a sixty fifth story...'chasing butterflies'

It’s funny how adulthood turns out to be such an anticlimax.

Seriously.  It’s funny.

..Sometimes. 

Funny as in haha.

(Yes, sometimes that too).

- Look, see here:

I am sitting at my desk.

Perhaps I am supposed to be working, or giving the impression of being at work.

I am not at work.

Instead, I am reminiscing about times gone by, childhood and so on – searching for a little boy.

The little boy that used to be me.

Where did he go? 

He can’t have just vanished into thin air, and I am sure he wasn’t pulled like a rabbit from a hat!

That little boy.  Me.  The one who used to run around the sunlit garden, chasing butterflies; the one who would bounce out of bed on a winter morning and catch snow flakes with his tongue on the way to school.

That was me! (or at least I have this memory of it being me).

..But what about school?

Maybe it was school.

Maybe it was school that set me on the path to adulthood and anticlimax.

Although..maybe, just maybe..I went gladly along that path.

(I did not).

But back then did I know which path I was on in the first place?!

(I doubt it)..

..Anyway, they say in life you should know where you came (have come) from.  But who is they?  And what do (does?) they know?

I know nothing about how I came to be an adult.

But I do know I am now an adult.

I am afraid.  I am anxious.  I am tired.  I can see the beginnings of crow’s feet around my eyes.  I even see children in the street point at me, and say to their mothers: ‘look at that man’.

It still surprises me.

That man?! Where is that little boy?

That little boy who was fearless and brave – would scrump apple’s from the blind farmer’s (decaying) orchard, would dance and sing nursery rhymes in front of family, friends, anyone.

Where I wonder?

‘That man’ is afraid.

Here, at work in my office, I am afraid of the people who I work for, the people who work for me, the people who work alongside me:

The people who I work for have the power to fire me, the people who work for me have the power to undermine me, the people who work alongside me compete with me.

(of course, in reality, we’re all afraid of each other).

For similar reasons I am afraid of my wife, and my children. 

(But I never let it show – they are probably afraid of me too).

I sometimes find myself looking at my wife, usually when we’re in the company of friends (all my friends scare me – one day they just might show me up! And vice a versa) thinking what happened to the little girl in her; or rather the gay, confident and attractive twenty something she used to be. 

That woman (or - little - girl) I fell for.

Fucked in a pedal boat at Whipsnade Zoo.

And then subsequently married.

I used..

I used to have to fight for her affection and attention; now, she is easy and sad.

Perhaps she is sad with me.

Or simply with adulthood.

..Still, my wife scares me.  For since she is sad and unhappy, I worry she is thinking of leaving me, and so at home I walk on eggshells (and have taken to staying in town and on occasions taking other women – the gay, confident and attractive twenty somethings - to bed, somewhere, anywhere else).

And my children..

..My children say to me I don’t pay enough attention to them.

And my wife reminds me of this (too) often.

Because at weekends I like to spend time on my own – reading a magazine, washing the car, walking the dog. 

(So far at least, I don’t think I am afraid of my own company.  And if and when the day comes, I will take to drink.  For this reason I have started collecting old wines and whiskey - as well as for the reason that should my wife in fact want a separation, I have a nest egg ready to pay for a divorce).

(haha!)

And nevermind.

(!!)

..But back to my children.

OK.

I do worry about them!

As an adult it’s astounding how much there is to fret over. 

My boy, who is six: I worry about him playing in the front yard in case he should chase his ball into the road and get run down.

For this and reasons of a similar nature, he scares me.

My girl, who is going on twelve: I worry about falling in with the wrong crowd, smoking marijuana, or drinking too much at a sleepover and having her stomach pumped.  She scares me too.

Everyone I come across appears to me to be on cusp of becoming wholly unreliable, and as a result, to me everyone appears entirely unpredictable.

Everywhere I go I experience this!

Where is that fearless little boy, I ask?!

Well…?

Well:

These days, that fearless little boy (Me?) is anxious, because he is afraid all the time.

(Where would he register on the autistic spectrum? Then again, where would anyone else!?)

He is tired because his state of anxiety and fear keeps him awake at night.

Most nights.

..most nights..

He will join his wife in bed after the ten o’clock news (his wife has taken to going to bed early these days – why? She’s never been a reader) and quietly undress.

Then he might – depending on his state of anxiety – kiss his wife good night before sliding into bed next to her.

And then he will lie, lie, lie and lie, his head and limbs feeling like useless appendages uncomfortable with being attached to the rest of his body, until at some point during the night he will slip away into an uneasy sleep.  And then yet, yet, yet again (for he is an insomniac, still a living entity) he will be hauled out of the dreamy depths by the nagging sound of his alarm clock and the beginning of another day of..

..adulthood-
-anticlimax.

(As well as by the sound of one or another of his children snoring peacefully in the next room).

What happened to that little boy chasing butterflies?

What happened?

a sixty fourth story...'ant-ony'

My name is Tough.  Well, thas my nickname. 

..I was born Ant-ony. 

Yeah, Ant-ony.

Tone for short. Right? 

Norf Middlesex Hosbital.  6AM, I fink

..don't remember.

Ha.

Any'ow, now I’m firty free, awll grown up.  


Wife, kids; well..

..My wife..

..we aren’t livin’ togeva anymore. 

Nah.  She left.

Wiv the kids and all!

My little pride and joys.

Yeah. 

Awe.

Ver’s Joseph, whose ten – looksa bit like his Dad. 

And Tina, she’s seven, maybe eight, takes after her Mum.

Ha.

Well, I 'ope not!

Ha.

Leavin’ upstandin’ men such as my goodself in ver lurch.

Nevermind.

Yeah..


..Yeah

I ain’t doin’ so badly vough.  Gotta job at Cartridge World. 

Yeah. 

I can almose tell ya anyfink aboutya Laser printah.

Do atehundred D P I I can.

Best scanning facility in town. 

..Vas us.

Cartridge World.

Also I am..ver..resident..‘ouse expert on ‘ewlett Packard.

Yeah.

..

Betchya my old mates wouldna bet I woulda fallen on my feet.

Oh no!

My name’s Tough, you see?

Innit.

Yeah..


..Yeah.


You see this?
 

Yeah.


In A Past Life I was a differen’ Animal.

Me. Yeah.

Betchya couldn ‘t guees wha’.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Fought not.

Me.  Tough they useta call me.

Why?

Er, Why, yew ask?

Ha.

Yeah.

Well, it’s like this.

I.

Yeah.

I was a part-time ‘ard man for ‘ire.

Useta do all ver jobs.

Me. Yeah.

Ya see?

Useta make people ‘who wouldn do what I sai..

..well, what the boss said.

Useta make ‘em row across ver Thames inna shoppin’ trolley.

Yeah.

Got holes in hasn’t it yeah?

Yeah.

Useta make ‘em propa brick it.

'Tough' - vey would say - ‘Oi Tough, please don’.  I’ll pay up.  Honest!’

..Respect.  That’s wot I ad.

Yeah.

Useta call me Tough an’ all.

..

..

Now ain’t so bad though. 

Nah.

‘cept not seeing the kids an’ awl.

..An’ ver wife.

Yeah.

..

Vat hurts.

Even for a tough guy like me.

Yeah..


..

Laser printas, eh?

Nah.

Not quite the same is it?

Nah..

Yellow airtex.

Yeah.

Nah.

..

Nah

..

..


..

Fuck it.

Fuck it, an' all!

a sixty third story...'the game'

Gunter left the engine of his Volkswagen turning, and shutting the passenger door behind him, looked up at the looming, grey, concrete façade. People go in, but they don’t come out.  He put his car keys in the top pocket of his overcoat.  Just another rumour, he told himself, as he moved toward the short flight of steps leading into the building. But some rumours have substance. His mind was continuing to torment him, and as if for reassurance, Gunter felt below his waistband for the cold steel of his revolver.

~

Control had taken an immediate liking to Gunter, if not an immediate trust.  Gunter was tall and squarely built with a strong jaw and prominent cheek bones.  His appearance was impressive.  Moreover, he spoke Russian fluently and without so much as a German accent which was also impressive, as well as necessary.  And his piercing blue eyes were always appraising any given situation, his calculating brain examining one possibility after another. 

‘Bloody good coup, our Gunter’, Control had confided in Williams, one night, over a few too many gins at his North London apartment.  ‘With more men like him we might actually start winning the intelligence war’.  ‘Those Ruskis won’t know what’s hit them and where the leak is’. 

~

And so it proved.  Gunter, who also possessed an uncanny ability to fade into a crowd, or slip into the shadows unseen, had been integral in gleaning Top Secret information about ‘Red Rover’, the Russian plan to infiltrate British Telecoms with operatives of their own, and the whole initiative had been stifled quickly and efficiently.

Nevertheless, there were those among the Secret Service who disapproved of Gunter’s methods, and Control’s apparent willingness in the wake of ‘Red Rover’ to continue using him.

‘Our approach is too American!’, complained Pangham, ‘too American, I say!!’.  ‘You can’t go around using force like that..’.  Control reached for a glass of water on the table in front of him. ‘It’s not our way!’.  ‘Isn’t..doesn’t this fellow Gunter understand?’. 

Williams was listening, and chose his time to interject.  ‘Pangham’, he began, clearing his throat, and flipping open his cigarette case, ‘I think you’ll find Gunter’s record withstands any kind of scrutiny, whatsoever’.  And at this, Control nodded his approval. 

Gunter was their man, regardless of Pangham’s blustering jingoism.

~

To Gunter’s surprise, he found the door to the building ajar.  Unhooking his revolver with a gloved hand from his waistband, concealed underneath the folds of his overcoat, he slid through the open door into a drab hallway across which there was a dimly lit stairwell.  Perhaps they are expecting you.  Gunter paused and listened for a few short moments, his breathing suspended.  There was nothing but stillness.

~

The problem Pangham had with Gunter was not just to do with Gunter’s propensity to use force, it also stemmed from Pangham’s belief in the principle of ‘fair play’. The former Oxford graduate would rather have settled his scores in a duel, than silently and stealthily when his opponent was either asleep, caught unawares or incapacitated.  Control had long since given up on Eton Rules, and it seemed to him Pangham would be more at home on a Fives team than on the front line of counter espionage. 

Williams also despised Pangham, but his was rather more than a professional distaste.  For Williams the words Pangham and imbecile, or Pangham and snobbery fitted very snugly into the same sentence.  During the drinking sessions he enjoyed with Control – ever since he learned Control was contemplating retirement – Williams took great pleasure in assassinating Pangham’s character.  The young are so unforgiving! Control would think to himself, wryly amused.

~

Thank God for my cushioned soles. 

Gunter moved silently up the spiral staircase, taking care to keep to the inside and retain the element of surprise should an adversary come upon him, his revolver was safely in his hand – there were seven targets, eight chambers were loaded. 

In this game the odds were reasonable enough.

a sixty second story...'denial'

My name is Peter.  It used to be Bartholomew.  Or Bart for short.  My wife calls me Barty.  She is insane.  I remember now the children I went to school with used to call me Farty Barty.  They too were insane.  And mean.  Children for the most part are.  I have two of them, so you would think I should know.

In a matter of weeks I will reach the forty second anniversary of my birth.  I have been traipsing around a small area of planet Earth for forty one years! Where has all the time gone?  And has any of my traipsing been worthwhile?

Forty one, going on forty two – I am much less decisive than I was when I was young.  And spry, and sure of myself.  Sometimes I look in the bathroom mirror and wonder who the person is staring back at me.  Sometimes the morning light really shows my age. 

But at least I am saner! (or so I tell myself)

My father, whose name was also Bartholomew – Bart to his friends – had a pretty disastrous forty two years on planet Earth.  So disastrous, in fact, shortly after his forty second birthday he swallowed a bottle of Suma.  Suma is typically used to clean out blocked drains. 

By this time my father was a blocked drain, clogged full of bad chemicals and bad feelings.  It made sense. 

He also used to complain about gravity.  That it was too heavy.  That the world and everything in it was weighing down and squashing him.

Sir Isaac Newton once said he could ‘calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people’.  And this from the person who introduced us to the concept of gravity!

Indeed, there are times when I identify with Sir Isaac, even with my father, and wonder how anyone living in their right mind can feel a lightness of being.  Of course I never reach an answer, and for now have settled on this: that all the people I associate with – my wife, my two children, my work colleagues, my friends (of which there are a few), are all cuckoo.

Cock-a-doodle-do!!

It’s my way of self-preservation or self defence, of explaining away my blues and my way of keeping my feet on God’s good earth (ha).  But while he recognised madness, my father, God rest his soul (haha), adopted the opposite stance to me: that he was crazy and everyone else was pure of heart and clear of mind.  He is now, and has been for twenty three years, in heaven (hahaha).

Or, enough said.

Then again, perhaps I have not said enough.  What else, you might wonder, convinces me – as far as I am able to be convinced about anything these days – everybody (except me) is crackers? 

My wife, my dear wife.  We’ve been married sixteen years.  She maintains to our friends we are happily married.  And in turn they pretend of themselves the same thing.  And that our respective children are anything but mean and insane.  Ho hum!  It seems to me, my dear wife of sixteen years and our friends have all come to believe this.  They are convinced.  And they agree with one another.  Needless to see this kind of harmony seems to me the first sign of (or seedbed for) madness.

I see the second kind of madness in my two children – their desire to please, their alarming propensity to do what I say, and even more alarmingly, to do what my wife says (although given their mutual insanity, this is in fact entirely comprehendible).  At least in their relationship with so called adults my two children display the same simple minded obedience I used to see in patients during my visits to the state asylum.

The state asylum.

The state asylum, I have come to notice is something of a parallel universe with the university where I now work.  We are all cocooned in our own little offices (cells) with the same padded floors and surround walls.  We too wear a uniform (after a fashion), and we, for the most part, go meekly about our business, save the occasional deranged rant to apparently thin air (voice com).  Moreover, most of my colleagues cannot spell, don’t flush the toilet and repeat themselves, repeat themselves, repeat themselves (most of my students too).

As you would expect, my dear wife also repeats herself a lot.  A lot!  This is the third kind of madness.  My friends repeat themselves a lot as well (they have all run out of new lines of conversation years ago). 

My dear wife and our friends, at least our friends who are couples, also refer to themselves as ‘we’.  ‘We did this’, ‘We did that’.  The fourth kind of madness – never feeling as if we are alone! Or feeling as if we are part of something bigger, together (The Big Society, God’s People, tralalala).

..Look: if I sound like a pessimist.

A depressionist (sp?)

Or simply depressing.

Then I am sorry.

Listen for a minute: I apologise for being sane.

But you have to concede I have reason to say the things I do, be the way I am.  After all, given what happened to my father, you might expect to be rather more insane, and furthermore, as I have already mentioned, I am surrounded by, work and live alongside, in some cases together with insane people.  At every turn!! My wife, my two children, our friends, my work colleagues!

Yes, I am aware I am repeating myself here, but it is intended for dramatic effect.

And no, I don’t want to come across as a misery guts, because I want to please you, and want you to see things as I do.

For remember, as I said, my impression of my own sanity is an act of self-preservation.

A self-defence.

Which brings me to the fifth and most irrefutable sign of madness. 

Denial.

Cock-a-doodle-do!

(echo: denial, denial)

The Spotless Prince - by Phil

Felix Swordsman emerges from under his mother’s long coat once the drone moves on. She watches it hum off, unsure if it was a government or private one. Either way, she can't take any risks with Felix.

The two of them were homeless again, having had a narrow escape from their crumbling tenement the night before. There had been a rancorous knock around eight on the fragile plywood door. On the other side was the now-familiar set up: a suited man; a pair of bodyguards to add persuasive muscle to his charms. All three with breathing apparatus and a kind of shield, like a motorcycle windscreen, over their faces. The men filed into the single room and stood around heavily, the suited man doing the talking. He was talking about a different path in life and their civic responsibility. The suited man made no specific threats, but Felix’s mother understood. Having no back door on this place, the pair was cornered. Felix’s mother had to use desperate measures to evade the suited man’s terrible proposition.

She flipped open a penknife she had stowed in her waistband and held the blade close to her son’s pale throat. She crouched low behind him, free arm roughly grabbing around both elbows to hold him close. The bodyguards pulled guns, but couldn't chance any harm to the boy. They were sharpshooters, but not that sharp. Felix’s skinny body was between his mother and the menacing trio, terrified, as she said ‘back off’ through gritted teeth and dragged him backwards out of the door. All the while, the suited man used negotiation manual language: “ I'm sure we can reach a resolution, Mrs Swordsman;” “Your welfare and the welfare of your son are important to us, Mrs Swordsman.”

Felix and his mother crept down the steel staircase to the street, her leading them down backwards. The three men crowded to the door. At street level, Felix and his mother had the advantage, knowing the complex map of the alleys between the tenement blocks far better than any bully boys from the sterile compounds. The fugitive pair made off into the mucky gloom, and kept moving until first light. They finally bedded down for a couple of hours in the lee of a pile of algae-coated corrugated iron.

Today, Jennifer Swordsman has to explain her actions to her son.

“You’re seven years old now, Felix. You know I'm just trying to keep you safe. The penknife, yesterday… it was just pretend. We were acting. It was so we could get away from the bad men.”

Felix stares up at her, sulkily, saying nothing. Mother looks back, weighing her son’s response. She brushes his long fringe to one side with her dirty fingers and says:

“I think we should head out into the countryside. There shouldn't be so many drones.”

“Will we sleep inside tonight?” asks Felix.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.” Like hell I will, thinks Jennifer.

They plod toward the city limits. Looking back, Felix can see the buildings of the sterile compounds rising above the dank everything else like pillars of sparkling light. He can vaguely recall his life of splendid isolation inside the sterile compounds, before they were on the run. He had his own bedroom, friends on the floors above and below. He remembers a time when he had enough to eat and wasn't ever cold. The time before his mother lifted him, dozing, from his bed and vacated the place, leaving Felix’s father and the rarefied luxury of the sterile compound behind. Jennifer spoke to Felix about his father often, trying to help him understand. To Felix, he was an absent yet present figure.

The sterile compounds were the only disease-free places left, she said. Aunty Biotic was useless now, she’d said. So people, who could afford to, lived in the sterile compounds. But they were still afraid. They thought the diseases would come back. Rumours of a ‘breach’ of asepsis periodically inflated and collapsed. There would be whispers of an infected child, food stocks being contaminated. The only part Felix really understood was that his blood was special, more valuable than gold or silver or copper. The doctors checking him shortly after his birth discovered its amazing properties. Important people wanted to use it to fight diseases. In exchange, the family would be royalty. The King and Queen (and prince) of cleanliness. Saviours of civilisation; the panacea people. Felix’s mother said that his dad was prepared to let them use his body and make his blood into medicine. Felix always shivered at this part. Jennifer didn't spare the details in her telling: they would remove all of his blood and at the same time pump in a synthetic alternative. Felix wasn't sure what a synthetic alternative was, but he didn't think he wanted all his blood to be taken out. Jennifer also spoke to Felix about his Aunty Bodies, but he’d never met her.

At the edge of the city, Felix finds a crash-landed drone. It lay like a prehistoric dragonfly, stranded on some charred rubble. Its wings were about the size of Felix’s hands. They were fashioned from living cells forming a translucent sheet over plastic supports, are still lightly beating. He points to it and his mother quickly crushes it beneath her shoe. A wing breaks off.

“It was probably still transmitting,” she says.

As she sets off walking again, Felix hangs back a moment, picks up the loosed wing and shoves it in the pocket of his anorak. He knows his mother wouldn't let him have it, but he thinks it is beautiful. He strokes it as they walk, and it responds with little shudders from time to time.

They walk for hours, through overgrown suburbs and into silent countryside, with Jennifer pausing to cough heavily every few minutes. The city becomes a memory, beyond the horizon. Jennifer is hoping for some luck. Prior to the sterile compounds, before the husband and child, she can remember coming out to picnic in the fields. There was a farm, and she can picture the chickens, waddling about with short feathery legs and pecking at the earth. Jennifer hopes the farm is in the direction they are heading. There is no doubt it will be abandoned.

At dusk, they happen upon some ruins. It is so dilapidated Jennifer can’t be sure if it is the farm she recalled from her youth, but it will do.

The driest, cleanest spot they can find is in the corner of an outbuilding. The main house is overgrown with moss and mould and weeds. There is some straw; with the blanket from Jennifer’s knapsack, the pair makes up a serviceable bed. Felix falls asleep huddled against his mother, but she wakes him many times in the night with her guttural cough.

They stay at the farm for a few days. Jennifer keeps saying to Felix ‘we’re lying low.’ Yet really, she doesn't know what to do next. Their pile of energy bars is running short, and her cough getting worse. Jennifer knows she was infected in the grotty tenement but she doesn't want to think about using the syringe at the bottom of her knapsack. She gets Felix to press his ear to her back and listen to her breathe. He says it sounds crunchy.

In the daytime, while his mum rests, Felix explores the farm. He picks fragile flowers and plays with his drone wing, which still flutters every now and then. Occasionally he sees a working drone overhead, a speck although they were only at fifty feet or so. When he sees them, Felix takes cover and buries his face in his collar as his mother had shown him. After they are gone, Felix waves his drone wing after them. His mother had told him the drones were bad news, but he is enthralled by their gift of flight and friendly hum.

On the fourth day, Felix goes back into the outbuilding in the afternoon and finds his mother looking death-grey. Her body is stretched long on the straw, arching as she coughs heavily every few seconds. Felix looks alarmed. “Mum, what’s wrong?”

“ I've caught a disease,” she says. She admits to herself that she has no choice; she has to use his blood for selfish ends, treat him like a walking pharmacy. Jennifer betrays the principles of their flight; her moralising side-lined.

“I need your antibodies,” she croaks.

Felix is crying now. “Tell me what to do, mum.”

“Get the knapsack.”

Felix hauls it over and Jennifer digs out the syringe, sealed in a little plastic case. She is confident it is sterile. She asks Felix, ever so softly, to roll up his sleeve and kneel down next to her. Felix somehow knows what to do, as though it is instinctive, and clenches his fist repeatedly to raise a vein. Jennifer gently, lovingly, pierces the skin inside the elbow and withdraws a few millilitres of blood from her son.

Jennifer carefully inserts the needle into her own vein and shoots her son’s miracle blood into circulation. She gasps at the incestuous thrill and grisly reality of the thing, this desperate plea for survival, and lies back on the makeshift bed.

Felix lies with her through the night as her coughs become less frequent. His magic bullet blood swarms through his mother, eliminating bacteria. Felix touches the drone wing in his pocket as it continues to silently pulse out data to the receivers back in the city. Mother and son wake up hopeful, even as the drones begin to gather over the farm.