by Alex Miles
The growing pain in my side brought me back to reality. There was nothing I could do as my body rotted. Why was the pedlar so cruel as to hide his gifts from humanity? What if every person understood? I was not angry with the pedlar. I was beyond that now, but he must have some greater knowledge than me. How come he did not have this empathy with the rest of humanity? I left the decaying house and the luxury of Jackie’s happiness to find him and try to convince him to help the people.
My side churned with pain and I wondered if I would make my destination. It was searing outside and the sun’s fierce strength sucked out my energy, until at last I stumbled down the little pedlar’s stairway, barely able to stand. Inside, the incense and the smoke choked the air and there was a moment where I thought I would black out. The pedlar sat contemplating me with that uncaring expression on his face.
“I need your help. I really need it.” Light-headedness came over me and, despite my new-found wisdom, I could not think straight. “You're the only one who can help me. Please, I’m a believer in you. I’ll do anything to set these things right.”
“What seems to be the problem?”
“These things you gave to me, and to Jackie, they’re fantastic! Thank you! Thank you so much. But I have come to ask you to give these things to more people. People will give you whatever you want for your powers.”
“They do not have anything I want.”
“What I gave you?”
“I did not need it. That was merely your price.”
I paused, struggling to collect my thoughts. “My head is swimming … I need your help … I’m sorry …” I realised I was babbling. I was not the same person I was a day ago; I had been reborn but this witch had somehow stolen my clarity of thought. “What have you done to me?”
“The doctor told you. Your brain is lacking blood. It is dying just like the rest of you. It does not matter what you put into it. If it rots, then everything you are is broken.”
“Please, I don’t care about myself. Just help the people. I saw so much suffering.”
He smiled contemptuously. “These are not your problems anymore. They belong to the world of the living.”
“But I am the living and I care. I saw all their misery and you must know and … you just sit there! They are good people. They deserve better.”
“And so?”
“What? You want them to be in pain? You get off on it? You get a power high? You freak! What do you want?” All I had learnt about people crumbled in front of the pedlar.
“I am not interested in creating or eliminating pain. I just follow the rules. All these worries are soon to be taken away. Sit and relax.”
The pain in my side made the room hazy. “Help—” I ended the sentence in a coughing fit.
“Unfortunately you do not have anything left to trade. I told you there is much less time than you think. Here, take a seat and have a cigarette.” I fell into the chair he gestured towards and I doubled up in pain. “Just enjoy the time. There is nothing more we can do. I suppose we have time to make you some tea …”
He lit a cigarette and, with animal speed, leant across the table and put it in my mouth. “Here, let us have a look through this.” He opened a book of photo portraits, placed it in front of me, and flipped through slowly, showing little interest. I reached up to remove the cigarette; I had almost no strength left to move my arm.
“You don’t understand. Why don’t you help? You don’t know what the pain feels like …”
“But these things are so far beyond the power of tiny little people like you and me. I am just an engineer you know. Is it my doing that holds back their empathy? But all this aside, the most important question is: why should I care?”
The haze around the room deepened. “Help me! I’m going to die.”
“Yes, yes, I know. We have known this for a while, have we not?”
I pulled together the last of my feeble strength and reached out. “Touch my hand.”
“No, I do not think I will actually.” He did not shrink back.
“Please, I want to live one more time.”
“I do not think you would like it.”
I could not think straight and I felt overpowering tiredness. “Give me something …”
“Would you like another hour or another millennium? You think this time will not come in the end?”
“Please, please touch my hand.” My left arm fell limp on the table.
“Very well,” said the pedlar, seizing my lower arm with both hands in a fierce grip. His palms were dead cold like a corpse, his skin like rubber. I knew that this was not right. It was not the usual set of life experiences that were trickling into my mind.
I felt a vacuum seep into my soul, not the set of visions of life, like vibrant clear water, that had come into my mind with the others. This was like some cold, dark liquid that poured into me. It was not a set of experiences I saw, but a motionless, eternal void. It was like looking into a black scar on reality. I could see nothing but these visions compounding themselves in my psyche.
“There you go, there you go!” said the pedlar in a mock soothing tone. I felt his hands leave me, but the lifelessness of his touch still ebbed its empty death into my consciousness, its roots finding their way deeper, like a fungus of the mind. I was paralysed as the soulless fluid filled my heart and took away my life force.
“Last chance for that tea, my friend …”
Despite the darkness and cold of this place I was warmed by the memory of the achievements I had left behind, and it was all I had left behind. I wondered why I had started on that inheritance so late.
I heard the pedlar exhale another self-satisfied puff of smoke and from then on I could not tell if I had lost my hearing or if the pedlar was just sitting in indifferent silence.
THE LOTUS DEVICE
“You haven’t said what job your friend has for me.”
Tom hesitated and with a glance at his watch, admitted his contact’s delay. “Well, that’s the thing. It’s not actually a job, so much. He’s just going to help.”
“That’s weird, I’m sure I remember you telling me he had a job. It would have been damn stupid for me to come out all this way otherwise. I was pretty sure I remember you saying that.”
“He can help. He can really help.”
“So I’ll be back at the corpses on Monday? Mate, I’ve got to get out of this. You think I like my work? It makes me hate myself. I’m suicidal. There! I said it.”
I turned away from him towards the backstreet we stood in. A pasty morning sky ebbed over the characterless houses and gave me little optimism for the future. We were waiting outside this dealer’s industrial steel door and I felt a spot of rain. I made sure Tom heard my groan.
Tom glared at me and said, “You know, I have a tough job too. You think it’s easy looking after those zombies. Old people can be shits.”
“Make friends. You might inherit something nice one day.”
“And they stink!”
“I wear industrial-strength rubber gloves and my hands still smell of blood, twenty-four seven.”
“Better than smelling of old people’s faeces.”
“Well, you do have a point there. You stink of shit.”
Something over my shoulder caught his anxious eye. “I see him coming. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Where are you going? He’s your friend.”
“No, no, I don’t want to talk to him. I owe him money. See you later. Listen to him. He knows what’s going on.”
Tom sulked off in a trot, putting up his hood against the drizzle. I turned towards the approaching businessman. A man in an old suit shambled forward with a trail of cigarette smoke dispersing after his trudge. I leant against the wall as he made his sluggish approach to the door. His malformed stance and his callous, shadowed features made him instantly unlikeable. He paid me no heed as he undid the locks.
“Alright?” I said.
At my question, the decrepit trader turned
and his melted face shot out a surly puff of smoke. His half-closed eyes looked past me towards some more interesting future. It was hard to put an age on him, but I could tell he was disgustingly unhealthy and fragile.
“Sorry. You were saying?” He barely had the liveliness to separate his teeth. “You are one of Mister Thomas Pace’s friends, are you not? This is my warehouse. Tell me about your problems then?”
“So, you have a job for me?”
“You have a job.”
“I hate it.”
“Quit.”
I laughed. “I could quit in the same way I could stop eating, but I can’t really, can I?” He had undone many locks and gone inside, without giving invitation, but leaving the door wide open. I looked in after him. “Dark enough, isn’t it?”
“What is the matter with your job?” his diminishing voice replied. I followed the mole-like trader down a spiral staircase to his “warehouse”.
“Well, I’ve been at the abattoir a few years now, and at first it didn’t bother me a bit. Killing things, it gets to some people, but not to others. And I guess it’s just got to me. Cutting throats and corpse splitting – all that takes a toll. You would have thought it would have hardened me, but it wore me down.”
“Your stomach gave way?”
The distance of the little trader’s voice surprised me. I had no idea how he had descended so speedily. I quickened my pace.
“Yeah mate, I’m not work-shy. Just the smell, you know? It says with you for days; makes everything disgusting. I don’t have a moral problem with it or nothing.”
At the base of the stairs I entered into a murky basement room, filled with spiritualist junk. Portentous smells filled the air and the collection was off-set by the thin layer of grime that coated every piece of tourist-trap sorcery. On the walls African masks relaxed with sleepy contempt next to grinning, golden idols and dwarfish South American gods. The room was filled with a thin, aromatic vapour that slithered close to the floor in ribbons. Shadows lay across everything and quivered to the whims of candles.
He was slouching at the other end of the room, almost lying down in a wicker chair. “You know, people come to me and beg and grovel for me to pull the cancer out of their only child’s brain. You come to me whining about your job.”
“If they want that from you then … well, they’re a bit thick to be honest, aren’t they?”
“The point being, your quality of life is better than that of nine out of ten people.”
“Well, as long as everyone else’s life is atrocious, then that’s fine, isn’t it? My ‘life quality’ is worse than anyone I talk to.”
“Apart from your work, how is the rest of your life?”
“The rest of my life is middling. So the work part takes down the average. It takes it down to being worse than dead.”
Recent despair had turned my thoughts in that direction much more than the throwaway comment indicated. If only I could believe in the statistical superstition of the pools.
“Maybe you do not need to kill yourself, my friend. Maybe you could just kill the part of you that has to work.”
“I and he are somewhat close.”
The flabby occultist sighed. “Well, I have got something that might help you, but it is very expensive.”
“I’m telling you to stop right there, mate.”
“We can talk about something other than money. Here, just have a look. What can it hurt? Let me see. I have it somewhere … ah, yes, here we are. It is very beautiful, is it not? Be careful now. You will regret it if you drop it.”
The device he handed me looked like a bulky pocket watch, but closer inspection revealed it as a much more intricate clockwork machine. It had many dials each within the other, all engraved with an unknown alphabet. The centre dial had pictures that reminded me of those on a tarot card. At its core was a lock and within it a flower-shaped key. Its archaic beauty was completely ruined by flaking rust and oil seeping from unseen cracks. The gummy substance covered my hands from the first touch.
“Cute! Looks expensive, mate. Three quid?”
“I will show you how it works.” He said it wearied by pre-empted questions. “Hold it like this. It is very important you hold it properly. No one else can do it for you. Turning these dials you can choose a time to the very second. See: years, days, hours and seconds. Select a time at any point in the past that you were holding the device … holding it properly that is; otherwise nothing happens. Turning this key erases your memory between the chosen past time and the present.” I gave him the look and he gave me one back. “Well, it is up to you, really. I am doing you a favour, you know.”
“I’m still here, aren’t I? Show me then.”
“Well … hold it like I showed you.”
There was a sensation like abruptly waking from a daydream, as if reality had faded away and back again within one instant. Everything slid sideways, without feeling. There was no sense of disconnection; it all seemed natural. My position in the room jolted and the occultist disappeared and reappeared across the room. He shrugged and disgorged endless smoke from his bottomless lungs. “You see … effortless.”
I stared down at the device, open mouthed. Out of curiosity I held it again, to repeat the taste of the experience. The room rotated hazily around me and the occultist appeared sitting next to me. I laughed.
“Now look, here is what you need to do. Every morning you can hold it; every evening you can erase your memory. As far as you are concerned, you will face a string of evenings and weekends.”
“So I’m living a half-life?”
He got up and absent-mindedly put his kettle on. “You are living less than a full life now. Want to wade through the gore and intestines again? You were the one about to kill yourself. Besides, you’re what, twenty? You have plenty of life left to halve.”
“Twenty-five, mate. So what’s the price for this thing?”
The occultist sighed, as if the cost was his burden. “It is expensive … but it can be very cheap …”
“Thanks for not answering. What’s the price?”
“Well, it is something you will not miss, not unless you go looking for it of course … I am almost embarrassed to say …”
He dropped the cigarette on his own carpet and crushed it. His face was livelier than when I first met him, though with no less condescension. From the walls of his chamber behind him, many misshapen images of mythology glared towards me.
“What is the price?”
“Actually, it is sort of funny. Do you not feel a little tired? Do you not feel a little hungry? The receipt is in your pocket.”
I reached in and pulled out a handwritten slip: “One Lotus Device paid in full”.
“What is this? There is no cost on here. What just happened?”
“Actually, I did put the cost on there … just there, where it has been scribbled out. It is all done. Congratulations, the device is yours.”
“What … what did you do?”
“I think our business is done.” He turned away so I ran up to him.
“What did you do?” He did not respond. “Answer me, what just happened?”
He shook his head dismissively. “The subject is closed, ‘mate’. Just enjoy yourself. You will never notice the price. Why bother me? Do you think I was the one who erased your memory? Do you think I scribble out prices I cannot bear to look at? You agreed with me you would never worry about it if you did not know.”
“I’m worrying about it right now! What did you take? I’m getting really angry real quick.”
“Self-pitying tires me.”
“Tell me!”
“Your attitude needs changing, my friend.”
“This one suits me.”
“Are you not even curious how many times we have been at this very scene?” I stood stunned, then looked at my watch to see how many hours had passed since I walked down those stairs. “You are in the driver’s seat now. Do not worry; you will have a much happier life for year
s to come. You should treasure it, but do not waste it.”
“But …”
“We can do this again, but every time we do, you get a little more tired. Here, put your hand on the device one last time. You have the power to make me and the job go away.”
I was home in an instant, again with the device in my hands. Dusk was giving out its last light and my clothes were damp from rain. Home-grown dullness replaced the threatening gloom of the salesman’s warehouse.
I took the receipt out of my pocket and tried to read the price, but I could not see through the scribbling of many different pens. Inspecting the Lotus Device, it looked back at me with its numerous irises, weeping the oily, shadowy liquid onto my hand. I played with it for a little while; I am not sure how long.
“So you thought you’d just leave bin night up to me, did you?” said Natalia, from behind me.
“Hmm? Oh sorry, I forgot?”
“Again? What’s wrong with you today? You’ve been wandering round like a druggy zombie.” She had the bin bag in one hand and her compulsory glass of dry white wine in the other.
I looked out the window, past the rain, towards the industrial chimneys framing the sky. “Just thinking about work, that’s all.”
She put down both the items and put her arms around me. “Sweetheart, you know that doesn’t make it any better.”
“No, no, I have a good feeling about tomorrow. I’m just thinking about it, that’s all.”
On Mondays I see the future through a pessimistic veil, knowing I have a miserable life five days out of seven. I suppose half of the problem is that the weekends are mediocre; passable weekends and terrible weekdays are the only two ingredients of my life. All Friday’s freedoms are forgotten as future academic problems become present, practical struggles.
This Monday before I left for work I held the Lotus Device. The world jumped around in the now familiar way. I found myself exactly where I had been, but more wearied. Each clock jumped forward by ten hours. I had done my day’s work and without any effort.