The Average Ignorant

The Average Ignorant By Yevghenny Bolgakov Rakmenanov

Contents Pink..............................................................................................page 4 The House of Groan...................................................................page 14 The Secret..................................................................................page 30 The Master and the Apprentice..................................................page 38 A New Dawn.............................................................................page 52

“It was kind of crunchy.” —Lonnie Stiffler

Pink It was a pleasure to read. To think and talk and write. The smell of the ink, and the hard feel of the pen as it cut into the paper. fingerprints. He looked down and the words spun through his head. People, places, names, love. Just looking at the paper was glorious— without even reading. The words formed an abstract painting on an imperfectly perfect canvas with faded brown blotches on the faded white paper. Even the paper itself smelt, and as it bristled quietly between his fingers small specks of it were sent flying across the table. But he had an appointment. He sniffed in the smell of the paper, ink, and oaky wood of the table one last time, then picked up the paper, slipped it carefully into his bag and stepped outside. He left early, early enough so that he could walk slowly and take his time, breathing in the world with each step. The sun was shining brightly in the sky, and it watched over the world like the heroes of old. The blue sky caressed it gently like a muted medusa, and the green trees and glass all smelt sweet and swayed gently in the wind. He listened to his soft steps felling the grass with wet, gentle crunches, and in the distance a far off bird crowed, and all around him he could hear invisible creatures scurrying about much more gracefully than he. Then in the distance he saw her. She wore crass bright colours that made the sun seem dark, and she moved quickly through the grass, leaving behind her a trail of destruction, yet somehow doing it so gracefully that her hair managed to stay settled on her shoulders, unmoved by the horrible things that she was doing. He was curious. Of course he was curious. Crass and tasteless she may be, yet unless illustrated by an artist, he had learnt not to judge a book by its cover, so he bounded after her carefully, trying not to crush too much grass. As he got closer, he followed in her footsteps, but

slowly his lungs found it harder and harder to breath in air, and he had to stop. “Excuse me,” he said, but she did not stop. “Excuse me!” he shouted. She stopped and he swallowed as she turned around. She smiled at him with red lips, and walked towards him with just as much grace as she had when she ran, while he stood with sweat running down his face, and panted like a dog. “Yes?” she asked. He said nothing as she smiled at him. He had nothing to say. He thought quickly and he thought hard, and he pored over the words that composed his mind, yet none of them seemed to be appropriate. None of them. “What did you want?” she asked again, still smiling. “Are you okay?” “I am fine,” he said, as she commanded him to. “Thank you.” “It’s just that you’re covered in sweat and panting, so…” she trailed off, and he waited for her to finish, but she did not. “So?” he asked. “So,” she said. “Just so. You know?” “No,” he said. “I do not know, because you did not finish your sentence.” “Yes I did,” she nodded. “Well,” he said as the sweat on his forehead began to grow cold, and collected in the lines like crevasses in ice. “I am sweaty and panting because I was running after you.” “Why did you do that?” she asked. “I don’t know,” he said, and wiped his forehead with shame. She smiled. She never stopped smiling, and she made him feel stupid and small. “Well, I was running over there,” she said as she pointed to the town. “You can run with me if you like.” “No,” he said quickly. “I was on my way somewhere.” “Then why did you run after me?” she laughed, and he sighed as he did not know the answer. “It was nice meeting you,” she said. Then she looked at him as if waiting for something. “Well then,” she said finally. “See you later.” “Wait,” he said quickly, then bit his lip with regret as she began to turn around. “What?” she asked impatiently, her smile gone. “You’re starting to annoy me.” “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to know what your name was.” “Charlotte,” she replied. “Charlotte Blake.” “I’m George,” he said. “George Michael.”

She laughed. “What’s so funny?” he asked. “Your name,” she grinned mercilessly, and he swallowed again. “There used to be a singer called George Michael.” “Opera?” he asked. “Choral? I have not heard of him.” She laughed again. He swallowed again. “No, a pop singer.” “A…pop singer?” he asked. “Does that upset you?” she smiled. “I don’t know,” he said. It did. “Why not?” she asked. He said nothing. “Well,” she grinned. “I will see you later, George Michael.” And she turned around, and before she ran she sung. Her voice was high pitched and harsh, and settled in his ears like maggots. But he stood and watched and listened as she ran through the grass until he could see and hear her no longer. Finally he turned, the maggots still squirming in his ears, and walked uneasily back the way he’d come, in the same foot steps, and at the same pace. He reached into his pocket and took out his watch. The hands pointed to a quarter passed five. He stopped and looked down at it to make sure that he had seen it right. He slipped it back into his pocket and continued on. He did not walk faster, because it was too late. He wasn’t fashionably late anymore, he was just late, and he felt too strange—too weak to think. He swallowed. Too weak to think. When he saw his house he didn’t smile. Its dilapidated grey stone wall didn’t provide him with the homely comfort it should have. He looked at it for another second. The cracks between the stones bothered him now. The grey mortar looked too grey, and the stones too chipped. He stepped inside and breathed in the familiar smell of paper dust. It made his eyes water, and filled his lungs with phlegm. He would find what he was looking for in his house—his sanctum; his home. But what did he want? He paused as he listened for the familiar scratching of pen and paper, but he heard nothing. “What did he want?” he asked himself out loud. He didn’t know, and he decided that he wouldn’t find it here. He glanced up at his library. The words on the spines of his books looked at him mockingly. They looked at him as if he was a child and they were a teacher—yet they were a teacher that refused to teach and instead they turned up their noses at him, and scoffed at his ignorance, for somebody who knew nothing, did not deserve to know anything.

He swallowed and turned away from them, with their abstract paintings on their spines, and their cold hard covers. He headed into the hallway. What had happened to him? All the words, all the paintings, all the pictures, all the essays, everything that he had thought was real had been cast aside and destroyed like a first draft. Something had over taken him. It was a desire for something, but he couldn’t work out what it was he—couldn’t work out why, and he took one last spiteful glance at the books’ cold spines, and he thought with a scared shudder, that they did not hold the answer. He stopped. If he had been carrying anything he would have dropped it. Then he moved immediately, yet his frightened jerk moved to a slow, frantic step, as he fell to his knees. His wife lay in a red bath, her skin white and pale, and her body thin and frail. “What are you doing?” he asked stupidly as she looked up at him. Words, people, places rushed through his head, death, blood, pain, Judas, Jesus, Jerusalem, hell, love…he stopped as she smiled. Love? “It’s okay,” she said reassuringly. “I just wanted to…I just wanted to see what it was to bleed like a pen.” She raised up her bloodied wrists, and he shuddered at the sight of the dark red wounds that were darker than space, and looked colder and deeper than a black hole. “It’s not as good as I’d expected it to be.” “I’ll be back,” he said as he ran for the cabinet-mirror. He ripped it open with such force that it almost was torn from its hinges. He pulled out bandages and rushed back over to her. She raised her wrists up obediently as he wrapped them up with the bandages and turned them red as they absorbed blood, water and death. As his hands were covered in blood he looked down at them and swallowed. He felt sick, but not from the sight of the blood. Love. He didn’t love her. He pulled her out of the bath gently, and bloody water slid down her body like a water fall, and was absorbed by his shirt like a sickly oil. He led her across the room, and they left behind them a trail of red water that quickly collected a layer of dust as if it was snowing. He laid her down carefully on the bed, and she looked up at the ceiling as she shivered. He covered her up with blanket after blanket, then ran his fingers through her wet hair as she smiled. “I’m going to get a doctor,” he said. “I don’t need one,” she said and turned back to the ceiling. “Do you want me to stay with you?” “No.” Her reply was quick and fast, and it cut him in his stomach like a dagger. “Then I’ll be back soon,” he said as he let her hair fall through his fingers like sand.

He ran from the room and out into the town. He wanted to get away from the house—he wanted to get away from her. He swallowed. When he saw her—when he saw her cold, bony body, he had wished that she was already dead—he had wished…he had wished…but he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t have time to stop—he didn’t have time to think. He could only run—run when everybody else walked—through the slow, dusty streets, down laneways and over bridges, until finally—finally the doctor’s house. He was panting as he pushed the door open, and the nurse looked up at him with a smile. She had pale red lips, and her clean face seemed to sparkle with sweat. She licked her lips, so that they shone more brightly, and then spoke: “How can I help you?” she asked, her voice soft and short. “My wife has slit her wrists,” he panted, his voice heavy and fast, almost drowned out by his own desperate breaths. “I’ve bandaged them, but she looks very weak, and she’s tired and cold.” “Wait here,” she said as she stood up and revealed the rest of her boring brown dress that snaked down to the floor with frilly edges like a curtain. She disappeared behind a big, heavy wooden door. He waited, and he cursed her angrily, he cursed the boring woman that was more beautiful than his wife, that he hated more than his wife—hated…he stopped… “Hated?” he whispered; hated his wife? No! He cursed the boring woman even more loudly: she had given him time to think. The door opened and he sighed with relief. A man with small round glasses, and thick white hair that flowed from his nostrils like violent waters, stepped out into the waiting room. “Well?” he asked gruffly. “Lead the way.” “Can you run?” he asked. “The need is dire,” the doctor replied. “I can run.” He led him out of the room and thanked him silently. They ran without stop, foot after foot, step after step, with no chance to think. But when they stepped into the house they slowed, their chests heaving up and down painfully, and the dust collecting on their sweat like frost. They headed into the bedroom and Michael almost expected to see her lying in the bed motionless and still. But instead she sat up slowly, her white arms shaking under the strain. As she smiled she looked like an old woman. Her face was wrinkled and white, and her lips quivered, as if smiling was hard. He shuddered. The doctor took her cold, shaking arm with his hands that almost looked young as they held her half-dead skin and bone.

“Food,” he said as he let her arm rest gently on the bed again. “And water. Lots of water.” “Is that all?” he asked as the doctor slowly unravelled the bloody bandages. “Maybe,” he said, and clutched the bandage in his hand as he looked down at her wrists. They were an even darker black. The blood had congealed around the wound and stopped the blood, and they sparkled sickly in the dusty air, collecting as many tiny figments of paper as they could. “You don’t need stiches.” He turned to the corpse on the bed. “But we better wash it.” The corpse nodded. “In the mean time.” He turned back to the living. “You should make a hearty, salty soup for her.” Michael nodded obediently, then headed out of the room, trying to ignore the words flowing through his head. He headed into the kitchen, and as he turned on the stove, and poured water into a dismally grey saucepan he stopped. Why? He stared deeply at a speck of dirty black in the saucepan. “Why?” he whispered as quietly as he could. She was dead…no…no—he had wished she was dead! He had wished she was a dirty, cold, rotting corpse lying in bed. He had hoped that the bed was covered in blood, and that the only movement left in the room were the hands of the clock. He jumped with fright and the thoughts were washed violently away as the black spot disappeared behind churning, white water, and cold, slimy liquid ran across his hands like a mouse in the corner of his eye, and made him gasp. He turned the tap off quickly and placed it down on the stove as the flame roared into life. It flickered in the corner of his eye, and just for a moment the cleansing flame, burned all thoughts from his mind. He blinked and opened a draw. There was a knife missing. He took out the remaining one, and glanced down at the dull blade. Already dust was settling on it, but it was red dust, red, cleansing dust, that dripped from the tip of the blade. As he cut up the vegetables he flinched with every stroke. Each time the blade cut faintly into the wooden chopping board, he felt it in his wrists, but he didn’t stop. And he wondered why. He dropped them into the bubbling saucepan, and they floated to the bottom like dead bodies. He watched for a second as they grew in size, and did not complain as they were brutally burnt. He looked down to the chopping board and froze. Sitting as still as a corpse on it was meat. His arms and hands were numb, and the knife slipped into it easily, so easily that it dug into the chopping board with a jarring thud. It cut through bone, flesh, fat

and gristle, and all with a clean, cleaving power that did not discriminate. He picked up the soft, wet meat with his hands, and squeezed it gently. It didn’t feel like her. He didn’t want it to feel like her. He wanted it to be her. He threw the meat into the saucepan and watched as the fat was ripped gently from the flesh and floated up to the top. He shook his head angrily. Words, again and again and again. He didn’t want it to be her. That was from a book, a story, a poem, but which? He couldn’t remember, but it wasn’t from him. All of a sudden the words that floated around his head, that composed his mind, were a disgusting pollution that blackened his thoughts. “Leave the fat in it,” the doctor said as he popped his head through the door way. He smiled with his confident eyes, and automatically Michael smiled back. “She’s in bed again. No exercise until she’s got some colour back in her face, but I don’t think that she’ll need any blood.” “Good,” Michael said. His mouth moved, but were the words that came out of it his? “She should be fine,” the doctor smiled, as he saw Michael’s white face. “She’ll look much better after she’s eaten something.” Michael smiled still. It was his smile, but it was a fake one. The doctor turned to go, then turned back again. “Lots of salt,” he said. “What?” Michael asked, his thoughts were being choked by James Joyce, portmanteaus, idioglossia, foreign words, and puns had their plump hands around his throat, and what made sense days, hours, minutes ago, were nothing more than words. “In the soup,” the doctor smiled. “Lots of salt in the soup.” “Oh,” he nodded and turned back to the white steam. “Of course.” He picked up a tea towel then picked up the saucepan with it carefully. He placed it down on the sink and then picked up a bowl. He poured the steaming soup into it, and the transparent yellow liquid galloped into it, as the saucepan vomited the meat and vegetables. They plopped into it sickeningly, and as Michael dropped the spoon in with one final plop, he sighed with relief. The bowl was hot in his hands as he stepped into the hallway, but he held it tightly as it burned his finger tips and palm. He turned into the bedroom, and his wife looked up at him. She didn’t smile. He sat down next to her and the steam floated up slowly into his eyes as he rested the bowl on his lap. He picked up the spoon, and the soup stirred rudely as it slipped from it like silk and spilled into the bowl noisily.

She opened her mouth reluctantly like a dog being given medicine, and swallowed the soup with a sickening gulp that made the hair on Michael’s back stand on end. He raised spoonful after spoonful and endured gulp after gulp. Finally he put the glinting spoon into the empty bowl, and rested it on the bed side table with a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry,” his wife said weakly. “It was stupid.” “It was stupid,” he echoed her. “I just—I’d just had had enough of the paper, I had had enough of the ink—of the paint—of it all.” She smiled—a sane, apologetic smile that made Michael smile too. “I was reading Shakespeare, and all of a sudden: “‘Ay, that would be known. To the wars, my boy, to the wars! He wears his honour in a box unseen, that hugs his kicky-wicky here at home.’ “I’ve read it a thousand times, but all of a sudden…all of a sudden it was me. And I could feel the ink, and smell it and taste it, and my body was filled with ink—my skin was ink, and I looked at myself in the mirror.” She closed her eyes. “I was as black as ink—even my eyes were black.” She opened them and Michael jumped. “Then I realised… all that was left was blood—everything else was black! And I had to exorcise it…I had to! I know it was stupid, but the whole room turned black, and I wanted to see something—to see some colour, so I had to, I had to or the whole world would have been black.” Michael looked down at his wife. There was something lurking behind her white eyes. It hid behind her pupils, but it whispered to him silently, and he shivered. “Well?” she asked with a white grin. “Have I gone mad?” “Yes,” he laughed. Her grin faded. “I didn’t mean it,” he said quickly. “I know,” she said. “Even if it were true it wouldn’t matter what you think. It was just a depression.” Her smile returned. “Everybody goes through one. If they didn’t what would they have to write about? To paint? Happiness?” she grinned. “Get my paper and my pen,” she said. “I am feeling inspired.” “The doctor said you shouldn’t over-exert yourself.” She laughed. “Writing is an endurance test,” she smiled with a patronising curl in her lips, “not a sprint.” “Don’t your arms hurt?” he asked.

“They are a little numb,” she conceded. “But there is no greater pain killer than distraction.” “And when the distraction is over there is no greater hang over!” Michael laughed as he stood up. The room fell back into its dusty silence, and as he walked across the floor, his dull footsteps could not be heard over it. He stepped into the study, and the thick dust formed a layer over his eyes, and got stuck in his throat. There were papers and scriptures and sketches all over the floor and the tables and the chairs, and on the walls were dark black paintings that seemed to recede into the walls like shadows. He found a piece of paper on the desk, and he looked down at it with disgust, then picked up a pen. There was ink dried on its sharp end like blood, and he imagined the sound of it scraping across the paper, and he felt it scraping across his skin. He looked down at the blank paper as he walked back into the hallway. There was dust all over it, and its dull yellow-whiteness seemed to fill the whole room, screaming in his ears even louder than text. He was relieved as the soft paper slipped from his fingers. The screaming grew quieter; quiet enough for him to hear her say: “Thank you.” He sat down on the bed again. He felt weak. The blank paper had emptied his mind of all his thoughts; of all his words, and just for a moment the screaming stopped as he thought nothing, but slowly the words and the thoughts began pouring back in and he closed his eyes and sighed. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Nothing,” he said. “Well,” she said with a commanding voice that made him look at her. “Leave me. How can I concentrate with you sitting there looking like a black dog?” He stood up and walked to the door. The silence was broken by the scratching of pen and paper and he flinched. He turned around and opened his mouth to speak, but the words were trapped in his head with no way out. He closed the bedroom door gently, but the sound of scratching slipped easily under the door and climbed up his legs with tickling, molesting fingers, that pushed their way into his ears and made the words in his head spin faster and faster and faster. He stepped out onto the veranda and looked down at the cracks in the floor boards. They revealed only blackness and nothing else. He shook his head and jumped onto the soft ground and ran. He felt his brain bounce around his head and he smiled as his chest heaved and heaved. And he didn’t think. The words were thrown around with his brain, and

they were illegible as they flew quickly passed his vision like mosquitos. Finally he stopped. He was surrounded by green grass, and the distant sound of animals, and just barely he could see a town. He sat down in the soft, forgiving grass, then let his back fall beneath him and stared up at the blue sky. White clouds stood up in the sky movelessly, but he closed his eyes and ignored them. He let the words out. They took his breath away, but he let them slip through his body, down his fingers, and into his toes. His body tingled with relief and euphoria. He had denied himself his mind for far too long, but he hated his mind, and the euphoria slowly grew in to an uncomfortable feeling hiding just behind his eyes, and whispering to him silently. But he listened. He sighed with frustration. He couldn’t understand what it was saying. It wasn’t speaking with words, or pictures. It was speaking with its soul—with its heart. He cried quietly to himself with only the animals and the clouds watching, and he cried until the clouds were turning black and threatening and the sun had abandoned him. He glanced around as his body twitched with fear—he had run here twice and home twice, but in the darkness the animals squawked and cawed like black owls and tigers, and he ran again, the words knocked the voices from his eyes. He stopped when he saw his house—his home. He had never seen it without a light on before. It was a part of the horizon—of the landscape. Its big dark walls grew up from the earth like rocks and trees, and inside it was a nest for birds and animals. He walked forward slowly, trying not to look at it, and he jumped with fright as the floorboards on the veranda creaked with an earthly groan. He walked down the hallway as the silence enveloped him. She wasn’t writing. Was she dead? He pushed open the bedroom door. There was a corpse on the bed, and it didn’t move. He pushed his way through the dust, and placed his hand carefully on her soft forehead. It was warm. He sighed with relief and lay down next to her as her chest rose up and receded with each breath. She was the only thing alive in the dead house. He put his arms around her, but her touch wasn’t comforting; it wasn’t loving. He closed his eyes as tears rolled down his face. He didn’t love her, but they hadn’t been his words.

The House of Groan When he woke up the bed was empty. He ran his hand down the sheet next to him, but it was cold as if nobody else had ever slept in it. As the dark world filled his eyes and ears he sat up with a jolt. He felt the scratching of pens in his ears and stuck his fingers in them. He sat there still, his fingers pressing against his brain, and suffocating his thoughts. But finally the scratching stopped and he let his hands fall to his side and then he stood up. His stomach informed him politely that he was hungry, so he walked into the kitchen. “Michelle,” he said as he saw the corpse standing over the stove. The name burned his throat like heartburn. He swallowed hastily to push it back down into his stomach, but instead it was sent crashing into his brain. “What?” she asked as he sat down. “The doctor said not to exhaust yourself.” She turned to him and smiled, her lips contorting in to a pleasant crescent that made him uncomfortable. “You’re the one that looks exhausted,” she said as she turned back to the stove. “You look like you can barely stand—yet you’re sitting down.” Like dust silence filled the room again, and he looked down at the cracks in the table. He stuck his fingernail into one of them, then started picking away at it, trying to cut out a chunk of wood. “What are you doing?” He stopped and looked up as two bowls were set down on the table. He sniffed in the sweet, salty smell of porridge, and picked up his spoon. “What were you writing?” he asked as he looked down at the porridge in his bowl. He poked it with his spoon. It moved like vomit. “I was exploring that feeling—that blankness with poetry.”

He spooned the vomit into his mouth, and let the hot liquid cool on his tongue. It was sweet, yet it slid across his tongue, and around his mouth like worms. “And what did you find?” he asked as he swallowed the worms, only to fill his mouth with another spoonful. “I found myself,” she laughed. “I found that the blackness was mine. I found that the blackness was me. And it wasn’t the blood that I needed to bleed with, but my thoughts! The only way to get rid of the ink was to write, and Michael.” She beamed. “I feel like Moses on Mount Horab, only I’m the dictating the commandments.” She laughed. “I feel like God!” “I feel like Michael the Levite on Mount Golgotha,” Michael laughed croakily as he put his spoon down in the empty bowl. “When was the last time you wrote?” Michelle asked. “When was the last time you really wrote?” “Yesterday,” Michael sighed. “At work. And he, the man who was lost in a sea of sand, waded his way through time on the clock hand, but was lost, and was never to be found.” “Cute,” she smiled patronisingly. “But when was the last time you wrote for yourself?” “I don’t know,” he said. “See?” said she. “You look worse than me, and I almost bled to death yesterday!” She stood up. “Well, I am going to slip back into the blackness. I will see you when you are back!” She grinned and leaned forward and kissed Michael on the forehead. Her saliva lingered on his skin for a moment, seeping into the wrinkles, and creeping into his thoughts. For a moment his vision turned an inky black and he gasped. He blinked it away quickly and stood up. He picked up his things and headed vaguely in the direction of work. He reeked of sweat and misery but he sniffed in the air around him, and grass, flowers, animals and birds filled his nose as they scrunched, buzzed, squeaked and twittered in his ears. He let the words swim around his brain. His legs ached, and he didn’t have the willpower to run. His body was empty and lifeless. It needed ink. He laughed then stopped. He was where he had seen the girl. He sat down and looked around at the beautiful trees and grass as they swayed gently in the wind. If he watched for long enough he could see the animals scurrying about, but it wasn’t long before he gave in to the voice in his head and pulled out some papers in his bag. He shuffled through them until he found what he was looking for. And he looked down at the dull yellow paper, and the dark black ink and read:

He looked out across at the rocks. They stuck out of the ground like hands from the grave, and they seemed to beckon to him. They were hideous and rugged, yet he found himself walking forwards. They were crass and rude, yet he found himself listening to them, hanging on their every word. He sat down on their hard surface; caressed them and kissed them, then looked up at the dark blue ocean. The sky above it was black, and it looked on with a serious face that betrayed none of the seething emotion that languished behind it. Instead it tormented the ocean which churned with bright white foam and deep, dark blue water that broke against the rocks like splinters, then slipped just as gently back into its waiting hands as it had beeen violently thrown from them. As he sat he was waiting. What was he waiting for? He didn’t know, but the rocks had told him to wait, and he had to trust the rocks. He let his hand rest on one as doubts started to slip into his head, but with its hard touch they were washed away jut as easily as they had slipped in. Michael jumped with fright. A soft, warm hand touched his shoulder and he looked up quickly. It was her. She smiled at him with wet pink lips, and he felt himself smiling to. “What are you doing?” she asked, and her eyes turned from his and to the paper. “I was reading,” he replied. “What were you reading?” “It does not have a title,” he said proudly. “Then what’s it about?” He opened his mouth, but words betrayed him, and he closed it again without saying anything. “Nothing?” she laughed. “Figures, George.” Michael stood up and grinned. He hadn’t been called George by a stranger since he was a child, and there was a youthful resonance about a first name. “Charlotte,” he grinned. “What?” “Nothing.” “Did you write it?” she asked to avoid a silence. He nodded. “Then why don’t you know what it’s about?” “I don’t know,” he said. “I should, but I don’t.” “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not your fault. Books are meaningless if you ask me, they just pretend to not be. I don’t like them because of it. They can be so patronising and cold…and.” He watched her eyes search for words. “And alienating. Unless you agree with the

author—agree with whatever they are trying to say, but instead of saying it they wrote a book, and if you don’t then you are derided and degraded as you read it.” “I hope my writing is not like that,” he said quickly. “I would not want to degrade anyone.” “Of course not!” she laughed. “Which is why you’re patronising me. I know it’s not your fault. You’re all the same, but you’re not as bad as the painters. They’ll paint a black square and say it solves the human condition and if you don’t understand it then it is you that is at fault. Composers are no better.” She grinned, “But at least some of them are hot.” “Hot?” “Hot,” she said again. “Sexy, beautiful, attractive.” She laughed. “Where’s a thesaurus when you need one?” Michael reached into his bag but she laughed again. “I was joking. Have you ever heard techno?” “Techno?” She reached into her bag without saying anything, and pulled out a white bead attached to a white wire which snaked its way into her bag, and she handed it to Michael. He looked down at it and turned it over. It was smooth on all sides, and shaped not like a bead, but a drop of rain. “Put in your ear,” she said as she pulled a small white box from her bag and another lead dangled from it. He watched as she followed the lead with her hand until it found the second rain drop, then she pushed it into her ear and he did the same. She pressed an invisible button on the white box’s grey screen, and green lines danced on it as a fast beat slipped into his ear and vibrated around his skull and brain. Again and again as fast a stampede and louder and louder until it started to give him a head ache. But he endured as he watched her move to the beat, moving and wriggling like the green lines on the screen and he had the urge to do the same. But just as quickly as it had begun the beat began to fade out, and she pulled the rain drop from his ear. “I’ve got to go,” she said, and without another word ran again and quickly disappeared. Michael turned in the direction of his destination with a sigh as the sound of animals and words started to push out the beat that was still bouncing around his aching head. He glanced at his watch. He was fashionably late. He walked away towards the town without hurrying with the beat still echoing around his head. It wasn’t long before there were buildings around him. They

were all small and old, and their stone, straw, and wooden surfaces seemed to crumble before his eyes, leaving the streets bathed with dust that danced in the dull sunlight. Or dulled the sunlight a thought made its way through the beat, and he pushed a door open. “Michael,” Professor Baldrick said. “You’re late.” “Sorry,” Michael said and sat down at an uncomfortable wooden desk. “It doesn’t matter,” the Professor smiled and sat down at the same table. “Before you begin let me ask you something.” Michael looked up at the Professor’s wise face. There were deep lines that were dug into his forehead and beside his eyes like trenches, and the soldiers inside of them threw water into his bright white eyes so that they sparkled. He smiled and took his long white beard in his hand, and ran his fingers through it as if he was washing it. “Anything,” Michael said. “You look troubled,” he smiled comfortingly. “You look tired.” He leant back in his seat and glanced around at the books that adorned the walls, then back to the Professor. He smiled at the man he respected, and swallowed his words before they could leave his mouth. “Come now!” Professor Baldrick said. “Don’t be silly. Would I keep something from you that troubled me so?” “No,” Michael admitted dryly. “So why keep it from me?” “Because it is embarrassing,” he said. “You will think that I am stupid.” “I have thought you were stupid many times,” he grinned. “So I can not promise you that I will not this time. But is that a reason not to tell me? Perhaps I will understand, and if not, at the very least the weight may be lifted from your shoulders and you will not look like the personification of a troubled Mister Jaggers!” “I saw a girl,” he said. “Was she beautiful?” The Professor smiled. “She was, but that does not matter.” “Ah,” he shook his head still smiling. “But beauty does matter, greatly so!” “But she wore pink,” Michael went on, and the Professor screwed up his face. “And talked quickly and bluntly. She was crass and hideous.” He stopped. “Yet?” The Professor asked. “Yet you find yourself fallen insatiably in love like Romeo and Juliet.”

“No,” Michael laughed. “Ever since I saw her nothing makes sense. Even my own writing I do not understand. It is as if words themselves have lost meaning.” “More like Samson and Delilah!” he said seriously with a playful grin. This time Michael did not laugh. “And today she played me some hideous music. It was fast and loud and had no melody and no discernible composition, and I could not tell it from a symphony!” “Well,” the Professor smiled. “It could be a case of Stendhal Syndrome! Or more likely, you do really find yourself infatuated by her. Was she young?” He nodded. “Well, we are all cursed to love young women I am afraid, Michael. There is nothing to be ashamed of. I think you should tell your wife about her. At the very least she might understand and if you’re lucky she may suggest a ménage et trois!” “Be quiet!” Michael laughed. “I’m meant to be working aren’t I?” The Professor said nothing as he stood up and Michael looked down at the table. He listened to his soft foot steps on the stone, and after he heard the screech of wooden table legs dragging across them, he reached into his bag and dropped some papers onto the table. He pressed his pen against the paper and wrote while reading in the corner of his eyes. He was transcribing or translating something—he wasn’t sure—because both the complete and incomplete text looked the same: even though they were not the same language: both were meaningless. He was interrupted as there was a knock on the door. He put his pen down and walked across the stones. He pulled it open and a woman with plump red cheeks and a furious smile stood on the door step. “Hello,” she said, and as she spoke Michael noticed a child standing next to her. The child looked down at the ground defiantly, and his plump red cheeks betrayed how tightly shut his jaw was. “My son refuses to read.” “At all?” Michael asked. “At all,” she replied. “I don’t want to read!” the child’s tightly shut jaw opened easily. “Because it is a waste of time.” The woman slapped him gently on the back of the head, and the child cried as violently as it could. “I’m sorry,” she said as she pushed her way inside. “It’s those God damn music machines! Will you show him around? I thought he might be more interested if he saw somebody writing.”

No, he almost said before the Professor put his arm on his shoulder. “Of course!” he smiled. “A young boy must read, and what better place to read than in here?” “Thank you!” the woman beamed and reached into her pocket. She pulled from it one of the white boxes that Charlotte had had and bent over her son who looked at it enviously. “If you’ve been a good boy and these kind gentlemen tell me that you’ve read, then you can get this back.” She waved it in front of the child’s face teasingly, and much to everybody’s except her amusement, he snatched it from her and blew a raspberry in her face. The woman wiped her face furiously, then snatched the machine back from her son. She threw it to the ground, and his jaw fell open as it landed on the hard stones. She jumped on it furiously, and it was crushed under her feet like an insect. “See what happens when you don’t read?” she asked furiously and kicked the broken machine across the room where it exploded in a shower of metallic parts and leads. Tears rolled silently down his face and without another word the woman stormed over to the door and slammed it behind her. “I’ll clean it up,” the Professor said. “You look after him.” Michael nodded and led him over to his table. He sat him down in front of him, and pushed the papers and pen back into the bag. “You don’t have to read if you don’t want to,” he said. The boy wiped the tears from his cheeks and smiled with relief. “I hate reading,” he said. “Did you? When you were a boy?” “No,” Michael smiled. “I loved it. But I’m starting to hate it!” “Why’s that?” he asked. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “It’s boring,” the boy said. “I hate reading. I like music. But not classical.” “Of course not!” he nodded. “Don’t patronise me,” the boy said coldly. “Sorry!” he pleaded with a smile. “What is your name?” “Mummy says not to tell strangers my name,” he smiled mischievously. “Well,” he said. “I am Michael.” “I don’t care much about names,” he said. “And Michael is a stupid name.” “Why’s that?” “Because I’ve seen a picture show with Michael in it. He’s a detective, and he’s emotionally inept, cold, and a devout Christian whose only friends are those he has met at church and the YMCA!”

“Michael is also one who is like God, and an Arch Angel!” “Well, Michael,” the boy grinned. “If you are anything like God, then God must be a bit of a fool and baby.” “A fool and a baby?” Michael laughed. “A fool and a baby!” the boy nodded. “Well,” he grinned. “After this tirade of abuse I think I have earned the chance to ask you a question.” “I wouldn’t say that you have earned anything, but you may.” “Well, why didn’t you just read something or not snatch it? You may have got it back in the end.” “Come now, Michael!” he laughed. “You are well read are you not?” He nodded. “I am not! Yet it would appear I know more of principle than you. Think of Atticus Finch, Saint Sebastian, Jesus Christ! Though admittedly in the case of the latter it was a little sacrifice if any at all. ‘Come my son, martyr yourself for your disciples, then be reborn and come up to eternal paradise.’ What a great example he was. Do what you want only for a reward! Sadly all I will be getting is a beating.” The door was flung open. “We mortals must suffer while God and his son sit in heaven enjoying themselves!” A man stepped inside with a furious glare. His black hair was tied in angry knots that flopped over his shoulders like nooses. “Come here, my boy!” he said angrily. “You’re going to get what’s coming to you. And then you are going to read 1984 from front to cover!” “No!” the Professor cried as he stood up with a flourish. “Not 1984!” “I, the martyr, will take my punishment, and expect nothing in return!” The boy turned to the professor who sat back down. “You’re damn right you will, and then you’ll write an essay about it!” the man cried and slammed the door closed after them. “Professor,” Michael said. “Do you mind if I take some time to think? My work is suffering because of it, and I fear I am no use to you until I have worked out what is wrong with me.” “Of course,” the Professor smiled sympathetically. “Tell your wife of this coarse Venus you found running about like a pink hare! Tell her and be cured.” “Thank you,” he said hastily as he picked up his bag, and slipped back into the dusty street. He would try talking to his wife. But he knew it would amount to nothing. And when it didn’t, he knew where he could go. Outside the sun was shining brighter. It illuminated everything, leaving no stone without a bright glow, and the things lucky enough to be hidden behind

a shadow where the only invisible things that were left. He walked away from the streets quickly. He could see every speck of dust floating before him, and he looked up at the sun angrily as it made sweat roll down his forehead. The only thing it illuminated was his own ignorance! He stopped at the familiar spot leading into town again and glanced around. He saw no one. He sat down for a moment and reached into his bag as the sun made the words in his head melt into thoughts of water. He waited for her, and stared in the direction of the town—in the direction of the sun, but as his eyes hurt and his skin burned, and his head spun, he stood up angrily and turned away from it. As he walked towards home the sun seemed to spill into the thin pocket of air behind his back and shirt and burn his skin until a gentle, hot breeze blew the cloth onto his back and it stuck to it with a thick layer of sweaty glue. He blinked when he saw the house. In the bright sunlight he could see a big cloud of dust and decay hovering around it. The wood looked older and drier and rotting, and around it the grass and flowers were full of weeds that hid poisonous secretes. He flung the door open angrily and wiped the sweat from his head as the sound of scratching entered his ears. He headed into the kitchen and tuned the tap on. As it disappeared down the plug-hole he was so thirsty he could smell it. It was warm and tasted like sweet copper, but he drank until his stomach felt cold and he was desperate for air. He wiped the water from his chin as he turned the tap off, then dropped his bag onto the table. He undid his soaking shirt, and as he took it off it held tightly onto his back until it was finally ripped away like dead skin. He followed the sound of scratching into the study then looked down at his wife. She sat at her desk with a blank, blinking stare as she looked down at her never-still hands that moved across the page like a machine. Her body was completely still, and her mouth tightly shut. “Michelle,” Michael said but she did not look up. “Michelle,” he said again, louder. Her eyes blinked back into consciousness and she looked up at her husband with a look of frustration. “Aren’t you meant to be at work?” she asked. “I am,” he replied. “But I have the day off, and I wanted to talk to you. I have been doing some thinking lately and I feel sick.” “Do you?” she asked, her eyes still pulling the rest of her face back to the paper. “I will be finished soon. Just give me an hour.”

Michael did not reply. The machine was already moving again. He stepped back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He could feel his own eyes pulling him towards the bag and he reached into it reluctantly. He pulled out the papers and a pen and let the machine take him over. He didn’t know if he had the patience to wait. He sat and watched the sky and the sea, but it was boring and his mind wandered into a frustrated daze. The cool, hard touch of the rocks wasn’t enough to reassure him and slowly he felt fear push its way into his body. It overtook him sickeningly until he felt like vomiting, and that the rocks had betrayed him. They were gone. He felt them again to reassure himself that they were still there but he couldn’t be sure. He could feel them, but he couldn’t feel his own touch, not when all he wanted to do was spit out everything about him so that he no longer existed. Not while he wanted to run out into the sea and drown; yet had a mortal fear of what he was waiting for. It was coming to get him. It was coming to kill him. It was coming to destroy him. He didn’t even know if the rocks cared about him anymore. He hated them. They could have saved him—they could have saved his life. But instead they had betrayed him and left him sitting, and waiting, and waiting, while the tide grew ever closer and closer; its watery hands reaching out to pull him into the grave. “Michael?” He jumped with fright, and his skin was torn from the sweaty vinyl of the chair with a sickly quiet rip that only he could hear. “What did you want?” “I wanted to talk to you,” he said as he pushed the papers and pens back into the bag quickly. “About what?” she asked as she sat down. “Why have you taken your shirt off? It’s not that hot.” “It was outside.” He shook his head. “I got the day off because I can’t think. And the Professor said that I should talk to you about it.” “Then do so.” His wife took his hand comfortingly, and he smiled. But it was an ignorant comfort. “Yesterday when I was going to work I saw a woman. She was running and she wore bright clothes, and…” “And?” “And I think she was smiling. I chased after her—” She interrupted him. “Because she was beautiful?” “No,” he shook his head. “Because she was different. When I stopped her she was blunt and crass, and she said that there was once a singer

called George Michael.” “Choral or Opera?” his wife asked. “Neither,” he replied. “She said he was a pop singer.” Michelle shook her head with disgust. “And then she asked if that upset me—because I told her my name— and I said I didn’t know. But now I do. It did upset me—it didn’t just upset me—it knocked me over, and ever since then nothing makes sense any more. The words flowing around my head are meaningless, and when I read I feel like I am being poisoned. Then today I ran to the same spot that I had met her, and I saw her. She played music to me with a strange machine that she put in my ear.” “A machine?” she asked. “A machine,” he nodded. “That’s horrible!” She squeezed his hand comfortingly, but he continued: “And it was almost just a beat, so fast and loud that it knocked the words around my head and made me feel sick, but when it was over, I realised that I couldn’t tell it from Mozart!” “You poor, poor thing,” she smiled. “Was she beautiful?” “She was hideous.” “There’s no need to lie to me. I won’t be jealous.” “No,” he said firmly. “She was hideous…yet she was so hideous that she was beautiful.” “Like a Rajapaksa!” “No,” Michael laughed. “Not at all, but since meeting her I can’t even understand my own writing.” “Could I read it?” she asked. “Yes,” he nodded and handed her the papers. “I have not got much further. He’s got to the rocks…but now he’s just a man sitting on some rocks on a God damn beach!” He leant back in the chair with a frustrated sigh, and the consciousness was pushed from his wife’s eyes as she read. From left too right they moved quickly and accurately as if in a trance, and the pages were turned with blind mechanical accuracy, until they were put down and life slowly poured back into her eyes. There were tears in them and she swallowed. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “It’s beautiful,” she replied as tears rolled down her cheeks. “So beautiful.” She stood up without saying anything and he heard her feet pitta patta down the hallway. He pushed the papers into the bag, then

followed the pitta patta into the bedroom. She lay on the bed weeping with a wet pool of tears on the pillow. “Are you okay?” he asked her and she nodded. “It is beautiful,” she said. “But please let it absorb me alone. Just for a little while…it is so beautiful.” “Will you be okay?” he asked, and she nodded with a re-assuring smile. He stepped outside and the sun was going down, and the world was bathed in an in-different orange that hid many secrets from his eyes. If he could make it to town by dusk perhaps he could find him again—or her. He ran away from his home and let her fill his thoughts. He still hated her for abandoning him, but the hate made him think of her beauty, her pink lips, and her white eyes, and her crass smile, and how much he wanted to kiss her passionately, and hit her and beat her and scream at her for destroying him. The town loomed in the distance under sun. It was bathed in a glorious orange, and all the buildings seemed to be coated with a thick layer of egg yolk. As he walked through the streets they weren’t as dusty. He could just barely hear the sound of electronic voices slipping underneath peoples’ doorways, and his heart jumped as he turned into a clearing. He was confronted by an empty concrete park. The orange light plainly illuminated the thin haze of dust floating around, and it twirled around a park bench. A park bench which held up an old man from the ground, an old man that Michael had seen before. He walked forwards slowly as his heart kicked in again and beat loudly in his chest, shaking his skeleton and muddling up the words floating in his head. He sat down next to him silently then opened his mouth to talk, but closed it as he turned to him. The old man’s face was changed. Big trench coat collars hid away his mouth, and his glinting, dark eyes seemed to be lost in wrinkled skin. “Bic,” Michael said and the old man jumped with fright. “What has happened?” “She’s dead,” Bic said, and his dark eyes fell on Michael and he felt cold. “Who?” “Charlotte.” “Charlotte?” he echoed him. “Charlotte Blake?” Bic nodded, and Michael swallowed as he thought of what he had imagined doing to her. “What happened?” “She was killed in a building collapse,” he said. “She was crushed.”

Michael said nothing. “Who are you?” Bic blinked. “And what do you want?” “It’s Michael,” he said. “Don’t you remember me?” “Michael?” His eyes widened. “Michael! What has happened to you?” “That is why I am here,” he sighed. “I don’t know…it was Charlotte.” “Charlotte,” he echoed him. “I saw her, and she was different. She was fast and ugly and I chased after her, and we talked, and she made fun of my name.” Bic laughed. “George Michael,” he said. “And then—and then nothing has made sense! She destroyed my world—she turned it into something without meaning or logic, and I don’t know why. And nobody understands me anymore—and I don’t understand them. Professor Baldrick thought it was lust, and my wife doesn’t care. She just wants to read what I’m writing—but I don’t even know what it means!” “I bet Baldric said that it was Stendhal Syndrome,” he laughed. “What a foolish old man.” “What could it be?” “Wait,” he shook his head. “George Michael,” he grinned as he reached into his pocket, “did she tell you he was a singer.” Michael nodded as Bic pulled one of the small white machines from his pocket. “She had one of those,” he said. “Of course,” Bic nodded. “It’s an iPod and it lets you listen to music wherever you want. Before that there was the Walkman, and before that the Boombox.” He laughed again. “But that wasn’t nearly as small. They’re almost gone now. People still have televisions, but only out here. They’re trapped in their houses, because outside they know that people like you will try and stop them from doing what they want.” “People like me.” “People like you. But,” he added, “maybe not any more. George Michael was pop singer.” “She told me.” “He no longer exists. You would never have heard of him if it wasn’t for her, but he speaks of oppression, sexuality and love just as any opera does. Would you like to listen?” He nodded, and Bic slipped the small device into his ear, and slowly the sound of an organ seeped into his brain, but just as soon as it had begun it disappeared and a soft-semi singing, a tambourine, and drum took its place, and then clapping and then the singing grew louder, and

a screeching high pitched instrument that sounded like a harpsichord appeared. “What’s that?” Michael asked. “An electric guitar,” Bic replied as all of a sudden the song ended. Michael pulled the device from his ear with a sigh. “It means nothing,” he said. “Good,” Bic smiled knowingly. “You must go home now. It’s getting late.” “But I can’t go home—I can’t endure the sound of writing.” He shuddered. “Take this,” Bic handed him a strange sea-shell shaped device. “Put it behind your ear, and I will be able to talk to you. It might give you brain cancer, but it sound like you’re already sick,” he laughed and stood up as Michael slipped it into and over his ear. “Come back tomorrow and I will show you something, and if you are scared and want to talk to me press your finger against your ear and talk.” “Thank you,” Michael said as he shook his hand. Bic said nothing and slipped the device into his ear, then walked off whistling an alien tune. Michael walked quickly through the streets, listening as intently as he could to the mechanical voices, but they were quiet, unintelligible drones. He tried to peer through the bright windows that hid behind them the life of the people inside, but saw nothing through their drawn curtains. When his feet found grass he ran again, and held his finger to his ear to stop it from being dislodged. Then he heard a voice and jumped with fright. “Michael?” He stopped still. “What? I can hear you breathing.” “Bic!” he laughed as he realised who it was. “I was running—I was running and I pressed my finger to my ear to stop it from falling.” “Well,” Bic sighed on the other end. “When you’re engaging in a night of troubled passion may I suggest that you take it off and put it somewhere safe or just take the risk? I am an old man and long passed my days of voyeurism.” Michael laughed and let his hand fall to his side as he ran and it stayed tightly wedged to his ear. He stopped when he saw the house. No lights lit up the windows to betray the deathly black hollow that blotted out the horizon. As he walked again he thought that Michelle might be dead. He swallowed as he stepped onto the veranda. They hadn’t been his words. He pushed the door open. They hadn’t been his words. But when he heard the sound of scratching and the flickering light of a flame creeping down the hallway like smoke he wasn’t relieved. He could feel the scratching

on his face, and as he closed the front door behind him he closed his eyes as the pen’s nib moved closer and closer to his eyes. He walked down the hallway blindly, counting his steps, then turned left and opened his eyes. In the darkness he could see the bed, and he pulled off his sweaty clothes quickly then crept onto the bed with only the machine in his ear touching his body. He let the sheets envelope him and he closed his eyes. He was bathed in complete darkness as the soft sheets fluttered down onto his body like leaves, and he felt like he was lying on the bottom of the ocean. He pulled the sheets back as he felt he was drowning or suffocating in a coffin. He lay there with his eyes closed as he heard the deafening scratching. All he could see were words and they moved along quickly with the scratches composing the images of what she must be writing. Black ink swirled around her stomach like a disease. She felt sick and tired and as she looked down at her stomach she blinked. It was swollen and big as if she were pregnant—or as if it was infected. She touched it: she felt it; it was cold. Death. Death, she thought, death. Was it dead or was she dead? She touched her forehead with the back of her hand. It was hot with sweat. She lay down on the floor and curled up in a miserable position. She felt the black ink growing in her stomach, spreading through her body like a poison, and she felt as if her death was inevitable. Each breath was laboured, and her lungs croaked and wheezed as if full of phlegm. But she knew what they were filled with, and when she coughed bitter, tingling, disgusting ink filled her mouth like bile. She spat it out and it stained the floor in ugly streaks. As she wept to herself she felt a huge weight on her chest. It was growing—it was growing with the amount of ink stains on the floor. She coughed it up, but she swallowed a little of it and her eyes spun briefly, perhaps it wasn’t the ink in her chest. She sat up quickly and glanced around, and placed her hand on her heart. It beat; pumping the poison through her body. But perhaps somebody was strangling her? Perhaps somebody was sitting on her chest, suffocating her as she lay. But as she sat there it still grew worse, and she coughed more and more until her throat ached and groaned and begged her for mercy. She stood up as she cried and stumbled over to the mirror. She coughed again, and black, thick ink rolled down the mirror, but behind it she caught something. She wiped the black away with her white sleave and turned it a deathly black, then she screamed. Her eyes were as black as paint, and rolling down her cheeks were dark black tears, that seemed to cut through her flesh.

Michael woke up with a jolt as he felt the bed move with the weight of another. He turned over to see his wife. She was smiling at him in his sleep. He could taste the ink, and feel the weight on his chest and he gasped for air as he cried quietly. He raised a finger to his cheek and picked up a tear then tasted it. It was salty. He looked at his wife with sympathy and fear, and put his arms around her tightly for comfort— they weren’t his words—but her smiling face and still body provided little.

The Secret When Michael woke up he was holding the sheets, and felt the sound of the scratching boring into his skull. He pressed his finger against his ear; the sheet still woven around the fingers of his other hand. “Bic?” he asked. There was no reply. “Bic,” he said again. There was no reply. He sat up and looked down the dusty room into the hallway. “What?” He heard in his ear and jumped with fright and relief. “Is anything wrong?” “No,” he replied as he stood up. “I just wanted to show you something.” “Fine,” Bic yawned. “Meet me at the same seat.” Michael pulled his clothes on quickly then stepped into the hallway. He followed the sound of scratching into the study, and looked down at his wife reluctantly. “Where’s my writing?” he asked, and slowly her eyes returned to life, her hands stopped moving, and she looked up. “I put it back in your bag on the kitchen table,” she said. “Are you going in to work?” “No,” he shook his head, then added quickly: “I’m going to try writing in town.” “In town?” Michelle frowned. “Well, you must do as your muse commands you! Now leave me alone. “She smiled. “My muse commands me that I be alone!” Michael said nothing and headed into the kitchen. He flicked his fingers through the papers in his bag and flinched, then flung it over his shoulder and stepped outside. He paused to glance down at the floorboards of the veranda, but blinked away the dark cracks as he remembered that Bic was waiting for him. He ran across the grass,

staring directly in the direction of the town, and trying not to see the world around him. He opened his eyes again as he stepped into the town. The streets were bustling with people, running and skipping, with ear pieces in their ears, and machines in their hands. He slowed down as he took it all in, and he stopped to listen to a talking box. There were some old men crowded around it, and they listened to a confident voice that droned on and on with words that all sounded the same. He continued on, and when he arrived in the park he sped up as Bic saw him and stood up. “Come,” Bic said. Michael followed him loyally, and they stepped into the middle of the road. “Have you heard of cars?” he asked. “Motors as Toad might call them.” “Yes,” Michael nodded. “I have written several essays on The Wind in the Willows some devoted entirely to what the contraption of the motor car may symbolise.” Bic laughed. “No, no, the motor was a motor! Yes maybe it was used to express his greed, but motor cars used to exist. It was published in nineteen o eight, and even back then they existed! You will have seen the progression yourself in literature surely?” “Yes,” he nodded, “as society’s greed for speed increased so did the metaphor to symbolise it.” “But it was no metaphor! I used to drive, Michael, before they were all taken away to be recycled. Your house probably has a bit of a car in it, and have you ever made a sculpture?” He nodded. “Well, that’s where most of the metal went. I suppose it wasn’t such a bad thing to happen to them, but I loved my car. I had a beautiful Porsche 911. God, everyone at the university hated it. They all drove Priuses as if they thought they were celebrities, and there I was destroying the world at one hundred and sixty miles per hour on the freeway!” Michael gasped. “One hundred and sixty miles per hour?” Bic nodded proudly. “But you know what they say about those who have a nice car?” He laughed, and Michael shook his head. “Well, it was an unfair stereotype! You know people who write short stories?” “Of course,” Michael nodded. “And what they say about them?” He nodded with a childish grin.

“Well that’s what they used to say about people with nice cars. But I can assure you I would never write a short story!” he laughed. “They were the contemporary craze at the time. Everybody was writing them. But things always change I suppose. I think you would have liked the car, though, it was a work of art. Black with smooth clean lines that seemed to float across the road while kissing it at the same time as it sped past.” They stopped outside a big old house wedged in between two new ones. It was made with white weatherboards; the paint peeling and poisoning the dead grass below them. Bic led Michael up the cracked concrete foot path and pushed the door open and then led him inside. “Welcome to my home,” he said as Michael glanced around the dull hallway. There was a bright red carpet on the floor and a cheap and garish chandelier that hung up above them. Bic switched it on with another click as he closed the door and the room seemed to fill with dust. He led him down the hallway and into a pitch black room. A light turned on with a click and he gasped. There were screens all around the room, and one giant one on the wall. There were stereos on the tables and big speakers next to them, and in the centre of the room was a leather couch facing towards a big screen. “Take a seat,” Bic said and Michael obeyed. It was soft and comforting. A simple beat with an electronic noise that Michael had never heard emanated from one of the speakers and Bic sat down next to him. “What’s that noise?” he asked. “A synthesiser,” he replied. All of a sudden a tuneless chant began, firing forth a barrage of rhyming words. “Sort of like spoken word poetry,” Bic said. “Why are they rhyming so much?” Michael asked. “Only Shakespeare can rhyme!” “Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly— And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well...” Bic laughed. “What is the greatest book ever written?” he asked. “La Comédie humaine, of course!” Michael replied. “It used to be Ulysses,” he sighed. “Now, tell me what you wanted?” “I wanted you to read this,” Micheal said as he reached into his bag. “Tell me what it means.”

He handed Bic the story, and he settled down into the couch to read. Michael watched as Bic’s eyes darted across the page quickly, while listening to the music that had taken on the same monotone drone of all sound. “Well,” Bic handed the papers back to him. “I am afraid you are very troubled. You should keep writing, try and purge yourself of your thoughts. That’s all writing is—that’s all art is—unless you’re a genre artist, purging somebody else’s thoughts! It’s just like detox,” he laughed. “But it could take even more than five years!” “Five years?” Michael swallowed. “Just an old man’s joke,” Bic grinned. “The world no longer makes sense, but you should go home. Will your wife still be there?” “Probably,” he replied. “Well, you’ll just have to write with her there won’t you? Spit it all out onto that paper—spit until your mouth is dry!” He stood up and Michael followed. “Good luck,” he said as he led him down the hallway. “Thanks,” Michel smiled as he stepped through the doorway. “See you later,” he smiled. “Goodbye,” Michael said as the door closed. He turned to the street and walked slowly through the town, trying to imagine the motor cars from The Wind and the Wheels careening down the road at one hundred and sixty miles per hour, and floating while kissing the road. When he stopped onto the grass he ran again. He shook his head as he did. Running was closer to detox than writing—it obliterated everything; writing magnified it. When he stepped onto the veranda he listened carefully. The squeak of the door pierced his ears as he opened it, but as they stopped ringing he smiled. He could hear no scratching of pen and paper. Then he remembered the bath. He glanced into the bedroom; it was empty. He continued on and glanced into the kitchen; there was a note on the table. He stepped through the door and picked it up. Felt like some fresh air, it read, goodbye. He put it down with a smile and walked back down the hallway. He glanced around at the lifeless nature then held his breath as he knelt down on the veranda and ran his fingers across the floorboards. He pulled one up and reached underneath it. He peered into the darkness and reached his hand into it, until it grazed against something cold and hard. He clasped it and wrenched it from the darkness with a guilty excitement. He grinned down at the white machine. It had two screens and a black plastic pen dangled from its side, attached by a string. He replaced the floorboard then stood up and walked into the house. He

closed the door behind him then headed into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. He turned on the machine with a click and it flicked on, then off, then on again and writing and pictures appeared on the screen. He picked up a pen and pressed it against start on the screen. A blurry, out of focus Chinese criminal appeared on screen, and Michael led him on a gleeful killing spree, the sound of explosions and violence filling his ears. “Michael.” His heart stopped, and the machine fell from his hands. He looked up and Professor Baldrick stood in the doorway. “It’s okay Michael,” he said. “Everybody gets curious once in awhile.” “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I am here to see how you are doing,” he replied. “I was worried about you.” Michael said nothing. “Listen, come into work tomorrow, and we can talk about your problems. I thought that perhaps a break would help, but obviously it hasn’t. I’ll tell you all about technology and what it did to humanity.” “I don’t know,” he said. “You don’t have to,” he said quickly. “But I am worried about you.” “You shouldn’t be,” he shook his head. Michael glanced down at the screen and saw the Chinese man die. “Everybody plays a game once in their life time—everybody gets curious. Bring it with you tomorrow, and I will help you destroy it.” “Okay,” he nodded. “I was just curious.” The words weren’t his. The professor smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” “I’ll see you tomorrow.” The words weren’t his. He turned off the machine as the professor disappeared, then he stood up and walked anxiously down the hallway. He stepped onto the veranda and glanced around. Professor Baldrick was gone. He pulled up the floorboard quickly and dropped the machine gently back into the darkness, then pressed his finger against his ear. “Bic,” he said. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You sound terrified.” “Professor Baldrick saw me playing with a machine.” “Is that some sort of euphemism?” Bic asked, then laughed. Michael did not. “Sorry,” Bic said quickly. “Humour is meant to help in such situations. What did he say?” “He said that I should take it into work tomorrow and would tell me all about technology and help me destroy it.”

“Go. I will be with you the whole time, and maybe he will help illuminate a few things for you better than I can.” “What about the machine?” he asked as he thought of its cool touch. “You bring it to me early tomorrow and I’ll see if it can be replaced. I have quite a collection myself.” “Okay,” Michael said reluctantly. “Remember that I’ll be right beside you the whole time. I’ll be your guardian angel in your ear.” He smiled. “Do you need anything else?” he asked. “No,” he replied. “I’ll be fine.” “Well, see you tomorrow then, Michael.” “See you tomorrow,” he replied. He walked back into the house and headed back into the bedroom. He sat down on the bed again and reached into his bag. He pulled out his papers and his pen and he sighed in the darkness before swallowing his fear, and writing: He felt the rocks move. At first he thought they were going to carry him into the sea, but as he looked down at them they stopped. He felt a sudden urge to pick one up—to see what was hiding underneath it. But as he tried to prize it from its home it stood there resolutely like a soldier. He gave up and hated himself for doing so, but he told himself that eventually he would see what was beneath it. He turned back to the sea. It was bathed in a fog—a fog that invaded his lungs and made his breath short and his thoughts troubled. He coughed and he looked down at his hand, expecting to find blood, but instead he found hundreds and hundreds of tiny pebbles. He dropped them onto the rocks with a fright and swallowed. He felt that someone was watching him and, glanced around, but he was completely alone, with only the rocks to keep him company. He listened to the sea, trying to understand what it was saying, but as it lapped against the beach, moving ever closer, it said nothing. He tried to stand up but the rocks held him down tightly. He struggled with fear as he heard the sea’s threatening cry as it moved closer and closer. And as the cold water froze his feet he had almost given up. He turned to the rocks pleadingly and tried to prize another rock away, but gently this time and he closed his eyes, and all of a sudden it came free with a silent explosion and he looked down with wide eyes. “Michael?” Michelle said through the doorway, and he quickly pushed the papers back into his bag and dropped the pens in after them. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” “It’s fine,” he said as he looked up.

There were dark circles under her eyes which were blood shot and wet, but as she smiled at him as if he wasn’t there, he knew she couldn’t be drunk. “I’m going straight to bed,” she said as she kicked her shoes off. “Are you tired?” “Not really,” he replied. “Are you still writing?” “Not really,” he said again. “Do you mind if I read the writing in bed, then?” she asked hopefully as she sat down beside him. “Just this once.” “Fine,” he said as he stood up. “I’m going to eat something. Good night.” He kissed her warm forehead, and she smiled at him with the last glinting shreds of humanity in her eyes, which disappeared as she turned down to the paper and her eyes turned dull and dead. Michael opened the cupboard and pulled out some bread then poured himself a glass of water. He sat down staring through the open doorway at the light in the hallway as he ate. It turned the cracked-whit- wall paper orange, and the floorboards a dirty black. He swallowed and drank. The bread was dry. The light turned off with a click and he stood up with relief, and tiptoed down the hallway onto the veranda. He sat down on it with his feet in the grass and glanced around at the night. The sky was black with blue specks trying to light the sky, but not even lighting half of the moon. There was a hot breeze, and it ruffled his hair and clothes pleasantly. It seemed like hours before he felt safe enough to prize up the floorboard, and as he reached down in to the darkness he felt eyes on his back and his body turn cold. He felt something smooth and wooden with his fingers, and then clasped it tightly and pulled it from the darkness into the light. He looked down proudly at a smooth machine. It had a wooden handle, and a long metal barrel, but the part he liked most was the circular chamber. He spun it and it clicked softly, then he opened it and pulled out one of the big lead pills it contained. He pushed them back in and then placed it reluctantly back into the darkness. He replaced the floorboard then tip-toed back inside as the eyes left his back. He turned into the bedroom and saw Michelle lying in bed. She was facing away from the window, but he jumped with fright as she turned over. He climbed into bed shaking with fear as he realised she might have been watching him. He felt her put her arms around him, as they reached for something to hold, and he felt the tight clasp of shackles on his wrists, and a noose around his neck.

He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the hot, jumping feeling creeping through his limbs, but not even the jumbled words in his head could drown out the fear that had taken over his body, and when he finally fell asleep he was covered in a terrified sweat.

The Master and the Apprentice When he woke up he still felt her hands around his chest, but they didn’t seem as tight now, until he remembered her eyes, and pushed her hands away with a jolt. He walked quickly into the kitchen and turned the tap on. He splashed the cold water into his face and drank, but it didn’t cool him down. He ran back into the bedroom and grabbed his bag, then looked down at hisbegwife pleadingly. He wanted to wake her up, and beg her, but all he could do was kiss her on the forehead, which felt even more lifeless than yesterday. He ran outside and kept running until he stood leaning against a tree gasping for air. Before he could breathe again he pressed his finger against his ear and spoke: “Bic!” he said desperately. “Bic!” H waited anxiously as his breath returned. “Michael?” The reply finally came. “What’s wrong?” “I think…I think my wife saw me with something.” “With what? Surely it doesn’t matter? Just hand it in.” Hand it in! He’d forgotten the machine! He’d forgotten the machine. He had to go back. He turned around and ran. “With what?” Bic asked again, but he didn’t reply. “Michael are you okay?” he asked. “What did she see you with?” But he didn’t reply. He peered in through the bedroom window and sighed with relief as he saw she was still asleep. He knelt down on the floorboards and ripped one up with a creek, then pulled out two of the machines and dropped them into the bag and replaced the floorboard, then stood up and ran. When he could barely breathe he glanced over his shoulder and couldn’t see his house. “Bic,” he whispered. “She saw me with a gun. She saw me with bullets.” “What the hell are you doing with a gun?” he asked and the fear on his voice scared Michael even more.

“I—” he said. “I don’t know.” He waited in silence. “What sort is it?” Bic asked. “Do you know how to use it?” “It is a 44. Magnum,” Michael replied. “I have it with me.” “For God’s sake get rid of the bullets!” “No,” he replied firmly. “It’s beautiful—they’re beautiful. The only way they’ll take it form me is if they prize it from my cold dead hands! It’s the only thing left that makes sense.” Bic laughed. “What’s funny?” “Nothing,” he replied quickly. “Nothing has changed then. Don’t act stupidly! Forget the other machine: go to work; hand it in. He’ll be there right?” “Yes,” Michel replied. “He practically lives there.” “Good,” he said. “Go quickly. Afterwards we’ll need time to think.” Michael said nothing and held the bag tighter in his hands as he glanced over his shoulder again and walked as the words seeped back into his mind. He blinked in the familiar dust of the town, and found a lonely wall to lean against and catch his breath. As the dust seeped into his lungs he glanced around. Everyone around him had long hair, and long clothes, and walked slowly. They talked quietly and they seemed as dusty as the street. He pulled himself from the wall and headed into one of the buildings —he wasn’t sure which one; only that it was the right one. “Michael!” Professor Baldrick said. “You’re as early as the hare!” “I suppose you’re the turtle, then!” Michael smileed as he felt the sweat welling on his forehead. “I wanted to show you my writing.” He reached into his bag, and swallowed as his hand touched wood. “And I brought this of course.” It slipped from the wood to metal and paper and he pulled them from his bag and handed them to the professor. He looked down at the machine with an air of fear in his eyes, but he discarded it on the table safely, and sat down with the paper in his hands. His eyes disappeared behind the pages, and Michael pressed his finger against his ear, but realised he could say nothing. Finally the Professor’s eyes returned and he smiled. “You must finish this!” he said eagerly. “You have me well and truly enthralled.” “I must admit that I am still troubled,” Michael said, then let his finger fall from his ear with a twinge of fear. “Not yet,” Bic said. “Have you ever destroyed technology? Let him take you first.”

“I can see that in your work,” the professor nodded. “You should have rested for longer.” “I wanted to talk to you, but first let us destroy the machine. It haunts me even on the table.” The professor nodded and picked it up. “Let us,” he said, and they stepped outside. “Press your finger against your ear for three seconds,” Bic said. “And I will be able to hear anything.” Michael did as he was told. “Is something wrong?” Professor Baldrick asked. “No,” he replied. “There’s just something in my ear.” “That one liner was almost worthy of a comic book!” Bic laughed. “I could just imagine Batman saying it after he head butted the joker with his ear. And no,” he said, “I’m not talking about satire but a black and white battle of good and evil with a troubled protagonist.” Michael almost stopped. In the distance he could see a huge tower of dark black smoke reaching high into the sky like a plague. “It used to be that the whole world was like that,” Professor Baldrick said seriously. “When there were factories everywhere and the sky was black. You couldn’t breathe because of all the smoke, and it got into your food and water and made your hair dirty and dry and your skin itchy.” As they drew closer Michael saw a huge building as black as the smoke. And even as they came closer and closer there were no signs that it wasn’t just a giant black brick; there were no windows and no doors and no signs of life. When they were close he could see that the thick black paint was speckled with big disgusting bubbles that made him feel sick. “Feel it,” Professor Baldrick said. “It’s hot.” He pressed his hand against the wall tentatively—against the hideous bubbles, and he smiled. The wall was hard metal, but it was warm like flesh. Baldrick knocked loudly on it and the sound ran out across the wall like an avalanche and the bubbles popped and paint crumbled down to the ground to reveal charred black metal beneath. The wall opened slowly and a man with a black smoky face and bright white eyes was revealed. He wore black overalls and his body was drenched in a layer of black sweat. Behind him Michael could see the shadows of dancing flames, and he could feel the heat on his face, and hear its vicious roar quietened only by distance. “Go on,” Baldrick said.

Reluctantly he pulled the machine from the bag and handed it to the man. He looked down it without saying anything, then turned around and the doors started closing. Michael swallowed as he imagined the flames devouring it, melting it; destroying it. “He looks like a black minstrel doesn’t he?” Bic asked, but he said nothing. They walked in silence all the way into town, with only the words in Michael’s mind keeping him awake. They stepped back into another building, and sat down at a familiar table. Michael rested his hands on his bag for comfort as the Professor smiled. “So, Michael, what is bothering you?” he asked. “The world, professor,” he replied. “That machine…I…I liked it. Have you ever used one? It was fun. That’s all it was, but it was fun. And it was smooth and cold and like nothing else in this world. It wasn’t like words—it—it was unique!” “Unique only because we have destroyed nearly all of them.” The professor didn’t stop smiling. Michael wanted to reach into the bag, and put a bullet in that smile—that confident smile. “It is not good to destroy anything, I am not a fascist Michael, but do you know why we destroyed the machines?” He shook his head. “We destroyed them because they were slowly destroying us. Firstly they invaded our lives and destroyed our minds with the condensing of information. It could move so much quicker then, but only something that is small can move quickly, so everything was cut down and destroyed until it had lost all meaning. All the concise forms of media took the place of great art and literature. But worse than that—worse than that was the second industrial revolution, the birth of the machine factory where man did not build machines, but machines built machines. How quickly things can change, how quickly things can change! The lower class could not work, because there were no jobs for them. They were forced to sit in their homes, kept alive in a dumb stupor by their televisions and computers, connected to the world yet disconnected from each other and themselves—disconnected from their own life. “Then there was the great catastrophe of Global Warming and we knew the world had to change. So many died because of it. You know the only reason machines stayed was to help the economy, to put money in the pocket of greedy politicians and businessmen, but after that the masses erupted—the poor unemployed masses, who had been dead for so many years, buried beneath snippets of information—

rebelled against their murderers and technology was wiped from human history with the disgusting snippets of information that it had brought us. “We destroyed machines because we had to—not because we wanted to! We are lazy animals Michael, we are greedy animals, and machines let us be greedy and lazy, but we are children of God—whether he be a real god or evolution—and sometimes you must make a child do something that he does not want to do if it is better for him.” “It’s a lie,” Bic said. “Global warming was a myth—it was just used so that we could get to where we are now.” Why? Michael wanted to ask, but he held his tongue. “So you see Michael that it had to be done, pleasant or not.” “But that’s not just it,” he shook his head. “Call me selfish but I couldn’t care less about politics. I want to know why I can’t tell the difference between George Michael and Handel—why I wasn’t repulsed by that girl, but intrigued—I want to know why I when I walk through the town— I stop to listen to what is hidden behind those doors as if they hid performance of Shakespeare.” “Lust,” the professor smiled patronisingly. “You have already said she was beautiful yourself. We all have fantasies of the younger woman, and sometimes that can be manifested in a vulgar way. Unfortunately we do not control our own hearts, Michael, but we do control how we react to them. It is understandable that you have reacted this way but you know that there is only one way to get over her. You’re married, but I have talked to your wife and she is worried about you. If living out your fantasies is what you need to do then she will understand. Of course you needn’t even tell her.” He winked. “She’s dead,” he said quietly. “Then grieve, Michael! Forget her, you must. Don’t be sick, Michael, you must forget her.” “I will tell you why,” Bic said angrily in his ear. “But ask him why Strauss is better than The Partridge Family, Michael, ask him why Shakespeare is better than The Sopranos,” “I just want to know why, Professor Baldrick,” he said, “why is Strauss better than The Partridge Family, why is Shakespeare better than The Sopranos.” “Where did you hear those names?” The Professor asked with an expression of disgust. “They are better, Michael, because they enrich your mind. Philosophies are built around words and thoughts, and words and thoughts are best expressed through literature and art. They are nothing but meaningless entertainment. They achieve nothing—

they help nobody—they are a selfish manifestation of exploitation— they are ignorance—they are death itself!” He wiped the sweat from his forehead as he took in a breath after his tirade. “Let me see your ear,” he said and Michael froze. “Wait!” Bic said quickly, but it was too late as Baldrick’s fingers found Michael’s ear. They pulled the machine from it, and threw it to the floor where it crackled and hissed, and wait! Spun around Michael’s head. “Go home Michael,” Baldrick stood up angrily. “Make love to your wife and try and forget about that stupid whore! You’re better than she ever was Michael—you’re better than this!” Michael stood up without a word and stepped outside. He wanted to run to Bic to find out what he had been going to say, but he felt like he had to write, just one last time to purge himself of his lust! He grinned with a bitter determination and ran again—he let the words hit him in the skull one last time. He stopped outside the house. How could he write? He asked as he stepped onto the veranda and remembered those eyes. He could feel them now, prizing their way into his mind, understanding his thoughts when he didn’t. He stepped into the house. There was no scratching; there was no life. He walked back outside and sat down on the veranda, over his secrets, and he reached into his bag and pulled out his pen and paper for one last time: The rocks were gone; he was released as the water crept around his neck, chilling his lungs and making his breath short. He sat up and shivered and turned around hesitantly. Where the rocks had been was sand—thousands and thousands of tiny ground up rocks and shells— tiny shards of the world and they stuck to his wet feet as they hugged him with each step. He stopped. He felt those eyes again—those eyes that crept into his soul and stopped his heart. He turned around and gasped. A woman stood before him. She was naked and beautiful, her silhouette illuminated by the perfect white moon and she smiled at him with pink lipstick. “My Venus!” he said. She took his head. “Run away with me,” she said. “I am just a witch, and you a pig stranded on the rocks. Let us swim away from her—let us swim to bliss.” “But I will drown,” he said, “we will drown!” She said nothing and turned to the water, still holding his hand, and she walked, and he followed. The sand was soon washed from his feet

by the deathly cold water, and it wasn’t long before the water was up to their mouths. He turned to her and the lipstick had been washed from her face, and he could see her for what she really was. He took in one last breath, and closed his eyes. And he asked himself who would drown? Did she betray— Michael jumped fright as he felt cold, bony hands on his shoulders. “Michael,” The Professor said. “Your wife has told me that you have a gun.” Standing on either side of the professor were two men that stared calmly and expressionlessly at Michael. He glanced over his shoulder and found his wife. “They’ll help you,” she said as she kissed him on the forehead one last time. “You’re sick.” He dropped his papers to the floor and kicked them away angrily and the words were thrown around his mind by the impact. He picked up his bag and turned to the veranda. “They’re under that floorboard,” she said as she pointed to his secrets, and he jumped onto the veranda. One of the men followed and prized up the floorboard. “Meaningless machines, Michael,” Baldrick said. “How could you be so stupid? But do not worry, these men will take you to a place where you can rest and read until you are well again!” “It’s not here,” the man looked up and Michael dropped the bag. The gun was in his hand. Everybody took a step back from him as if by magic and he pulled back the hammer. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” he stuttered. “But not mightier than a magnum.” He reached down into the darkness and pulled out a tiny screen. He turned it on and a crudely drawn character appeared on it and spoke: "You can't fight city hall." They froze. "Death and taxes." They recoiled. "Don't talk about politics or religion." They listened. “This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda, rolling across the picket line. ‘Lay down, GI! Lay down, GI’. We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now on the 21st Century, it's time to stand up and realise, that we should NOT allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not SUBMIT to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned with what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control. Those that control my life, and those that seek to control it EVEN MORE! I want FREEDOM! That's what I want, and that's what YOU should want! It's up to each and every one of us to turn loose of just some of the greed,

the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities, because that is the central mode of control, make us feel pathetic, small, so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have GOT to realize we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century's gonna be a new century! Not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance, of classism and statism, and all the rest of the modes of control... it's gonna be the age of humankind, standing up for something PURE and something RIGHT! What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it's all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated! The TRUTH is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of LIES! I'm SICK of it, and I'M NOT GONNA TAKE A BITE OUT OF IT! DO YA GOT ME? Resistance is NOT futile, we're gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, WE'RE NOT A BUNCH OF UNDERACHIEVERS, WE'RE GONNA STAND UP, AND WE'RE GONNA BE HUMAN BEINGS! WE'RE GONNA GET FIRED UP ABOUT THE REAL THINGS, THE THINGS THAT MATTER - CREATIVITY, AND THE ‘DYNAMIC’ ‘HUMAN’ ‘SPIRIT’ THAT REFUSES TO ‘SUBMIT’! WELL THAT'S IT, that's all I've got to say. It's in your court now.” “There is your meaningless machine,” Michael said as he dropped the machine to the floor and the screen cracked and then flickered and died. “There is what you have destroyed.” “You fool!” Baldrick shouted and ran forwards. “You imbecile! It’s all lies.” He leapt onto Michael and dug his fingers into his eyes and he screamed. There was a loud bang and another scream and Baldrick slipped to the floor. “It’s all lies.” Through the red he saw Baldrick’s face. It was as lifeless and blank as when he had been reading. Michael ran blindly, his eyes stinging, and he never wanted to stop. But something hard hit him in the face and he was sent sprawling onto the ground. He opened his eyes and his vision was clearer. He had run head first into a tree. He waited for his head to stop spinning then laughed; the words were gone—his mind was clear! He picked up the gun and pushed the hammer down again then stood up. He pushed it into his trousers and pulled his t-shirt down over it with a grin as he imagined himself to be so like a black man he had seen fighting aliens. But his smile faded as he remembered Baldrick’s lifeless face. He ran again. This time in the direction of the city.

He listened to the mechanical buzz of voices behind doors as he walked through the city. His urge to stop and listen wasn’t gone, but he knew that he couldn’t stop—that he could never listen. He stood outside a familiar house. He raised his hand to knock but the door opened quickly and he was pulled inside before he knew whose sharp hands dug into his shoulders. “What happened?” Bic asked. He looked down at Michael and saw his clear eyes, and saw something in them—something like grief. “I shot Baldrick,” he said apologetically. “I didn’t mean to! But he attacked me—he grabbed me—he tried to kill me! But for one brief second I saw fear in his eyes—I saw myself in his eyes!” He smiled. “I played him—I played him something from a show—something that he understood—something that he couldn’t understand!” “You’ve got to get out of here!” Bic said quickly. “Or you’ll be thrown into the fire with your gun. Those bastards think they’re poets, as if they’ve built their very own hell for machines and people alike, but they kill—they destroy with mechanical reliability! You must run, Michael you must escape from this place.” “I have no where to go,” he said. “And besides, I want to hear what you were going to tell me!” “But you don’t have time. Your life is more important than some trivial postcard-level philosophy!” Michael stared at the professor angrily. “Tell me.” The expression was drained from his face and he sighed. “Okay,” he said as his hands slipped from Michael’s shoulders. “Come with me.” Michael followed him down the hallway and into the room with the screens. They sat down on the couch and Michael waited eagerly. “Information is nothing but communication, and communication can be used by anyone no matter its form,” he said. “What they do not believe—what you did not believe, is that there is no difference in information—that there is no difference between different pieces of art. But it is all the same, it is all expression whether it is propaganda or philosophy; whether it is pornography or plagiarism! That’s all it is, words, images, sounds, and they are only what your culture and society tell you they are. “They didn’t destroy technology because it had brought down society —the second industrial revolution didn’t destroy society due to unemployment because machines couldn’t do anything, no machines were rendered useless because we simply ran out of fossil fuel. Then

society had to change drastically and we are currently transitioning from one society to another. It has been hardly any time, Michael, but it feels like centuries. But that’s the beauty of information they need merely say something happened the way they wanted it to even if it was only thirty years ago and everybody will believe them because they are the meaning of the information. “Is Lolita about paedophilia or obsession? If paedophiles are the current villain of society why not say it’s the former and ban it? What is it about Michael?” “An obsession with machines,” he replied. “Or if you want to add it to your propaganda re-publish it without even editing it and merely market it, for want of a better term, as a book about man’s unhealthy obsession with machines, and voila, you’ve got a piece of propaganda you didn’t even need to write yourself!” “But why destroy the machines?” he asked. “Have you noticed that the machines they destroy still work? They don’t destroy ones that do not—they don’t march into the city and raid televisions except on occasion, but it is illegal to watch and nobody is supposed to have them. You know the answer yourself, Michael, you have just spent the past few days living it out when you couldn’t think!” “Fear,” Michael said. “Fear!” Bic nodded. “Fear so that they can march us off in the direction they want us to go like the brainless imbeciles that we are, but Michael don’t blame them, you were one of them once—I was one of them once! I didn’t lift a finger to stop it from happening, but Michael, if I had nothing would have changed. Unless the majority wants it to the minority cannot win. “So you must run! If you truly hate it then your only option is to retreat into your own world away from them—whether it’s in your head or as an outcast, or burning in hell, but Michael, the history’s pages might judge you as a hero, but come another age and you’ll be a demon again. It’s best that history forgets you completely.” “Okay,” he said. “But where do I go?” “See,” he grinned. “You’re doing what I tell you to do, and I’m doing what the minority tells me to! There is no escape and there should be no blame because we can’t think for ourselves—but that is the path that our species has chosen to take.” He laughed. “No, that is just what our species is, but at least we aren’t grasshoppers!” He winked. “Unless the sex is worth it.”

“But there’s one last thing I want to do,” he shook his head. “I want to burn the gun.” “Just go Michael, it isn’t worth the risk.” Michael stood up. “I have to.” Bic smiled as he stood up. “Now you’re doing just as history bids you to! If anybody writes your story know that you will be judged and nobody will really understand your motivations or thoughts but they will pick you apart regardless and use you and spit you out until you’re no longer yourself but just a piece of meaningless information.” “That’s okay,” he smiled reassuringly. “I don’t understand why I want to do it myself!” Bic laughed and leaned over his shoulder. “Run, Michael, run. After you have burned the gun continue passed hell until you come across train tracks—God how I miss trains—then follow it east to Eden. There will be others who have had enough of this life.” “Thank you,” Michael smiled. “I wish that Charlotte could have come with me.” “No,” Bic smiled. “Charlotte is better off dead. She wouldn’t have liked it there—there weren’t enough people. That was all she understood. But she knew that information was just our thoughts, and that our thoughts weren’t under our control, but she didn’t drown under that idea, she embraced it and looked passed our thoughts at us! That’s what she thought mattered.” Michael swallowed. “In another lifetime she would have blossomed, but no man or woman can escape the laws of luck. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time as we all are and who benefits from it?” “People like Professor Baldrick,” he said. “Baldrick is dead. The only thing he got was a short life of superiority and then he got a bullet for all that he had done for his species! That was all the damn thanks he got.” “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “It’s not your fault,” he smiled. “It forces us to do everything; even kill others. Now run Michael! Spit in the face of history and be remembered for just a moment as a criminal before you are desecrated under the hood of heroism and villainy!” Michael smiled at Bic for one last time and Bic smiled back, then he turned to the doorway and ran. He ran through the city listening to the illegal muffled voices, and the sizzling drone of radios, then fell out

onto the grass and listened to the chirping and the rustling and then froze. He sniffed in the bitter, harsh smell of smoke and followed an orange serpent dancing its way murderously through the countryside obliterating everything in its path like a furious phoenix. He swallowed as it engulfed the town and grew higher into the sky devouring people and buildings and paper and words and voices and turning them all into black smoke that filled his lungs and the sky and made him cough and splutter and his eyes water. He threw the gun as hard as he could in its direction and it disappeared behind a grassy mirage. He wanted to go closer and make sure it was swallowed by the flames but even here he was sweating from the fiery heat that was as engulfing as the sun was pleasant. He walked now—he couldn’t run—and he turned his back to the flames and tried not to think of the people that it was killing, destroying, and burning as easily as he had shot Professor Baldrick, and as he walked he saw his face plastered against his, and he felt his frantic fingers digging into his throat and heard his scared cries in his hands, as he cried into them. He had killed a scared animal out of fear and he could not have done anything about it! Then he remembered his wife—they weren’t his words!—he swallowed. No! No! They were from something he had seen, something about people, something as stupid as everything else, something as stupid as he had thought his wife was. And those were his thoughts—those were is thoughts! Oh God those were his thoughts! And he wished they still were, because they turned to her charred corpse before him, and he hated himself for thinking that she would not be changed much, and he hated himself for having hated her, if only for a few days. “Don’t die!” he shouted. “Not when it might all be over! You can escape! You can all escape! Run Bic, run Michelle, run Charlotte!” But she was dead. He swallowed. And if they escaped it would start all over again. They would go back to destroying and belittling each other and it would all start again. Anarchy was temporary, fascism was temporary, but society was permanent and there was nothing he could do about it except kill himself or remove himself from it, and that’s what he was doing! But to another one…to another one…to a better one until it grew and had to change and had to make them all hate each other again. He turned back to the fire and saw that it had crept its way into the city. “Run!” he cried one last time and then coughed.

He looked back at the flames where the gun might have once been and the watery flames and sky made his eyes catch on fire. He felt like he was boiling and he wished he had the gun. He wasn’t a hero; he wasn’t a villain: he was just a coward. He just wanted the madness to be over and he wanted the gun in his hand so that he could end it himself—for once he would be in control! But he wouldn’t. He shook his head. He would be just another victim, another tool for them to use —but he would have got what he wanted—even if it was what they wanted. He stood there waiting for the flame. If he was turned to smoke and floated up into the sky nobody could use him. He wouldn’t turn into meaningless information but into the atmosphere itself—he would be eviscerated from everything. Then he looked down at his hands as the heat burned his nose and eye brows. But he was just as meaningless as the sky, all he was was flesh, blood and bone; all he was was water. He was just as stupid as everybody else and his thoughts were nothing but words that even he couldn’t understand and use. In his madness he wasn’t ignorant—he could finally see what he really was! A scared animal just trying to survive. Survive. He turned and ran. He ran from the flames and the death and the ash and the smoke and the heat, and he ran. He ran. Then he stopped, and he gasped, and he paused for one moment as he looked down at never ending metal tracks rising up out of the weeds like a crucifix and so confidently that they seemed to never end. Then he fell onto them and coughed and spat and bled all the soot and smoke from his lungs until all that was left were scars, and his chin was covered in phlegm and saliva. Then he stood up and wiped his face and he wondered which way was east. He looked up into the sky but the sun had disappeared behind black smoke and the world was turned a blood red, with the horizon a burning orange as if it was sunset. Then he turned down the tracks and squinted. In the distance he could see something. He could see people; he could see a camp. He stepped between the tracks and he ran again. Over wooden slats and stones and weeds until he was in the camp and he collapsed onto the stones and gasped for air as people looked down on him like the sun in the pitch black sky. “Who are you?” one of them asked. “I am Michael,” he replied with a cough.

“I’m Greer,” a man with smoky brown hair and a scarred wooden face said as he pulled him to his feet. “Looks like you might be the only one that survived.” “I hope not,” he said. “Well,” another added. “We better head for somewhere else; we better get away from the stench of death.” “Let’s follow the tracks,” Greer said. “You can come with us if you want, Michael.” Michael nodded. “But you’re in no fit state to walk.” Greer handed him a bottle of water and he drank and almost vomited as the water carried with it all the smoke and soot from his mouth and throat. “We’ll rest until tomorrow. The flames shouldn’t reach us by then.” Michael lay down on the slats without another word and closed his eyes. “We have beds!” Greer said, but he was already asleep.

A New Dawn When he woke up his throat crackled and his lungs were full of black tar. He sat up and coughed again until he thought he had passed out, but he felt an arm on his shoulder and he opened his eyes and waited until the world wasn’t black anymore. “Here.” A bottle and a loaf of bread was pushed into his hand. He ate and drank and both carried more and more bitter smoke into his lungs, but he felt better when was finished. “Come on,” the man said and Michael blinked until he could see him. It was Greer. “We’ve got to go or the flames might catch up.” He followed him and glanced up at the sky. It was still black. “It’ll burn itself out eventually,” another of them said. “I’ll try and keep up,” Michael said in a dead voice. “I’m sorry, but I might be slow.” “It doesn’t matter,” Greer smiled. “We can always carry you!” “But you’ll be slowed down.” “Maybe,” he nodded, “but it won’t matter. We’re a family here and we don’t leave family members behind.” “Do you think it’s like a phoenix?” he asked. “The flames: killing everybody but us—but me. And I arise covered in dust and smoke barely alive; barely able to talk, and I find you and we continue on.” “Don’t be silly,” he smiled. “It was just flames that killed them; nothing else. And it was a roaring blaze. You know we used to have trucks that carried water and put them out, but even they couldn’t have stopped it. If something burns it burns and burns until it burns itself out and then slowly things return until there’s enough fuel for it to all burn again and it happens again and again. It’s nothing poetic—it’s not a metaphor it’s just a God damn flame! It’s life and death, Michael, so just be glad you survived. Did you have a family?” He nodded.

“Well we’re your family now. Remember them fondly but it’s nobody’s fault—not even that idiot stuck directly in hell. Whether he started the fire or not he didn’t build hell, and those that did didn’t want to, and those that made them didn’t want to! And it wasn’t their fault that they were people, that’s just how it was.” He said nothing and there was silence except for the sound of the crackle and boom of the flames in the distance, and the gentle whistle of the wind carrying the smoke mercilessly into his lungs. Mercy, he smiled, was just a word. Then he looked over his shoulder at the fire. They wouldn’t leave him behind, he was sure, and the flames wouldn’t catch him. But when they were free and when they met more and more people or found another city and other life they’d be trapped again. But not yet. He was still among animals. He wasn’t among people yet.