HERE BEGINS NANOWRIMO 2005!!!
Mid-november edit: I decided to make my Nano LJ friends only. Let me know here or at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rodia if you want to read it. ;)
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In which Thomas gives his inexpertly phrased condolences to little Lottie, meets a few neighbours on the staircase and is asked unpleasant questions, and in accordance with his decision of the previous night attempts to evict the cat from his apartment, but finds it to be more difficult a task than he could ever have anticipated.
The fatigue that hunted Thomas Ruskin for over a week habitually dropped down on him in the early evening, brought him down fast and kept him in its clammy clutches until the late morning. It would return again in the early afternoon, weaker but still a power that was hard to resist. Thomas hadn't gone to work the previous day, nor in fact the day before, or even Monday the week before. He had not called to explain or inform his supervisors of how long he would be away, because each night he had gone to bed expecting to wake up to his alarm clock and show up at work duly and on time. Unfortunately, each morning since that Monday of last week, he slept through the alarm and could not even remember pressing the complicated combination of keys that would turn it off. Thus it was over a week that he had not been to work, and had not presented an excuse. He expected the office to call, but the phone never rang. The line hummed and the operator answered him, but work never called and after two days, three days, four days, Thomas did not think he would have anything sensible to say if they did call. Maybe they had forgotten about him, and he didn't mind, because that meant he wouldn't have to force out explanations. It wouldn't surprise him if they really had forgotten about him, or simply not noticed his absence. The job was boring and made those who laboured at it boring. It was a grey and dull unreal reality that Thomas did not miss.
However he would miss the money at some point, and could not afford a cat to feed.
He nudged the furball at his side and got a claw up his nose. He kicked and got sharp little teeth buried in his big toe. This started a furious fight between the bedsheets. While it lasts, and it will last a good ten minutes, a magpie perches outside on the balcony rail. Its interest is caught by a glass of water that Thomas once left outside and forgot with the passing of the summer. The glass is cut, and glimmers in the particularly pretty autumn sunlight of that day. The magpie cocks its head to the left, and then to the right, but doesn't move. It knows what a glass is, and it knows it's too large and heavy and oblique to be carried to the nest. But it likes to sit perched on the balcony rail as long as it can to watch the sunlight sparkle off the cut glass, because it thinks it's a pretty thing. It knows no one is watching it, and does not worry about being alone on the balcony rail. Being a kind magpie, it always does its best not to appear in public without company, because it knows how much distress that can cause in humans who may be watching. But now it knows it isn't being watched- Thomas is struggling with cat and bed sheets, and is the only one awake. It's five a.m. on a cold autumn Saturday, and no one is privy to the magpie's silent admiration of a sparkly glass of water forgotten on the balcony. But the magpie is careful, and within earshot of the nest. One high pitched call, and her partner will join her on the balcony rail, so that Thomas, who will call a truce with the cat in just a couple of minutes, will not be worried by the sight of one magpie, but cheered by the sight of two.
Thomas is not yet looking out of the window though, but negotiating with the cat. The cat has caught hold of the duvet in an odd way, and is ripping a large tear in it, through cover fabric and into the very stuffing, which is popping out of the rip like yeast bread from a bowl. Suddenly the cat freezes, and diverts its bulging eyes from Thomas. It stares at something on the floor with near rapture, then releases the duvet and dives under the bed. Thomas, who was pulling hard on the duvet to tear it out of the cat's grip is suddenly thrown back onto the chest of drawers. He crashes into it loudly and painfully. Items that stood on the chest of drawers tumble down with the shock- a photograph, a can of deodorant, a plastic bottle of water, a notebook, an agenda, and a small standing mirror which falls to the ground and breaks into pieces.
The magpie outside the window quickly lets out a shrill call. Her partner flies over and they discuss the emergency. They agree to appear on Thomas' windowsill once every half hour, to reassure him of his fortune and divert the bad luck of the broken mirror.
Meanwhile Thomas rubs the bump on the back of his head, and counts the places in which he can expect bruises to show tomorrow. He groans and moans and bends down to look under the bed, where he finds the cat purring as it plays cruelly with a mortally wounded, but still conscious grey mouse.
A few hours later, having dressed, breakfasted and fed the cat, Thomas put on his coat and went out of his apartment, holding a deep enamel cooking pot and a large metal spoon in guise of bucket and spade. He walked down the stairs because even though the button lit up when he pressed it, the elevator would not come. As he reached the ground floor he saw that the reason for this was a coffin laid in between the lift doors, which every few seconds bumped against it with a sad little whine, trying to close.
Next to the tormented elevator stood a group of people, arguing fervently about something. There was mrs. Elber from the third floor, and her little daughter Lottie, both dressed in black and sniffling into large handkerchiefs. The other three people looked like moving men. They were shouting at mrs Elber, and when she was not sniffling into her huge handkerchief, she was shouting back. Little Lottie did her best to cry as loudly as she could, but she spotted Thomas coming down the stairs and rushed to inform him of her terrible sorrow.
“My fish died” she said. “ My grandma died too. The fish killed her.” she sobbed, peeking from between fingers at how this news struck Thomas.
He looked at the coffin and the bumping, sighing elevator doors.
“Your fish killed your grandma?” he asked.
“It was self defence.” she said. “Grandma tried to eat my fish.”
She burst into tears again and blew her nose loudly into her huge handkerchief. She must have been crying for a long time now, because the handkerchief was soggy all over despite its size. Thomas fumbled in his coat pocket and handed her a packet of paper tissues which she accepted gingerly, as if sobbing into disposables somehow lessened her drama. She blew her nose again and looked at Thomas with an irreplaceable small child cuteness, innocence incarnated and the great flattery of a plea for advice which touched Thomas quite a bit, even though he did not like children.
“How do you know” he asked “how do you know that it wasn't the other way around?”
She sniffled and cocked her head, puzzled.
“What do you mean?”
“You can't be sure” he said, helpfully. “It might have always been your grandma killing the fish in self defence.”
The child considered this a while and then burst into screaming hysterics, running back to her mother who stopped in mid-yell and looked startled at Thomas. The whole group turned to look at Thomas. The little girl pointed to Thomas.
Thomas waved the pot and spoon in an explanatory manner, and quickly stepped out of the building to avoid confrontation.
He walked towards the narrow ring of grass, dirt and trees that surrounded the group of apartment blocks he lived in. It looked horrible at this time of year, when all the beauty of the red and golden leaves had already been stomped into the mud. But in the green of spring and the sun of summer, it was a refreshing two tree forest that opened windows and hearts. Foliage is one of the world's most underestimated forces.
There was something of a charm and magic about the two frail trees and miserable bushes, even in near-winter. They were naked and dirty, coloured grey like the slush on the ground, and yet there was that imperishable promise of bloom and green in just a few months time. Sooner, a blanket of white that would enchant the romantic, and parachute bomb down the collars of the cynical. Thomas felt compelled to hug the tree and call it brother. He resisted valiantly, though the urge to make a complete fool out of himself in public was great. He found a spot where the earth was, by miracle, still dry and somewhat sandy, and put down his pot. He started scooping the dryer dirt into the pot with the spoon. He took his time, wanting no rotting leaves, no worms, no beetles, no woodlice or cigarette butts. Clean earth never was an oxymoron before the age of cities. Thomas took his time.
When he had filled the enamel pot to the brim and was sure of having taken no creepy crawlers hostage, he took it carefully by both handles and walked back to the apartment block. As he made his way up the steps, towards the door with the broken glass pane, a stocky woman with a great broom appeared out of nowhere, and blocked his path.
“Yes!” she barked. She was large and angry- her hair was gathered in the kind of tight bun that is more statement of hit points than fashion, and her hold on the broom was tight.
(to be continued...)When I wrote this I felt:  calm And I was listening to: Texarkana |
In which Thomas Ruskin's nerves are stretched to what he incorrectly assumes to be their absolute limit, but in which he also makes a new friend, though he won't realise the value of this encounter for at least two more chapters.
Now, at the exact same moment in which the stray cat that had walked unnoticed into Thomas Ruskin's apartment decided to make his presence known and ask for food, two storeys below on the fourth floor, almost directly below apartment number fifty eight in which Thomas lived, a few interesting things happened all at once. First of all, a fish died. It wasn't a particularly pretty fish, although its owner heartily claimed it to be the most beautiful fish in the world, and encouraged everyone to admire its beautiful orange colour, as well as the almost mystical blue glint which its scales gave off when the light hit them just so, the fish was a dirty brown and wouldn't glint even under a disco ball. It spent most of its living days down in the murk of its bowl, presumably trying to hide from curious eyes, ashamed of its ugliness. It wasn't pretty and it wasn't gifted with much intelligence either, regularly displaying its stupidity by attempting to escape via digging tunnels in the artificial yellow gravel that lined the bottom of the bowl. On a few occasions it had in its desperation tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the bowl, but lady luck seemed to have an affinity for it since each and every time the wretched fish landed in a conveniently placed glass of water. Once it had plunged into a pint of Guinness, and had thought itself well dead in the darkness, but was soon discovered and spat back out into the fishbowl. As far as it remembered, the week it took to recover was the happiest of its whole life.
The day in which Thomas Ruskin's shopping trolley ran away, and in which he found a stray cat in his apartment, was the day when the fish finally succeeded in its suicide attempt, the fourty fifth since its release from the pet store. There was no one in the room, and the fish leapt, without much enthusiasm but with a certain sense of duty. It leapt, and in the split second when lady luck was looking the other way, and fate was calling the bets, it missed the mug of cold breakfast tea by milimetres. As it lay in the silver heirloom sugarbowl, feeling the crystals dissolve gently on its wet scales, it had a brief moment of regret. Before it could become a huge moment of regret and turn into desperation, the fish died of diabetes.
The second thing that happened at the exact same time that Thomas met the cat, and the fish died its sweet death, was the return home of grandma Hughes. She was half blind, half deaf, and fully ancient, and was the grandmother of eight year old Lottie, the owner of the fish and soon to be number one mourner at a double funeral. It so happened that grandma Hughes returned home at the very moment that the fish jumped out of its bowl. In all truth, she was at her door a full fifteen minutes before, but as she was very old (or as she preferred to have it put, meticulously careful) it took her the full fifteen minutes to fit the key into the lock and open the door. By the time she had taken off her coat, scarf, muffins, toque and leg-warmers, the fish was dead.
Grandma Hughes put on the kettle for some tea. She was always careful about following her special diet, but today was a special day, she decided, since she had managed to get home without getting on the wrong bus more than once. Today she would allow herself two full lumps of sugar.
Three floors above, in apartment number fifty eight, Thomas let out a terrible cry, wordless, but clear in its desperate demand for logic and reason, and a sensible explanation for the presence of a cat on his kitchen table. Or under it, for his roar startled the poor animal into a leap of faith, backwards down to the floor. It sat under the table now, grumbling its annoyance loudly, with a very subtle hint of terrible consequences should anyone startle it so horribly again.
Thomas backed away from the threatening sound effects and leaned back against the wall. He believed in neither fate, fortune or that God played pranks on his creations, but there was a definite smell of gunpowder rising from the situation. A runaway trolley which made him unintentionally buy a large supply of cat food, useless to him were the day a normal day but given unexpected meaning through a cat that got into his kitchen...how?
It came out from under the table and Thomas tensed, but the cat only rubbed against his legs and purred. He had no choice but to carefully step over the animal and open the drawer on the left, which held a bachelor set of spoons, knives, forks and one can opener.
Meanwhile on the third floor, the kettle bubbled and whistled as loud as it could, knowing Grandma Hughes was deaf and had burned more than one kettle before. This kettle was red enamel with painted daisies, rather proud of itself, and had no death wish. Therefore it whistled and screamed until its enamel turned blue, and Grandma Hughes came to take it off the stove. She poured the hot water into a chipped mug, and dropped in a fresh teabag. She took the lot into the living room, and put it down on the table next to the deserted fish bowl. She picked up the sugar tongs and carefully took one cube from the bowl, and dropped it into her tea gently, in order to make no splash that would dirty the tablecloth. She moved the tongs towards the sugarbowl again.
Upstairs the cat purred and snorted and growled and spluttered. Strays are always ravenous and the canned food was better than sparrows and mice, so the cat had thrown itself on the bowl as it would have on a deadly enemy, and devoured the contents fiercely and with much noise. Thomas watched it, horrified, sucking sweet blood out of the finger that he snagged on the sharp edge of the can. A few moments later he realised with even more horror that he was pouring fresh cream out into a bowl, even though he never had the slightest intention to do so. On the contrary, he was firm in his decision that the cat would have to leave as soon as it finished the meal. There was no room in his apartment for any sort of animal, least of all a cat, who would meow, shed, and relieve itself wherever it decided was most convenient. No, no, and ten thousand times no, there would be no cats in his apartment, he rallied as he poured the cream. There would be no making scratching posts out of my furniture, he declared as he laid out a blanket inside an old shoe box. And there will most definitely be no shedding filthy flea ridden fur on my duvet, he said firmly as he put away the shoe box and laid the blanket out at the foot of his bed. Never will I allow some furry horror to take dumps inside my house, and mark territory, he raged inwardly as he lay out newspapers in every room. Never! No cats.
He stroked the little purring beast, and rubbed its belly when it turned on its back. He'd evict it in the morning, first thing in the morning.
With a dull thump, Grandma Hughes landed on the round yellow carpet that her daughter had picked out for the living room two years ago, and died, the victim of an eerie post mortem murder by Frank the fish, whose limp little ugly water body was lodged halfway down her windpipe. The presumption can be chanced that Frank, though a gentle fish, would have been quite happy to know he had murdered an old lady, as it would have been the first and only significant deed in his life. Fortune so had it that it came to him after death, and if fish have ghosts, his was certainly floating above the crime scene and sighing great regret but also great pride. Frank the fish had had his five minutes, and even the fact that he was already dead couldn't change that.
An hour later little Lottie came back from school and found her grandma dead on the living room floor, a small scaly tail sticking out of her gaping mouth. When her mother walked into the door minutes later, and hugged the sobbing child, she puzzled at that tail- it was bright orange and gave off an almost mystical blue glint in the living room lamp light.
Three storeys up, Thomas Ruskin was overcome with the fatigue that hunted him for the past week, and he went to bed early, falling asleep with a purring ball of fur curled up at his side.When I wrote this I felt:  drained And I was listening to: Near Wild Heaven |
In which Thomas Ruskin as we now know his name to be recovers his lost trolley and resumes his shopping in a more regular and orderly manner, but is unwittingly duped a second time, though in a different way, and this time with no clear clue as to the culprit's identity.
Thomas was about to give up the chase and humbly go back outside to choose another trolley, hoping it would be more obedient and also keeping a continuously firm grip on the handle, perhaps even harnessing the cart in some way, if he could find a length of rope to tie. At the worst, he considered, he could use that rope to hang himself, since if the supermarket's transport equipment was so intent on making his day miserable, a politely addressed crane surely wouldn't object to lifting him up to where he could reach the beams and tie a loop.
Thomas was about to give up the chase, but it was the fugitive who gave itself up by nudging Thomas from the back. He turned, expecting to see an inconsiderate shopper, and found only his trolley, meek, humble, obedient, and absolutely inanimate.
He moved slowly towards it in case it would flee like a startled animal. He felt hot and panted a little, the chase had tired him out more than he would have expected. If the trolley bolted again, he wasn't sure he'd be able to repeat the run.
But the trolley behaved like a normal trolley should and didn't move as he circumvented it, and didn't kick, bite or stand on its hind wheels as he grabbed the handle and waited for a reaction. There was no reaction though, except the expected slight shift. The wheels were straight and obediently rolling forward and back, in accordance with Thomas' will. Reality seemed to reign again.
Thomas saw no reason to waste time, since he couldn't be sure for how long his trolley remained ordinary and without a life of its own. He made quickly his way to collect the products he needed- orange juice, bread, butter, cheese, a dozen packets of instant noodles and some double layer unscented plain white toilet paper. Passing by the newspaper stand, he stopped to read the headlines.
“The new Daniel: Man Evangelises Lions in Zoo”
“Child Bodies Found in Barrels”
“Man Angers Lions, Loses Leg”
“A New War?”
He picked up two comics and a sci-fi magazine and threw them into his trolley (which still showed no signs of independence.) That was that, and if he could just make it on the good passe to the cash register, he would be rid of the angsty cart and could go home. He already planned not to take his chances with the trolley in the parking lot. A strange instinct told him the beast was playing meek inside, but would tear itself away as soon as they were out of the doors, and flee to the hills. Thomas had no objections to any creature gifted with intelligence desiring freedom, provided that creature wasn't carrying his food supplies. No, he would pack the groceries into bags and carry them down to the car- he wouldn't even try to retrieve the coin from the lock.
Someone patted him on the back. He turned round, absentmindedly letting go of the cart handle, and met only an anonymous crowd- he turned again, and his shopping was gone. He turned again and again caught in a whirl of surprise, but eventually stopped and concluded- the person who had tapped him on the shoulder, if indeed someone had, was gone and nowhere to be seen- his shopping trolley had taken the opportunity to disappear again, and Thomas had now to weigh two solutions. One, to go back to Start, pick another trolley and perform the route again hoping for no surprises, and two, to find the cart that he'd already filled. Both promised the need for much more effort than he had been prepared to take that morning.
He took two steps and almost fell over his trolley. It stood there as if it had never disappeared, and for the first time that day Thomas doubted his own eyes and thought, perhaps it hadn't.
He found a cash register where the line didn't look hours long.Two boy scouts were there, one in front and one in back- they had identification tags marked 'Guest' pinned to their uniforms, and collection boxes set up in places that would make it difficult for shoppers to ignore them. One of the boys offered to help unload the cart, and didn't wait for an answer before beginning- the other waited at the end of the checkout and packed everything up into plastic bags. Thomas saw no use in objecting and rather liked having someone do all of this for him. He paid and dropped his change into the collection box, also advising the scouts that they could have the coin from the trolley's lock.
Even without a meanspirited nature Thomas had to give a silent chuckle in thought of their struggle with the cart. He walked almost to the doors before deciding to turn back and watch- indeed, one of the boys was already wheeling the cart towards the trolley parking area. The suspense was unbearable.
The boy parked the trolley and pocketed the coin. He walked back to the register.
Thomas turned on his heel and tried hard to forget the whole affair. Perhaps it would be the final vote in favour of adapting a better sleeping schedule.
He loaded the bags into his car and drove home, regretting not having placed the bumper sticker on his car when he was stopped by the police again. He could not manage to get a word in, and received a second Happy Driver certificate. The epithets seemed to cancel themselves out as Thomas certainly didn't feel happy, or even moderately indifferent anymore. He was in a bad mood, although that did make him forget about having wasted his whole life, so it wasn't an entirely evil thing. Pulling into the small parking lot in front of his building he had to slowly edge past the little crowd of gossipers gathered around an elderly lady, who brandished a new, but dirty broomstick and told an excited legend of this afternoon.
Thomas took the lift up and walked into his apartment. The homely smell of old cabbage and potatoes made him feel a little better, but he wasn't pleased at all when he discovered the reason why his shopping seemed a lot heavier than it should be. When he unpacked the bags on the kitchen table, he found that instead of his water, bread, cheese and noodles, he had six cans of cat food, a mouse toy, and a flea collar.
Somehow the trolley had played its prank to the end. Or had he absent mindedly taken someone else's shopping to the register?
His frustrated thoughts were interrupted by a soft but clear meowing, and the intruder cat leapt up onto the table to rub against the cans, demanding to be fed.When I wrote this I felt:  energetic And I was listening to: REM's Out of Time |
In which the name of the man who thinks he has wasted his whole life is revealed for better communication of the story, as he makes the necessary supplies to survive another week, and is duped in a rather unexpected way by an even more unexpected prankster.
Someone had called an ambulance, finally. The medics opened the doors and jumped out in perfect synchronisation with the man who opened his car door and got in. His car was the same dust dirty colourless colour as his bookshelves, back in apartment number fifty eight ,on the sixth floor of the building that he could see in the rear view mirror, a building which was known to carry the number three until the plaque bearing that digit had been taken down from above the steps by a boy trying to prove that he was a man. It was not the same boy who had with the same intention thrown a fist-sized rock through the glass panel of the doors two weeks before, but it may as well have been, considering the peculiar fondness for uniformisation of the rebellious adolescents of the age.
The man could see the building in his left rear view mirror, and he could see the ambulance in the overhead mirror. The medics were now trying to establish what injuries the caretaker had suffered, and he was objecting loudly to their actions. The caretaker was not as it may seem an old-fashioned man, a relic of the thatched countryside who travels to the city in search of improved living standards, but once there, dwells in constant fear of unemployment and medical assistance. The caretaker had a positive disposition towards the wonders of modern medicine- he had at home a large bottle of big brown vitamin pills, and had ordered a homeopathic kit and blood pressure measuring wristband from the television shopping channel quite recently. He did not object to the ambulance or the medics themselves, as his leg was beginning to throb quite badly, and he was afraid he would faint again. He did object to the medics trying to set his right leg, while it was evidently his left that was broken. However his protests were futile, as the only evidence of the fact he possessed was the excruciating pain in his left appendage, and this could not be presented to the medics in any form. Thus the caretaker fainted again. The ambulance staff were quite pleased at the unexpected silence, as the constant flow of vulgarities much impaired their thinking, and they performed all the necessary preparations twice as speedily as before. The supervising medic made voice notes into his recording device, stating an unfortunate fall as the reason of the accident, and two broken legs the result.
The man observed all this in his rear view mirror, and when the ambulance had driven away, with an almost happy air to its siren pin-pon, he put the keys in the ignition and started his car.
He got pulled over by the police as soon as he turned into the dual carriageway. The officer took his time to strut forward, and kept his eyes on the road all through the conversation, as if to make it clear that he was completely indifferent to the whole of the situation.
“Routine check, sir...road patrol. We endeavour to keep our roads and citizens safe. Are you transporting in your vehicle any unlicensed, endangered, sick, dangerous, illegally acquired animals, are you transporting in your vehicle any illegally acquired electronic devices, illegal broadcasting and slash or transmitting devices, any illegally acquired goods such as contraband cigarrettes or alcohol, any pornographic material displaying the participation of persons under the age of eighteen and slash or animals?”
“No.”
“May I see your driver's license, please?”
The man fumbled in his pocket and gave the policeman his license. The policeman beckoned to his partner, who approached, a folder in his hands. He took out a sheet of paper and a pen, and began to copy onto it. A few moments later the first policeman handed back the license, and the sheet of paper.
“Thank you for your cooperation, sir. On behalf of the “Safe Roads” committee and the National Police Department, I'm honoured to present you with a certificate stating that you are a model citizen, complying with laws on and off the road, as well as a complimentary bag of toffees to sweeten your day, and a bumper sticker. Thank you for your help.”
The policeman walked back to the patrol car. His partner was already waving down another driver. The man put the certificate on the passenger seat. It said:
Congratulations, Happy Driver!
This is to certify that mr Thomas Ruskin is a model citizen, complying with laws on and off the road. Issued by the National Police Department, and the Safety for Our Children Foundation.
Thank you for keeping our roads crime free!
It was signed by the Head of Police, and the founder of 'Safety for Our Children'. The bumper sticker said “I'm a Happy Driver” and had the foundation's logo on it. The sweets were wrapped in little snippets of driving tips, and Courtesy of the National Police Department.
Thomas Ruskin, Happy Driver, unwrapped a toffee and put the wrapper back in the bag without reading the tip. He put everything on the passenger seat and started the car again.
He put his foot down a little harder than the painted discs on the sides of the road allowed, and managed to get to the supermarket without any further hindrance. The parking lot was nearly empty, but the trolley he picked was, as usual, a drunken pirate vessel of the shopping alleys, turning everywhere but where it was directed, sailing close to the shelves of shore and when it wasn't skidding in spillage whirlpools, marooning itself in between displays and sample tables.
It was a tuesday, and unbeknownst to Thomas and other customers, it meant the supermarket looked nothing at all like it had the previous day. On the eve of working Tuesday, in the small and unreal hours of no shopping, blazen and underpaid half-time employees crept out of the corners, and performed their monthly job- a massive feat of shelf stacking, box-shifting, and magical aisle dances. The Ballet Balshoy had nothing on them. At the end of such a night of wonders, they would slink back into the shade, unpraised like the hard working elves of st. Nicholas. The morning would come with sparkly-eyed shoppers, who would rush in to follow their habitual paths only to end up lost in the milk aisle where the cd's used to be.
Thomas did not fear getting lost. His trolley seemed to know exactly where it wanted to go.
He finally reared it in at the far end of the store, by the single changeless cigarette window. It had been banished there a long age ago, in the dawn of the food store chains, and there it remained, once inconspicuous like the bottle collection booth, now plastered over and under with grim, black signs: Smoking causes cancer, smoking is lethal, tobacco kills. To its left, spring water piled high in a transparent pyramid, to its right, a shelf lined with bottles of carrot juice. Which Thomas liked, contrary to cigarettes. He placed five bottles into the rampant trolley, and tried to wheel away. As the trolley did everything a young untamed stallion might at receiving his first rider, short of, but very close to standing on its rear wheels, Thomas did some quick thinking. Six bottles of spring water landed in the cargo, and the sea storm died down, and the stallion was once again a peaceful, heavy old mare.
But the supermarket remained a labyrinth, and the zombies that wandered it didn't have maps. Thomas zig-zagged around collisions to pull in with a breath of relief into the health food alley. He found with dismay that it was no longer the safe haven and solitary refuge it used to be- fashion dictated diets, organics, ecology and lots of tofu. Its loyal and faithful consumers were now crowding at the altar of the shelf, their long bony digits scrabbling for the last box- high, high up, unreacheable, climbing ever higher to mock their sunken faces.
The world was cruel in supermarkets. Thomas found no refuge in the health food alley, nor did he find full wild strawberry and blueberry yoghurt with real fruit in the refrigerated section. There was an elaborate display advertising plain skimmed diet yoghurt in the middle of the aisle- it seemed to mock him cruelly. Further on, thirty six varieties of light yoghurt. A glimpse of red at the far end, and Thomas hastened to collect it. But it turned out to be a misplaced chunk of lilliput gouda, abandoned by some other shopper, or lost in the confusion of the night shift.
At the cereal shelves Thomas had to look twice, and a third time. It wasn't the reality he was used to, and despite recently having come to the conclusion that he had wasted most of his life, he still liked going to the shop and finding his favourite sugar coated rice puff cereal. To find no wild strawberry and blueberry real fruit yoghurt and no sugar coated rice puff cereal successfully destroyed what wasn't a particularly good mood, but had at least been moderate indifference.
It was at this moment that his trolley decided to go look for the alcohol section. It rolled away slowly, inch by inch, tile by tile, until Thomas looked behind him just in time to see his meagre shopping turn a corner and disappear with a joyful rattle of the lock chain.
Thomas stood still and perplexed for a short time, thus allowing the fugitive shopping to cruise down the next alley- and again, once he'd woken up from his stupor and taken pursuit, he was only just in time to see the trolley's tail turn another corner. He stopped to grab a box of powder cocoa and continued the chase. The trolley was surprisingly agile and elusive, turning corners like a racing motorbike, then stealing past delivery cranes like a night assassin. But for the constant rattle of its lock chain, Thomas would have lost its trail way back in between the fish and vegetables. But he heard the rattle, and followed like a trained hound dog. He followed it into the frozen foods alley, around the special offer bubblegum stall and its child worshippers, left into the cracker and instant foods, past the healthy and organic crowd of mummified skeletons, past the fresh bread, past the long display of ugly cakes with pictures of ugly children printed onto sugar paper with ugly edible food colouring, as usual the best quality guaranteed for an unforgettable birthday party. He bounded into the stationery row, and stopped puzzled- someone had begun unpacking boxes there and had left the job unfinished. Under no circumstance could the trolley have made it past this obstacle, lest it possessed powers normally not attributed to inanimate shopping carts, such as the ability to take large leaps, or climb.
He turned around and looked from left to right, and then remembering, listened very carefully for the rattling of the lock chain. But it was evening now and after-work shoppers were filing in, each with their own trolley and their own rattling lock chain, ruffling coat, ringing phone, crying child. Thomas shook his head in disbelief and decided to go left.
Behind him, a shopping trolley quietly and carefully slid down from the stationery shelves.When I wrote this I felt:  nosebleedy And I was listening to: nothing at all |
| » Chapter One |
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...in which we discover a rough outline of the topographical, infrastructural and administrative conditions in which our novel begins, as well as learn about certain habits of the location's most prominent fauna.
In an regular-sized bedroom on the sixth floor of a rather small building in a fairly large city, a man of average height woke up late with a strong feeling of an almost entirely wasted life.
The weather was dripping rain and leaves, and a band of cats prowled around the front steps of the house. Behind the glass doors lurked the caretaker with a sturdy new broomstick, and waited for their next advance. The glass doors were closed but the side panel had been smashed two weeks ago, by a rock about the size of a man's fist. The rock had been thrown by a boy with no facial hair who called himself a man, and would prove his right to the title by throwing rocks at glass doors that he knew weren't wired to an alarm which would call the police directly. When he had broken the glass door behind which now lurks the caretaker with a new broomstick, he had been trying, in addition to proving his virility, to impress a girl. The girl dressed like her mother never would, and looked several years older than she really was. She lived in a building similar to the one with the broken glass in the doors, but on the other side of the city.
The cats prowling around the front steps of the house grouped into an audience as the boldest of them all approached the glass door. The cats had been evicted from the basement two days before. The caretaker had boarded up the little windows and shafts leading down into the cellars, and the cats could not find a way back. They were now trying to come in through the broken glass panel, but the caretaker was lurking behind the doors, and he had a sturdy new broomstick.
As he roared and chased after the boldest of the cats, the other felines dispersed, some into the bushes, some, cleverly, into the building through the broken panel, unguarded as the caretaker screamed profanities outside.
It was to these profanities that the man on the sixh floor awoke. His bedroom stank of cabbage, potatoes and old dust. Cabbage, because that was the usual stuffiness of a room where the windows haven't been opened in months and the radiators are on, potatoes, because there were a few left over from last night's meal, dust, because there was a lot of dust. It lay a thick grey blanket on the bookshelves. It was a grey blanket of dead skin, dirt, and many many other disgusting things mentioned in biology books, but far too long ago to be trivia remembered.
Perhaps the biology books also held the answer to why brushing one's teeth did nothing to help the bad, bad taste of the morning wakeup. It was a taste of bacon pizza when you never in your life had one, broccoli mashed and too many stale crackers. Curry overdone, shopping mall food court chinese take away.
It was the taste of a lack of chocolate.
Down below the eastern window that looked out on the front steps of the building, six stories below, the caretaker's sturdy new broom retired in a puddle. The caretaker lay next to it screaming murder at cats that were miles away, his leg twisted back in a way legs don't twist. But it was four in the afternoon and everyone was at work, and no one was there to call an ambulance. Not even the man from the sixth floor, who hadn't gone to work that day. His phone was working, and he wasn't malicious, but he hadn't looked out the window.
The air in the corridor was a little fresher and more pleasant to a late afternoon wakeup. Soap and wet pavement were the closest definitions. Soap was something everyone liked, good soap with moisturiser, the kind that didn't crumble and turn sharp if you went away for the weekend. Soap was also pleasant due to the semantics- you could buy a bar, or a cake of the stuff. Cakes had pleasant associations. Candles too, and wax sometimes felt like soap- but the smell coming from outside, from behind the one open window in the corridor wasn't of candles on a birthday cake, but of leaves burning in a pile, somewhere over in the plot gardens. The leaves would be wet on top but it hadn't rained too badly- a match or two in the right place and the sodden heap would still burn, perhaps with no bright flame but a cloud of smoke that could leave vigilant citizens wondering, fingers poised over the telephone keys, with a three-digit number in their minds. Indeed, someone was already reaching for his telephone, in the buildings on the other side of the plot gardens, and soon a fire truck would come hurtling through the city to a fire that wasn't there. But it would stop at the western gate, far and out of sight of the building with the broken glass doors- the caretaker would not be rescued yet. He might have alerted someone with his screams, which carried far across the gardens, but he had fainted from the pain quite soon. The cats returned cautiously and sniffed his body on their way back to the basement.
One of them chose to walk upstairs instead of down, perhaps following the scent of number 39's chicken wings, or of the cat in number 44. He climbed past 56 with the blind daschhund, and made it to the sixth floor, where, conveniently to the flow of this story, he chose to relieve himself on number 58's doormat. It was a regular piss, a crouch from need and no territory mark- the doormat imitated well the rub of fertilising bark from the flowerbed where the cat was accustomed to answer nature's call. He felt relieved and content as the stairwell gained his own special smell.
Behind the door to number 58, the smell wasn't welcome. It was the apartment of the man who woke up with a feeling of having almost entirely wasted his life, and having the stench of cat piss seep in under the door to disrupt the sensible and pleasant smell of soap and wet pavement that reigned in his corridor did not please him at all. He took a moment to track down the source of the yellow scent, and opened the door violently, hoping to surprise the culprit in action. Indeed, the feline criminal was still on scene, performing the ablutions necessary after relieving himself in a foreign place. He glanced up at the man briefly before continuing to clean fur and skin. He was home now.
The man from number 58 kicked away the doormat. This startled and annoyed the cat. The man kicked the doormat down the stairs so the smell would bother his neighbours instead. He was inconsiderate, but from a point of view of someone who feels they've wasted most of their life, things look a little different.
While he kicked the mat further down the stairs, as far away from his part of the well as possible, the cat finished his toilette and daintily walked into the open apartment. He made for the kitchen, as instinct and an enormous confidence told him he'd made a much better choice of locum than his companions crowding in the dark of the basement.
The man returned to put on a coat. He'd been sleeping with his clothes on, as what was intended to be a short nap ended up eating most of his day, and he was now hungry. He closed the door and locked his apartment, with the alien cat inside.
Downstairs, in a puddle, the caretaker had just come to and was cursing even louder than before.
Nov. 1st, 2004 @ 06:06 pm
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