A part from you

The dreams are similar but infinitely varied: sometimes it is day, sometimes it transpires at night; sometimes the whole school is watching, forty souls all holding on to an in-breath; shock, awe and almost spiritual terror keeping everything else at bay. Other times he is alone, but when he is in the wood he is not always alone; someone else is there beside him but he can not make out who they are.

But there is always one constant: It, the unknowable object that hovers in front of him, threatening to shut his rational mind down. It’s almost easier to contemplate seeing it in a dream, pretend that was all it was, that it never really happened. But it did, and his life was never the same.

Sometime he wakes up in a sweat, and for a second it’s like he’s back in the wood that first time; when he truly woke up. Everything else since that day has been a fantasy, ethereal; the world just a sponge: full of holes and malleable; nothing ever having any solidity any more.

Adam was 15 when the unknowable object landed in the playing field adjacent to his school. It was the end of the day and most of the children had gone home otherwise there would have been more of a panic. As it was, there was a handful of pupils that had stayed behind for special projects, but Adam was the only one who was brave(?) enough to venture close to IT. The remaining teachers and pupils were frozen in time, unable to move even if they had wanted to. Adam was insistent and managed to climb through a gap in the metal fence that the caretaker had been too lazy to fix.

Something drove him, pushed him closer, ever closer and with each step he felt the air become charged, denser as if he was walking through thunder.

 It hung there, defying gravity, logic and God. It didn’t belong, it felt wrong; everything about it. The way it pulsated, changing colour like it was litmus paper, like a chameleon: silver, gold, red… the air was dense with the smell of ozone and a rose-petal scent as every atom seemed to vibrate in his body as he reached out. Now it was he who felt a prisoner in his own body, horrified as he watched his own hand reach out to IT, to touch IT. He knew that he couldn’t stop it; his only hope, that he could wake before it took him.

Lill felt like a prisoner in her own life, always living someone else’s; someone to be used, torn up and then discarded, and her dreams were no different. She only ever remembered the one dream anyways; always the same dream and, just as in her life, the dream was always happening to someone else.

It was a boy, someone she cared about; possibly the only one she had ever cared about, on a level that she never thought was impossible. It almost physically hurt knowing that she was a part from him.

Something was happening; something had appeared that should never have been there. She felt helpless, watching the boy walk towards it, every muscle in her wanting to do the same but unable to get her body to comply. The boy seemed as much prisoner as her, obviously not wanting to be there; the fear palpable, tears streaming down their face. His hand reaching out to the death of childhood, a stronger pulse, a searing heat and then her everything draining of colour, leaving her awake, barely.

She was used to sleeping alone; the night fears making it easier for Clive, her husband, to have his own bed. They had been married only six months, the latest in a long line of failed relationships.  Clive, at least, did not physically abuse her.. but at least that would count as contact. Since being married he had gone from constantly putting her down to barely acknowledging her presence, to completely ignoring her.

And who knows, maybe that was all she was good for. She never seemed to have anything worth contributing. She was incapable of having children, possessed no qualities that made her worth remembering, which had kept her in the same position in work for many years, with no prospect of promotion. But then she had no desires of her own, no aspirations, she felt barren.

No, there was one person that made her feel whole, that had always made her feel as if she was someone: Adam, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember why that was. Her memories were so vague due to some kind of head trauma, no doubt. Yet when she heard the news broadcast she suddenly remembered what was missing and what she must do next.

Adam felt like throwing the radio against the wall after hearing the asinine broadcast about the reunion. They called it the “Return of the Mothership” and made it sound just like any other excuse for a drunken piss-up. Damn it! This was his life; it was the only event that had ever meant something and they had cheapened it.

“Is everything alright?”  The woman lying next to him asked. The radio had woken her up; his dreams already acting as an alarm clock. She would never understand so he told her to go back to sleep. He couldn’t remember her name anyway, there seemed little point, he’d be gone in ten minutes.

Most of the time he could do without people; their inanities and insistence at their own self-importance nagged him. He alone had seen beyond the veil; the Object had taken him there; wherever that meant. Time just seemed to pass for him now, it was something else that happened to everyone but not him; he had no passion or drive –just for a completeness that he could never satisfy. Every so often thought he could bear it no longer and had to give in; drown that unquenchable desire to be one with someone and afterwards he would loathe himself for it.

He hadn’t always been this way. Life used to have meaning back when he was a child, before…

There had been …

..had he touched the object? Everyone had insisted that he had but he couldn’t remember. His memory was terribly fragmented –he knew that he had reached out to it, his fingers tingling the closer he got; then there was a blinding light and he was awake; deep in Franklyn’s Wood at night, whereas it had been daylight beforehand.

For twenty years he had lived with this unknowable thing, this loss; but no longer. The fates were conspiring and he could now get some answers with someone else; for maybe she would be there too.

There were two types of people at the re-union; those that had actually witnessed the incident and wanted some closure and the weirdo’s, those that wanted to believe and had watched far too many episodes of the X-Files (and had watched Buffy before that, wanting to believe in vampires, and if they had lived in Conan Doyle’s time then they probably would have believed in fairies at the bottom of the garden rather than think for themselves.)

Then there was Adam and Lilith. No one noticed Lilith when she walked into the hall where the reunion was taking place. Everyone assumed that she was one of the “believers” and she was too shy to actually start a conversation with anyone.

When Adam walked into the room everyone turned as one. Everyone knew who he was and why he had come; even if he didn’t. He had wanted to blend in, walk about as inconspicuously as possible and almost turned around to run out again; but then he saw her. Like long lost lovers they ran to each other and embraced, everyone else looking at them with obvious bemusement: just who was she?

Time passed, Adam and Lill chatted like they were old friends, almost forgetting what had brought them to the reunion, and then a voice from the stage brought the present crashing back down.

“Please could all those who were there that night follow me to the fence outside. We don’t want anyone else there; we’ll know, so please don’t try. This isn’t for you; this is for us, so we can hopefully understand what happened.”

Like a procession, both ex-teachers and ex-pupils gathered at the now rusting fence, a crudely chalked “X” on the field in front where the Object had hung.

Adam stood at the back with Lill, holding hands and when everyone had reached the fence they all turned round to look at her. “Why have you come here?” Someone demanded. “We asked only for those who were there that afternoon.”

“I was there.” Lill protested.

All shook their heads whilst Adam protested her innocence. They didn’t want to know, “Yes, you were there, Adam. You were the one that brought this upon us; you wouldn’t listen and had to touch it… but she wasn’t there.”

Lill shook her head in disbelief, this couldn’t be happening. This was the only event that had ever held any meaning for her and now she was being told that the people that she hoped would understand her couldn’t remember her either. She started sobbing and wrenched her hand away from Adam. The gap in the fence was still prominent, like a tear into the past and she slipped through it and ran for the sanctuary of Franklyn’s Wood, now deep in night time shadow.

Adam looked at those who he’d hoped would give him some resolution but he could see that they were just as empty, looking for him to add meaning. It was her, it was Lill; she was the only one that could help him and he knew that he could help her so he ran after her as fast as he could.

The past doppled around him as he got the strangest sense of déjà vu. It took a couple of minutes but he finally caught up with her. She was inconsolable at first, wanting her life to finally have meaning. He held her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the lips: “You are the only one that’s ever meant anything to me.”

As they kissed again the air around them became electric, a sodium light pulsated throwing flickering shadows across the wood. Adam knew why they’d been brought back there and he also remembered what had happened that day.

The Unknowable Object had held everyone stationery for hours, no one aware of the passage of time until suddenly it flew up into the air, releasing everyone. Adam couldn’t let it go; his compunction was to run after it, especially when he saw it land in Franklyn’s Wood.

He not only chased it, but he found it hovering where they were standing now. It was then that he had reached out as it was spinning, pulsing a globulous red, but it was cold to the touch. He never registered the shift to unconsciousness only the groggy coming to later.

“And had you looked to your side upon waking you would’ve seen me lying there where I had not been before.” Lill replied to his unspoken question.

“I’ve always known that you existed even though my conscious mind would never allow it.”

“So what now? How can we carry on?”

The light coalesced in front of them, red shifting, become whole. They looked at each other, Adam and Lillith, originally one soul. Holding hands, now of one mind, they smiled, perhaps for the first time; knowing no other and walked as one into the light.

Sitting on a train

Sitting on a train, everybody’s reading whether it’s the latest best seller (a fat, bloated excuse for a novel released by a publisher who cares more for price than value) or a well thumbed classic where each page is so well read it becomes an extension of the reader and imbued with the very sweat and smell of its host body.

Newspapers are torn between the sickly sweet condescending tabloids playing to the bygone age of smutty sea-side Britain and the aloof and presumptuous broadsheets, opinionated but distant; like critics to the naked emperor - they’re too busy describing the water to realise that the ship has sunk.

Magazines are just as bad: gaudy and excessive covering a multitude of nothings; cars and fashion, both externalisations of the vacuum that lies within the readers souls. Then there are the health and lifestyle publications written by prophets of hypocrisy and the jizz ridden rags of celebrities and the terminally washed up –each one indistinguishable from the other.

The rest of the carriage, those that are not nose deep into a publication, are either reading each other, hoping to find familiarity in strangers; or the landscape, trying to discern what they can from the hills and woodland that passes them by so unashamedly, like remote phrenologists hoping to catch recognition from their reflection of the train windows.

I’m of the latter category, struggling to come to terms with a whole host of emotions – my whole psychic world having been turned upside-down. My motives for being here are no longer clear so I sit staring out the window trying to catch my reflection unawares.

I’m not sure whether I’ve actually accomplished anything, or whether the trip was a futile gesture on my part; only time will tell, for sure. (I hate futile gestures, they’re dishonest and often leave me drained and empty; forcing me to question my motives.) I know one thing; I’m on the return journey, in more ways than one, and I have the scars to prove it, though you would need to be a medium to feel them.

Conversation in the carriage ebbs and flows with the rhythm of the tracks, children fight to be heard: a compulsion to repeat vies with the adults repulsion to complete. I stay silent, content at this stage to try and soak it all in. I’m hoping that some of this small talk, the ability to spew forth cheap nothings as if they were pearls of insight and illumination, will avail itself to me via osmosis. But like a faulty mobile there must be bad network coverage because the signal is quickly lost; too much noise.

Everything is so banal to me, or is this the key to understanding it all. Is one person’s banality another person’s gossip? What about me? Am I gossip-worthy?

Somehow I doubt it. I keep to myself mostly, my world internalised; I’ve tried making small talk in the past but the words soon fail me. I want to find out what makes the other persons world turn; why they get up in the morning. This goes too deep for most people, especially strangers on a train and their body language soon changes from mild indifference to hostile blocking. From killing time to cornered animals, and even though they have not the place to cross their legs they will turn away from me and blank me that way, pretend that I no longer exist as if I had offended them.

On the times that I do get a sensible answer I’m often sorry I asked…

I forgot to bring my mp3 player with me. I can’t drown out this static. I also forgot to bring a book so there is to be no escapism for me at all, so I must endure. Luckily I’ve a window seat so I can lose myself in the view.

Damn it, we’re still in London. I thought we’d been on the train for at least an hour but that can’t be so, it must be only a matter of minutes still.

Someone is talking to me; a woman opposite and judging by her proverbial tone of voice and unashamed assumptions she must be family of some kind, but she is just another stranger to me at the moment. I reply, feigning interest at her observations and even manage to fake laughter at one of her absurd banalities. I reason that at this stage it would be better to remain on friendly ground until I can distance myself from this charade permanently. This is neither the time nor place to try.

The woman seems placated by my answers and smiles. I turn back to the window and the view outside and see only my own reflection, vague but understanding, staring back at me as we pass through a tunnel. I ask him a silent question and receive only a negative in reply, and like a solar flare we erupt into the hazy sunshine like a liberated mole.

Slowing, the pace of conversation changes gear to compensate. It’s almost like the end of a movement in an elaborate and disjointed symphony. Counter rhythms and contrapuntal melodies weave in and out as the passengers enter a frenzy to gather their belongings before they disembark. Even before the train draws to a halt there is a further flurry of activity as they sprint to form an orderly queue at the door.

I’m asked another question by my familiar companion and reply that there will be quiet a few stops more before we reach our destination. She sighs.

My own metaphysical destination is still unknown to me. For a while I was comfortable and I thought I knew where I wanted to be. I had, if not an actual goal, then at least a sense of general direction that I was travelling in. I was actually at haste when bit by bit it was taken away from me. I’m still not sure exactly what it was that happened or even if there was one defining moment that changed everything, but I woke up one morning (both figuratively and actually) no longer knowing my purpose or if there was a point to my travelling.

Was this journey my way of finding that? If so, I can’t have succeeded….

I am so lost in my own maze of supposition that I fail to notice the woman sitting in the empty seat next to my companion. We had been lucky enough to board a nearly empty train and I had hoped that it would last until our destination. Yet more piped dreams.

In retrospect I’m unsure whether I would actually have preferred her to sit next to me or not… On the one hand I would have had the, admitted, guilty pleasure of her physicality and warmth next to me but facing me… I could drink in her charm and heavenly beauty.

Please do not think of me as one of the trench-coat brigade. Admittedly I do own such a garment but it was due to a fondness of Film Noir and practicality. I am also far too easily embarrassed ever to try such a shameless pursuit of exposition.

No, it was nothing so scandalous… I simply spend too much time on my own and very rarely frequent places where I can be in close proximity to women. I am not perverted, nor desperate.. if one had to pin a label to my mannerisms it would be one of loneliness. I am not ashamed to admit it – it surely must be a brave man who can admit to his shortcomings.

Be that as it may, when she spoke to me my whole perception ratio was suddenly inverted. No longer was I focussing inward, reflecting on the days misgivings and grievances, I was now fully cognizant on the world around me, aware of her every movement and exhalation.

Believe me, and I know how this must sound, but let me make an analogy to explain my behaviour. A starving man will gorge himself on seeing food, almost to his ruination as will someone dying of thirst. I had been starved of seeing beauty for such a long time – isolating myself had obviously come at a price.

A description of her would be futile but I will try. Should my elaborations seem flat and insipid it is due to my own lack of a poetic soul rather than her divine beauty… Her recently washed, auburn hair hung limply but somehow seductively down across her shoulders; her bright and inquisitive eyes stole glances at me as she waited for my reply. She seemed to drink in the world around her, inquisitive like a child but with a knowing glint in her eye.

And the dress… oh, the dress that she wore was so alluring and draped over her body giving brief and tantalising glimpses of her pale, almost creamy skin, so tactile and inviting. I felt the temperature rise in the carriage and tried to stop my pupils from dilating against my will.

Part of me hoped that she would get off at the next stop so I could regain my composure. My sterile world was being rocked to its very foundations. Up until now I had lived by mediocrity; comforted myself with the familiar and now this blissful earthbound angel, innocent of what she was doing to me, had shown me that there was hope for something more in my life.

With a marked amount of effort on my behalf I returned my gaze to the window, hoping to catch her reflection –a much less threatening way to stare at someone, but somehow far more sinister.

And then she spoke to me again and I realised that I had ignored her previous question. I could hardly believe that I had been that rude. I answered quickly unaware exactly of what I had said. My mind was reeling with possibilities and computations like an overworked enigma decoding machine. The why’s and wherefores of this chance encounter could wait until later for if ever there was a reason to live in the present this was it!

My garbled answer must have pleased her for she laughed with bright abandon and I laughed in reciprocation. Her voice was bubbly and her body responded in kind. Animated, her dress flowed and coalesced and my heart raced with every crease and fold that unravelled. Her dress was knee length and left everything to the imagination, but she sat with her legs apart, her hands tugging and kneading at the fabric that lay gathered there. And sometimes I could see pale flesh ascend into such sweet darkness that I felt myself go light-headed to compensate.

We talked about nothings, the asinine noise that everyone else rambled on about suddenly took on new meanings for me. This was sublime! She made everything interesting that I almost hung myself on her questions and glided out on her sentences.

Even my companion felt encouraged to join in with our conversation, much to my regret. Typically she soon monopolised the conversation and actively ignored my attempts to steer it away from her. It was like trying plot a course away from a whirlpool or the event horizon of a black hole.

However, as we were nearing the next station my companion asked a fatal question, dashing my hopes forever. It is doubtful that anything could ever have come from this chance encounter anyway but all the time there is doubt there is also the capacity for hope.

The question was innocent enough; however, the answer was, for me, an equivalent of Icarus’ descent after flying too close to the sun –my hope was dashed against the train tracks. The light died in my eyes at that point and I scarcely acknowledged her leaving although I did see, with scorn and contempt, the hug that she gave my companion. I half-heartedly waved back as we passed her on our departure and as she disappeared from view all that I was left with was my own unanswered question.