by Greg James
She had no wish to touch the stuff. It no longer appeared as mould or moss but an unsightly fusion of the two; bristling clumps, bulbous and doughy, clear in places, milky and obscure in others. She wielded the hammer that she had relieved from Father’s toolbox. She swung it hard. The padlock shattered, scattering into rusty pieces on the ground. She struck at the door itself with the hammer, refusing to touch its cancerous surface. The door splintered and swung inward, hinges howling. She stepped forward; wanting, needing whatever was there. She looked and she hoped. She fumbled about in the windowless dark.
There were rags, nothing but rags; two bundles, loosely-stuffed and tied together with frayed hemp to create a pair of crude ugly dummies aping the human form only in having the correct number of limbs and a lolling, lumpy head on the shoulders. Their eyes were broken coat buttons. They were bound to the shed by an intricate cat’s cradle of ropes and knots. She pulled at one the ropes using the hammer; still refusing to touch anything.
The dummies and jerked and twisted about; clutching at one another with clumsy fingerless hands, also kicking each other. their uneven, bulging heads seeming to twist in on themselves in painful animation as ropes wound tighter and tighter around their roughly-stitched throats. Some of the stitches tore open. She dropped the hammer and the dummies slumped back into welcome stillness. She rubbed at her own throat absently with finger and thumb.
At her back, there was a rustling in the grass. She turned around. There they were.
Mother, Father, and some people from the town. Their faces staring at her. They were still, so still, she’d heard them moving but not seen them do so. They could have been there, standing there, all the time watching her. She shook her head, not understanding. Tears came; great, wracking, debilitating sobs.
These dummies, these grubby puppets, these ugly jokes – how could they?
The stuff covering the shed made a sound and, through the mist of her tears, she saw them rush forward, seize her, push her, and shut the door on her; locking her inside the shed. There was a rustling of grass outside and they were gone.
She pushed at the door. It would not give. It never would.
Tired and sore, she crawled on her hands and knees over to the dummies. She slept in between them; wrapping their arms around her as much as she could. She breathed in in their mustiness, listening to the rain fall on the shed. In the morning, she might be like them then again, she might not. She might wake staring into darkness and see it staring back into her with cracked coat button eyes.
The Bus Shelter
The bus shelter stood barely upright. Its supports were buckled and corroded. Its panes of protective glass were shattered. Rain came in through the gaps, defeating the idea that this was a shelter of any kind. The bus timetable was bleached illegible by sunlight that I could never remember shining. I could only recall the rain, the relentless rain and the interminable grey skies rolling overhead.
I could not tell you how long I had been waiting at the bus shelter but I am sure it was a very long time. I could not tell you where I was intending to go once I had caught the bus and was on the move again, but I am sure that it was to somewhere of great importance. I also could not tell you what was inside the package that I held in my hands, resting gently on my knees, as I sat on one of the shelter’s cracked plastic seats, but I knew that it was also of great importance.
The package was a curious thing. It was a plain cardboard box with no markings, labels or stamps upon it, heavily-sealed with industrial tape and with a dampish texture. It was as if whatever was inside the box was sweating a substance of some kind, but the actual nature of that substance was beyond me. I was left with no clues at all, except that I had been entrusted with this package and I had to take it with urgency to its destination. I was sure that I would know when I got there. Places of great importance were most astute at communicating their significance to the layman. And I was most definitely a layman.
The bus came out of the rain, its windscreen wipers methodically thudding back and forth, back and forth. It came to a stop by the kerb and the boarding doors hissed open. A few hunched figures in long grey coats with sallow faces disembarked and shuffled off into the rain. Though I noted, as I was boarding, that one of them took my seat in the ineffectual bus shelter.
I boarded and paid for a standard pass. I could travel as far across the city as I needed to with that in my pocket. Even if the bus broke down, as they were wont to do, I could board the replacement and continue my journey onward. I took my place on the bus. A window seat where the glass was as cracked as the plastic seat in the shelter. The window threw back jagged reflections that made my sallow face seem as angry as it was sad and as beaten as it was tired. I had not shaved and rubbed at my stubbled chin ruefully. I also noticed the grey hairs creeping out of my scalp in the hollow reflection. I was sure that they had not been there the last time I caught a bus like this. Yes, I was sure. Certain. Almost.
The bus went on its way through the city and I saw the people outside go by. All of them, men, women and children, wearing the long grey coats with detachable hoods that dragged along the pavements and hung heavily with the incessant rain. Though there was light in the city, burning from windows and shop doorways, there seemed to be no way for it to alleviate the darkness that shrouded every street, alley and major road. It was not just pollution, you see, it was a poison in the air that one seemed to not only breathe in but to breathe out as well. It was something dismal and symbiotic buried deep in every one of us. I found myself gripping the package hard as this knowledge passed through my head. I found myself wondering if the package itself was something that could ease or even banish what was hanging over the city, making every person within its limits walk with a downcast head.
But I did not know this for sure and so could only go along on my journey, peering out of the cracked, rain-streaked glass, searching the buildings that rose out of the gloom for a sign of great and key importance that would tell me that I had arrived at my destination.
They embarked several stops after I had taken my seat. These were the Inspectors. Dressed in more formal and cleaner trench coats than the rest of the populace, they also wore masks with circular eyeholes of opaque glass and beak-like projections that were supposedly stuffed with sweet-smelling herbs and spices to protect them from the stench and disease that was one with the city. Each of them held a hypodermic needle in a gloved hand. The metal was rusty and the glass was dirty and cracked. Each of the passengers, myself included, knew the procedure and we began the earnest job of rolling up our coat-sleeves. To demonstrate even a moment’s reluctance would have been to brand ourselves with suspicion. Looking down at my forearms, I felt my stomach turn in a familiar way as I eyed the numerous puncture marks mottling the pale flesh, and the brown trails of dead veins running out from them.
The wrist of a woman sitting ahead of me was seized harshly, as was the norm, and the rusted needle was driven into her forearm. I saw her shoulders sag and shake a little from the sensation as her blood was slowly drawn. She gave out a gasp as the needle was removed and its dark contents held up to the eyeholes of the Inspector’s mask. I watched her blood, how it was so filthy and heavy, so slow, almost coagulating, and how it seemed to glisten in ways blood should not. We all took our government-issued medication. It was a crime not to. Though how many took other substances to ease the daily pain those drugs induced was impossible to know. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath as they waited for the Inspector’s pronouncement. It would decide whether the woman sitting ahead of me continued her journey on the bus, or whether she would be taken away for purification. The voice of the Inspector finally rang out, releasing us from our unwanted tension.
“You are clean.”
I heard the woman choke on a relieved sob as the Inspector approached me. My fingers tightened around the box in my lap. The Inspectors did not always board the buses and, when they did, it was because there was suspicion surrounding someone on board.
It had to be me. It could be no-one else. This box, unmarked, with its strange, cloying dampness marked me out as guilty though I had done nothing, and did not know what was contained within it.
“Your arm, sir.”
The voice made me hurriedly thrust out my arm for inspection. I felt the fingers bite into my soft skin so hard I wanted to weep there and then. It took out the same needle it had used on the woman sitting ahead of me. The Inspector jabbed at my arm with it. The Inspector took some time to find a vein that was neither dead, nor broken, and I was gnawing hard on my lip the whole time, trying not to cry out. My free hand clutched at the box, fingertips stroking over it in fitful trembles. The Inspectors had not asked about it, not yet, but soon they would and then this charade of checking my blood would end. They would take me away, ask me questions, hurt my mind and my body, and I would never see the grey skies again.
The needle went in and drew blood. I waited and waited. The needle was withdrawn and the blood inside held up to the dull light. Watching my blood mix with that of the woman, I waited some more. This was it. The moment had come. It could wait no longer. I closed my eyes and prepared myself for what was to come.
The Inspector spoke.
“You are clean.”
He moved on to the next passenger, and I slumped down into my seat, sobbing hard.
Later, I realised that, much to my distress, I had fallen asleep on the journey. My fear and then relief at not being taken away by the Inspectors had exhausted me. Looking around, I could see that there were only a few souls remaining on the bus and that the lights outside had grown less and less. Surely, there should have been more light as we came towards the heart of the city, not less. Grasping the package in desperate, sweating hands, I sprang from my seat and ran to the back of the bus. I pressed my face against the long horizontal sliver of glass that formed a rear window. I could see faces turning to look at me in my periphery but I paid them no heed. There was no threat in their eyes, just a dull, somnambulant interest that would soon evaporate along with their next breath.
But surely ... surely this was where I had been meant to go to. A place of great importance would be in the heart of the city and, doubtless, someone was there now, waiting for this package to be handed to them. Over a desk, perhaps. Passed across a table in one of the less salubrious cafeterias. Left for them to collect from a pigeon-hole box in one of the train stations. But it was so dark outside. I could just about discern the shapes of buildings and the many shuffling forms of people but that was all. Nothing was clear. All looked to be one and the same. So many, had darkness and disease undone so many?
The bus went on its way and I returned to my seat where I slumped in a dejected state. The package with its strange, damp texture and lack of identifying marks rested on my knees. I stared at it, wondered at it and wished I knew more about it. And about myself. Flicking a lock of greying hair out of my eyes, I returned my gaze to the passing tower blocks, hoping to catch a glimpse of some sign to indicate what I should do next. Though I felt a tight clutching sensation inside that told me I had already failed at what I was supposed to do and that there was no good fate awaiting me.
What a wretch!
How could I have fallen asleep?
But as I looked around, a thought occurred to me. The few people who were left aboard. Their eyes staring off to here and there, never meeting, always avoiding contact as one does in the city.
What is not seen, nor heard, nor felt, cannot send your soul to Hell.
The words of the Worship-Men sounded in my ears as I got to my feet. These few, these unhappy few people could be the key. With the box in my hands, my breath catching in my mouth, I went up to the nearest person and asked the question.
“Have you seen this box before?”
He was an overweight man with a bullish, raw face that sweated an oily sheen. The squinting eyes of a pig stared back at me as his hands closed tightly around the small burlap sack balanced on his bulging knees. The sack seemed to writhe as I spoke and I thought that I heard a child’s cry from within. The overweight man smacked a fat hand down on the sack and it became still and quiet again.
“No, I have not seen that box. I have my sack. It is all I need. My sack and what’s in it is all I will ever need.”
I didn’t like the way he smiled at me as he finished speaking.
So I asked the next person. A long, thin woman with her hair drawn up in a tight bun and her son sitting next to her. They shared a complexion of sour butter and eyes that were hard flint marbles. His forehead bore the mark of an iron needle puncture. It had become law a few years ago that any child known to suffer from excessive thought and imagination would have its brain cauterised. A thin line of drool ran from the corner of his mouth and I could see that his eyes saw and focused upon less than most.
“Excuse me, Miss, have you seen this box before? Or, perhaps, your son-”
“Perhaps my son what?”
“Well, has seen this box before, perhaps?”
She turned her eyes on her son, who continued to stare sullenly ahead as the bus rocked along the uneven road. Then she turned her eyes back to me.
“No. He hasn’t seen the box. He hasn’t seen any boxes ever. None at all.”
“Perhaps, if I could ask him-”
“No. He hasn’t seen no boxes. None. Not ever. Why you asking? You an Inspector? You want to be one? Do you?”
The colour drained from my face as I shook my head vigorously, realising what I had done. What an admission that gesture had made. I backed away from the woman and her hard stare. Her son’s dull eyes were also looking at me now, at a man who had shown public dislike of the Inspectors.
My fingertips were almost piercing the card of the box as I approached the third and last person aboard. He was sitting at the back, by himself, in the far corner seat and I had to duck to squeeze into the shadowy compartmented space. He was old and frail, picking at the fraying grey wool of his fingerless gloves.
“You want to know if I have seen this box?”
My mouth worked dumbly as I processed the man’s words. Eventually, as I sat down beside him, I found my voice.
“Yes. Well, have you?”
The man nodded.
“When? Where? Do you know what it is?”
“A long time ago. Years, maybe. I saw it somewhere, I’m not sure where. But ... I can tell you that it is yours.”
He reached out a cold, bony hand and took one of my hands in his as he leaned forward out of the shadows and met my gaze with his.
“It is yours.”
I saw he was holding onto something in his lap.
Something that should not have been there.
What is not seen, nor heard, nor felt, cannot send your soul to Hell.
With a yell, I snatched my hand out of his and made my way, on shaking feet, back to my seat. I could not stay on this bus. Not with this box. The people on here. They knew something, all of them, and whatever they knew, they knew too much. I could not stay here.
I had to get off – now!
The bus stopped. The doors hissed open and I was outside in the driving rain under grim, grey skies. I was in a bus shelter and it barely stood upright. Its supports were buckled and corroded. Its panes of protective glass were shattered. I had been here before, and I would be here again, many, many times. And soon, I would forget this and I would board the same bus when it came by again. I would take the same journey, the same seat, and the years would continue to go by as I travelled with this box in my hands and I would grow older, so much older and still not know any more about the box or who I was. Until the day came when I decided to take a seat by myself in the back of the bus, in the farthest corner, and from there, somehow, in some way, for some dark, unknown and senseless reason, I would see myself, my younger self, climb onboard.
Waiting
Waiting, waiting, always waiting. That was the life of Rebecca Frobisher. The odd one out. The last in the queue for anything and everything.
That was how it felt to her. Her feet hurt, her ankles were bulging as she stumbled in her clumpy shoes onto the station platform. The air had turned bitter over the last few nights, it was that time of year, winter’s teeth nipping at extremities. She rubbed her hands harshly over one another, wringing the fingers until she felt her knuckles ache. The cheap faded wool of her gloves doing no good. I can feel my body heat whistling out of me, she thought, like the steam out of an engine.
It was empty and quiet on the platform. It always was for her. She never left work early, she often missed her lunch breaks. I have to get everything done, she thought, plucking at her shuddering fingers. The shakes had been with her for a few years now, since the divorce. The night he told her he was leaving. Wetness stung at the corners of her eyes, she blinked it away. Good riddance to him, she thought.
I should have found better but I didn’t.
“Now, look at me.” She whispered to the unlistening world.
The kind would say I’m plain, she thought, but I know I’m ugly. He told me so but he didn’t start it. It was always there, always in me, waiting, always waiting. Frog-face Frobisher. Mouth too wide and plump, eyes too big and goggly behind my glasses, which are too thick and look like they’re made from bottles. Then, there was the wind. Little belches, wheezy pops, burping like a frog. The doctors couldn’t find out what was causing it. Mum and Dad hated it, especially at dinner times. Made me hate myself, lock myself away in my room. I still live in that room.
Mum and Dad died and I hadn’t left home. Too scared to be doing more than a dull office job. White walls. Dirty carpet. Computers hum. Tepid tea and cardboard biscuits. I barely know what I do but they pay me so I keep on doing it.
Waiting, waiting, always waiting – but what for?
Dressed in washed-out shades of beige, my head down, my shaking, shivering hands. I’m waiting for nothing, for no-one. Just waiting, that is all.