roots, like a lone jellyfish drifting out at sea, with nothing but a big blue expanse ahead.

I am not scared. I have not called this house my home for a good few years, and I'm ready to make my own. But as I walk down the hill, mentally ticking off all the change-of-address forms I needed to fill in, considering a little more what kind of flat I would like to move to next, and that maybe I should speak to that mortage adviser again on Monday, I mentally scrub the forever-remembered phone number and the postcode I could recite on my deathbed from my mind. I grow up in one quick instant when I realise the only permanent address I now have is myself, and the memory bank of my own brain.

The jellyfish drifts off, trailing its roots.

NB An unsuccessful submission to 1000words.org.uk, where every story is inspired by a picture. I chose this one. My parents are selling the house I grew up in. I think the problem with this story was I tried too hard to make the picture fit my story. I did it before in an 1000words submission with greater success. I'll post that one another time.

Dinner

At the end of the night, just as the bar was due to close and the last waitress was clearing her tables, the door opened and a man walked in. Tall, dark, in a black overcoat and pointed boots, a hat, glasses, sideburns, glinting eyes.

'A table. A glass of red wine. A steak, rare with mustard in a seperate dish. Spinach. And a chocolate souffle.'

Two minutes and a lifetime of dirty looks later, the man sits at a table, eyeing the wine and listening to the sounds of the bar, of the chef (still in his outdoor shoes by the sounds of it) swearing as he warms the pans and the waitress tapping her foot.

There had just been one tonight. It wasn't as good as usual, and his notebook would be a frustrating read the next morning. 

The wine is decent; they know his preference for French and keep it, uncharacteristic for steak, thick and syrupy, overly fruity yet still with a faint smell of cork.

The smell of memories, and of a night well spent. 

The steak is good, the knife cutting through it easily and unlike the charatans that hack at their meat without care his cultery carasses it slowly, like a lover, like a a conoisseur, adoring the animal before gently removing one morsel and relishing the hot blood spilling over his tongue and the powerplay between the animal muscle and his grinning teeth.

She had been an accountant and she wore peculiar purple shoes. 

The spinach keeps him vital, keeps the new blood pumping and the mustard wakes him up, puts the spark back in his eyes. The hair on his chest, as parents might say to children fighting against vegetables. He knows the value of good nutrition. He is clinical in his habits and tastes and pursuits and he has studied, long and hard, at his crafts. He sips the wine, remembers the taste of the fruit and the scents of the night in his nose.

Someone had tried to stop him as he walked away, but he brushed them off as one might a fly. They were uncouthly drunk on beer, and would not remember a man in a black coat. 

The plate still bears the remnants of the animal's struggle with his unyielding hunger as the waitress clears his plate and, knowing, replaces it instantly with the souffle. Dark, decadent, pert, with the smallest dollop of very fresh creme fraiche. A spoon to one side. The scent of the bitterness of the chocolate rises. He inhales, his eyes roll back as the scent seduces him.

Her eyes had been big bottomless pools, and he had allowed himself one last look at them before he walked away. 

He contemplates the surface of the pudding for a long time, not wanting to disturb its fragile beauty but at the same time desperate to destroy it, like a child with a sandcastle might. To make his messy mark, to wreck it. But that is not his way. Gently, with only the slightest bit of force, his spoon sinks delicately through the surface, releasing the heat. He puts the spoon to his lips, inhales, takes a taste.

She hadn't worn perfume - this is good; the ones who wear scent or cologne are similarly uncouth, unhonest. She smelled of printer ink and coffee granules and overheating wires and hope and roses. Always they smell of a flower. She smelled of roses. 

The bitterness floods his mouth, the pain of a taste that you do not expect brings a tear to his eye, and he swills the wine in the glass and takes a long drink, and a mouthful of souffle and soon it is gone before he knows what to do, he is spooning it down like a man who hasn't eaten in weeks.

The struggles, the resistance, the screams, the pain, the upset and the dislodging of clothes, the muddying of shoes, the knocking off of glasses. The disarray. The glorious, glorious disarray. The chaos. He is greedy, caring not for the waitress and her stares and the wine spilled. Drinking and eating in the memory of the evening. Making the scent of bitter chocolate, rich syrupy wine and roses cling to him.

The lights go off in the kitchen as the chef leaves, angrily abandoning the dishes for the potboy the next day. The waitress waits by the till, eyes the door.

The man regards the empty plate, the empty glass of wine with the splashes on the table, the mess he has made. Then slowly he returns every item to its place, lines up the plate with the spoon, the glass with the plate. He wipes his mouth, dabs at his face and catches his reflection momentarily in the spoon. He looks, takes off his glasses, polishes them.

His head snaps up. 'The bill, please.'

A Confession (Postscript)

It is with great regret that I have been forced to classify my experiment as a failure. 

My challenge was simple - I am a medical man, a clinical person and possessed of an incredibly inquisitive and curious mind, and in an age where man feels he can overcome any challenges, I was intrigued to pit the parasiticly resilient human spirit against the sheer overwhelming terror of modern existence that occupies us. 

My subjects (there were five in total - two male, three female, ranging in age from 17 to 89, one regrettably a mother of young children), sadly, all succumbed to the phantom illness which I planted in them - a dual illness combined of despair and hope. Between them they selected varying methods to bring about their demise, from the benign and delicate (sleeping pills) to the Bronteian (exposure to the elements) to the not entirely surprising old age. But die they all did. 

Frustratingly, I feel the youngest may have survived - I interpreted that wild, animalistic run that unfortunately juxtaposed with the trajectory of a car with faulty breaks, not as headlong into death but headlong into life. The jubilant sprint of a creature clinging to life, running for the horizon. The parasite I tried to awaken. Cruelly aborted. Perplexingly unresolved.

And thus, my experiment is deemed a failure, and all those who know me and my work regard me as a devil. Deserving of the fate that awaits me. But they misunderstand my purpose; I never meant to be the devil. I merely showed the subjects the path that led to their own destruction, asked them to map their own fate. I nudged. But I did not push. I did not kill them. 

I do not classify my experiment as a failure. It is notable that all of my patients, regardless of the fact that they succumbed, chose to take control of their final moments. I did not wish them to kill themselves; that was not my intention. I wished to see how they would deal with the news they all thought that they wanted to hear. It comforts me to know that, as so many people pass through life afraid of the end, delaying it, five individuals took the hand of the Reaper and calmly walked into the Hereafter. I feel that that is what I gave them, what I gave the world. A second look at the inevitable. 

Therefore I conclude my experiment, and my practise. I am no longer a doctor, nor am I a free man. I am the nation's most hated individual. And yet, strangely, I feel like I have given it the hope it needs.

I remain inquisitive, optimistic, and hope to find peace.  

Dr F A Lacey, 24th October, 2011

(deceased)

(Originally published on Flash Flood Journal, in celebration of National Flash Fiction Day)

N.B. This story is called Postscript because it was originally intended to be the Postscript of a full-blown novel that I planned in detail, but only ever managed to get this part down on paper. Watch this space for further attempts. 

Baby. And Me.

It floats up at me as I lie in a solitary bath, my busy belly. Pops up above the soapy surface, quivering like a potential-filled jelly, bursting with ideas but incumbating not yet, baby. A potential baby. Potential.

It pokes itself out over the jeans that will not do up, strains against the favourite dress that now becomes a sad memory; I throw it out. Someone else can be betrayed by it. Traitor baby.

He is desperate for it, I can see it. He skipping jubilantly around the yellow-walled house in his dreams, swapping the desk for the crib and the books for baby bottles and shelves for photographs of we three, him, baby and me. Him and baby. And me.

I lie alone in a hot bed on steamy summer nights and baby stops me sleeping. Baby insists on being heard, even before it is meant to be demanding my nights from me. Damn you baby, let me sleep, baby. Leave me alone, baby.

I rest my hand pensively on the expanse, soft from the moisturiser and from the warmth of love, waiting for the kick that comes before I wake and realise either that this is a dream, or that this is my dream all along.
Baby, why do you do this to me? I was happily waiting to become ready for you. You didn't need to push me, baby. You didn't need to go this far. I am scared. You are fiercer than disease, darker than cancer. I can disappoint you. I can fail you. I can become the worst version of myself because of you.

You are uncharted territory and at the same time my companion in it, the sinister and melancholy friend with the big eyes, holding the map but holding it upside down. My up is your down. In a few months, you will push yourself away from me and then cling to me forever again. I am to give birth to my own heart and brain and chase them around for the rest of time, making them better and keeping them growing.

Will you have my hair, his eyes, my love of fresh flowers and his fear of heights? Will you bring about peace, feed the hunger, be rich, be poor, be clever, be stupid, be brave, be a coward? Who will you fall in love with, who will you marry? Who are you, in there? What am I bringing into the world, for people to judge me on?

I find myself holding my belly tight as I fall asleep, holding you to me and trying to keep myself together, stopping us shredding when you escape, knowing this is the last time I will hold my whole self together, before part of me walks out and away. Like a light on the water or a lantern floating in the sky. You will be my message in a bottle. I will teach you to read and write.