Young Writers Society

Merry Mourners

[flashback]

Your son? Six this morning, thereabouts. Smashed by a hammer. She’s in custody, your wife. Speak to her if you want. No? I really am sorry, sir. Very sorry. My colleague sends his condolences.

Help yourself to coffee.

The officer turns back to the window, his hands locked behind him and his neck upright with the poise of a swan. He is watching the trees. Me still a leaning figure of bones, tense, upon the chair. My face bloodless.

You okay, sir? Seem a bit shocked is all.

More waiting. Reclined waiting.

Do we have your phone number?

Good.

Well, the officer says, don’t let us keep you.

His hands waving at the doors with their glass panels revealing a spidery day. Light depressed by the blackout film, a bruised sunlight waiting for me.

I walk outside. Don’t let us keep you.

[/flashback]

*

Images passing before his eyes again, drifting in and out like a movie reel clicking round and round in an empty theatre. His mind clouded by them. Ashamed words eluded from his voice. There is no one to hear them. The beggar leaning against the wall, his words all scattered by the flight of moth businessmen.

The house is hungry. Its doors and windows dried and shrivelled mouths before the summer, carpet weaving inside, tongue parched, an unrolled cigarette. Door open. Come in, it says. Hungry, desperate. Unripened strawberry walls not good enough.

Let me feast.

The beggar learns his first word today. The first in a long while that the crowd has not broken and scattered among the weeds. The word was good once, it was civil, common in is air. He watches the people waddle along the pathway and they, without intent, remove all doubt of its existence. But it does not exist for the beggar. He doesn’t know what the word is, but he can see the people smile it, and laugh it in and taste it in their food only a few feet away. Food, food, food. He drools for it like a hidden child at the summer day.

Begging. That’s what it’s all about. His hands are not high at all, barely significant. They just float above his knees in a kind of limbo state of play. The beggar laughing. His hands are snatched together, two palms rubbing together like a millionaire holding his notes in the wind. He’s laughing at God.

Crosses prayers fear death perfection.

Not really fitting him, and so he’s laughing. Perhaps he’s praying. No one will ever know. The beggar’s mind is scared like a tortoise before man. The shell ever so slowly crumbling, at the moment just a little flaky and not a lot more. But soon, his head will break.

*

[flashback]

I’m sitting in my lounge now. Didn’t really drive anywhere, just sort of passed along the roads and heard the old spice of the radio blasting slurred music down my ears as the tyres rocked in and out of potholes and dead rabbits and foxes and badgers.

Gotta go gettin’, father can’t go waitin’, on my wedding day.

And I sang it a little, wondering why I was singing alone a song that I never had before.

Door closed. TV on. Eyes closed. Dream on. Boy there. Woman next to him, her shadow resting on his skin and then the boy’s hand trailing through his hair and then there’s no more to that dream before the woman’s index finger rises to her lips and we’re in a nightmare. But we’re together if only for a short time. All three in a void where there’s no nothing, not even an up or a down but still all three of us who elude the emptiness that should be.

So quick, so quick.

06:50. The alarm tolls and it’s time for another dose of reality. This is where someone has removed routine from my day, and it’s where the woman would sit up and stir up a coffee and some porridge in the kitchen and give some to me. It’s where I’d nod and drink as some sick child. The phone rings. I pick it up.

What do you want?

Heard the news.

The news, I say. It’s no news to me.

It sure ain’t. Look, my mrs is comin’ over later to see how you are.

I think I’m not. Just leave me alone, Paul.

You know what Mum said on her deathbed?

Always send your wife if there’s dirt to be scrubbed. Yeah, I can guess.

She said to sit by my phone and keep a watch on the door if you go off the rails, he says. Little brothers need to be looked after. But let me know if you’re needin’ a counsel. Work’s nothing.

This is where I’d ebb a smile to my lips. This is where habit shows its first sign of defeat.

Bye, Paul.

I fall back onto my bed, and I stare at the ceiling. The patterns start to mutate, mouths opening and closing and eyes bobbing around like those mouths as if they were the rude audience to some silent orator. So many voices, now, so many that I can’t even hear.

[/flashback]

*

He’ll be forgotten in a moment. Thieves don’t care for emotional wealth. Murderers will see and shake the thought away. Even they have some motive. The moment of deity as the victim slips down not quite dead, the bit where they die merely a concluding consequence—none of this in the beggar. Then the pedestrian, passive workers. They haven’t the time to care.

Lots and lots of people all seeing him—but he can do what he wants. Attention, yes, attention. He can keep that for a few moments and then as soon as they walk away he’s forgotten. He can do what he wants.

He’s God.

Finishes praying.

Tucks up his eyes behind their lids and stands up. Man watching him. Now a woman. A group of people, crowd. He can hear them notice him as he rises to their level and now the light is shining on his rags. This is where the people lip up their faces in revulsion and scramble away. Desperados breaking up beyond recognition. But it don’t matter, it’s a dream, he’ll wake up soon.

Laughing. Can’t be sure who, though, and so he’s laughing some more to be certain.

Wino! they spit. Lookata freak, mum!

Stay away, darlin’. Don’t let yourself buy anything.

Drugs! the beggar shouts. I got drugs! That’s what you wanna hear! Hah!

And now they’ll all toppling over his arms and tripping onto the ground like children on broken slides.

Run, mama! He’s insane!

It’s all very good fun. He regards them as they flee, as if they see something to fear in him. His undernourished arms as they loop in some kind of dance—nothing but a wild chance card that they take, running. He watches the afternoon claim everyone in the vicinity as they hurry away and their feet clatter like cutlery on a platter. So many voices. All those faces that never die and just get bigger and more powerful with their eyes all glaring from the air like women and children shooting up out of shallow water and screaming with sharks as they chase them—

This is when the sun sets. Shortly after the road sleeps and the beggar moves on the ground. No one leaves. Pigeons flounder overhead. Doors and windows like cells and bolted shut with their owners risking a glance outside and holding their phones close in case the madman comes knocking.

Now it’s just the voices. He knows all about their lusty glares their moonless mares myriads of followers pilgrims who love his pain feed off it hungry they’re going to get him.

*

[flashback]

Honey, I’m saying. I’m home.

Honey’s not responding. I wonder why. She’s banged up in some jail, maybe. Don’t know. I think the phone said something about it yesterday but it’s hazy like the crackling of a TV screen. A few bits of information dropping in through the black and white dots but no real colour, no substance, no connection, no plot, no marbles. I can’t really be sure I woke up. I don’t think I have, yet. Because none of this makes sense—

The clock says 17:21

and now

there are words. Wake up, it says. Wake up.

I never thought my life could be lost late October dreaming. Is it even October? No? That’d be why then. When I go to bed I wake up, yes—it’s up the wooden hill for me. Resting on the pillow, snorting, rolling over like some drunken student. Them good old days. I’m smiling as I fall asleep.

[/flashback]

*

Night. Bits of chipped moon rise out of the clouds like a wart poking out of cotton wool. It’s too cold, suspenseful, as if a group of vampires are waiting for someone to die. No, no—mustn’t think that. Dreams are wild. Anything you realise couldn’t happen, any time you remind yourself that no, it’s not possible, it will be.

He’s scrubbing his head of all the voices.

Lemme go leave me alone I hate you. Cummon. Show us ya heart.

Get outa my head! the beggar says, but they just get louder. Rocking, rocking back and forth, forth, back and forth like an old cat lady on her rotting chair.

Excuse me? Would you like to come with us?

No! he shouts. But he looks up and there is a woman there with her book cover hair smiling some voodoo doll complexion. Julia?

Julia. Her voice intones as she looks up at a man, not crouching though still a little shorter than her and they share a glance. They’re plotting.

Paul said something about a Julia. Was that his wife?

You’re not Julia? Go away! The beggar is clinging onto his beer-stained trousers and looking up at her opal reflection, a dim globe against the moon. What about Sam? Haven’t you grown!

The man looks at him. Yes, yes, it must be Sam. No one would approach him like this. He’s the king of the road. Only the beggar walks the street at night, only the beggar talks throughout the night. Only ever him.

And those voices.

Go for it.

The man grabs at the beggar, and pulls him up by the collar. Sam stinks. Full of flowers and slumdog odours.

Get off me! Please, please, just let me sit down. I’m tired. I need to sleep.

(I need to wake up from this nightmare.)

And then a few minutes later they take the beggar and lock him up in a big white box where the sun does not shine.

*

Note - obviously, this is very strange and I don't really know if it works. All those flashbacks were in italics, but it would have taken me far too long to italicise them here. Would love general feedback on whether this appeals to you, if you like it--all that jazz, please. Thanks for reading!