|
 |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| Electric Acorn 12 : Short Stories: |
|
|
The Knowledge
If I can have one wish, he thought, it is that she will be alone until she finds me again. In the hallway, dust particles illuminated by streaming sunlight waltzed silently, slowly moving to their own music. Just think: they are always there, circling each other constantly, we just cannot see them. He shot through all this dead time and space, a shambling bloody mess. He stood for a second, swaying on unsteady legs, letting his eyes get used to the light. After the bright sunshine, it took him a while to register objects on the inside. But slowly their shapes became plain and hard and they revealed themselves: chairs, tables, staircases. There was a man sleeping somewhere, having a nap after dinner. His snoring joined in a chorus already began by the constant thrum of fridges and freezers. Even this distant hum made his aching head worse; it was already throbbing, a distinct and sharp pain coming from around his temples and up through the nape of his neck, meeting somewhere in the middle. Blood was forming a crust around his right eye and if you looked carefully distinct skid marks could be seen on his temple. Underneath a bruise was beginning to blossom. The upper lid was ballooning in size, so his eyeball peered out through a narrow slit. Swelling that had worked its way around his ankle had made walking a series of sharp piercing stabs. He was nearly there….it was only a matter of a few more steps and he would be in his flat; fighting back the nausea rising up inside his gut, he tried once again to put one foot in front of the other. But a few steps shy of his own door, the wave of sickness won out. He retched all over his blue-striped runners and the hall carpet.
He woke up several hours later, swaddled in a fleur-de-lys quilt and patchwork-patterned bedspread. He was hiding; he felt safe there, just as he did crouched in the hot press as a child during hide-and-seek, surrounded by the arid warmth of rough scratchy towels. His flat was one of many small cells stacked on top of each other, divided only by hollow paper-thin stud walls. All around him there were the sounds of other human beings; to his left a man groaned slightly as he strained forward to slide a video tape into the recorder, while somewhere above him he heard the tinfoil pop as two paracetomol tablets were released, followed by the swill of water to wash them down. At last it was night. There was no more harsh sunlight, just kind and forgiving darkness embracing him. As it became darker outside, he began to feel lighter; something was lifting inside of him. He cleaned himself up a bit. It was one hell of a black eye, but once the crust of blood had been swabbed away it looked much better, more like a movie-star shiner that you could be proud of. When I get back to college, he thought, this'll give them something to talk about. Some interesting storylines will have to be imagined. A mugging, maybe or….a burglar. Yeah, you should see the other fella….His headache was gone, and the swollen ankle was much relieved by an old bandage tightly strapped around it, giving it support. He began to feel almost…optimistic. When he felt this way, it was pretty easy to block out all kinds of nastiness, including what had happened the night before. But…what about the carpet in the hallway? He had cleaned it up as best he could with old newspaper and a dishrag, but there was still a roughly circular stain right in the middle, giving a curlicued carpet rose a deep yellowish orange hue. It would be the first thing his landlord would see on Monday morning, the same landlord to whom he owed three week's worth of rent.
As all this was darkening his mind his ankle started to radiate pain again, a sharp reminder of how he had sprained it the previous night as he was pushed out of the back seat of the dark blue Toyota. He had fallen headlong out of the car door, skidding and scraping his head along the concrete as he went. They had grabbed him from behind, and one of them slapped a hand over his mouth. He could still taste the metallic tang of money from that sweat-slicked palm. Their message was simple and clear. He had stared a little too long at someone's girlfriend; he had asked for this. Before he had a chance to fully grasp this concept (do people really get beaten up for looking at someone's girlfriend?) his head met with a red-brick wall, below a sign for 24-Hour Auto Repairs. The garage this wall once belonged to had long since gone, but the wall still stood proud, bearing its rain-worn picture of a pick-up truck and a man in overalls holding an oversized spanner. This wall would probably be gone soon; in this part of the city red-brick terraced houses were having their innards ripped out daily to make way for new families. Better say goodbye to 24-hour Auto Repairs too, he thought. All his was occurring to him as his left arm was being forced up behind his back, causing a deep muscular burning to travel from his shoulder socket down to his fingertips. Tears were forming in his eyes. Just take it, he thought; just take it. After all, they' re right. He was staring at that girl. But how to explain? How to explain that for just the briefest moment, he thought it was someone else; he thought it was her.
Her outline was the same, her hair almost the same colour. When she was standing still and listening to what was being said, she had the same habit of resting her palms on the tops of her thighs and cocking her head to one side. He stared at her in some kind of recognition, but he knew it wasn't really her. She was an imitation, a facsimile. It was as if a person who had never met the real thing tried to put together a copy from a few hastily jotted details. No; this was not the person who, one year previously, had delivered him to oblivion with one dry-lipped kiss. If he ever did see her again, there would be no question. No squinting, no wondering if it was really her. He would be sure. He could distinguish her from everyone else, could pick out her gait, could spy her shape out of the corner of his eye in a crowded bus station. This is what he knows. Not exact height, width, breadth. He knows the deeply carved line that runs along the surface of her left palm, the curve of underarm as it rolls softly into an armpit. He knows the three hairs that stand translucent silver against dark brown hair when tucked behind an ear. He knows the perfume that smells like the feel of newly carved pinewood. He would continue searching. On the train, he would stretch his neck to examine every new rush of people as they got on at each station, just in case. Busy streets, wherever. He was ready. He had been left behind, but this knowledge had been left behind with him; this is all he has.
Catherine McMahon is 25 years old and this is her second story to appear in Electric Acorn.
| DWW Home | EA Home | EA12 Index | First Poem | First Story | Copyright |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |