by Iain Scarrow
The Fern House
(Part 3)
10
Day after miserable day Collins sat in his dull little room, blinds drawn, and ate, and over ate, and drank. And if anything threatened to run out, he ordered in and ate and drank some more.
He gained his weight back, more than before. But at least he started shaving again. He even showered once in a while.
And if he drifted off into a semi doze he would sit back on his marshmallow sofa as the walls, the floor, and the ceiling melted into 3D IMAX as he couch surfed the universe. All dark but cozy, as he zoomed around the Belt of Orion and saw the Pleiades close up (beautiful beautiful hazy blue) as his sofa turned into the waltzer of his childhood when he was six years old and the world spun around under orange, red and yellow light bulbs flickering on and off to the smell of hamburgers and onions as he chewed on sickly sweet strawberry-pink candy floss, and his aunt threw up spiral after hysterically funny spiral of vomit and blood as they careened around the carousel at the speed of light.
His aunt had put it down to tainted hamburger meat.
Collins put it down to the power of Paraquat.
It was fun until they banned it.
Besides, poisoning was girly stuff to him now.
Strangulation, dumdum bullets and the nudge over the edge of a cliff by the vibrating power of a fender proved a better dream.
And that blue bottle stuff from Booze Central tasted better than anything Collins had ever tasted before. Every sip he took of it felt like a thousand tickly little black legs and fluttering grey wings, were slithering their way down inside of his neck, and all the way down some more into his guts. And from where, somehow, they swarmed straight inside his skull where he could feel them crawling all over the sticky outside of his brain that was melting into a sleepy sickly goo but the minute.
Unfortunately for Collins his skull just wasn’t big enough anymore. There was so much in there now that it was beginning to ache even worse than before its big bash on the hand basin episode.
And that’s when Collins made a major life changing decision; to order a couple of great big iron clamps, and a brand new cordless Black and Decker hammer drill.
11
Mark Hansson slung his jacket over the armchair, dropped his notebook on the coffee table and headed for the kitchen.
So far he had a guy passing off funny money, a tramp who thought he could fly, a pissed off pastor who was losing his faith in a soup kitchen, and a plant pod that looked like nothing but which proved to be the weirdest thing of all.
And fly boy wasn’t talking.
There has to be a story in there somewhere.
And this wasn’t turning out the way Mark had hoped.
He made himself a coffee as he waited for the turntable inside the microwave to stop so that he could yank out the quarter pounder and cheese.
The microwave went ting and Mark yanked out the instant cheeseburger.
The bun was soggy on the bottom, crispy on top.
He dropped it on the worktop and waited for it to cool a bit before chomping into it.
He leaned back on the worktop, crossed his legs at the ankles and sipped Habana coffee.
The ancient fridge hummed into life next to him and realized he didn’t even know how a fridge worked, apart from it being plugged into the national grid.
There were a lot of things Mark didn’t understand how they worked. But like everyone else, he just took it for granted that they did.
Expanding gasses lose heat.
But that was as far as his schoolboy science studies had ever taken him.
The whole thing was just like magic to him.
(like fossilized plant pods turning up alive out of the blue)
He sighed, put down his coffee, and picked up the cheeseburger.
He took a bite.
(something’s wrong)
He chewed…
(stomach lurched)
He forced mush down his throat.
(eject)
And it was a projectile splat straight from his throat into the sink.
He scraped slime off his face with a tea towel then swirled his mouth out with coffee. He couldn’t bear to spit in the sink for fear of seeing what he’d just vomited in there, so he swallowed instead.
He grabbed the box the burger came in.
It was still in date.
So why did it taste so crap?
(like chemicals)
He poured another coffee and took it with him into his front room.
He sat down at his writing bureau and rolled up the top.
The only thing that was anachronistic about this antique setup, he noted, was his Dictaphone sitting in one of the bureau’s pigeon holes.
He had pencils, erasers, sharpeners, an old pen nib short of a quill, and a bottle of Quink Ink never opened and still sealed in its box to this day.
He had mimeograph paper predating anything a copier could do now, with pink-purple lettering a little fainter and out of focus than when it had first been printed, all in handwritten lettering at that.
He picked up the sheets, smelled them, a faint pleasing aroma still there.
He wasn’t even born when this sheet of ancient paper was printed on, but there it was, the original odor.
If I had the guts I would go out and hunt me down a dustcoat and a snap-brim hat, a Fedora.
He looked his collection of old black and white pictures of press photographers and reporters of the past from Time Life, Argosy, and Fate Magazine.
What did they have that Mark didn’t?
It’s about the story.
It’s about investigating.
It’s about the truth.
And no one likes telling the truth.
They clam up.
They shut down.
They point the finger at the other guy.
They’ll have you running around in circles until you forget what you were looking for in the first place.
And sometimes the truth won’t out until years later, when no one’s bothered about the story anymore.
Or everyone concerned is dead and beyond caring.
He pulled down the roll top on the bureau, locked it, and sat back.
He was torturing himself and he knew it.
Let it go.
His cell phone rang with the reproduction of a real bell ringer.
He picked it up, answered. “Yeah?”
“What did you do to him?”
Mark sat up straight.
“Do what to whom?”
“He’s standing on top of a Wal Mart with his arms out ready to jump.”
“Who?”
“And he’s ready to jump off the top floor with his knapsack on his back, his whole life stuffed inside that little green bag. He’s ready to end his life, bare foot and all, by diving head first all the way down onto the concrete parking lot below.”
“Is that you, pastor?” Mark asked, running his fingers through his hair. “Who’s ready to jump? Who the hell are you talking about?”
“John, you moronic shithead,” the pastor yelled into Mark’s ear. “Who the hell else?”
12
There were crowds everywhere holding up smart phones, aiming, clicking, talking, giggling, some with kids in tow, pointing at the mad man on the edge of the roof with his arms out like Cristo Redentor on Corcovado mountain.
But Wal Mart was no mountain.
“That’s him?”
Mark recognized the voice right away.
He turned around and saw the pastor gripping the arm of a cop.
The cop looked as if he wanted to yank his arm away from the man.
“He caused this,” the pastor yelled, jabbing at the air in Mark’s direction.<
br />
Now everyone was looking at Mark.
It was like watching a shoal of fish turning in the same direction at the same time. And reporting the news was not the same as being the news.
The crowd parted. The cop walked over.
“You know that guy up there?” the cop barked at Mark.
Mark squinted in the sunlight.
“Hard to tell from down here,” he said.
Which was true.
“He says you do,” the cop said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at the pastor.
Mark looked around the side of the cop’s bicep.
The pastor was all wide eyed with his hand clamped to his mouth.
What a fucking drama queen. He’ll be flagellating himself in public next.
“Does he now?” Mark said to the cop.
“Tell me about it?” the cop said, tilting his head to the side and grinning.
A helicopter hovered overhead.
Mark looked up.
Not a recue copter, but a press copter.
Mark felt sick to his stomach.
“What do you want to know?” Mark asked the cop.
“What you said to the guy?”
“I did an interview with him, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“A human interest story,” Mark said.
A fire truck pulled up, siren wailing, gleaming bright red with a big turntable on top.
Christ!
“I wanted to do a story about guys who live on the street of our fair city,” Mark said, “about how they live, how they survive, how they got to be on the streets in the first place, and about how nobody gives a flying fuck about them.”
Don’t say anything about the friggin pan scrubber.
“And that’s it?” the cop asked.
“That’s it,” Mark said.
“He was suicidal?”
“What?”
“Was he suicidal?”
“No, actually,” Mark said. “The guy seemed very together to me, as happy to live on the streets as a pig is happy to be wallowing in shit.”
“Listen, creep,” the cop leaned in. “If that mad fucker up there jumps you’re going in. And if any of my guys gets hurt. You’re never coming back out again, get it?”
Mark flashed his reporter’s ID.
“Press Privilege,” Mark smirked. “So don’t even think about threatening me, Bluto. You might think you’re a big guy, with a fat ego to match, but to me you’re just a great big balloon and just as easy to pop with a tiny little prick.”
Bluto the cop grabbed Mark’s arm, and dragged him through the crowds and all the way to the front doors of Wal Mart, then shoved him through them.
Once round the back of some shelves the cop frisked him.
“Not wired, huh?” the cop said. “Bad move.”
He found Mark’s cell phone. “Christ, even this thing isn’t recording,” the cop laughed. “What kind of reporter are you?”
“One with a brain, Bluto.”
The cop grabbed Mark’s arm again and yanked him close.
“Listen Elmer Dud, since you caused this problem, you’re going to fix it. Now get up those fucking stairs and bring Tweety Pie back down with all his feathers intact. And if you come down alone, and my guys end up having to shovel his giblets into a black plastic bag, I’ll drag you back up there and kick you off the fucking roof myself. Clear on that?”
“This is all admin to you,” Mark said, “isn’t it? You don’t care about what happens to the guy. You just care about all the boring questions you might have to answer to, never mind the paperwork. I take it you can at least draw your own name, Hobo Cop.”
The cop squeezed Mark’s arm tighter.
“I could crush your arm with one hand,” he said.
“Not with all those inconvenient witnesses out there,” Mark grimaced, “to testify that I came into the store with no broken bones.”
The cop leaned in close enough to breathe in Mark’s face. “They’d have to find your skinny little body first,” he said. “Wouldn’t they?”
Mark swallowed. “Speaking from experience?”
The cop slammed Mark into the door labeled STAFF ONLY.
“I said get up those stairs.”
“I get vertigo,” Mark said, rubbing his arm.
“I don’t care if you throw up all the way to the roof,” the cop said. “Get over yourself and get up there.”
The cop walked away, cuffs glinting on the back of his belt.
His walkie talkie screeched into life.
“I’m on it!” the cop yelled into it.
Mark waited until the cop stepped outside and back into the sunlight.
“I hate heights,” Mark whispered. “I hate planes, hate roller-coasters, hate clouds, hate outer space, hate astronauts, hate Buzz fucking Lightyear. I hate everything.”
He smoothed down his jacket.
His arm ached.
“Ow!”
The cop stuck his head back inside the door at the front of the store.
“You on it yet?” he yelled.
Shit!
Mark pushed open the STAFF ONLY door.
He looked up the stairwell.
There were a lot of banisters, and a lot of rails and steps defying gravity the way they just jutted straight out of the pale-green walls. Steps that spiraled all the way to the top like an invitation into a funnel web spider’s lair.
13
Shale crunched. Sunlight stung. A crow flapped its wings and flew over Mark’s head.
There were air vents. There were cooling towers, and a fan whirling like a circular buzz saw caged inside wire mesh. Mark had heard of these things. He’d seen pictures of them; black and white art deco shots. But never in real life, and never this close.
There was a knee high wall at the edge of the roof.
And maybe John isn’t here. Maybe he’s found a way down.
(jumped)
And it’s over.
(splat)
Mark’s gut squeezed
Except John was there, standing toe close to the knee high wall and with his arms out steady as a plaster cast.
Just my luck, I’ll call his name, he’ll slip and …
Mark closed his eyes. But try as he might he just couldn’t stop imagining what a human body must sound like when it kisses concrete at fifty miles an hour.
“I know you’re there.”
Mark froze.
“The journalist guy,” John said.
Mark swallowed. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s me.”
“Mark, I remember your name,” John said.
Mark’s voice wavered. “Why don’t you step back from the edge, John?”
“I like it here,” John said. “Did you know American Indians have no fear of heights? They used to walk along girders hundreds of feet up in the air, with no safety harnesses or nets under them, or anything.”
I’m gonna throw up!
“I’ve seen pictures,” Mark said. “But truth is, John, I’m scared of heights.”
“So why are you here, then?” John asked.
The press copter had pulled back into blue sky where it hovering over endless rooftops (built by guys on girders tap dancing for black and white pictures).
“Because a big cop said if I don’t stop you from killing yourself then he’s going to kill me instead,” Mark said.
“So you’re not here because you want to be here,” John said.
Mark shook his head.
“Not without Velcro on my feet,” Mark said. “The truth is, John, if I had the choice, I’d rather that my feet were nailed to the sidewalk.”
A gust of wind blew at John’s hair. He swayed.
Mark swayed back just looking at him.
“I’m not trying to kill myself,” John said.
“What are you trying to do, then?” Mark asked.
“I’m going to fly.”
Mark stepped closer to the edge of the roof, his neck out, his eye
s straining, trying to see over the side but not wanting to, seeing the crowd below silent, their camera phones aiming.
He almost toppled over.
His heart thumped.
He closed his eyes. His head spun and he breathed hard.
He opened his eyes again.
And when he did his skin prickled. The sun was too damned bright. And the sky was just too infinite and blue.
“Careful you don’t break your neck,” John said.
Mark licked his dry lips.
“Guys don’t fly unless they’re inside a plane with wings,” he said squinting into the clear blue sky in the distance, at the press copper hovering like a black gnat in sterile sunlight.
“But Arthur could,” John said.
Arthur?
“Arthur who?” Mark asked.
“Arthur in The Sword and the Stone,” John said.
What?
“That was a movie, John,” Mark said, “a cartoon.”
“Merlin turns Arthur into a little bird,” John said tilting closer to the edge. “Arthur didn’t think he could fly. But once he was given a push, he was off, flying around and loving it, looping the loop and showing off.”
“And he almost got picked off by a vulture,” Mark said wiping a trickle of sweat from his hairline, then looked at the palm of his hand before scraping it clean on the back of his pants.
“Vultures only eat what’s already dead.” John said. “They don’t kill anything.”
“Whatever, John, but it wasn’t real. It was a movie for kids. It was just drawings on a page, lots of pages, different drawings on each page with actors” voices added in to the illusion. That’s all.
He opened his mouth to say something else when he choked. A hand had grabbed his collar at the back and yanked him off balance until his heels were dragging twin tracks backwards through the shale. His arms flew out, flapping.
“You got a death wish or something?” Bluto the cop yelled in his ear.
More cops rushed in, dragging Mark one way, John the other.
“See you around, Mark,” John yelled giggling as the cops handcuffed him. “That is if you don’t get yourself killed before then.”
Mark was dumped in the back of one squad car, John in the back of another.
Cameras pressed against the glass. Mark turned away. The cuffs dug into his wrists.
“Can I get his autograph,” a girl asked a cop as she pointed at Mark with his head bowed in the back seat.