The sideboard had remained virtually intact and unmarked
through those generations between which it had been passed until this very
second now when a bottle opened upon its edge removes a sizable bite from out the
dark wood.
Having collected the last two remaining bottles of
Moosehead from the fridge, deleted
name had exited the
kitchen, only to remember his lack of bottle-opener here partway along a
corridor on the house’s ground floor, the sideboard providing him the first
available right-angle that might function as such.
The air continues to vibrate in his vision as the
entire building rumbles to the sound of pounding drumbeats, distorted into
simple primeval rhythm by the stereo’s speakers’ inability to deliver anything
resembling clarity in volume at this decibel level.
Carrying the newly-opened Moosehead bottle while the
cold condensation of the other begins to soak the pocket of his trousers
through to the flesh of his leg, he resumes his walking back through the house:
up stairs, along a corridor, up more stairs, through double doors, another
corridor, in through the door and there open upon the bed an old shoebox filled with cards: postcards,
Christmas, birthdays 30th, 40th, 50th each
completed decade deemed significant enough to merit that many more regards than
those by which each was bookended, and the source of almost all now almost
certainly dead, many long since so, along with which he recognises the
possibility of at least some of these being the very last remaining record of
them in their own handwriting left anywhere.
The drumbeats boil at their remove, and he swallows
at the green glass bottle.
Skunk: If you had what you knew to be
the last fragment of someone’s handwriting, even if it was only a note or a
shopping list or something just… totally banal, would you feel you had to keep
it?
deleted name (an expression suggesting
he is looking albeit briefly directly into his own head): You think you should?
Skunk: Well… maybe, yeah. I mean, that’s
the thing, is that you don’t know if, I mean, unless you had proof otherwise,
how would you know it’s not? And if you destroy it, that’s, it’s the end.
He
drinks again, and the stylus drags a man’s scream from out some profound depth
of his bowel.
deleted name: You do know there are
some people who feel absolutely no compulsion whatsoever to archive every last
little fragment of their life, those, all those Christmas cards or theatre
tickets, all that… minutiae? And then of course there are other people who do.
But that doesn’t mean the story of either is any less valid.
And
again.
deleted name: It’s important to
remember that the story is not the Christmas cards, or the photographs or
concert tickets, or what have you, they’re not the story. I
Skunk: But those things can help you
remember the story.
deleted name:
and a moment
later
deleted name: Just because there is
not a single surviving example of your handwriting does not mean you have been
forgotten, or will never again be remembered.
The distant noise ceases, and begins again.
Skunk: The first time I saw “Blade
Runner”, have you seen, you must have seen “Blade Runner”?
deleted name: Oh yeah, yeah, I
Skunk (interrupting): The first time I
saw “Blade Runner” was on a tiny screen, maybe just two or three inches across.
It was a video played on this, sort of box thing, like a box that was also a
radio and maybe a cassette player too, and a friend brought it and a vcr round
to my house (we eh, for a good few years we didn’t have a tv in the house) (and
that’s,
sighs
Skunk: that really is a whole other
story) and we watched some videos, one of which was “Blade Runner”. But when I
think back to that, even when I think back to that very ehm, that actual scen-,
when I think about us sitting watching those films, I don’t think of the films
as these tiny little things.
with his thumb and forefinger held to
suggest the scale implied.
deleted name: Have you ever seen a
3D movie?
Skunk: No, no, but I’ve seen pictures of
people wearing the little glasses though, if that counts for anything.
deleted name: Well it’s the same as
you’re saying. I’ve only seen a couple, but when I think of them I don’t think
of them as anything other than movies, I don’t remember them in 3D, is what I
mean. When I think back that’s not the, that’s not the cornerstone of the memory.
He
drinks again.
deleted name: Any object, regardless
of its actual worth or value, will acquire such in the simple state of its
having been possessed over any length of time, and the secret to dealing with
this, pretty obviously, is to not hold on to anything for too long.
looking to Skunk at this last with a
raised eyebrow.
deleted name: Skunk?
These
untouched cards, their shoebox and the room itself, all the rooms and the hundred
thousand heirlooms he has never yet seen and now never will, the entire house
and its grounds: knowing this time tomorrow all would be gone by his own hand
affords him some disturbed sense of comfort, and in this anticipation of
relinquishing his obligation of having had to maintain and curate this
accumulated and absolute archive of everything, it is almost as if he can already
inhale from out the air some phantom of that very smoke its burning will
author.
deleted name: The one decision I will not live to regret.
The
empty bottle clunters off into the corner of the room, the other’s weight become
such a constant to his pocket he no longer acknowledges its existence, even in
this new want for another.
He
recalls that in deciding to burn her diaries prior to the operation, ache1
before she became ache1 experienced what would prove to be a
short-lived and ill-founded sense of maturity, perceiving found in such forward
motion the kind of anti-nostalgia she believed would grant her passage through
the oncoming and unknown everything ahead.
Unlike
the forsaken plaything, or book, or videocassette, renounced when outgrown but which
if ever missed could always be replaced, these words once destroyed would never
again exist.
With
which too she worried at how much of this detail might be forgotten absent
access to these handwritten prompts, and also, at an imagined alternate future
where these words would still indeed endure, and be read, and yet excite in her
no memory whatsoever of those moments they narrate.
Compared
with this, and at such remove from so much of the life he has lived, deleted name understands his own arson
is itself perhaps less wilful, when time alone has already robbed him of so
much, and he knows himself thwarted by the brain’s finite capacity for
remembering, its ceaseless and injudicious accumulation usurping whole tracts of
his memory without prejudice, failing to distinguish the substance from the
rot, of which he would only ever come aware when failing to locate a name, a
face, some requisite detail just beyond his ken, and the accompanying blunt
frustration.
With one hand he flips the box over upon the bed and
collects up into his fist a random handful of the cards, and then, having
wandered back through the house, scatters them with a gesture across his desk,
further litter to its covering of photographs, manuscript pages, broken glass
and spilled beer.
From a drawer within the desk he takes out a silver
Zippo lighter, the thin clink of its opening and the stiff rasp of the flint
producing no flame.
Hunting through the room he eventually locates a
small black canister of lighter fluid, and proceeds to focus his attention upon
removing the lighter’s works, soaking its wadded fabric gut in one sustained
squeeze, until fuel begins to drip from out its upended top and onto his desk.
The can gulps audibly at the air bubbling back in to
replace the expelled fluid as he sets it right side up and aside.
Reassembling the whole he shakes it back and forth,
and then again, before thumbing off the lid and ignition.
The flame burns steadily, gutters, and burns again.
He circles the lighter slowly beneath his face the
better to inhale the fumes’ heat before slowly closing back the lid, watching as
the flame seems almost to gasp at its diminishing oxygen, life being buried
alive; the metal casing emanates its warmth within his fist.
deleted name: Skunk you’re still so
young, and I know you won’t want to hear this now, not now and not for…
making some
small noise inside his open mouth
deleted name: Your life isn’t over,
and in time there will come a time for you to begin again
Skunk
(interrupting, exhausted): Right, “in a golden land of opportunity and
adventure.”
before locating amongst the desk’s debris a
photograph upon the reverse of which he writes
deleted name (writing): Only when once again found is it possible to understand any sense of perspective
to have ever been lost.
finishing up in the sudden silence.
