by Peter Marks
‘At least HIS son learned the basics of carpentry before they impaled him on a couple of four by two’s, but what about HIM? What about G...O...D. What does he know?’
Buggar all Wright guessed considering the state the planet was in. While Wright guessed those about him acted and began hurling the entree at him.
It was Kelly who finally put a stop to Wright’s frenzied blasphemy by soup lading him into an unconscious stupor.
The guests applauded. Then hurled the main course at the maniac immobilised.
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In actuality God knew most things. SHE knew Wright was a fucker for starters.
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This particular morning the fucker was ill. Wright had a bad case of gravity. Grog gravity. Viewed from above, from the spider webbed ceiling or hidden blue sky he was a pale slab on colourless sheets; a contorted white cross on a mattress white background, an albino shroud of pigmentless plasma. Appeared to be a flag of surrender, an appearance that wasn’t deceptive, merely descriptive. His spirits flagged, his extremities were flaccid, his feet fetid. Only the dead conserved energy more efficiently than Wright did only the dying bore any passing resemblance. Only the sick and infirm were healthier than Wright was. Haggard and hungover he was fast asleep, decaying faster.
‘I’m decaying fast,’ he’d say in strategic avoidance of the real truth whenever Kelly asked him why he looked so tired.
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What he should have said was that such perpetual exhaustion was her fault being mainly due to her playing procreation with him ‘til five in the morning so he had every right to look nackered; but desisted.
He believed that such abject honesty was as dangerous as suckling tigers so avoided it whenever possible. (Nathan N. Wright may have been decaying fast but Nathan N. Wright wasn’t decaying that fast. He wasn’t senile so wasn’t suicidal. Yet. Had always found that honesty was never the best policy when it came to women so was inclined to bend truth like Superman and steel to stay out of trouble).
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Outside, beyond the room, beyond his coma, the morning sun spat orange fire at the docile domicile. Wright rolled over to shield himself from the obituary orb with doona and pillows, snug inside a brain which was currently the consistency of mashed potatoes lying ill and at ease convinced that if he was going to die he was better off doing the dying in bed rather than in public (feeling it was more convenient and less likely to draw applause).
Wright was a mess. He was over the hill, overweight, recently exhumed, completely exhausted and half naked. He was half in, half out of the bed and wholly comatose wearing the smile of the demented and the shorts (white with royal blue side stripes, a small QPR logo printed front left) of a soccer centre forward (and the only things separating him from total nudity and probable arrest).
Nylon and English, these thunder pants hummed with storms of static electricity which shot dull sparks into gloomy recesses between soggy thighs. Gave his penis a thrill but his bum a rash and made him feel like there was a parakeet loose in his pants.
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When very hungover, which today he most certainly was, Wright tended to view all movement as a genuine physical impediment; something akin to a limp or a coughing fit - nothing life threatening but certainly an unnecessary infringement on his aging faculties so he kept as still as a still. And stunk like one.
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This particular morning he was the proud owner of a pretentious, father fucker of a hangover. His head felt like the entire cast of A Chorus Line had auditioned in his head, pulsating lines of long legged showgirls seemingly having tapped ‘til they dropped amongst the grey that was no longer matter.
His face, the colour of toothpaste, hung crazily over the end of the bed; eyes, twin red tail-lights, staring blankly at the ceiling while his head (currently the weight of a small family sedan) was angled awkwardly backward over the wooden frame throbbing like a finger hit by a hammer and behaving like a pneumatic lungfish expanding then contracting a few inches from the bedroom floor, soggy strands of unnaturally bleached hair dangling loosely from a full scalp brushed lethargically across the honey coloured floorboards in flowing blonde waves.
Like a drowning baby, Wright gurgled and gasped and felt his head.
Which felt awful.
Lying in state, in soiled linen, he wondered why he kept abusing himself like this; why he drank gallons not gills and groped under the bed in search of the medication he’d secreted there for just such an occasion. Wright located three condoms, then two odd socks, then two empty cans of Foster’s before finally grasping the packet of Aspirins he’d stolen from Kelly’s handbag when she’d thrown it at him during one of their programmed rows.
Falling back, leaning askew against the raw timber bed-head he placed two of the tablets on a pillow tongue and swallowed. Or tried to for the pills just stuck there. They wouldn’t move or shift or slide down his gulch gullet so he lay back, took a shallow breathe in, a lung lapsed breathe out and waited patiently for them to slowly dissolve amongst the saliva. Finally felt the dull fizz on his tongue and savoured each passing particle (as refreshing as mints when compared to the taste of a garbag mouth).
Below his nose, beneath two nostrils that ran like rivers to his mouth, dry lips pursed to a puckered oval. Air escaped. Words wouldn’t. His throat was dry, his larynx desert. Dehydrated and delirious, he inched across the bed dully remembering he’d watered the plants last night so searched for an oasis and reaching over to a spindly pot plant dying of drowning on the shelf by the bed, drank from it in long, staccato gulps taking care to strain the grit and soil through clenched teeth before expunging the residue. Seeding the floor. Satiated, fertilised and fermenting, he slumped back to the mattress with a cushioned thud and crept back to sleep.
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He heard something. Imprecise. Rather he felt something through the solid shell of narcosis for most sensations in this state, or at this time of day, were more a vibration than a clearly defined sound or image for asleep and a few drinks too many all extraneous noise was merely a sort of neutered E.S.P. (best described in Wright’s case as Exceptionally Slow Perception).
What he thought he heard as he kicked turned at the deep end of his bed swimming lethargically amongst the sheets, was a telephone. Felt rather than deciphered it, experienced rather than heard the beckoning echo.
Beyond his sleep a world turned. This worm didn’t. While humanity exercised, Wright relaxed. Beyond his room, beyond his sloth, Melbourne moved. The birds cacophonied, cars coughed and the city bound trams toiled loudly down the High Street at the end of his consciousness as another day managed to escape the night to stray into his morning (...or mourning as Wright always chose to spell it).
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In bed in one of five bedrooms of the large house, Wright attempted to survive life by sleeping it away.
On the walls of his bedroom, hanging about with as much enthusiasm as Christ at Calvary, cheap prints in black frames dotted the blue planes while, praying for a decent burial, green sticks that had once passed for plants (had passed on as plants) wept softly atop shelves or wilted silently in dark corners.
Soaking in malodorous ponds in the depths of white china vases, once colourful flowers turned to slime above a carpeted floor that was littered with laundry and shoes and old food in cardboard house. There were pizza’s from Patony’s, hamburgers from McDonald’s, sandwiches from his infancy and something resembling frogs’ intestines under the chair in the corner. (Which following a post-mortem Wright identified as Tuesday’s spaghetti).
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Something itched between clamped thighs. Wright was too tired to scratch or bathe so slept on while Tossing about in the bed, he was attempting to delay this day, preferring last night. Restlessly tugging the straying covers over a vinegar brain, he valiantly tried to give his bloodshot eyes ti
me to regenerate behind their flesh bandages. Time went, Wright stayed. He rolled over; and over; then over again unfurling one tired lid to glance wearily into the far corner. Seeing there was nothing interesting happening there, no-one offering him some financial inducement to arise, he rolled over again, again pouncing face first into the pillow.
With a thin smile crossing a porcupine jaw, he yawned. Thought about god; then women; then vacuum cleaners before lurching back to booze induced coma and stayed there until his dreams were rudely interrupted.
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The clock radio by the drunk in the bed decided on dreamus interruptus. Circuits kicked surged into action as boisterous and exuberant a shrieking symphony filled his ears and Wright awoke. Opened his eyes to an all singing, no sleeping reminder that it was time to get up.
And answer the phone.
Wright, catatonically awake, finally deciphered the message, finally managed to tell one racket from another and noticed that the ringing in his head had nothing to do with the hang-over.
Up and away, he was off like a bat out of hell (and the resemblance was uncanny) fleeing the sheets so quickly that it almost made his nose bleed and now naked (his shorts having escaped to less greener pastures) this rushing apparition ran from the bedroom and into the hall, then catapulting himself over the balustrade sprung onto the stairs and chased them down.
Streaking across the carpet downstairs, he raced frantically for the voice that was busy soliciting in beckoning, beeping tones.
Bolting through the doorway he almost there.
‘Keep ringing Quasimodo..,’ he panted breathlessly between thundering strides, threatening the device, ‘...stop breathing before I get there and you won’t live long enough to dial a prayer!’
Almost there.
The lounge at last. He’d made it. He lunged for the receiver. Which stopped receiving. Ceased breathing, halting Wright mid cardiac arrest so with one hand splayed tight across a thudding chest, he tried to calm the pulse, then, marbles rafting through his chest, gingerly lifted the receiver to still ringing ears and confirmed the death.
He heard the dull hiss then a soft repetitive beep. Wright crossed his chest in Catholic affirmation and decided to bury the apparatus up the arse of whoever had gotten him out of bed, staring at the heavens praying. Plaintively, he asked HER for the identity of the rectum he wanted to nourish with a few trillion calories of moulded plastic.
‘Bastard.’ he puffed, prayer finished, curses starting standing there exhausted and somnolent, drawing deep wafts of air into two tightly constricted cavities huffing and puffing trying to get two congealed lungs to expand and contract with some semblance of rhythm.
The sorry sacks coughed twice and he knew he’d awoken them.
‘I warned you!’ Wright hissed, dancing in frustration above the device like a shoeless hiker on summer bitumen before stepping back and raising a rapier palm; moulding it to a chopper, and was just about to karate it into oblivion when it defended itself.
Loudly.
Startled, a surprised Wright staggered backward in shocked retreat at this sudden resurrection as the phone started ringing. Again.
With all the elegance of a Parkinson infested prima ballerina, he stumbled back ‘til he could stumble no more. And fell instead. Tripped over the Leaning Tower of Pisa, collapsing amongst the ruins of an until then high structure built entirely of telephone directories Wright had constructed the previous evening to demonstrate to a disinterested girlfriend the magnitude of the tower’s tilt.
‘Shit,’ he gasped, his bulk demolishing the Tower and terminating its tilt; reducing the model to mere memory.
He was horizontal. Again.
Above him, on the ledge by the window, the phone kept ringing while he, sprawled on the rug on the floor, searched amongst the debris and looked under ‘A’ in the phone book by his feet until he found an Ambulance then his feet, rising again to somersault to the upright and snatch the fucking phone in one deft movement.
Peevishly ordered: ‘Speak to me!’
‘No,’ said the phone, dying again.
Wright gazed at a heaving chest. With fingers crossed at the end of arms held behind a bent back, he promised the purple pump that this was to be the last time he’d risk a coronary because of some arsehole’s idea of a joke (fingers which were crossed in precaution for Wright knew that the problem with his promise was that he couldn’t be sure who, or what, was trying to make contact. Could be his mother. Could be some mother fucker so he was still forced to answer the damn thing to find out who was there. Who the fucker was. Catch 22).
Yawning, he detached a stray hair from a falling eyelid and sighed, his perpetually slumped shoulders drooped over a cold, naked exterior as the urgent need for a few warming layers of frock or fabric made it’s frostbite felt. Shivering, his knees rattled, his teeth started doing the jackhammer waltz so he turned from the room and was walking out the door when the phone started again. Christ he groaned, teeth chattering in Morse cold, more resurrections than Jesus he thought, turning to race for the phone.
Cautious, curious and expecting the worse Wright whispered hello and received the expected. Got a good-bye. Teeth still chattering, Wright’s upper and lower jaws tapped out a response. Tapped out b..a..s..t..a..r..d in molar Morse then spoke gruffly.
‘HELLO!’ He yelled, more in rage than polite enquiry.
‘Good-bye..’
Wright was getting sick of these long farewells.
‘Hell low,’
‘Bye..’
‘Bonjour,’
‘Au revoir...’
The fog lifted from leaden senses as he put a face to the voice and a name to his persecutor.
‘Hell Nikkie, cut it out, have you got any idea of what time it is,’ (sure as hell Wright didn’t),’...or what day it is?’ (sure as hell Wright didn’t. Thought it could have been Christmas but noticed there was no tree. Just as likely it was Easter only there were no eggs - actually it could have been Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Last Thursday or Next Monday; Nathan wouldn’t know and wouldn’t remember for more than a millisecond if he was told).
Standing, freezing by the phone, he wished he were back laying where he lay best. In bed. (Before he began lying where he lied best. In lust).
Unusually patient, he awaited an answer.
‘Sure,’ she replied. She knew what time it was, Nikkie even knew what day it was but she wasn’t about to tell a frigid blue Wright.
Outside it was oven hot but here in the house it was as cold as a virgin’s loins.
‘Dear God, it’s too early for such persecution. Hell Nikkie buy yourself a ticket to Chile if you want to torture some-one ....I’m sure they’d welcome some sadist like you with open cells.’ Wright wailed (... God had been up since six so had no sympathy for Wright or his wails).
Nicola was a Public Relations Consultant who worked for a large firm of professional liars in the city. Ferreting in a desk draw she found some nail varnish and decided to anoint herself.
‘It’s not early,’ she informed him, unscrewing the white cap of the small glass bottle, ‘it’s ten o’clock and most of us have been at it for hours.’
Wright shifted his weight from one leg to the other and gazed out the window.
‘Good for you,’ he said,’....personally I haven’t been at it since last night,’ he added grimly, watching the wind massage the trees. Saw frisbee leaves scooting about in the back yard.
‘Anyway,’ he decided, ‘fornication during daylight is a health hazard ...I refuse to commit my body to such a lethal pastime...”
‘You should have been committed years ago.’
‘You should have been vivisected years ago,’ Wright replied, still staring out the window.
‘Wanker,’ she decided, removing the brush from the bottle.
About time Wright smirked. Now she was swearing at him, now he was getting somewhere - somewhere near her habits a
nd his level.
‘You know what I mean,’ she murmured (and that she didn’t mean well was becoming all too obvious) ‘Most of us have been up since seven,’ she continued, spreading her palm on the desk and examining the cuticles then grabbed a nail file from the Out tray and began to trim any excess.
Wright continued unfazed. ‘I was up a two o’clock this morning,’ he said glibly, patting a stomach which growled for food. ‘And I would have been up again this morning only there was no female to get up,’ he added shading his eyes, fending off the light with a dinner plate he’d found on the couch, the reluctant retinas having turned dwarf and sunk back into the dark caves either side of a Rudolph nose.
In the backyard pilot leaves were taking flying lessons.
‘Anyway ....it was daylight,’ he said in support of his argument, brushing moss teeth with an outstretched finger.
‘Have you quite finished?’
‘No. Finns are Finnish. I’m Anglo Saxon and proud of it’.
‘You’re Anglo Cretin,’ Nicola corrected.
‘And you’re pure Cretin! At least my cranial capacity has increased over the generations.’
‘So why don’t you go and add a brain to your head’s spacious vacuum...’ she sighed, growing surly.
‘Why don’t you go add nauseam to water and create a clone of yourself?’ Wright replied.
‘Is that the best the inventory between your ears can muster. You’re slipping’.
He stood, one foot supporting the vertical, waiting for a suitable response to materialise in the space between his ears. ‘You’re secretion,’ the vacuum said. Wright told Nichola what the vacuum said. She was unimpressed but enjoyed these verbal jousts so long as they didn’t go on too long. Fingers outstretched, she painted her left thumbnail the shade of a haemorrhage then sat back in the chair and casually requested Wright take the section above his shoulders and insert it somewhere anatomically impossible so Wright requested she complete a manoeuvre only surgery could achieve.