Experimental

Moment

Each beat pressed harder against her ears, slippery and jagged inside the clenched bones of her skull. Each pulse sent brutal spasms down her spine, causing her interlocked fingers to ache as they sat, webbed and waiting over the plastic receiver. Her mouth felt barren, razed by fire, and her eyes followed nothing, except the directionless beat in her head.

This, she reasoned, had to do with the phone call received minutes ago, jangling like the cry of roadkill, the bare wail of a flea-bitten orphan. Both similes ridiculous of course – after all, the truth hadn’t been known then, a phone was just a phone. Always a phone. It always would be. And words would look pretty, decorative black shapes on the page, but they were deceptive and flat, dry dirt.

The outside world had already known, known for hours. The skies had blinked and moved on, into rain, hail and the Scottish mountains. But there had been no clue for her until the walls had been pierced by its invisible sting, wriggling and twisting between the bricks and mortar. There had been no clue. Nothing at all. She should have known, surely?

Her breath, still steaming the air after the last greedy gulp of coffee, had drifted across her scribblings on the daily crossword

     ROBIN
    I
    GNOCCHI
    G
            VALEDICTORIAN 
            E

Since the siren’s scream, the crossword had collapsed into an inanimate sprawl across the table. The blank squares were shattered bone on the pine. Always chasms now, from the pivot of the phone, always white. The clues shouted at her, cried ‘look, I knew, I knew, you thoughtless bitch’. One Across: ‘Common Bird’ pushed images and memories into a mind that wasn’t strong enough to hold them. And yet she couldn’t read, couldn’t comprehend how they meant anything at all. They were smudges and stars, stains smeared across her eyes.

She was young and healthy. Her appearance was nothing like the porcelain she envisaged herself; in photographs we see someone ruddy and red and tender. In the new Now, past the word ‘normal’ and past the shrill stab of the phone, she had mutated; now she was blotched and carved into a rigid shape, like frozen rutted ground, pigs scratching for truffles in the freckles on her cheek.

We can see she was in shock, and she saw shock itself. Shock was the grip of an invisible stranglehold, an immoveable clamp that pulsed to the beat in her ears, and set her face to Nothing. It was a forgiving beast as it teased at the curls around her jawline, cutting around the rim to remove her face. But whilst it itched, she made no effort to bat it away.

Her hand still rested on the back of the phone, the wire spiralling like an umbilical cord. The plastic was hot and her hand damp, two halves melting into a passionate embrace. She was seated, but could not feel the seat, could not feel the pulse of her palm against the plastic phone, though her brain believed she was bleeding.

The Phone: channel of reason, spoken word, a performance, antics, in an earpiece, the word of Truth, God, Outside, Inside –

TODAY. 4.30PM :

The ticking clock sounded out each beat of her heart, tormenting, laughable, like a fist blowing open a hole where her nose and cheeks should be. It jangled notes it couldn’t possibly produce. A staccato of ‘well-meaning’ bullets ricocheted off her nothingness, flowing water, a cascade. It would be a cliché to say she was drowning from the oxygen in her lungs:

“breathe this music, breathe beats, pulsing, hearting, no phone or ear, just this overriding music, figures in a manic Chaplin movie, no Chaplin movies ever again, no broken stairs, stones, dancing, how? Why? feeling, thinking, couldn’t, can’t, won’t. Broken rag doll, broken rag doll, broken rag doll…”

Like one limb ripped off and away, alone now, all in a moment.

No, not a limb; but a torso. The sky.

The silence pulsed red.

Her ears began to sing.

Mel Evans