Blurry

life is very blurry, very bright, very fast, very beautiful. my name is Stuart, and I am eight years old. in a few years, this memory will be nothing but an old faded videotape reel playing at superfast speeds, the colours frantic and bright and quick, the motions blurry, the faces indistinct, but for now it’s my unconscious, speaking directly to you. like a phantom from the blue beyond.

                I am on a ride at a funfair. it has just started moving, slowly at first, then faster, up and down, up and down, in big sweeps, I am thrown lightly from the bucket of my seat, the lights in the centre are big and bright, bulbs, like studs running up a trunk, the ride swings in and out, there are three arms, like it’s a big insect that’s trapped littler ones in its claws and is spinning them up in its silk, it’s quick, and my dad is next to me, breathless now, full of wind, I try to anchor myself down, holding on so tightly that my knuckles glow like the white-hot embers of old coals, my daddy does the same, only he seems less frightened, I hope he doesn't crush me. but I seem to be being thrown violently, everything is a-blur, blurred into one like God has shaken my small universe, blurred like a snow globe, blurred like a winter scene stitched white in snow, blurred like a smack to the head, blurred like the vision of the dead.

                I am feeling sick now, I am upside down, I think, but I can’t be, I am one of the lights, in the lights, a bright light flickering like a yellow warning, red danger, tubes of light, angels streaming in neon, fluorescent blurs rubbing across my eyes and entering down into my queasy core, the night is breaking through the light, black and stars and red and yellow and white, the night music, the sounds of joy and laughter, all merging into the centre of these sweeping arms, into me, a small bright point in the centre of my head about to break open in a shower of colour.

                the ride slows down, slower, slower, then it stops. I slowly get out. I wobble, I am not sick, I do not fall or trip. my daddy takes me to the candyfloss stall because I ask him, puts one in my hand, it’s spun like an insect weaving a feathery home, like a bird’s feathery dome, it sticks to my lips and nose, gets caught in the back of my throat, congeals to a sticky singularity.

                life is very blurry, very bright, very fast, very beautiful. it fills me up like a balloon, full of helium, about to burst out of my skin. it dims with age: the blur clears to a seedy numbness, so you have to speed up life around you to counter it. and then you stop suddenly, the world careening around you slowly – in place, perfect – and you smile before you’re sucked back into the vortex of all those colours and the movement and the pain and the heal.

                my name is Stuart, and I am eight years old. make a wish, wish me on my way, but make it bold, send me out to light of day.

Mess

  
He was sitting in the office of the twenty-first storey, his head a huge hard blank vacance. He was pale – he hadn’t been feeling well for a few weeks – and his face was blotched with large brown and yellow spots. His frown stretched across his face like a taut elastic band, his eyes huge like two moons.

            All around him was the rhythmic chanting of keys being tapped, voices sounding off like waves against the shore of a desolate beach, telephones ringing like empty cans, like xylophones being played by ghosts. He looked at the calendar on his desk, which was next to the picture of his wife. It was October 3^rd 2008.

            His phone rang. He picked it up. ‘Good morning, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. This is Humpty Dumpty speaking. How may I help?’ he said.

            ‘Humpty Dumpty?’ said the voice.

            ‘Yes, this is Mr Dumpty speaking. How may I direct your call?’

            ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said. ‘Humpty Dumpty? You gotta be kidding me,’ he muttered.  ‘You think you’re a wise guy, huh? Well fuck you!’

            The line went dead and Humpty Dumpty gently cradled the receiver back into its place. He looked at the blank screen and then calmly stood up.

            The next thing that was heard was the sound of shattering glass. Humpty fell in a shower of crystal, like an angel descending from a mountaintop, his coat-tails billowing out behind him. He closed his eyes, and then he was no more.

            ‘Jesus!’ said a voice from the office floor. ‘Was that Dumpty?’ He went to the window and looked out, his hair swept up in the scowling wind. From the twenty-first storey he could see the lanes of traffic down there like yellow veins, the cars and people like models on a great and simplified map.

            He noticed the pool of yolk way down there oozing out from the faint halo of cracked shell that littered the sidewalk. ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘That’s gonna take fuckin’ forever to clean up!’

The Kiss

‘One of you will betray me,’ he’d said. ‘One of you, but I don’t know which one.’ But he’d also told us that he loved us all. It was gone midnight in Gethsemane and we were sitting around a fire. The garden was beautiful in the twilight. The hills ranged as if they possessed their own life, and the flowers filled my head with the intoxicating liquor of night perfume.

                The sky along the far edge of the valley started peeling from inky black to blue, transitioning to a bluer and bluer clarity. The Sun broke the horizon like a halo crowning the head of a cherubim. At that moment a cock crew and several soldiers marched through the gates of Gethsemane towards us.

                ‘Are you the man they call Christ?’ one asked in Aramaic, the deficiencies of his Latin tongue showing through.

                ‘Why?’ asked Mary Magdalene. ‘This is public land. What do you want with him?’

                I approached Jesus. Putting both my hands on his shoulders I kissed his coarse cheek. When I stepped back from him the light in his eyes had brightened. It seemed a knowing had come upon him.

                Two of the soldiers took him by the arms and escorted him from the garden. I slunk off back to the fire and sat down, thinking about my god. Peter looked at me, his eyes black in the half-light, and I could see they were glassy with tears. They will revere me in years to come, I thought, for I have done a necessary thing – I have fulfilled the prophecy.

                As I watched Christ die on the cross amongst the innumerable crucifixes of Golgotha, more slowly than the long and drawn out history of all human suffering, his all-too-human body drained of the last of its life, I bent down to kiss his feet. I looked at the other bodies, some writhing in pain, some almost departed from this life, some long gone, now drying out like the husks of Egyptian slaves or the relics of mummies. My eyes watered onto the dirty skin of his blistered bloodied feet, the dirt and tears and blood intermingling like life in the midst of death.

                I kiss the human, I thought. I worship the god, but I kill that which is most holy: I have killed the sacred bond that only two brothers can share. I looked up at the eyes which had gone white. Christ was dead. They would soon bury the body, but I knew the image of my brother strung up there on the two interwoven planks of wood like common fowl would stay with me throughout the ragged course of my life.

                I went back to my room in Judea. I looked in the mirror and saw a miserable face looking back at myself, the eyes sunken and puffy. I recalled the hands reaching up, reaching out, and smiled at the way the fools had taken to my brother as if he were the Messiah.

                I laughed to myself, took out the quill and parchment, and began to write.

The Clown

- for Sufjan Stevens

Claire walked down the wide boulevard, unconsciously looking over the flowers in the flowerbeds of the neat rows of gardens. The lawns were lush and moist, regulated with clockwork precision by the parade of lawn sprinklers. It was April, and it would be Claire’s birthday in nine days’ time.

            As she walked, she heard the tinkling of a bell. It was Bobby Simpson. She knew him from school. ‘Hi, Claire!’ he said. She gave him a small wave and looked onwards, blushing slightly, not wanting him to see her. She heard a low rushing sound and looked overhead as the paper descended in an ark onto the porch of one of the houses. Bobby delivered the Chicago Tribune, a daily paper. A lot of people in the neighbourhood were retired, not connected to the city, and they wanted to know what had been going on: what the mayor had said that week, whether any politicians had been involved in any scandalous affairs, what the Lakers were up to, how Reagan’s campaign was going – that kind of thing.

            She looked at Bobby. ‘See you later, Claire,’ he said, a stupid grin writ upon his face. She stopped herself from blushing, smiling at him as he cycled off down the road. He looked back once more before commencing throwing the papers onto the lawns.

            Claire was headed to Mr Macey’s house. Everyone else called him ‘Old Man Macey’ on account of all the good deeds he did around the neighbourhood. Last year he’d managed to raise over three thousand dollars for a local school’s new sports block by organising a community fundraiser: on the spread of his huge lawn he’d had a stool on which he sold homemade preserves and pickles, he had fun and games – apple dunking, guess the weight, knock the cans from the shelf – he put out a paddling pool for the little ones, and, most memorably, he dressed up as his alter ego, Bozo the Clown, telling jokes and performing magic tricks for all the local children. Claire could remember they sat there mesmerised, transfixed. They laughed, but at the same time they seemed very quiet, as if there were some invisible terrifying thing about the man. Those eyes swollen with joy, that red and white face, the smile huge and carved like a slice of watermelon.

            Mr Macey had been giving Claire music tuition for three weeks now. She liked him a lot: he was always kind to her, giving her tea and sweets, but he didn’t talk down to her like a child. When she made mistakes he didn’t placate her, but he also didn’t bark at her like some of the others had done. He was a good teacher, and her parents approved of him. There was something about him which was calming, something which put Claire at ease. Today she’d be learning scales – pentatonic major and minor. The same as the last two weeks.

            She got to Mr Macey’s house about twenty to two. Opening his garden gate, she marvelled at the beautiful flowers in his garden, nestled behind the brick wall. Buddleia, thick cones of purple-blue flowers tapering off at their ends like the fingers of strange hands; tournefortia, white and mysterious curled up in their little bunches like claws; and dahlia, the flowers exploding with colour, from white to burnt orange to the white-streaked pink edges of each petal. Beautiful, like brilliant unnatural eyes. His lawn was vast and greener than all innocence.

            She latched the gate behind her and walked up to the front door. After she pressed the bell, she heard movement and Mr Macey had opened the screen door. He was dark behind the glass, but when he opened the front door the light burst in, and all she could see was eyes and a smile, his little teeth like shards of porcelain.

            ‘Hello, Mr Macey,’ she said.

            ‘Claire!’ he beamed. ‘How good it is to see you again.’ He bent down slightly and shook his finger playfully at her, a menacing little grin writ upon his face. ‘But what have I told you about calling me Mr Macey?’ he wagged at her. ‘Call me James. We’re friends – I’m not like those teachers you have in school.’

            ‘Okay,’ Claire said, smiling, and he ushered her into the front room. She sat down in the green arm chair and looked at the television. It was an old set, bound in oak – probably from the 50s. Ronald Reagan was being interviewed on CBS. She flicked the channel over to some cartoons, old episodes of Tom and Jerry. She’d never got too old for them, she thought.

            Mr Macey came in from the kitchen holding two cups and saucers. He placed them next to a table beside the piano, which was in the corner by the window, and then went back to the kitchen. Claire could hear the faint melody of birdsong outside his window. She looked up at the pictures on the walls and then looked at the pictures of Mr Macey on the mantelpiece of the fire. There was one of him dressed as Bozo, beaming broadly, another of him collecting a community award, and there was one black and white photo she liked especially in which he was stood between his parents on a beach looking hazily up at the camera, the sun in his eyes. He must've been about ten. His mother’s hair was windblown and it obscured her face, and she was looking down at James. His father smiled broadly. He didn’t wear a shirt. His hair was short and cropped, and he wore thick-rimmed glasses. James was wearing a cowboy hat and his mouth was smeared with vanilla ice cream. She’d not told Mr Macey she liked the photo, though – it hadn’t occurred to her to. He looked a little bit like Bozo with his mouth all white with ice cream. She smiled at the thought.

            Mr Macey entered the lounge again holding a plate of biscuits. He put them down beside the tea and approached Claire, gently taking the remote from her. ‘Now, now, Claire,’ he said. ‘Too much TV rots your brain!’ he said, and he chuckled. He turned off the TV. Claire couldn’t help but think there was something odd about his laugh. It was like it was Bozo’s laugh, or Bozo’s was his laugh. For some reason, she couldn’t place it – it didn’t seem to belong to either of them. He approached the stool and sat. He tapped it lightly, beckoning Claire to sit next to him. He took a sip of his tea and then placed the cup on the windowsill. He leafed through the pages of the music notation until he came to the right song.

            Claire had come over and sat beside him, and she was dunking a bourbon biscuit into her tea. ‘You like the Beatles, yes Claire?’

            She struggled to finish the biscuit before she said, ‘Oh, yes. Yes, James.’

            ‘Good, good,’ he said coolly. ‘What’s your favourite song?’ he said.

            She thought about it, racking her brains and twisting her mouth up into a little squiggle of contemplation.

            ‘Do you like Hey Jude?’ he interjected.

            ‘Oh, yes!’ she said. ‘That’s my favourite!’

            Mr Macey smiled. ‘That’s good.’ He took a sip of his tea and then said coquettishly, ‘We-e-eel, what if I were to tell you that I could teach you to play it.’ He paused. ‘If you learn your scales for today, of course,’ he said, putting all the emphasis on that if. ‘And you could play it to your parents. Wouldn’t they be impressed? Wouldn’t they,’ he said, ‘be so very proud of you?’

            She thought about it and then looked up and laughed, a joyous smile on her face. ‘Yes, yes, they would!’ Mr Macey gave her a contented look, and she felt at peace. She looked outside at the bright sunshine, the colours, the pristine houses and lawns, the rows of cars, and she felt complete. It would be her birthday in a few days. She wouldn’t be able to come to next week’s lesson because she was having a sleepover with a few friends, so learning Hey Jude would be a great treat.

           

                                                                                 *****

            Claire and Mr Macey had been practising for an hour and a half now. It was half-past three, and their lesson would end at four o’clock. She had practised major and minor scales, and she’d done it well. Just as he’d promised, Mr Macey was going to show Claire the chords for Hey Jude, and then slowly interweave the melody.

            Claire had noticed throughout their lesson that Mr Macey had been looking down her blouse. But not in an interested way – not in the intent way that the boys in some of her classes looked at her. Not like Bobby Simpson. The few times she’d glanced him looking, there was an odd expression on his face. It was like he was repelled by some thought. Sweat streaked his wide brow in a thin film. He'd periodically pull out a white handkerchief and dab his brow carefully, as if it were a little ritual. But then whenever they’d make eye contact the beguiling look would change quickly to one of joy or entreaty, him spurning her eagerly on and praising her playing.

            The two of them sat there, and Mr Macey started telling Claire about his father, whom he’d not spoken of before. ‘Your father’s such a nice man, Claire. Ever so nice. Not like my father,' he said, disheartened.

            Claire looked at him, his old pocked and weather-beaten face fixed in a morose look. ‘Really?’ she said, curiously, sincerely.

            ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ve the same name, you know? Only I’m Jr.’

            Her natural reaction was to laugh as it was quite funny and strange; she’d never understood why men did that, name their sons after themselves. But then she looked at him. He looked troubled, more troubled than she’d ever seen him. He frightened her in that moment, something which she’d not felt around him before but which now felt oddly natural. A brief feeling of anxiety seemed to settle like a pall, a cold white sheet, over her face.

            The tea Claire had drunk earlier had made her throat dry. She had begun itching it with her tongue. Despite the window being open, it was quite hot in Mr Macey’s front room. ‘Mr Macey - I mean, James -’ she said, ‘would it be okay if I go fetch a glass of water?’

            ‘Why, of course, Claire.’ He looked at her quite severely. ‘You’re my guest. You don’t have to ask,’ he said, quite gently. She began walking to the kitchen, and just before she rounded the corner she heard him call her name.

            She turned back to look at Mr Macey. ‘Yes?’ she said.

            ‘Just be careful,’ he said.

            She didn’t know what he meant. She thought he was just being polite. ‘Okay,’ she smiled, slightly nervously.

            She was pouring herself some water when she heard movement in the other room. Mr Macey must’ve been filing though all of his music books to find the Beatles notation for Claire. She was looking out of the window into the back garden when she by chance glanced upon the pantry in the corner to her right. She’d never noticed it before: the door had always been closed. There was something strange about it. She couldn’t pin it on anything specific, but then her eyes fixed on a loose floorboard. One of the nails was missing. Once she'd had the thought there was no removing it.

            She looked into the door opening to make sure Mr Macey wasn’t there, and then she got on her hands and knees in the corner. She worked the floorboard away from the others carefully. Something inside of her told her to stop and turn back. She could see herself putting the floorboard back, taking the glass of water, and returning back to Mr Macey. But she persisted. Something inside her was telling her to persist.

            She felt around in the space. There was a leathery texture. She could make out many differently sized objects. Her fingers worked across them and she clasped her hand around one of them. She withdrew it.

            In her hand was a child’s shoe. A boy’s shoe. By the size of it, the child it belonged to must have been eight or nine years of age. She put her head into the dark hole, deep down. In the faint light, she could make out several pairs of shoes, most of them small and musty, bitten by age, scattered randomly. But one pair looked quite new. A small pair of black low-top Converse. She recognised them. How long had Charlie Parker been missing? Three weeks? She couldn’t believe it. No, she thought, it can’t be. But she knew it to be the truth. The fear was too much for her to take in any deeper, like a breath caught in the throat of an asthmatic child.

            ‘Claire?’ Mr Macey called out. ‘You’re taking ever so long. Are you okay in there?’

            Pushing down the fright deep into her stomach, she said, ‘Oh, yes, my water was a bit cloudy. I’m just running it for a second.’

            She held the shoe in her hand. The Parkers only lived across the road, just a handful of doors down. She had to get it to them. ‘That’s funny,’ said Mr Macey’s voice, ‘the water’s not running.’ The voice came from the doorway.

            She looked up and saw Mr Macey fling open a drawer. But before she could clamber to her feet to run, or scream the shrill unnatural scream that only a child in ungodly peril can give, he’d sent the mallet crashing down onto her skull. A loud hollow sound issued out, a clear popping sound, as if all the air in her head were suddenly rushing out into a vacuum. She crashed over sideways and slouched in a heap up against the white formica cupboard. ‘Stupid girl!’ he roared at her small limp body. ‘You stupid girl! I told you to be careful!’ he raged.

            The man clambered over the girl's body and looked into the pantry, putting his head down into the dark dusty hole to make sure nothing had gone missing. He put the shoe back into the hollow and then sat down at his kitchen table, looking at the wall.

            He sat there for what seemed an hour, but when he checked his watch only fifteen minutes had passed. The room had begun to spin, everything was in motion. But then some thought made him shudder back into life. His sight moved down the wall above the sink to the girl. Her head was covered in blood, the small wound on her skull starting to cake over dry, and her skin had begun to turn unnaturally blue.

            He sighed a regretful sigh: he’d have to dispose of the body, but there was no more space under the crawl space of his patio. As he sat there looking at the lifeless body sprawled before him, he had a sudden thought. It came to him like thunder from some Jovian cloud. This girl, she’d be fourteen in a few days. She was a star pupil at school: he had broken an agreement, a relationship of trust. He had broken the seal of a letter not meant for him. The others, they were only kids. They didn’t matter. What had he done?

            He walked calmly into the hall over to the phone and dialled a number. It rang a couple of times, and then he listened to the voice. ‘I’d like to make a confession,’ he said.
            He waited for the voice, listening, but carried on speaking out of desperation. ‘I’ve done something terrible,’ he said, and then he paused. The voice was entreating him for something, for information.

            My name?’ He thought about this for a time, staring blankly at the floral patterns of the wallpaper in his hallway. ‘James Warren Macey,’ he said. His throat was dry and parched. ‘Junior,’ he finished. He stood there with the telephone limply held up against his ear, his posture rigid. Looking into the hallway mirror, he didn’t recognise himself. His reflection seemed warped, as if he were looking into a hall of mirrors at a funfair.

            A tear trickled down his cheek. He rubbed it away with the back of his hand. He thought his makeup was running.

End note: 

For those of you who didn't get it, this story is based on the real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr. Yes, I know it's a cheery subject, but if you know anything about the man (and I can't say I know an awful lot), you'd know that he's a fascinating - if despicably vile - character. Anyway, I don't feel I have to defend the story in any way - hopefully it speaks for itself. If not, please tell me and I will go editor on it!

More micro fiction

Far

When I first went to university, I thought that was far. I missed my parents terribly; but, gradually, I started calling less and less. Now I see them four or five times a year – Christmas, birthdays, Easter. The first time I left Sarah and Meghan in New York to train in Houston, I thought that was far. But leaving Earth – that’s different. From this scarred ochre surface, I can just make out a pale blue point of light in the dusty sky. Through my visor, I can see the sand-blown Polaroid, their faces almost worn completely away. Space: that’s far.

The Martian

After re-entry, I think I was born again, into a new body. Hurtling down to the Earth, bracing myself all the way, when we opened the capsule, the light pouring in seemed startling and alien. I barely recognised the calm blue water. Now I walk down high streets rippling with them. They look like me, but I don’t feel any connection. I was away for so long, you see. Almost three years: the first manned mission to Mars. I look through my telescope of a clear night until I find it, my eyes adjusting to the dim red light. Home.

Addiction

I’m addicted. They’ve got me hooked like a ravenous fish – weighed and packaged, too. I go in: I need my fix, need what they’re pushing. They’ve got a good set up, all right. An entire industrial operation. My fingers seem frenzied. I think they can see the twitch in my left eye. One heads out back to fetch more product. It smells good – they’re expecting me, I can tell. I go up to get my fix. ‘One grandé Americano with cream,’ I say. ‘No, wait!’ I say, my hands splayed menacingly on the counter. ‘And an extra shot of espresso.’

Micro fiction

Micro fiction is fiction usually defined as being of less than 100 words. A neat form for coming up with ideas, it at first can be difficult as one must think very closely and concisely about what one wants to achieve. However, after spending some time writing them, they become fun and very fulfilling - and, as I just said, they're a great way for coming up with the kernels for larger ideas. As they say in studio kitchens and delivery rooms nationwide, here's one (well, several) I made earlier:

Writer’s Block

In five minutes, I’ll not remember what I’ve written. It’s pointless. I had a two-book deal for £50,000. I invited my friends round to the soiree – burgundy, canapés, a champagne toast. I could see Steven boiling away in the corner all evening, chatting nonchalantly despite the froth spuming from his mouth, invisibly. Bang! Sarah uncorked the champagne, I kissed her cheek. I went to the kitchen. Bang! He’d struck me with the knife block. ‘You hot shot bastard,’ he said. A pool of cooling blood, A&E… You might laugh, but it brings a new dimension to the phrase ‘writer’s block’.

The Writer’s Academy

‘Always use the active voice.’ he said, striking me in the temple. ‘Never use a trite statement, and avoid cliché like the plague.’ He reached into his duffle bag and pulled out a roll of grey masking tape. ‘Be specific to detail, but telling detail: it’s often what’s not said that’s most revealing.’ He swathed the tape around my head and mouth as if sealing a cracked engine. ‘And finally, always end with a twang – not a bang.’ He reached into the bag. A sharp object floated peripherally. He crouched down to eye-level. ‘So you want to be a writer?’

The Clown

Natasha had always hated clowns. She was seven the day her father bought her one from the Sunday market. Its smile seemed contorted, more a gaping sneer, empty and violent. Its cheeks were the dun red of dried blood. Its clothes were vagabonds’ clothes – damp, unfunny, filthy. She remembered how it stood on her dresser, a crow perched on a tarnished bone. And then one day she threw it into the garden pond. Now she gets up every morning, applies the white face paint and rouge, looks in the mirror, thinks, my eyes are looking more unreal with each day.

Irreversible

It can’t be changed. I’ve done something terrible. I didn’t mean to – I didn’t see him. He ran out into the road. You must believe me! Oh, God! He came from nowhere – it was pitch black. I drove off into the night wind like a wild animal, the engine howling, the image of a small, white contorted shape suspended ghostly in the overhead mirror. It was pitch black. He came from nowhere. Oh, God! You must believe me! He ran out into the road. I didn’t see him – I didn’t mean to! I’ve done something terrible: it can’t be changed.

How to Make a Human Being

As she dipped into the page, he stepped out from it. Steadily, remarkably, the flesh built upon itself. First a leg: enmeshed in tendons and ligaments, bound in muscle and blood vessels. Femur, tibia, fibula - with each new word a new limb. The chest began to heave. Nerve endings shot through him, a fish caught in a net of sensation. A small, sensitive area bulged between the legs. A fine carpet of keratin crept from his scalp. Two aqueous blobs coalesced in his sockets. Skin danced upon him, pulling him taut. She closed the book: Human Biology for Dummies.

A Meeting

Dawn was breaking, and she was sitting on the bench beneath the yellowed trees, oak and beech, their boughs drooping fingers, like the nicotine-stained hands of a long defeated addict. She looked at her watch; wriggling in her thick fleece, she knew it wouldn’t be long before he arrived. She hoped Michael would hurry; the sky was just beginning to lighten, birds were beginning to stir, the great behemoths that rolled across the sky would become lighted, changing from red to purple to white – red to purple to white, she thought, putting all the emphasis on that last word, with all its unseen shadows and dark places.

            Helen wore a scratchy woollen skullcap. It felt like some fuzzy little creature enveloping her head. These days, she never took it off – whatever the weather, she’d be wearing something similar. Her husband, Paul, had left her three months’ previous. He’d come home some barren hour worked up with whiskey on his breath, berating and shouting at their bedroom threshold, bellowing like a mad engine, not making a great deal of sense. But she could draw from the random nonsense he spewed a code, something she’d done throughout their marriage.

            After a few minutes, he’d collapsed at the top of the stairs crying, and she could make out the words ‘can’t do this anymore’. He garbled and fumbled over these words for some time, gasping and choking on tears, before finally saying sorry. He looked to the dark doorframe of their bedroom, but she lay despondent on her side. Then the front door slammed, and Helen knew he wasn’t coming back. She knew she would never see him again. She lay there on top of the covers and looked at the dark hole of the wall, the darkness total, and she felt consumed within a great blank ocean of night.

Helen sat there on the bench listening to the birds. She always liked sparrows – black ones. Their neat little wings, how they flocked; so much like swifts. How they could dart with all the precision of something mechanical. And yet all that vigour – it could never be possessed by any machine. Life, it seemed, was a complex patchwork of interconnections, reducible to several laws, several powers – cause and effect, all that; and yet it was so incredibly complex and chaotic that all one could ever make of it was a haze – and that was good enough.

            It was approaching sunrise now. But where was he? She’d got up when the first stars in the east were dinted by the sun’s arrival. She walked to the park, taking the old familiar route to meet Michael, hands in pockets, staring up into the night, that hat seeming to dwarf her otherwise tiny proportions.

            She’d met Michael at a meeting several weeks after Paul had left. Michael had told her that he was sick – that it was pancreatic. ‘Don’t worry,’ she’d told him, and he’d smiled, but she could sense his quiet concern – and he could sense hers.

            After a few minutes of waiting and staring with trepidation at the smoky glass of her watchface, she heard a slight rustling sound, continuous and muffled, like slippers trudging flatly across a worn carpet. In the half-light she could see the figure of a man, slightly hunched, approaching, his small white face peering out from a shroud of blankets, underneath which he was snugly nestled within the huge bulk of his parka jacket.

            He approached, shuffling towards the bench, and sat, a pained sigh escaping from his lips. ‘Hello, Helen,’ he said, looking plainly across the park to the brow of trees cresting its edge.

            ‘Hello, Michael,’ she replied.

            ‘How are you?’ he said.

            ‘I’m well, thanks,’ she replied. ‘And you?’

            He was looking straight ahead at the trees, almost dazed, before he snapped back into life. ‘All the better for seeing you,’ he said, and he rubbed his chapped hands together. ‘I’ve been feeling better recently. I really have.’

            ‘Oh, yeah?’ said Helen.

            ‘Yeah, really,’ he said, halfheartedly. ‘I’ve been able to keep my food down a lot better on this new drug – Diaxiprix, I think it’s called. It stimulates the appetite – amongst other things.’ He paused. ‘But there’s no substitute for a bit of herb.’ She could see him smiling coyly through the layers of his clothes, his face a pale rock gleaming from folds of soft hills. She could sense from his demeanour that he knew his time was limited. She held his hand, squeezing gently.

            ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘How are things looking?’

            She looked downcast at the question. ‘Oh, I’m dealing with things as best as I can.’ She looked to the trees. ‘It won’t be long now,’ she said, smiling.

            They sat quietly for what seemed an age, listening to the birds, watching the sky peel blood red from the horizon’s lip, and then Helen piped up: ‘Michael, do you love me?’

            ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I’ll love you for the rest of my life.’

            Helen laughed. ‘Okay,’ she said, and she leaned in, carefully pulling back his hood to kiss his forehead. She held his hand once again, and the two of them sat there quietly.

            ‘You know,’ Helen began, ‘This reminds me of a painting I once saw of two Japanese lovers sitting beneath a cherry blossom. They were watching a pair of cranes, sitting beside one another.’

            ‘That could’ve been us,’ Michael offered.

            ‘It could be us,’ Helen said.

            ‘We could be Japanese,’ he said.

            ‘Could be,’ she replied.

            ‘We could be in a work of art,’ Michael said.

            Helen looked at him with playful scorn: ‘Don’t be daft!’ They both laughed.

‘We could go to Japan,’ said Michael. Helen looked at him, her eyes almost swelling with a mixture of love and pity. ‘We could, Helen – we could!’

            Helen wrapped both her hands around his right hand. ‘No, we couldn’t, darling. You’re in no fit state. Besides, how could we get there? It’s so far away.’ She rubbed his hand, feeling the soft skin, almost luminescent, and the two of them once again sat in silence watching the changing sky. But then Michael said, in a quiet and yet emphatic rasp, ‘Helen, will you take it off for me?’ She looked to Michael, and she could see him gesturing feebly at her cap in the half-light.

            Helen looked searchingly into his swollen face and could see the earnest look he gave her. She removed the coarse cap, revealing her small bald head, feathered with soft tufts of hair like down, baby-blonde, like ostrich fluff, and she hoped he could imagine her with her once lush mane. Does he see me? she wondered.

            He paused to take her in, his bright eyes staring from two sunken holes. ‘You look beautiful.’ He paused. ‘No – radiant,’ he said.

            She smiled. ‘The doctors have given me a year,’ she said. ‘It might go into remission, but there’s a 60% chance it’ll spread to my left lung.’ She paused, briefly closing her eyes, trying to imagine the concourse of her damaged body laid out before her eyes. ‘It’s in my lymph now. Or so they say.’

            He squeezed her hand. ‘Be strong,’ he said weakly. ‘If you have hope, then gold can stay – Frost was wrong. Frost was a fool!’ he said, and Helen laughed to herself.

She put her cap back on and the two of them sat there quietly, as children do when consumed by some mysterious and secret interest.

‘Look!’ she said. ‘There it is!’

‘I see it,’ he said. ‘Here it comes!’

‘Remember this moment,’ she told him, but a quiet voice in the back of her mind told her that with each dawn, dusk could only increase its hold. But maybe – just maybe – after all, dawn and dusk were merely the opposite sides of some great ineffable coin. She squeezed his hand tighter, and the two of them watched the sun burst through the trees on the other side of the park.

***

               As they watched this spectacle, warm and safe in the chill morning air, a man walked past the two of them, shrugging off bad feeling, heading to some bright point of darkness, not noticing the two enfeebled frames sitting there staring out at the rising sun, half expecting to be met by two pairs of change-hungry grubby hands. But if he’d turned his head, he’d have seen a small universe of suffering, a small speck of beauty on the lens of existence – and it’s the same all over the world.