A Day
Enormous blood-red numbers shone through the dark, a
screeching buzz rang in his ears.
God that fucking noise is
annoying – he lifted his heavy arm and thumped it down on the alarm clock –
that’s better.
The man was staring into the
darkness around him.
I just had a dream. But what
happened in the dream? I can’t remember. Well, there was white, I remember
white. All I can remember is white.
He looked at the clock: the
numbers were swimming around, inscrutable. His eyes felt sore and dry; he blinked
to moisten them. The numbers remained blurry. He blinked some more and suddenly he could read them! – it
was 6:00AM.
It’s 6, I have to get up, 6:01, I
really have to –
He closed his eyes and when he
opened them it was 6:15AM. “Shit” he whispered loudly. He felt his eyes
drooping again – he needed to turn on the light.
…
In the mirror, the man saw: a wrinkly and jowly face,
rheumy, droopy eyes with big dark puffy bags under them, and a general
appearance of enormous dilapidation.
Who is this? I look ugly, I look
old, I didn’t used to be so old and ugly.
When he looked down at the bench
below his mirror, he noticed a large brown cockroach crouching behind a ceramic
cup.
He resolved himself to murder it.
It was hideous and deserved no
life.
He began to search for an
implement of death, feverishly scanning his eyes over the messy bench.
Eventually he decided on a shaving brush. He picked it up brush end first.
But how to get the cockroach to
move out from behind the cup? He decided to poke the wall just above where the
cockroach sat. It immediately sensed the danger of the situation and responded
exactly as he had calculated by scuttling out from behind the cup. He pounced.
He smacked down on its exposed back as it ran towards the sink, depressing a
part of its skeleton and crippling its right hind leg. Incapacitated it still
clung onto life, limping and lurching on with three working legs. So he smacked
it again! – it was immobilised and its tiny spindly legs twitched feebly; its
body was almost entirely squashed but it was clearly still alive. He smacked it
again and it completely burst; a bit of orange fluid squirted out onto the
bench.
“Fucking cockroaches,” he
muttered. “They deserve to die.” He continued to stare at the cockroach’s
mangled remains. Suddenly, he was overcome by doubt.
But what if I’m not meant to kill
things? Killing things is bad, they deserve life, they are alive; alive things
deserve life. But no, no they are insects, they have no idea what’s happening,
they have tiny brains, so tiny, their heads are so small, how could they fit
brains? And animals don’t think like we do, they’re not conscious of their own
existence. They might be actually. But they’re not. But they might be. But no,
they’re not. But what if god judges me for killing them? No, I’m an atheist. Or
am I? But yeah, killing is wrong. But is
it? Maybe that’s not the truth, maybe that’s just what they teach us, killing
is natural, evolution, it’s a dog eat dog world out there, the big fish eat the
little ones, survival of the fittest. I’m the fittest. Not really I’m unfit, I
have a big gut.
He looked down at his belly; it
was very bulbous. He looked back at the cockroach.
I wish I was a cockroach – it
would be such a simple life. It would just be scuttling, nothing else, imagine
that. No nothing.
He looked in the mirror again. He
stared at his face for a long time, noticing more than he had the first time:
now he saw its generally elongated shape, its blotchy complexion, its upturned
nose, its stupidly despondent expression. He decided to change its expression
to a smile, just to lighten the bleak morning up – he looked happy, sort of,
coz it was fake of course; he accentuated the grin by straining his cheek
muscles upwards – he looked maniacal, crazed, like a bloodthirsty serial
killer; he shifted to an expression of terror – he looked as if there was the
bloodthirsty serial killer standing in front of him, armed, say, with a huge
rusty machete. He returned to his neutral expression coz there was no time for
such games: he would have to shower and shave and eat breakfast and brush his
teeth before 7:05 am and it was already 6:30!
…
He walked into the mostly-white typically modern-looking
kitchen; a fridge was on his left; he turned towards it and he stepped forward
and bent down and opened the freezer door (which was on the bottom, not the top
as is usual), feeling the freezing escaped air on his face, and he pulled open
the top rack of the freezer and looked for the packet of normal brown bread and
he located it and picked it up and placed it on the polished grey bench top
next to some letters and various pieces of paper, and he located the blue
plastic bread clip and took it off and allowed the plastic to untwist and he
put his hand inside the opening and felt under the end-piece to collect two
pieces of normal bread, and he carried them as he walked towards the toaster,
feeling their coldness and stiffness in his hands, and he placed them inside
the toaster and he adjusted the dial so it was just below 3 minutes (it had
only changed because he had made raisin toast yesterday and that toasted
quicker for some reason) and he lowered the plastic knob, watching as the bread
dropped into the abyss and as the heating elements reddened, and he stood for a
second just in front of the toaster, and then he began to walk towards the
toilet which was in the laundry at the back of the house, and he arrived at the
laundry and he opened the door and he opened the toilet door on the left and he
walked into the toilet-room and he lifted the lid of the standard-white toilet
and he lowered his cotton pyjama pants and there was his penis and he grabbed hold
of it and began to urinate, noticing the water making a noisy trickling sound,
lasting for a fairly long period, and then he pressed the small flush button,
noticing the sucking and trickling sound the flushing made, and he pulled up
his pants over his penis and walked out of the toilet door and out of the
laundry door and back towards the kitchen and towards the sink and he arrived
at the sink and he turned on the ‘cold’ tap with his right hand and the water
streamed out of it and he put his hands under it and rubbed them together and
around each other and he turned the tap off with his right hand and then he
walked over to the tea-towels which were hanging off the handles of two of the
white-painted cupboards below the kitchen bench and then he began rubbing his
hands on the right tea-towel and he did this until they were dry (enough) and
he stood around and walked into the dark pantry and turned on the light-switch
on the left and the light turned on and he walked forward a step and then
looked to his left at all the cereal boxes and he stared at their names – Weet Bix, Crunchy Nut, Sultana Bran – and
then he heard the springy sound of the toast going up to his left (now that he
was facing left) and he began to walk over towards it and on his way he opened
the cupboard to his right and bent down and grabbed a small white ceramic plate
and stood up and placed the plate on the bench and then he continued walking
towards the toaster and arrived at it and grabbed the two pieces of bread,
feeling how hot they were in his hands, and then he hurried back and deposited
them on the plate and walked to the fridge and opened the door and looked
around and saw on the second-from-top row, on the left, was a jar of mixed
berry jam from that brand with the sort of gourmet authentic look (as opposed
to the supermarket-standard or mass-produced look) and he grabbed it in his
hand, feeling how cold and hard it was, and he placed it on the bench next to
the plate with the toast on it and he slid out the top drawer which was just to
the left of the plate with the toast on it under the bench, noticing the sound
of metal being rubbed, and he grabbed a butter sort of knife from the third
slot of cutlery where he kept the knives (it went spoons then forks then knives
from left to right) and he lifted it up and put it down on top of the toast on
the plate and twisted open the lid of the jam jar with his right hand and
placed the lid on the bench to its right and grabbed the knife again with his
right hand and dipped the knife into the jam and lifted it and quickly lowered
it on to the top piece of toast and steadied the toast with his left hand and
began spreading the jam with the knife in his right hand, and when it was
sufficiently coated in sugary fruity syrup he lifted the bread and fed it into
his mouth and began chewing, noticing the crunch sound it made as well as the
flavours – the robust flavour of the brown bread contrasting nicely with the
sweet tangy flavour of the jam – and when he had finished chewing it he
swallowed it, noticing the ever-so-slightly sharp sensation in the throat that
resulted from ingesting dry bread, and then he started spreading jam on the
second piece of toast and he noticed his mouth felt dry and he turned around in
the direction of the stove and the cupboard above the stove and he walked
towards them and then reached up and pulled open the right door of the cupboard
above the stove by its grey metallic handle, noticing the way it creaked, and
he grabbed a glass from the many in front of him and he took it towards the tap
and he held it under the tap with his right hand and he reached awkwardly to
turn on the cold tap with his left hand and he watched as the water filled up,
noticing that it made a sort of soft-fizzing sound and that bubbles were temporarily
created, and then he turned off the tap with his left hand when the water was
at a desired level; and as he walked towards the bench on which sat the plate
with one piece of half-jam-spread toast on it and the jam-sullied knife next to
the open jam jar and its lid, nothing of significance happened.
…
When he entered his car, the dashboard clock read 7:07 – 9
minutes to get to the train. Marius Benson was on the radio.
“Professor Stefan, the climate
commission is no more, now there is a climate council; what exactly are your
plans?”
He had reached the end of the
driveway and was beginning to drive up his street, Bond Street.
“Well, we’re gonna take up where
the climate commission left off by taking exactly the same approach we did
then, uhh, we aim to provide an unbiased, authoritative, independent voice on
climate change issues, uhh, communicating with, engaging with the Australian
public, so we’ll have, uh, hopefully the same six commissioners we had before
as councillors now with the, uh, Australian Climate Council, uhh, we’ll do
similar sort of things in ter, in terms of producing reports that are, uh, easy
to understand, easy to get your head around, uh, making presentations at
various events, and of course doing a lot of media; so basically it’s business
as usual for us.”
That’s a relief, I actually
thought they had been obliterated by Tony, evil Tony, Abbott the abhorrent,
goddamn cover-ups, I hate climate change denialists, the arrogance to go against all the scientists, the stupidity. Actually it’s always for
financial gain, always about financial gain, that’s the way the world works eh.
“But you won’t have the resources
that the government previously provided.”
Yeah financials.
“No we don’t and so, uh, the six
of us are starting out volunteering our taunts –
Taunts? No must have said Talks –
“so we won’t get any, uh, payment
for this, uhh, we’ve got some very modest start-up funds to get us back on our
feet but we’re, uh, looking forward to getting widespread community support to
allow us to have some, uh, researchers, to some, to have some, uh,
professionals to help us with the media and so on.”
He was now travelling along
Norton Street over one of those truly irksome suburban speed humps.
“Greg Hunt, the Environment
Minister, has actually welcomed this change, he says That’s exactly what you
should au-always have been, you are a lobby group, the Commission as it was
should never have been funded by taxpayers.”
Greg Cunt.
“Well, I was, I would put a quite
different slant on that we were, we were, never a lobby group, uh, in terms of
being an advocacy group, uh, we had a very specific remit, and that was to
provide unbiased, authoritative, independent information on climate change, not push any particular position in
terms of policy, and we’re gonna continue that strongly apolitical grole, uh,
role; we’re not a lobby group, uh, we’re a group that’s out there to engage
Australians on one of the most important issues of our time.”
What a reasonable thing, just
goes to show how screwed-up Liberal priorities are, it’s a farce, they’re a
farce.
“But you will now be just another
voice in the mix with no particular standing in government, does that mean
you’ll be a less powerful voice?”
I bloody hope not.
“Well we hope that by the nature
of what we do we will continue, uh, to have, uh, some important, um, influence
and emphasis in the whole climate change discourse. By st-sticking away from
advocacy positions, by staying away from the political positioning, by staying
away from commenting on-on policy, uh, we wanna maintain that role as ah-an
independent voice that does provide authoritative, trustworthy information; we
strongly believe there’s a, there’s a, very big role for such an organisation
and that role, uh, continues.”
Too right.
“But Greg Hunt says that when it
comes to advising the government you have no particular role there; that role is played by the Bureau of
Meterology with seventeen hundred staff to do it.”
He was now turning left into
Cartwell Road.
“We’ve never had a role, uh, as
advising government, we didn’t in the previous, uh, incarnation of this climate
commission, it was quite clear in our remit, uhh, that we were not to take any
direction from government, which we didn’t, nor were we, uh, to provide any
advice to government, which we didn’t; we’re apt to provide, um, public good in
terms of providing this authoritative, independent information; now, as a scientist, I can see we relied
strongly on the excellent, excellent
w-work done by the Australian scientific community, including researchers from
the CSIRO, researchers from the Bureau, and certainly, uh, the outstanding
observational record that the bureau provides, but a lot of the information
isn’t easily accessible to the public, and we’ve found over the past two and a
half years that we are providing, I think, a very valuable service, in working
closely with the scientific community
to ensure that we have absolutely accurate, up-to-date information but, very importantly, making that
accessible to the public.”
Good on you.
“There is renewed debate about
climate change at the moment in anticipation of the official release of the
IPCC’s report on Friday Australian time, and the suggestion is that it’s
finding that the rate of increased temperature is not that that was projected
in previous reports; the fulleh, the full report’s not out and people are
cherry-picking perhaps; what’s your reading on the information out so far on
the latest report?”
He was still in Cartwell Road,
passing all the local shops – cafes aimed at rich old people, roast chicken
shops, newsagents – and he was approaching the car park near the train station.
“Well let’s wait and see what
comes out, ah-as you’ve said, uh, that’s a draft, uh, obviously some people are
leafing and cherry-picking, uh, I’m not going to say anything on the content of
the report until it’s actually out; there is a meeting in Stockholm, oh-of lead
authors of that report and they’ll be going through making their, uh, final,
uhh, modifications and touches and so-on to the report, uhh, I will say that we
can anticipate that it’ll be a very comprehensive report, it’ll go far beyond
just looking at air temperature, it looks at the entire climate system, how
it’s changing, what the reasons are for the, uh, those changes, and what risks
w-we might see into the future, so let’s wait, hold our horses on this, ah-and
get a more comprehensive look when that report is officially released.”
He was steering the car in
between the white lines.
“Professor Will Stefan, thanks
very much.”
The interview had been perfectly
timed for the drive: he was just pulling up the handbrake now. Dashboard time:
7:12 – 4 minutes to walk to the station, buy a ticket – it was Monday, the day
he always bought a weekly ticket – and get on the train. Now he turned the
ignition off and the radio immediately died. For a moment it was deathly
silent; then he opened the door with a big click and got out and stepped
noisily onto some loose car park gravel. He moved with a couple of deft steps round
to the boot, opened it and grabbed his briefcase. He slammed down the boot,
pressed the lock button on the plastic car key and began to canter along the
pavement towards the concrete staircase that led up to the station’s overpass.
When he reached the staircase he quickly glanced down at his watch – shit three
minutes – and with that encouragement bounced up the staircase two steps at the
time, quickly ran along the overpass – passing the Chinese-lady-run kiosk to
his right – danced adroitly down the stairs, ran straight along towards the
ticket booth and machine – shit there were three people in the queue for the
booth and one for the machine – and took the machine option. He waited behind a
woman in her thirties wearing conventional female office garb, a skirt and
whatnot, like what Margaret used to wear to work. This woman was really taking
her time and she was pissing him off. He glanced down at his watch: one minute.
Come on come on come on.
She collected her ticket, she
collected her change, she moved out of the way. Now this was it, his chance. He
moved precisely and quickly, first Destination: scrolling down the square metal
buttons – shit, where’s City? Oh there – then Ticket Type: shit, where’s
Weekly? Oh there, and what was he? Yeah, adult. The price came up – $34 –
they’ve really been increasing the prices recently – he could hear the train
rolling into the station, he quickly took out his wallet and fumbled around
until he grabbed a slippery $50 note, in the process dislodging a $10 which floated
down on the ground – shit – he put it in the machine, the little light went
green, it was working, it was processing but the train was stopping, it was
making that squeaking noise, he clumsily picked up his tenner from the ground,
he desperately grabbed for the coins and ticket in the metal tray, the doors of
the train were open, his hands were slippery, people were funnelling in, there
were only two who hadn’t entered the train yet, he had everything in his hands,
he started running towards the nearest door, Stand Clear Doors Closing, they
were shutting, mechanically, sadistically
shutting, they wanted him to stay out, they were heartless, unfeeling, they
were about to close, the world hated him, he jumped in between them at the last
minute, he had done it!
It was the victory of the
day.
…
Only a few steps after he had gone through one of the ticket
gates, he was weaving through the crowds in the station arcade. On each side of
the grimy arcade, there were juice bars and take-away Indian curry shops whose
pungent aroma of spices filled the air – and what of the hygiene, leaving them
to go off in those metal trays all day? – and there was McDonalds and there was
Burger King, already filled with people, at breakfast too – what of their
health? – and soon he was on the street, the noisy, densely-populated street,
with people going here and there and here and there, the pedestrian bipper
going bipbipbipbipbip as a great crowd of people, mainly wearing office clothes
like suits and ties and knee-length skirts and coats crossed the
road to the other side.
He began to walk along the
pavement. He passed a youngish attractiveish woman wearing bureaucratic attire,
a very young man wearing a suit, a drug-addled stumbling middle-aged man
wearing dirty and tatty clothes, a homeless person sitting down with a hat on
the ground in front of him with a few meagre coins in it and a cardboard sign
next to that reading “Need money to rent acomodation, desperate”, and a balding
middle-aged man wearing similar clothes to himself. Then he saw Café Milan,
which he entered.
It was warm. There were two women
and one man standing waiting. The baristas, both of whom he recognised, were a
bearded man who looked in his early thirties, and a young attractive woman. As he
looked at them, he felt around in his coin pocket to check if he had coins:
yes, he did. He consequently pinched what he hoped would be an amount of at
least the amount required for his coffee, which was always $3.50. He was
rolling the coins around in his hand as he counted them: there were a few 20s
and one 1 and there was another 1 and there was a 50, ok that must be enough.
“Next” the woman said loudly. He
looked around at the other people near the counter; their expressions
immediately conveyed the sentence ‘I have already purchased and am now
waiting’. So he was next. He walked towards the attractive young woman,
brushing past the woman who was maybe quite close to his age – he apologised
quietly for brushing her and she said “It’s OK” quietly – and then he reached
the counter. Now, as happened every day, he could see this attractive woman had
slight skin blemishes. As usual he thought about how she wasn’t flawless after
all, though she wasn’t too far away after all; her skin was just sort of bumpy that’s
all, but so is everyone’s skin. She was still very attractive.
She was suddenly naked and having
vigorous sex with him and screaming loudly
He decided to speak.
“One regular latte please.”
“Takeaway?”
“Yep.”
“What’s your name?”
“John.”
She wrote a J on one of the
plastic takeaway lids.
“Ok, that’ll be three dollars
fifty.”
The price wasn’t a surprise but
he hadn’t been able to arrange the correct amount in his hand yet. He needed to
move quickly. The coins had blurred into a metallic circly haze but they needed
to be counted – and quickly – because she had a job to do and he was holding
her up; that’s 1, 2, 2.50 obviously, ok there’s three 20s, and another and
there’s the fifth, ok that’s it. He gave the correct amount to her and said,
feigning more uncertainty in his voice than he really harboured, “I think
that’s $3.50.” She didn’t trust him, clearly, because she started counting them
in her hands. Then she appeared satisfied. She popped out the cash register
tray and deftly deposited the coins in their respective compartments. He said
thank you and she smiled at him, salaciously.
He waited for his coffee. He got
his coffee. He sipped it as he walked on, out of the shop, down the footpath
and towards his office.
…
He was in the lift with three other people: standing next to
him was an Asian female cleaner equipped with a blue bucket, inside which stood
a big fluffy pink cleaning brush and various bottles of noxious cleaning
products; In front of him – facing away from him, towards the door – was a
balding gentleman wearing a grey suit about his age whom he, fortunately,
didn’t recognise; and next to this gentleman was a lady around the age of
thirty who worked on his floor, he reckoned, but whom he’d never talked to.
They, like him, were all standing silently and with serious, professional looks
on their faces – though maybe the thirtyish woman had a slight-smile on her
face as she stared at her phone. He began to think about what they were
thinking. Maybe they were thinking about what he was thinking. Or maybe they
were thinking what he was thinking now about them thinking. Or maybe they were
thinking what he was thinking now about
them thinking about them thinking
Ha ha. This is so silly, this
thought.
Suddenly the lift’s ascent halted,
the doors opened and the robotic, female voice of the intercom spoke: “Level
sixteen.” The Asian cleaning woman, appearing anxious to exit the elevator,
said “Excuse me” in a Chinese accent to the thirtyish, possible floor-sharing
woman; she stepped aside to let her and her cleaning implements through. The
cleaner got out.
It was just three of them now as
the door closed; more space and the same silence. He looked at the level-number
buttons just to see which ones had been pressed: there was his, 23, and there
was only one other, 21.
So the thirtyish woman does work on my floor – that’s sorted.
Unless it’s the balding man, but nah, it must be her cause I recognise her.
Seeing they were now hitting
level 20 made him realise that he was almost at work. He started thinking about
work things. Did Jane need that thing today or tomorrow? God, which one was it?
The balding man got out. He was now standing in the lift with the woman only.
It was silent. Today or tomorrow? The engine whirred. Did she say the 26th
or the 27th? The display switched to 22. Argh, why can’t I remember?
The display switched to 23. Oh either way, I haven’t finished it so I’ll have
to do it today. Ding! The doors opened and he moved towards the exit, before
noticing that the thirtyish woman was doing the same. Annoyingly, she also
stopped. He quickly contrived a smile and spoke: “You first”. “Thank you” she
replied with an insincere smile, then quickly left the lift. He exited the
lift, turned right down the corridor, walked towards the big glass door at the
end of the vestibule, and inserted his pass into the slot on the left. It
buzzed and the light turned green.
He pushed open the heavy door and
was immediately confronted with a wave of indistinct chatter. He gazed over the
familiar bureaucratic scene: there were desks everywhere, most of them
occupied, as a multitude of people typed on computers or talked on phones.
Why am I standing still?
He turned left and started
walking towards his section. He first passed his junior colleagues on the
project – the plebeians; haha – then, as he approached his office, passed the
more senior ones, all of whom he said “Good morning” to, but with most
ebullience to his sort-of-boss Jane because he also had to ask her whether she
wanted that thing done by today or tomorrow. She said “Tomorrow”, which was a
relief. He eventually reached his office, which was quite a large, enclosed
one, with a large, perfectly-clean window over the desk and a vista over some
tall glass buildings and some of the harbour, with the harbour bridge and Luna
Park just visible way over on the other side. It was a big harbour in a big
city, a massive city, and he was just
one cog in an immense machine, now sitting down at his desk, ready for a day of
working stolidly.
He reached down beneath his desk
and felt around for the on button on the computer tower. He found it and
pressed it. It began to whir with great effort as the Windows 7 screen
appeared, then, slowly, the log-in screen with the blue background. He deftly
typed in his password – SheepDude73 – and pressed enter. The screen said it was
Logging in.
To his right on the desk was a
pile of documents. He reached over, picked them up and began reading the top
page. As he did, he noticed that the computer had finished logging in and was
now on the desktop page. The mouse was still spinning around though. When the
mouse assumed its default look, he clicked on the Folder icon on the toolbar on
the bottom of his screen. He then clicked on Documents. He began to scroll
through the multitude on the screen. Finally, below 5446376-v…reement.DOC, he found the one he was looking for – 5461930-v…reement.DOC, The Relocation of
Utility Assets Agreement. He clicked on it: all 34 dense and abstruse pages
opened up on the screen.
He scrolled down the document,
admiring as he did the mesmeric patterns of his formatting. On page 26, he at
last found what he was looking for. After the clause, The Insurer(s) hereby agree, subject to the limitations, Exclusions,
terms and conditions hereinafter mentioned, that they will insure against all
risks of physical loss or damage to: ,
there was blank space. He began filling it in.
…
He looked up at the clock on the wall above his computer: it
read about twenty-three past twelve.
Just a few more minutes.
He began to scroll up and down
the document, absentmindedly looking for instances of awkward phrasing or
plain-old errors. His stomach groaned with hunger. The words were beginning to
blur.
Must keep working.
He stared at the screen:
9.5 -> The
Principal has effected and will continue to maintain, from the Date for
Commencement until the expiry of the Defects Liability period, Principal
Arranged (“PA”) Insurance being contract works and third party liability
insurance effected by the Principal in the name of the Principal, the
Contractor and an approved subcontractor employed in relation to the Works for
the limits of liability as stated in Attachment 4 to cover the Contractor’s
liability to the Principal and to third parties.
9.6-> Blah blah
blah blah
He didn’t know how it happened
but when he looked at the clock again, it read about twelve thirty-two.
It’s lunch time.
He sat up, stretched his legs,
and walked off towards the lift
…
He returned to his office with a
stomach full of curry. He sat down and awoke the computer. His Word document
appeared on the screen, its rows and rows of words sitting dense and immovable.
He began to type from where he left off. His fingers clicked and clacked on the
keyboard, and the clock ticked away on the wall.
As he wrote a clause about the
company being willing to insure damage to construction vehicles, he began to
look around his desk. He saw the black, Toshiba monitor and the keyboard on
which his two hands were working, his computer mouse sitting on its pad, his
shiny metal lamp, three soft-cover books – two those ones about the Englishman
who goes to live in France, the other that detective fiction novel called
“Blood” with a sensationalised front cover and journalistic praise all over its
back – that mug with a big, red number 1 and World’s Best Dad written on it,
that picture of him with the kids in Tasmania, that picture of the kids posing
together in the old backyard, that picture of him with Margaret back in 97 at
the farm, and that picture of Margaret with the kids in the hallway.
Something stirred inside him.
“Fuck this.”
He stopped typing. He sat still
for a few seconds, staring with a pensive expression into his screen. Then he
shifted his feet slightly and allowed himself to rotate on his swivel chair
ninety degrees to the left. Now he was staring at a white wall, at the millions
of tiny lumps that had come into focus; the millions of tiny lumps on the wall
that had appeared from far away to be flat and uniform.
There are so many lumps on the
wall, so many lumps on the wall, why am I thinking about the lumps on the wall?
I do that every day, it’s such a waste of time, it’s so pointless, thinking
like this is pointless, it reduces my productivity so much. But maybe that’s a
good thing, I mean I don’t want to be some sort of bureaucratic slave, some
sort of servile robot in an Orwellian society; ha ha yes it’s good being able
to think about the lumps on the wall because then I am not a slave to society
anymore, no longer confined. No I should seriously get back to work, I need to
finish work on the contract, the deadline’s tomorrow. But it’s so stressful,
it’s so boring, I don’t want to do it, these days drag so slowly, look at the
clock over there, it’s so mechanical, so-so inanimate, it just ticks and ticks
and ticks, these days drag so slowly, I’m slowly dying in here this white
office; I was going to become a writer, I was going to do something with this
life, then I grew up; ha ha; maybe I should have been though, I still probably
can, I want to write about thoughts, I want to escape my head, I really do wish
I wasn’t stuck in my own head, I wish I wasn’t eternally alone inside my own
head, how weird is it to think that I will never know what it is to be someone,
to live like someone else, to think like someone else? it’s so strange. I
should get back to work, it’s so boring, oh but I should, oh but this is all so
pointless!
He started singing very quietly,
almost in a whisper: “One day I am going to grow wings, a chemical reaction,
hysterical and useless, hysterical and useless.”
“I love that song” he whispered.
He continued
staring at the lumps.
After about a
minute, he swivelled back to the computer screen and continued typing.
…
As he drove to the supermarket it started raining. It gradually
intensified until it was splattering noisily on his windscreen and drops were
streaming down.
After a few minutes, he turned
off the highway onto Juliet St. On his right was the huge, familiar
supermarket, near the top of which was emblazoned in enormous letters, COLES.
As he noted there were no spaces on the street, he drove just past the actual
supermarket building and turned off into its driveway. As he descended the
slope, he had a view of the whole, immense, black, rain-slicked square of the carpark:
he immediately perceived that there were many empty spaces but that they were
mainly for disabled people.
Why are there always so many
bloody carparking spaces designated for disabled people? It’s got to be a
massive superfluity.
As he reached the bottom of the
hill he was somewhat mollified, as he spotted a spot without the annoying blue
square very quickly. He dexterously swerved in between the white lines and
turned off the car.
He opened the door and got out.
He immediately started getting wet and noticed it was cold. He didn’t have a
jacket on. He ran towards the supermarket, through the car park, becoming
wetter and wetter, until he reached the brightly-lit shelter of the supermarket’s
front entrance. He headed up the pavement towards the entrance. He walked into
the supermarket as a woman with a young child and a pram walked out; they
passed each other next to the automatic doors.
He grabbed a red basket and
sauntered into the supermarket. He wondered what he would make for dinner. He
decided: I guess I’ll just make Spag Bol. He went to the vegetables aisle first
and collected some oregano and a handful of carrots and two zucchini. He next
headed to the refrigerated meat section; after a bit of looking he found the
mince section. 3 Star, 4 Star or 5 Star, that
was the question. He chose 5 Star coz though he was dubious about the ratings
system, the 5 Star one looked the most red and meaty, as opposed to the other
slightly greyish ones. He then headed towards the aisle where he hoped to find
both spaghetti and tomato paste; he first found a packet of spaghetti, then
after much searching he found the tomato paste section. He chose the Dolmio’s
flavoured one; it felt somehow wrong. As he began walking out of the aisle,
towards the ice-cream section at the back, he suddenly recognised Michael
whatshisname, the father of a girl in his daughter’s old soccer team. He
quickly turned around, and began walking quickly the other way. When he had
finally reached the ice-cream section, he found it difficult to choose which
two Connoisseur flavours he would buy, but eventually decided on Café Grande
and Chocolate Honey Nougat – assuredly two delicious ice-creams. Then he
realised, as he delicately placed the ice-cream in the trolley, that he
couldn’t remember what the last thing he had to get was. Or maybe he hadn’t
forgotten anything. Suddenly he remembered: milk! When he reached the milk
section, he made sure not to get a Coles brand bottle despite them having
stacked the shelves full of them – those corporate cunts – instead choosing a
Dairy Farmers two-litre bottle, as per usual. He then walked over towards the
checkout, burgeoning red basket in hand.
When he got there, he noticed the
Express, 12 items or less, checkouts were closed. ‘Shit’ he thought as he
looked at all the other checkouts, almost all of them populated by mothers with
trolleys stacked to the brim. They all seemed like equal waits. After much
internal deliberation, he decided to head towards the one directly in front of
him, where a fat man with a fat child had just started purchasing his whole
trolley-load of frozen food meals and junk. He walked in behind him and put his
basket down. As his items were being scanned, he picked up the plastic
item-ownership separator, placed it down on the conveyor belt, and started
taking his own items out of the red basket and onto the conveyor belt, behind
the separator. He was finished quickly. But the fat man’s items continued to be
scanned. Bip. Bip. Bip.
He turned his gaze upwards: on
the wall just in front of him was a bright, vibrantly-coloured picture of
Curtis Stone posing with a housewife. They were both replete with immaculate
hair and wide smiles, and both of them were holding out for the camera bowls of
steamy, brown, slightly diarrhoeal spaghetti bolognaise. There was a caption
beneath it, in large letters: “Feed your family for under ten dollars”
Feed your family shit for under ten dollars; haha. But
god advertisements are awful, they’re such terrible things. Except are they?;
they are necessary things, certainly. I don’t know. Well I do know something:
Curtis Stone’s a cunt.
He looked back down at the checkout: a plastic
bag of his had already been filled and deposited in the collection area. The
checkout lady, whose name he could just make out was Sophie, was now picking up
the Weet-bix, bip; now the tomato
paste, bip; now the spaghetti, bip; now she picked up the full bag and
deposited it in the collection area; now the Café Grande ice-cream, bip. He looked at her face: she was
extremely attractive. And very young. Just older than Elizabeth. And extremely attractive.
All of a sudden she was naked, on
top of him, feline in her pose, purring that he should make love to her; the
room dark, ambiently-lit, candles to his left on a table, him on a lounge and
her now
“That comes to a hundred and
thirty-seven dollars and thirty cents. How would you like to pay?”
‘God I’m a creep’ he thought as
he replied “Visa”. It continued to bother him as she asked him if he wanted
Flybuys. It continued to bother him as he swiped his card and as the
transaction was confirmed. It continued to bother him as he picked up his bags,
as the automatic doors opened onto the gelid night air, and as he lurched,
bag-laden, embarrassed and unhappy, through the carpark’s rain and darkness,
towards the metallic silhouette of his empty car.
…
He nudged open the door with his foot, shopping bags in
hand. The house was dark. He knew the
light switch was somewhere to his left on the wall. He put down the two
shopping bags in his left hand. He felt for the light switch; he pressed it and
the room was suddenly lit-up. He walked forward, heavy-legged, towards the
kitchen. There he lifted the shopping bags onto the bench, and stood, looking
around at the space behind the kitchen: the furniture was disorderly, and there
was clothing and clutter everywhere. It was also silent.
It used to be so nice this house;
so alive. It used to have a family in
it. I raised two children.
“Life’s over now” he whispered.
The kitchen remained impassive.
He stood, still staring, with a
solemn look on his face.
“No, I can’t say things like
that, no it’s not over.”
He bit his lip.
But it is, it is. What more can I hope for? There is nothing,
there is nothing.
He sighed. He whispered again: “I
still need to cook dinner. Life goes on… On and on.”
He turned around and cooked some
spaghetti bolognaise.
It wasn’t fucking Curtis’ recipe,
though.
…
John was slumped on the lounge. He was staring at the TV.
The program was Masterchef Australia.
This show is so trashy, so
stupid.
Excerpts from John’s responses to
the show: “What a ridiculous mixed metaphor”; “Cliché”; “Oh no another one of
them is crying”; “This is so contrived.”
The program finished. As soon as
he realised he had lost the remote, the ads came on – the ones advertising
“new”, “fast-tracked from the US”, “incredible”, “thrilling” crime dramas, with
the deep, sensual, extremely irritating female voiceover who only speaks in
superlatives. He was beginning to panic. The noise and images on the screen
kept shouting at him.
Where is the remote? Where is the
remote? “Fuck. Where is it?”
He stood up and wrenched away the
in-built lounge cushion on top of which he had sat; it thudded softly onto the
floor. Now the lounge was exposed in all its ignoble nudity.
He could sense the remote’s
presence somewhere, somewhere concealed in the lounge’s frame. He reached his
hand towards the back of the lounge, into the abyss where wayward remotes
normally could be found. He felt around and felt nothing. Then, suddenly – yes
he’d got it.
Mocking incantations were
cascading from the screen:
Down
down prices are down Down down prices are down Down down
prices are down Down down prices are
He turned it off; the ordeal was
over… But no, he suddenly realised it was only 8:30; he would have to look for
something else to watch until 9:30. It was too early to go to bed, far too
early. He had to be exhausted when he went to bed, otherwise he’d think,
descend into a thinking frenzy… No he hated those nights. He turned the TV back
on.
He watched a documentary on SBS
about modernity and modern cities and architectural feats and how many people
there are on earth; it was very overwhelming and there was something altogether
frightening about it. And when it had finished he realised he felt queasy in
the stomach.
He turned the TV off. He was
tired and it was bedtime. His legs felt lethargic and his body felt stiff and
unresponsive – old. He was old and he forgot go for a run today at lunchtime.
“Shit, I can’t believe I forgot
that. I need to get fit.”
He switched off the light in the
living room, then the kitchen, then began to walk up the staircase. One step at
a time, his body drunk, his eyes bleary. He was not going to read a book
tonight – he was too tired for that. He stumbled into his bedroom, then round
into the ensuite bathroom. He flicked on the bright light; it startled him and
he squinted. Everything had a surreally laboratorial look in the bright light –
all the garish colours of toothpastes and toothbrushes and deodorants gleaming
at him like surgeons. Slightly unsettled, he grabbed his toothbrush and the
plumpest toothpaste tube and performed a task practised thousands of times
before: squeezing-out a blob of paste onto the brush. He put the brush in his
mouth and started brushing. He did it sleepily, absentmindedly; it took less
than two minutes. He flicked off the
bathroom light.
He hobbled stiffly towards the
left side of the double-bed, the side where he slept, and where his comical
cotton pyjamas lay. He torpidly removed his work clothes, and hung up his shirt
and tie and trousers in his wardrobe. He put on his pyjamas; they were snug. He
climbed into the bed; the sheets were cold.
“Shit, the light’s still on.”
He climbed out of bed, stumbled
over towards the light switch and turned it off. He stumbled back towards the
bed and once again climbed in. Thankfully he was too tired to think and quickly
went to sleep.
He dreamt of walking alone down a
never-ending white-walled corridor, getting slower and slower until he could no
longer walk and then collapsing down and
Enormous blood-red numbers shone
through the dark, a screeching buzz rang in his ears.
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