The instrumentation is going fucking nuts!
A rumbling sound, like a localised earthquake, shakes the room. Mrs Webber lets out a deathly scream. An enormous crack traces its way from ground to ceiling. Steadfastly, I keep the headphones pressed against the wall. More cracks form and dance randomly over the surface. Mrs Webber is cowering in the corner, entranced yet terrified. A small portion of the wall crumbles away, giving birth to a plume of plaster dust. More sections crumble and fall, covering me with dust and debris. Before long I’m holding the headphones against nothing. The wall has turned to rubble.
Both Mrs Webber and I are powder white and blinking through the dissipating plume. My instrumentation has thrown up vast quantities of data and the blinking light indicates that automatic shut off is imminent to avoid overload.
I stare at where the wall used to be, taking in the mound of rubble. Mrs Webber dives with surprising agility toward the debris and frantically starts to sift through it.
“The Lime! The Lime!” she yells.
I get down beside her, compelled to aid in her search. It doesn’t take long for a green, circular shape to emerge. I pluck it up and hold it above my head. Mrs Webber falls back sobbing. I can’t believe the condition the lime is in.
“The lime! You found the lime! I knew it would be there. I found my father’s beloved lime!”
Slowly I hand the lime to Mrs Webber’s shaking, hungry hands. She carefully takes the lime from me and holds it before her eyes. With tears flowing, cutting trails through her powder white face she looks warmly toward me and says, “Mr. Astenburger is a FABULOUS man.”
I let the events and Mrs Webber’s words sink in before saying, “You know something Mrs Webber, you may actually be right.”
Ever so gently she wipes the dust from the lime with her shirt, cleaning it with love. She studies the lime ever closer, eventually her expression changes. The awe has vanished.
“You know Michael, this lime really isn’t that perfect at all. I’ve seen hundreds of limes more pristine than this at the supermarket. This is actually a little disappointing.”
* * * * *
I exit Mrs Webber’s home. Nadia is waiting for me. She must have followed me. Sweat is pouring from her body and she is visibly shaking.
“Michael! The headphones, Michael, give me the fucking headphones. I need them, Michael, please let me have them.”
I completely die inside as I hand the headphones over. Everything Nadia was has been distorted beyond recognition. She snatches them from me and begins to run.
“I’ll see you tonight Michael. I’m sorry.”
Her voice trails away and she’s gone. Instinct tells me that she’s gone for good. Right there, on the footpath, I break down and cry. A few passers-by give me a wide birth and utter things amongst themselves. Goodbye Nadia.
My mobile phone shears through my pain and despair. I hold the phone against my ear half expecting to hear Nadia crying.
“Michael!” Mr Hayes’ voice booms instead.
“Hi sir.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I got a response, sir.”
“You’re fucking telling me you got a response! The remote data feed is off the charts! How?”
“Persistence.”
“Can you meet me in two hours at the office? I have someone here who wants to talk to you.”
“I’ll be there.”
“See you then, Michael, see you then.”
* * * * *
Until this day I had only seen Astenburger in photos. Now, there he was, sitting in front of me, eyes gleaming. He was a man in his late sixties with snow white hair and black rim glasses. He reminds me somewhat of Colonel Sanders.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you who this is,” says Mr. Hayes, full of pride.
“Of course not. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Astenburger.”
Astenburger leans across the table to shake my hand. He has the smooth hands I’d imagine aristocracy to have. “The pleasure is all mine Michael. You look terrible. Are you alright?”
“To be honest sir, it’s been a fairly taxing day.”
Astenburger’s shrill laughter fills the room, followed closely by the laughter of Mr. Hayes. I’ve never seen the office and I don’t even know who it belongs to. It has a blurry, maniacal edge to it, which disorients me.
“I’m sure you have, I’m sure you have. Now, Michael, I came here today to thank you personally. The readings we received from you have been triple-checked and there is no doubt regarding the certainty of the results. I believe that what you did today single-handedly validates my assertions more than any theory I can wretch forth. How on earth did you do it?”
“It was all just a big wank, sir.”
A stunned silence replaces the joviality. Mr. Hayes stares at Astenburger, searching for the correct response. Laughter fills the room once more.
“You are a scream, Michael! Seriously though, I’ll have you fill out a report detailing the events. I can essentially guarantee a hefty raise coming your way.”
* * * * *
The scene I walk away from resembles a cardboard cut-out of reality; faces frozen in rehearsed emotion. Everywhere around me there is overwhelming heat and suffocation. I make my way to the bathroom. The mirror reveals several coagulated wounds mapped across my face. Beyond these I search for that spark which makes me who I am. There is no spark to be found. I am officially empty. I hear Nadia’s voice tripping down stairs in my head, fading away into nothing. I dive after her but she’s already gone – broken and gone. I leave work, resolving to never return again.
Approaching my house I can’t quite shake the feeling a mausoleum might elicit. The sky around me is sympathetically overcast and grey. I vomit down the face of my front door where I find a note:
Michael,
Every part of me loves you. You subvert my hell and I give you nothing in return. You deserve so much more than me and I’ll never be more than I am. Please find it in your heart to hate me with everything you have. Anything less would crush me.
I’ve taken the headphones, Michael, I need them. I won’t be coming back. I can’t come back. There’s something I haven’t told you. Remember how the masturbation in the headphones never resulted in orgasm? I was proven wrong, Michael. Eventually it did. The disembodied voices came in me en masse, drowning me in their seed. I think I’m pregnant, Michael. My skull is engorged with life. I don’t know where this process will lead me but I do know that I need to be alone with the father. The father in the headphones. I can’t say what I’m about to give birth to, but I will love it with everything I can muster.
You still mean more to me than anything. Other than my child, I can’t imagine anything coming close. I’m in pain, Michael. I am in such never-ending pain and I don’t know how to cope. When you picture me, picture me leaving. You have to kill your love for me.
Love eternally,
Nadia
I skulk through the house, kicking CDs out of my path. Every room is infused with our combined BO, which reminds me instantly how far we both slipped. I have an urge to open every curtain and window to flush the place out but I can’t be bothered. Instead I begin sifting through the CDs littering the carpet, trying to find something to suit the mood. I settle on a mid 90s Funeral Doom album that I didn’t even know I still had. I contemplate emptying my bladder and maybe inducing some more vomit but I do neither. I pop open the tray in my stereo and place the CD inside. With the sticky remote gripped tightly in my hand I fall back on the couch. I hit play, close my eyes and resent her completely.
MEETING MAX
Part 1: How I met Max.
I met Max unusually. He would lurk about the barber shops that dotted the streets around the Hair District. He was bald as a snooker ball and clearly had no need to utilise the services of a barber. I was a barber enthusiast and chronicler. I was compiling an elaborate volume about local barber culture when I met Max in Dean’s Hairporium. Well, I didn�
�t exactly meet Max but it was the first time I noticed his presence. I was comfortably reclined while Dean himself lathered up my cheekbones with a custom made mixture. I began questioning him about contextuality within shaving perception, and the juxtaposed aesthetical versus functional dichotomy within hair design. Dean’s answer was unsatisfactory inasmuch as he didn’t answer. Eventually he relayed a story concerning the banality of the day thus far.
It was Max who knocked over the jar of combs on the adjacent bench. It was Max who interrupted the banality. Both Dean and I directed our attention toward the ruckus. There was Max, crouching in a pose of frozen fear. Before we could question him, he had leapt dramatically through the storefront window. A shower of glass ensued. With cheeks still foaming I hurried after the mysterious intruder, which proved to be an exercise in redundancy. Max was quite a speedy man. I emerged outside just in time to see him duck into an alley. Meanwhile, there stood Dean, gesticulating wildly toward the broken window. He made mention of his mother before sobbing rather powerfully. He shooed me away and flipped the sign on the front door several times, eventually deciding on ‘closed’. I made note of the event in my journal.
My journal had become a tome dedicated to the minutiae of barberal life. I drew a sketch of the shattered window as I recalled it from the safety of a local eatery. The eatery in question, ‘Peter’s Peatery’, had attracted my attention several months ago when a barber’s pole was erected by the entrance. This was a crafty way of ushering the countless barbers through the doors on their many and varied lunch hours.
At this stage, I didn’t know Max by name, but his bald visage humped my brain. Why in the hell was he skulking around Dean’s Hairporium? To what gain of his? Why hadn’t I seen him earlier? It’s possible that I was so totally caught up in my intricate shave that I simply blocked out the stimulus around me. If that was the case, what kind of chronicler was I? Certainly it was my job to stay utterly tuned in to my surrounding environment as far as barber shops were concerned. I took a sloppy bite of my welt burger. Several strands of hair caught in my teeth. This was the kind of place where finding no hair in your food was cause for complaint.
* * * * *
The clock had just hit three pm when I heard the sound of more shattering glass – this time from Hairtastic Hair for Men. Glen, the owner of this establishment was standing by the store’s shattered front window, gesticulating even more violently than Dean had earlier. My eyes scanned the main strip, searching for the culprit. My eyes failed me. I ran over to Glen with my journal carefully tucked under my arm. He looked especially distraught, as if the window were a living, breathing member of his family. Asking Glen to explain what had occurred was rather useless, such was the sheer level of his distress. Glen did mutter something which struck as potentially significant. Through the whining and the tears, he clearly made reference to a bald man and a toppled jar of sanitised combs. I thanked Glen with a bow, drew a rough sketch of the shattered window and gave him my sincerest condolences before leaving the scene.
News reports later that evening indicated a string of window breakages at several key locales around the District. This was growing as interesting as it was unsettling. In each instance a jar of combs was inadvertently toppled by a bald man fleeing the scene on foot. A wave of confusion laced with anxiety spread throughout the Hair District. It was my job as chronicler to remain on the scene and make note of any future developments for the sake of posterity.
My mind kept replaying grainy liminal footage of the bald man. What was his motive? My initial theory leaned toward the possibility that he was a man jealous of hair and as such, was initiating an act of terror against the local barber population. Such a situation was something I had feared since my interest in barber culture began. It was only a matter of time until jealousy erupted into destruction. This theory of mine didn’t sit comfortably. There was something almost accidental about each occurrence. The reports I had read backed up my own experience. The windows weren’t broken until the bald man inadvertently toppled a comb jar. The comb jars had all displayed remarkable resilience by refusing to break.
I knew the man who made these comb jars, he went by the name Billy Backwash. I had interviewed Billy several years ago when news of his comb jars filtered through from Berlin. Billy had moved to Berlin some twenty years ago to pursue his love of comb holding devices. Word on the street was that Berlin allowed particular ingredients in the making of its glassware that most other civilised countries wouldn’t touch. Initial experiments in his home country with industrial grade hardened plastics were largely successful, yet aesthetically unrewarding. Glass was where it was at and Billy knew it. Billy had fortuitously arrived in the Hair District several days earlier to attend a barber’s conference as a keynote speaker. If I wanted to get inside the head of the bald man, I needed to find out about these comb jars. Billy was my man and I knew just where to find him.
* * * * *
I swung the saloon style doors open and strode confidently into Ben’s Barbers Bar. This was the drinking hole for any barber of note. Billy used to work here before moving to Berlin. If Billy was anywhere he’d be here.
My eyes scanned the darkness. I could make out several recognisable, smokey silhouettes; none of them Billy. I approached the bar with purpose, my eyes boring into Smith, the Barbers’ Barman. He was delicately sprinkling beard shavings over an overindulgent cocktail. I knew this cocktail well, they called it the ‘Hairy Nonsense’, a popular drink around these parts.
“What’s new, Smith?” I inquired politely.
Smith stared up at me, smiling warmly and blowing me kisses.
“Jack Backtrack! So good to see you within these hallowed walls. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I’ve been busy with my work.” I held up my journal. The smile widened over Smith’s glowing face.
“I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d kill to get a peek inside that journal.”
“Sorry, Smith, it’s all a work in progress. You know it ain’t gonna happen.”
“You throbbing tease! What can I do for you, Jack?”
“I need to find Billy. I know he’s here for the barber’s conference. I also know that if he’s in the District, he’s here in this bar.”
“Why of course he’s here, Jack! He’s sitting right beside you!”
I was taken aback. Smith was right. Sitting beside me, enjoying the recently made Hairy Nonsense was Billy himself. He was grinning at me intensely, in a disconcerting way.
“You going blind, Jack?” he inquired, with undertones of mock.
“This dive is darker than death, Billy.”
Billy waved his hand as if to erase the dissatisfaction of our reunion.
“So tell me, Jack, why were you looking for me? I can’t help but be intrigued.”
“I need to know about the jars, Billy. We have some strange shit happening at the moment. I need to get to the bottom of it… fast!”
“Ahh, you’re referring to the mysterious window breaker running amok around your precious Hair District?”
“Don’t speak ill of the District, Billy. How do you know about the windows?”
“Are you kidding me? I can’t walk two steps without hearing some bummed out barber regaling me with their tales of woe. Most of these guys haven’t even been hit personally but they feel the fear. I’m guessing that by the time I get back, news will have reached Berlin. You guys sure know how to party.”
“This is a party that I don’t want an invite to. I need your help, Billy.”
“Me? I only arrived in the country a few days ago! What can I do to help?”
“It’s those comb jars of yours, Billy. I was there at Dean’s when the bald man first hit. The window didn’t cop a smashing until your comb jar was accidentally knocked down. It spooked the bald bastard pretty good. He made a flying leap for the window. He reached his target admirably. Turns out that one of your jars was responsible in each incident.”
“Don’t speak ill of the jars, Jack! The only thing those jars are guilty of is being perfect in an imperfect world.”
“You know I love the jars, Billy. I’m just saying that your jars were a starting point.”
Billy was shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He knocked back the cocktail before gesturing toward Smith for another. He looked somewhat guilty.
“Can I get you anything to drink? I feel kinda uneven talking to you like this.”
I hadn’t touched an alcoholic drink in three months. The events leading up to today were enough to make a man return to old ways. After a mild inner struggle I refused with a firm shake of the head.
“Sorry, Billy. I’m trying this whole ‘dry’ thing on for size. I did some things I’m not proud of but that’s by the by. I need your help.”
“I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed but I know when to lie down. Ok, shoot. What do you want to know?”
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