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Ray listens to their conversations. On the bus or at the jobcentre where he works. The tiny circles of subject matter repeated endlessly. These people seem to live vicariously through their offspring, so proud of what they have produced. A colleague describes in minute detail her teenage son's exploits. Isn't it just darling? An objective ear would say she's raised a spoilt and obnoxious little shit. They see things through specs tinted by the bonds of DNA. Ray would remain silent, occasionally nodding, feigning politeness in response while a voice in his head growls 'Why do you think I'm interested? Why don't you hurry up and die?'.
Births, christenings, confirmations, education, jobs, engagements, weddings. Joy! More births, houses, new jobs, promotions, retirements, funerals. More funerals. Did you hear Such-and-Such is dead? He was only sixty, still young. Still young. Saw him last week, fit as a fiddle. Funerals, grandkids, more funerals, death with DNA following only a few years behind. It's circles and cycles, unbreakable, endless, like Ouroboros, consuming itself forever.
To Ray, life and death seem interchangeable. Was there much difference in the two? Past and present didn't exist. They were just traces, illusions. The 'now' existed, so the 'now' is every single moment of consciousness. Now is birth and now is death, but it has to go somewhere so it's birth again. More circles. So death is not the end. Ray couldn't figure out whether that was good or bad. Is there nothing besides endlessly repeating futility? Is there no way out of this?
A child's voice whined. Stop the ride I wanna get off! Stop! Get off! Life is a ride, they say. You're supposed to enjoy it. Enjoy it, damnit! Ray wondered whether the desire to exit was right or wrong? Was it the truth or the lie? Sane or crazy? Which was the reality?
*
Ray sat and smoked Camel and blew smoke rings. They hung in the air for a moment before losing all shape and disappearing. He drank for months and didn't drink for months and then drank again. Circles pulled him back into place like gravity.
Today he would go to his cousin's house. Frankie used to be in the air corps. Liked guns and junk. Ray was going to 'borrow' the Glock 17. It was kept in an Adidas box on top of his cousin's wardrobe. He would go see his old principal, the one who had always like to get 'physical' with 10 year old boys and girls. He would perform an experiment; 'The cathartic effect of homicide on the fundamental void of life'.
*
She was messed up in the head, or else she just had weird taste. It was the only explanation for her apparent interest in him. Kathy, married, no kids, tens years older. What was her deal? She was messed up in the head, and Ray was almost normal when he was with her. Sometimes he tried to count how many different people he was. He guessed that it was not healthy. Weren't people the same no matter what, or did everybody change completely depending on their company? He was good with her, a good guy. That's what she told him. She brought out the best in him, made him feel like a man and not a boy. She had a way. It was natural, for her, to be in total control and make him feel like a man at the same time. She had a way.
*
Ray sat reading a book about the holocaust. A picture of the sign above the death camps, Arbeit Macht Frei, work liberates. Self-disgust became worse when he thought of those who had truly suffered. He found it even more pathetic that his self-disgust grew in such a manner, and his cycle of thinking continued until he wished he was nothing. Not just self-destruction, obliteration, that didn't cut it no more. He wanted not to exist, to be anonymous and invisible. He wanted never to have existed.
No. This attitude made him sick. Self-pity, self-disgust, pathetic maggot. Endless circles, inescapable. Fuck it.
*
His birthday was in July, so he was a cancer. And like a crab, he had crawled sideways his whole life. Never grown, just preserved like a science experiment in a jar. His 'thing' with this woman - that's what it was called, a 'thing' - wouldn't do. He accepted that. It was low, carrying on like that. Sleazy. Another reason for self-disgust, but it hadn't stopped him. He told himself it was her choice. She was the one with the spouse, the one with obligations, and responsibilities. She was messed up, she had a screw loose, she was a boozer. She had pity for him? Possibly. He wanted her to condense him down into a powder, melt him to a liquid and pump him into her veins. He wanted to enter her bloodstream and scream around her bloody heart. It wouldn't do. He didn't ask any questions. He didn't have any right to, being just an excursion from real life for her.
*
The school principal sits slumped on the floor of the office, holding his jaw from where the butt of the gun smashed into it. The collar of his shirt cuts into his jowls and a collection of stray hairs lay flattened on top of his head, cast adrift of their brothers.
"I never... I never did anything!"
"You think I don't remember. You think nobody remembers?"
"I never did anything! I never did anything!"
"Admit it, what you did."
He doesn't admit anything, just repeats his mantra.
The guy's insistent. He's convincing. His expression is incredulous and there is no flicker of recognition of what he did. Ray points the gun at him to whimpers and strange snorts of fear. It makes no sense, and Ray's mind starts to fog. Real or unreal, right or wrong? Memory is unreliable, just traces of existence. "You pathetic piece of shit," he shouts, still pointing the gun at the man, but not sure who he's addressing.
*
As Ray waits at the train station, a man sidles up to him. He's Scottish, with pleading eyes, dead pools of black, and he's grubbing around for 'a few quid tae go home, like'. His bare arm is like a map, with track marks and thick scars like white tatoos. "Goin' home tae kill mahsel', he declares, all matter-of-fact. Ray nods and instantly wonders why going home is necessary, but perhaps he has to settle a few things before he settles himself. Ray gives him a fiver, but this is apparently not enough, as the guy asks for more. A tenner does it, and Ray immediately feels slighted and resentful. Best of luck with that, he thinks acidly. He goes to the front of the train to avoid any further interaction with the Scot.
The train fills up with chattering commuters. They talk about their jobs, and the weather, and then they talk about how their kids are doing. The woman beside Ray speaks about her daughter who is afflicted with some genetic muscular which means limited capabilities. She's done her final exams and is planning on going to college, despite her obvious physical limitations. She wants to be a veterinarian because she loves animals, an interest fostered by a childhood without many friends or normal activities. Pride radiates from this woman. She tries to contain it but she cannot. For one insane moment Ray loses his breath, head reeling. Screws his eyes shut. It passes. There are some worthy people, but I am not one of them, Ray thinks, disembarking.
*
The local news is on the television in the pub. The report is about the man who entered a local school with a gun and balaclava, threatening the principal after school hours. The story had been all the rage around town for the past week. The reporter is blathering about something else now though. "...recent publicity arising from the story has prompted allegations of abuse from one woman... " Several builders come in the door of the pub chortling about something, drowning out the voice, "...are being investigated by police...".
The cricket is put on at the request of a regular, though others are complaining because the football will be on soon and they're not sitting here watching fucking cricket. Ray sits and drinks, and doesn't do much at all. He listens to conversations, waits for closing time and tells himself that he's going to give up the drink again, but knows that it won't be for too long.
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