Short fiction

Numbers

I inhale deeply on the cigarette. The ambers recede, the end shrivels, and I take in the wonderful nicotine. Holding it, then slowly opening my mouth for the vapours to exit, I walk away from the bookies, and make my way home. Home is a flat on a shitty estate with my ex-hippy wife. Not that I'm a hippy - or ever was, but it seems worth mentioning. The winter’s in - ice clings to the air, but you can’t see it. I dig my left (non-cigarette) hand ever further into my denim jacket and curse the foul weather. I stomp onwards, retracing a well-worn path. There are good days and bad days at the bookies, but it’s always something to do. That's why I go, not for the hope and dreams and disappointment and anger - but because it’s there, and I find little else to occupy me.

When I come back to the flat I see my wife lying on the sofa, thumbing a cheap magazine and watching some shopping channel. This saddens me, though I never tell her so. I just sit down and watch with her, stroking her shoulder and enjoying the time we spend together.

After a while I kiss her on the cheek and go to the kitchen to make dinner. Dinner is pasta with tomato sauce and cheese. Vitamin C tablets stop the impending scurvy, so I don’t feel too bad about eating the same crap every night. I put the pasta on to boil and don't go back into the living room. I enjoy the mindless boredom of waiting for something unimportant to happen, and have another smoke, weaving around the room, slowly parading in a thoughtless dance. I take in the meals to my wife and we eat them on the sofa, the TV now showing the lottery.  I squeeze the ticket bought earlier from my jeans pocket and put it on the side table, glancing across to check the numbers are still the same.

My dad, a few days before he died (of emphysema - he was a bad smoker) told me how he had had a dream in which I won the lottery. He was senile at the time, though in this case he spoke with absolute clarity. He made me write down the numbers which had burned themselves into his decaying mind, and I've kept them ever since, using them from the age of 25. I'm now 48.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of life I would have had if I not placed all my trust in these numbers for all those years. That thought haunts me now and again, as I lie in bed unable to sleep, in the late hours of the night. I am however, certain that they will come up. It's just a matter of patience.

We sit there watching the presenters read auto-cues, announcing bad jokes and I stare right past them - right to the throbbing machine with its answers and dreams. It seems to pulse, gaining momentum like a frightened animal, nervous of a stranger’s glance. My eyes focus out the people and all I can see is the machine, numbers spinning as though in a washing machine. I light another cigarette and the usual thoughts repeat in my mind. "What if this is the night? What if this is actually it?" My heart speeds up in trepidation and excitement. The first ball drops from the bowel of the spinning animal and in slow motion it rolls to the end. My eyes widen. It's the right number. A sweat creeps across my brow and I do my best to keep calm, my heart pounding now. The thoughts double, now shouting inside me. The next number follows suit, clunking from its’ sometime cage. I edge forwards. Sound doesn't reach me now. There could be a fire and I would continue to stare at the numbers before me. Once again it's the right number. I swallow a deep breath, try to calm my shaking hands. The third number. It exits, and slides down to marry the previous two. I'm brought back to reality like a car crash as I see it's not one of mine. Suddenly I'm sitting in the flat again, the air seems unusually still and I watch the next numbers disappoint me with less and less impact. I am angry with myself for getting so excited and once again lie awake that night growing madder and madder at my waste of life. I eventually drift into sleep and do not dream.

*

I'm now 56, the same age as my dad when he died. I'm glad to have been able to live this long. Not much changes. I've been diagnosed with emphysema, though it didn't come as a surprise. I was ever going to learn my lesson, it would have been a long time ago. I'm too old now for adjustment, I'm just waiting for time to take its course. I won't get in its way.

My wife turned 51 today. I bought her flowers and a box of chocolates. Tonight I'll cook lasagne and we'll sit down together and watch TV as always. It's summer and the window is open, a cool breeze floats across the room, caressing our warm skin. The sky is still light when I begin cooking at 7. When I bring in the meal she smiles at me in the same way I smile at her; it’s been almost 30 years now. The smile has almost given up. Her face is sweet and thankful though, and I tell her I love her, which of course I do. She repeats the same back, and I know she means it. Behind this though I know she is sad. The furrows on her forehead betray her guise of contentedness. I am filled with sorrow in knowledge of her sadness, but despite this, in bitter nights my escape card is always to think that at least I have her.

We sit, we eat, we hold each other without pressure, but with a prevailing feeling that we might fall if we let go. The lottery comes on and I zone out.

It crossed my mind, a long time ago, that from the day my dad told me about his dream, I was doomed to a senile prophecy, in success or death. I now only await the latter, as no reparation can be made to the live I have supposedly lived. I tried, about 13 years into this stagnant life, to quit. My current existence is a testament to the results of that attempt. I made several vows since then, but never with the same energy.

The mechanical whirr of the animal churns into power and I feel its heartbeat draw me into its grasp. I am its victim, but I choose to be its slave. The first number drops, almost indecently, onto the rail. It's not any of the numbers I have. I feel weight fall upon my shoulders again, gravity returns to my feet. I sigh and force a lame smile at my wife. She smiles back and I know she's urging it not to look fake. I hug her and whisper nice things to her, telling her it'll be soon. That it will happen. The words are as much for my benefit as hers. Perhaps more. I look back to the rumbling organism and see that I've missed one of the numbers come out. This number is one I have. One I was told from the senile dream. My heart bounces inside me with enough vigour to incite a heart attack. My eyes disappear from my body and become part of the camera, zooming ever closer onto the number. A new type of smile creeps across my face, bursting through buried emotions. My wife sits up to my side, staring in an infantile reverie, as much part of the camera as I am. The third ball departs, dancing and sliding its way to the others. My wife gasps. We have that number. This is it. This has to be it. It's the right time. We've waited long enough. We've had patience, we've definitely had patience. This is going to happen right now. Right now. Finally. As the fourth ball descends I look out of the window and into the sky and I look right at god and I shake his hand and he holds me in his arms and I thank him for all he has done. I turn to face the glowing box in our twilight room, once again engrossed and consumed. And then I see the fourth ball and I can only close my eyes. It's the right number. My mouth is dry. I look at my wife and there is only happiness that fills the room. Such euphoria, I shall never forget.

The old saying goes - "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all". I agree with that, but it doesn't mean that the heartache is always bearable. I say that, because the fifth number wasn't ours, neither the sixth, and not the last. I felt love, and happiness, and a thousand emotions that all combined to elate me to some unimaginable bliss, though I also felt every last positive emotion within me die and retreat, once the fifth ball finally descended.

*

I'm now 67. I haven't felt anything approaching happiness since that day. When those emotions were beat back, they weren't just put away - they were eliminated. My wife killed herself on her 60th birthday. She dumped her head in the oven and waited for the fumes to possess her. I was at the bookies at the time. When I returned her skin had turned red from the gas, and she was bent over undignified and ungraceful. I called for an ambulance and held her in my arms until they arrived, trying to capture an image of her face, fearing it could be the last time I saw her. She was so red. I cried and couldn't look at her anymore, holding her, but repelled. Reminding myself of how she was, of who she was. Who she was. The paramedics knew there was no hope when they saw her. They barely looked for a pulse. I cried, and I cried. Her funeral was pathetic. They say you can't take it with you, but what’s left behind? A life on the dole barely buys a hole in the ground.

I killed my wife by binding her to this vapid pursuit. I killed everything we had. Gone are the times when I dreamt of a future, now I only dream of death.

I looked in the mirror today, filling a glass of water in the bathroom so I can swallow the bounty of painkillers I have hoarded. I looked at myself and stood there, trying to find one reason to deny my planned actions. I saw an old man's face, its wrinkled form, putty for skin. I looked further and caught my own eyes and saw all that I had become, all that I ever was.

The man who waited for nothing.

Bryn Farnsworth