One
I put my cigarette on the ground, stamp out the glowing tobacco with a victorious movement of my foot, and return to the past. My life is two things now: a battle against a numerous and belligerent army of cigarettes, and a flashback. There is no longer a present.
I’m not sane anymore, so I linger in the past where I’m totally balanced. Think of it like self-inflicted hallucinogenic time travel.
I have a nicotine regiment in my pocket that are falling one by one against the force of a lighter and my corroded lungs, and that is all I need to break space and time inside my head. I’ve given it a name; one of the words I’ve made up and written down in the empty pages of non-events that tell my fractured story.
Cigaretterospect. Need I explain?
If yes, maybe later.
Tonight, like every night, my body is in the cold embrace of the courtyard all around me, and the apathetic eye of the sky above, that hangs beyond recognition like the subconscious. They let me out here to smoke, but it falls short of an exit by a long way.
My mind is four years in the past, where feelings existed and everyone belonged to themselves. Although, truth be told, this is the second time in my life I have not belonged to myself. The first time was willful.
I’m at a child’s birthday party, celebrating the birth of someone I have never met. I didn’t meet many small children back then, but there I was, surrounded by them as they played and laughed and slowly grew up. You’re only as old as your memories, and these kids were having a simultaneous growth spurt.
I stood near the barbecue, talking to one of the only two people I knew there. I don’t know him now, so his name is government property like everything else that was taken away. He was tall, much taller than me, and had an anomaly of hair that covered his chin, cheeks and neck, but had totally abandoned his head. He wore a singlet and shorts, as he moved steaks and sausages around the hot plate like pieces on a chess board; trying to force the inedible and undercooked meat into a checkmate. Soon he would win and we would all share the spoils of victory. That’s just what men did in those days.
“So how’s school going?” he asked, genuinely. He never looked away from the barbecue.
“Slowly,” I said. “I’m in the middle of exams and each day feels like it could be the rest of my life.”
It was true. When you’re achieving something, time slows down. Conversely, failure causes time to accelerate and leave you behind.
Here there is no success and no failure. There is no time.
“Yeah?” he said, finally looking up at me.
“Yeah,” I said, looking away.
“It must help having someone like...”
I want to interrupt myself here. I can’t continue with this particular passage of events. It’s not exactly painful of distressing to recall, it’s just that when I remember her name being said by someone else it sounds too real. I don’t want to think that she’s real, that she existed. That she might still exist. I can say her name all I want, if I force myself to believe she was a delusion.
I crush another tobacco soldier into the ground. He didn’t scream; a dignified soldier’s death. The courtyard is about the size of a waiting room at a doctor’s office. I don’t know why that comparison comes to mind. Maybe because I associate the courtyard with waiting.
Waiting for something to happen.
Waiting to go somewhere new.
Waiting for them to call me back in.
They call me back in after about ten smoke/repeat circuits. Mr. Jones sticks his head out the door like a man acquiescing to the guillotine, and this alone is the sign that I allowed to reenter the house.
I use the term ‘house’ lightly. It is more of a building that people happen to inhabit.
I use the term ‘people’ lightly, too.
There is no smoking inside, so that part of my life is relinquished when I cross the threshold. They let me outside to smoke because it keeps me complacent; possibly there are depressants in what they give me to inhale.
In the middle of the room is a large round table. The Trigger sits at the far end, with the Blacks all looking at him attentively. They don’t notice me until the Trigger tells them to.
“He’s coming along well,” he announces. They all turn and look at me. “He isn’t showing any signs of regression, and I’m confident that he’ll be fit to join the rest of them in a few weeks.”
Odd, weeks are still a part of society.
“Is he speaking much?” one of the Blacks asks.
“No, but we know that he’s listening, which is marked improvement from when he first got here,” the Trigger says.
I was listening. They were just concerned that I wasn’t reacting. If sound passes into the ear, is turned into vibrations by the eardrum, enters into the inner ear and reaches the brain through a series of sensory nerve fibers, it doesn’t really mean anything has happened. What happens inside your head has nothing to do with the reality; a wince, a twitch – any sort of reaction when you’re being closely monitored – that is the only sign of life that they care about.
I like thinking about my own physiology. It’s the only thing they can’t change. Humanity and evolution will outlast these bastards. I hope.
“We’ll keep him under close observation for the time being and we’ll let him go if nothing goes wrong,” he says to the Blacks. It is the end of me as a subject.
I am led by Mr. Jones, who had been standing next to me during my short stint as a focal point, back to my room. The hallway is long, like walking through dimly-lit drug rehabilitation. There are doors on either side of the walk, none of which I have ever been through or even seen open.
Near the end of the hallway is my room. I live in a cupboard. Not in the architectural sense; it’s actually a decent sized room. A cupboard is where you put unimportant things that you only bring out on the odd occasion that you need them. It’s not healthy, but I’ve come to think of myself as a coffee cup.
I walk in, Mr. Jones stands behind me, making sure I enter, and closes the door when he’s satisfied that he’s no longer needed. I’m not sure he has ever been needed anywhere in the world.
And now comes what might be called the ‘exciting’ part of the story. I resume the potentially dramatic process of planning my escape.
I’m going to kill Mr. Jones with my bare hands, burn down the house and run away into the night. To where there is no more freedom than there is here.
Mr. Jones is much smaller than me, so it won’t be a problem. And the house will burn easily with all the materials they keep around here. With any luck the house won’t just burn, it’ll explode in a riot of chemicals and fire.
Where then? I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll pretend to be a bricklayer. Something I can make it look like I know what I’m doing.
I lay on my bed (I call it a bed, despite just being a mattress on the floor) hands behind my head and look at the ceiling. I’ve got everything I need to make my plan a reality, but I’ve also got one extra that means I’ll never be able to leave: complacency.
I can’t break a stream of inertia even to save my life. Things have always been that way; they’ve only now become so melodramatic.
My room is empty, in exactly the same way that I am empty. I have internal organs and the room has furniture, but we’re both devoid of anything that might make us ‘full’. There is no warm and inviting fireplace, no desire, no pictures on the wall, no smell of a lover, no desk with a typewriter and no choices to be made. Try to combat it as I may, there is an affinity between me and the last place on earth I’d like to be.
I think about that for a while: the last place on earth I’d like to be. What about the inside of a nuclear reactor? Or one of those new prisons that have been set up? I remember learning about the camps the Nazis set up for the weaker pieces of humanity, and I guess they’re a little bit like that. Only a little bit, though.
I could be on top of a skyscraper, looking over the edge, with a cigarette in my mouth and a grand idea in my head. I’ve always been interested in that sort of thing. I don’t know why. Maybe because so many people die, wishing to stay alive, and then there are people staying alive, wishing to die. Which situation I am in, I can’t say for sure. Let me deliberate over the evidence for a while, and I might come up with a conclusion.
Even sleep isn’t the way it used to be. It used to be like friend you invited over whenever you wanted its help. Now it’s like an apathetic criminal, that jumps you lackadaisically when it can be bothered getting out of bed. I can never predict when sleep is awake to come over and help me out.
I crawl under the blanket, hoping that if I look vulnerable he’ll get me. I wait a few minutes, and I can feel him approaching.
He attacks. Lights out.
