Fiction

Dinosaur Soup

Dr. Maloney,
I think you should take a look at what Matthew has been producing in the writing circle. He is really starting to worry me. Such an intense individual.
Finch

From Matthew's journal —

Week 1 — Setting
The shed stood alone at the bottom of the garden. Patches of paint had worn off to reveal the original, cheap pine of the thing. The door was difficult to open, so a spade and a pair of long-handled shears leaned outside it. The combination lock was stiff for lack of handling. Inside, it shared the universal smell of sheds everywhere; compost and rotting wood with a petrochemical undertone. A lawnmower languished in the corner, the workbench was crowded with terracotta plant pots and gardening gloves, unworn since father left. Under the bench was a canister of petroleum for the lawnmower.

The Bloomfield Institution was a high-security mental hospital. From the outside it looked like a country house: picturesque aged brickwork and a garden out back, with benches scattered around for patients to sit on and gawp at the roses. High fences all around it, spikes pointing inward. Inside, the place had been gutted and repainted white, which was calming, and a muted green meant to be calming but actually nauseating. The patients' rooms were furnished nicely enough: some of us had carpets and patterned curtains. On the chipboard table next to my bed sat two mediocre books by Joshua Finch and a battered Bible. They put the Bible in there to give the patients Solace in the Word of God. Eventually we got bored enough to read it, but it didn't really have any effect.

Week 2 — Character
The boy was ten-and-a-half. We will call him David and not Matthew. Josh Finch says that this is fiction and it can be about anyone and anything I want it to be, and that I should not dwell on things. The boy wore a dressing gown over a pair of pyjamas that were not warm enough for outside. Adults always said that he looked half starved, but he explained to them that he just wasn't hungry. He did not think of himself as rebellious or anti-authoritarian by nature (and would not have done even if he had known the word ‘anti-authoritarian’); he had just been finding it difficult to concentrate for the last year or so.
He would buck up eventually and land a job doing data entry for an office supply company called StapleMate. But back then, the teacher would have to say his name three times to drag his attention from the window to ask him a question, which he wouldn't understand. This confused him. It made him anxious and even less likely to pay attention. Apart from that day's lesson — he paid attention then because it was about dinosaurs, at least indirectly, and he loved dinosaurs.
Thoughts in His Head — He had learned in school how natural oil was created, how it was made up of dead things like algae and fish and dinosaurs, billions of years ago. They would die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, and then heat and pressure and time would turn them into a liquid. The liquid could be pumped out of the ground and made into all kinds of useful things, like petrol and diesel and plastic. This meant that toy dinosaurs were made out of real dinosaurs, and that his Mother's car ran on dinosaur soup.

‘Mother’ is spelled with a capital to show that she is an imposing figure who loomed large in David's mind. Mother was thin too, all elbows and cheekbones and crow's feet at the corners of her eyes. Mother always took care of her little boy, but had been finding it difficult to keep track of him recently and was more prone to shouting. The number of people in her house had changed but the number of wine bottles stayed the same.

Joshua Finch was a small man in early middle-age who had begun to sag around the edges. His hair melted from his head, starting at the crown and working outwards: when he turned around the light would glint off it. He insisted that all of the circle call him ‘Josh’ because this helps to build rapport. He genuinely believed in the power of writing to ‘heal the mind and order the soul’, as he put it. If you stared at him hard he sweated as though you had heat-beam eyes like Superman.

Week 3 — Action
It was too early and too cold to be awake, but David had a mission. He was Being a Scientist. He was Finding Things Out. He took a small torch from the pocket of his gown and closed the door of the shed behind him, so that its dim light could not be seen from the house. He cast the beam around him, checking that he was alone, knowing that he was alone, but checking all the same. He knew what he was looking for, and where to find it — under the workbench. The canister sloshed, about half-full. He set the torch down on the bench to illuminate his work, and poured a little of the canister's contents onto his hands. It was viscous, slimy, not at all as he had expected. He rubbed it onto his dressing gown, and set to work. The plant pots wouldn't do because they had holes in them, so he found an empty paint tin and filled the bottom with petrol.
The matches were in his other dressing gown pocket, stolen from the kitchen cupboard that his Mother forgot he was tall enough to reach. His hands did not even shake as he struck one and dropped it into the tin. The effect was instant, glorious. The flames shot up and then faded back, dancing like the ballerina in a music box. He stood, mesmerised, barely even noticing when his dressing gown caught. It must have been one second, two seconds, three seconds before he felt the heat on his thigh, then he started screaming.
He ripped off the gown and threw it to the floor, nearly knocking the tin over. He huddled down, shocked, and watched as tin and gown consumed themselves, throwing distorted shadows on the walls. Mother arrived minutes later, shrieking at the top of her voice, but he was in no danger. The burn on his thigh would transmute itself into a silver scar, marking where the fire kissed him.

David was sitting at his desk. A spreadsheet was giving him trouble; the numbers of crates of printer toner that should be bound for Birmingham refused to match up with the numbers that were recorded leaving the warehouse. The fact that this mattered so much was depressing. Dinklage, the boss-man, blustered up to David's desk and made savage gestures at him with sheets of paper. His face turned red the way it would if someone were to hold a candle underneath his hostile, blubbery chin. The problem may not have been Birmingham. David's gaze kept slipping to the waste bin, which seemed to make Dinklage think that he was ignoring him. It was so difficult to care.
When Dinklage gave up and walked away, threats of discipline still hot on his lips, David returned to the spreadsheet. Another ten minutes and the numbers were still refusing to resolve themselves. The waste bin became more inviting, but he couldn't do it there. He got up from his swivel chair and made for the break room. He walked over to the pile of newspapers and glossy magazines on the corner of the table and took out his lighter. It was silver and monogramed; it cost £55. It would light even in gale-force wind.
Looking around to check that there was no-one else in the room, David held the lighter to the stack. The cheap toner used in daily newspapers meant that the stack caught quickly. He took a cigarette from his pocket, ripped it in half, and tossed the bottom half into the conflagration as a Probable Cause —  someone having a surreptitious smoke without going out in the rain. He stood back, watching for as long as he dared. The flames were tipped with dark grey smoke, standing six inches proud of their fuel. A few charred shreds floated upwards like ascending angels. He took a damp tea towel from beside the sink and threw it over the pile. He just had time to slip out of the back door and join the milling crowds outside before the smoke alarms went off.

Week 4 — Dialogue
Dialogue is difficult. Dialogue is not your friend.
‘David. David, are you listening to me?’ A drop of spittle flew from Dinklage's mouth and flecked the page he waved.
‘Yes sir.’ The standard answer.
‘Then why are you doing nothing about it, man?’
‘I shall get right on to it, sir.’
‘You just see that you do — Polytech has our nuts in a vice. They're edging us out of the market.’ He could have said anything. David was tuning out. He turned to his spreadsheet and keyed in numbers. Dinklage had no idea if they were correct. David knew they were not.
‘You've been letting it slide, David. Pull yourself together or it'll be you for the chopper.’
‘Immediately, sir.’ Autopilot was fully engaged.

Week 5 — Setting
The head office of StapleMate Office Supplies Ltd was like a set of Chinese boxes — cubicles in cubes. Each of the cubicles had a desk with a dated computer beside a filing cabinet for storing pointless pieces of paper about other pieces of paper and staples and paperclips. The drone of the ceiling fans and the whir of computers were constant and turned the air into a nerve-jangling hum that pushed on the brain like a tumour. The air smelled of Heinz tomato soup, burnt coffee and toner.

David's house was OK, which was part of the problem. He had spent seven years of his life working and saving up to buy it, and it was nobody's but his own. It was one of a row of identical semi-detached houses. The ground floor was open-plan; an adjustable leather armchair sat a perfect distance from an HD television and a high-range sound system. The cookware in the kitchen went virtually untouched. On the glass dining table stood an elegant cruet, flanking an empty vase. A study in chrome and white.
The house represented the culmination of his life thus far, and he hated it. His bookshelves were stacked with unread classics in attractive covers. His CD collection failed utterly to define him as a person. All of his things were carefully arranged to make it appear as though he had a life, when in fact all he had was stuff. He needed to work, and he had to work for something, so he bought stuff.

Week 6 — Dialogue
Dialogue is invented speech. People do not talk in books as they do in real life; it would be too annoying to read and would not make sense.
‘How often do you think of fire, David?’ she asked. Clipped consonants.
‘Less, now.’
‘You know that these thoughts are unhealthy, yes.’ Not a question. He gave no answer. He stared, she tapped. Tap, tap, tap.
‘I would like you to try something for me,’ she said. Speech tags help the reader to follow the flow of the conversation. ‘When you think of setting a fire, I would like you to vocalise the word ‘no’. It is the first step in recognising the thoughts as negative.’
‘You're the therapist.’
‘Very good. Pyromania is simply an impulse control disorder. I believe that with the correct combination of CBT and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, these impulses can be managed.’
‘I'm sure you're right. Being here, with all this quiet, I am feeling calmer already,’ he lied.
‘Quite. Also, have you heard that we will be visited soon by a man by the name of Joshua Finch? He will be running a writing course with some of the patients; it could be very helpful for you, to find a more healthy method of expressing your feelings.’
‘I may have seen a notice somewhere.’
‘Do you think that will be a problem for you, David?’
‘No.’ Her head was anointed with a tongue of fire.

Week 7 — Character
Dr. Maloney, M. (Mary) had a brass plaque on her desk that lists off the letters after her name (14, in groups of 2 or 3). An accoutrement of an ego that was masturbatory in its self-indulgence. She found time in her schedule to keep her nails manicured and painted red, a gloss red like cherries. Her lips too, red. Her ginger hair bunched severely on top of her head. The odd wisp of it escapes the bun and floats upwards. It looks as though it is on fire. I picture her head on fire. She looks at me over the top of rimless Swiss glasses and smiles as her skin blisters. She is doing this only to excite me.

David is older now, nearly 28. He spends most of his time being bored and dissatisfied with the way his life has turned out. He gets terribly anxious about his interactions with other people; sometimes his words come out of his mouth before he has had a chance to consider them properly. The people probably talk about him behind his back. His colleagues play tricks on him at work, which could be camaraderie, but they laugh at him rather than with him.
Thoughts in his head — cars pull into petrol stations all the time. People put the pumps into their cars. They watch the numbers on the screens cycle higher and higher. Few of them could even tell you what colour petrol is. As far as they are concerned it could be an imaginary substance that everybody just assumes is real. We only know about it because of its effects. The car leaves the station. Smog rises. Every so often, something catches fire.

Week 8 — Action
David stared at the ceiling. He was lying on a leather couch in Dr. Maloney's office, trying hard not to look into her smug face. She tapped a pencil against her clipboard during the lull in conversation, slightly out of time with the second-hand ticking of the clock. The effect was syncopated, maddening. They talked for half an hour, every other day, despite the fact that there was nothing to do in Bloomfield, and so there was nothing he could have done since they last spoke. He thought about running, but there were guards to stop that kind of thing — huge men in nurse's scrubs. He was trapped with the clicking pencil and the ticking clock and Maloney's smug face.

He had fantasised about it for months, planning it meticulously: taking the sheaves of pointless hardbacks from their shelves and scattering them across the floor in savage circles, toppling the CD racks in an act of iconoclasm. He emptied a gallon of petrol across the floor, across the leather armchair, the kitchen. The words ‘dinosaur soup’ played on repeat in his head. Before he left, he turned on the gas rings of the hob without pressing the ignition. He took out his lighter; it would be his beloved sacrifice. Outside the door, he clicked it; the spark was instantaneous, as always.
He tossed it inside, closed the door, and waited. When the fire crews arrived, the blaze had climbed out of the upper floor windows and onto the roof. They found David sitting cross-legged in the street, watching his life go up in flames. He was smiling. The fire had spoken to him like the burning bush, promising him great things, if only he would trust it. If only he would let it into his heart.
The firemen were speaking to him. One of them had pressed an oxygen mask into his hand and was trying to get him to inhale. They were asking him questions — was he alright, did he know what had happened. Someone in the background was screaming, or maybe it was a siren. Policemen arrived, hoisting him from the ground. David could see firemen dousing his work with jets of water. He resented them; this was his moment. They were walking with profane feet on his hallowed ground.

Alex Marsh