Almost Insentient, Almost Divine

by D. P. Watt

  She downed the last of her tumbler and hugged him tightly to her. He hadn’t realised she was so strong. He looked over at the bottle of whisky by the sink and saw that another good quarter of it had gone.

  “There, there,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “Let’s get you sat down and have a nice cup of coffee and talk it all over. I called the garage and they’re sending someone out in the morning and they reckon they’ll have the car fixed in a couple of days. It was an awfully damp walk back though, and that night just seemed to drop out of the sky like a tarpaulin.”

  She’d been nuzzling into him and squeezing him tighter as he spoke. Her breathing was still heavy, but less random. She kissed his neck and held his back with her bony hands, the nails beginning to dig into his skin.

  “Now, now, love,” he chuckled, trying to pull away a little. “Ease up. I might break.”

  “No, you won’t break, and you’re not going anywhere now I’ve got you back,” she said, playfully, and a little sternly, he thought. “You come here!”

  She pulled him back towards her with her right arm and began kissing his face frantically. With her other hand she unlocked the door, which rocked open with a blast of rain and wind. The storm was really coming in ferociously, rolling off the sea and surging up across the fields to batter the little cottage.

  She led him out in the pouring rain, kissing and stroking his face. Suddenly, off to the East side of the garden Robert caught sight of a strangely squatting figure that seemed to have a large bovine head and tall horns or antlers. He jumped in surprise, Margaret still pawing and kissing at him.

  “My God, Margaret, what is that,” he spluttered, a terror rising inside him.

  A flash of lightning burst across the clouds illuminating the fields around them. It was a line of three small conifer trees in a row that had somehow, in the shadows, formed a strange animalistic shape.

  “Oh, crikey, I’m getting as bad as you,” he said, shaking with relief.

  “Oh, you’ll never be as bad as me,” Margaret said, coquettishly. She dragged him down into the muddy grasses.

  As they thrust and scratched at each other in the increasing storm Robert heard eerie sounds all around them; like the wind whistling through a broken pane of glass; beats of wings beside his face, a chorus of abnormal female voices. His eyes flashed with images of havoc and ruination; the sky appeared to glow red and the field seemed to be alight with weird blue and green flames, silhouetted against which were shapes of naked women cavorting about a muscular figure who strode towards them on spindly, tall legs, wearing some kind of shaggy animal fur; two great horns sprouted from his enormous head that rocked back and forth as he let out a neighing, braying, mooing laughter that filled the air about them with such sound that it could almost be felt.

  Margaret was screaming wildly and the bizarre sounds got louder as the mad figures approached them.

  Robert shrieked and ran, terrified, into the cottage. Margaret was fast upon his heels.

  She leapt upon him from behind, biting at his neck and clawing at his chest with her fingernails. His mind reeled again with images of bloodied animals—deer, cattle, sheep, rabbits, foxes, boars—rutting and fighting in a dark forest; of ruined cathedrals overgrown with moss and ivy, filled with naked, undulating human and reptilian bodies; of orgies with reclining masters drinking wine from cups of gold and silver as they were attended to and pleasured by slaves; sun-baked shorelines alive with great thrashing fish-like forms that rolled and bit at each other as the surf around them crackled and foamed with sperm and eggs.

  Robert turned on Margaret and returned her violent passion with his own, forcing her to the floor as sounds of pipes and drums and screaming banshee voices flared in the field outside.

  As they lay there savagely kissing and biting at each other a great crash came from the range. The rusted bottom of the stove gave way and a pile of burning logs tumbled across the floor. Some rolled against the heap of papers and kindling and even more against a tatty broom propped behind the door, beside which their packing boxes were stacked.

  They watched—eyes red with ferocious lust, panting their desperate animal breath against each other’s cheeks—as flickers of flame began to spread around the fireplace and up the door towards the wooden beams and ceiling.

  Margaret held Robert to her tightly, gazing into his eyes with a feral, insane delight.

  “Leave it. Just leave it,” she gasped. “Just lay here and fuck. I don’t care for anything else anymore. I don’t want to become a waning moon, I want to be a star—to set the universe ablaze.”

  He stared back at her as the smoke whirled around them, and animal faces leered at them through the windows. A monstrous unfathomable urge grew within him—a yearning for dissolution. He was frantic, more consumed by desire than ever before. He could see their charred bodies smoking in the rubble, a heap of ashes, scorched tissue and blackened bones, fused forever.

  The flames that consumed their flesh were nothing to the inferno that annihilated their spirit—an ecstasy of unified, eternal oblivion.

  At the Sign of the Burning Leaf

  I

  In which we meet our protagonist and discover his malaise.

  My name is David Ford and I am sick of everything. I once loved the cinema and loved to read. I once loved playing for a local football team and visiting art galleries. I thought I was cultured and entertaining, and the world worth engaging with, then the boredom set in. But it was a special kind of boredom. Everything seemed to take on a taint of dullness and gradually the colours seeped from things, as though my life were fading into the decaying frames of some old film. Every person I met seemed stained with this bleak, unrelenting void, and every word I read confirmed my ennui. Anything I tried, from literature to lovers, drugs to drink, seemed pointless and futile, every word I uttered only an affirmation of the senseless nothingness from which were are all formed. In a word existence, in all its forms, was either a pointless joke or a pathetic mistake. I needed something either profane, or profound, to rescue me—neither was likely to occur, I knew, but I remained open (in an arrogant and cynical fashion) to my redemption.

  II

  In which David discovers the shop.

  As my mood darkened I lost my job. Nowadays you need to be a “team player” and a “go-getter”, even when you’re stacking shelves in a supermarket. So they found someone to replace me—just plucked another fading face from the gathering gloom. To pass the time I had taken to travelling the suburbs of the city, using my jobseeker’s bus card to get about. I liked to see the little communities that would once have been villages, and imagine what they might have been before the sprawl of the city had consumed them—perhaps once there had been something different in amongst the monotony.

  On one such journey, in early autumn, I happened upon an unfamiliar place—Gildwell. I decided to alight and have a wander about. It seemed common enough; a down-at-heel main street, with charity shops and the customary hardware or electrical shop with sun-bleached stock gathering dust in its windows. The typical supermarket mini-store had ousted the butcher and greengrocer and I was just about to hop on the return bus home when I spotted a narrow lane leading away, just beyond a boarded-up funeral directors—one of the few businesses the area could easily maintain, I thought.

  The street was odd—not in a quaint, olde-worlde “cute” oddness, but just genuinely “wrong”, I can’t think of any other word for it. There was little chance a car, and certainly no van, could have got down it, and the houses seemed taller than on the main street, at least four levels on each, and some with more; consequently there was a dingy feeling to the narrow pavements and disintegrating tarmac which, had there not been weeds and grass growing through it, would have seemed in desperate need of repair anyway. After a few minutes following this little lane, and just as I was about to turn back, feeling unnerved that I had seen no one and none of the houses seemed to show any kind of life at all, I happened upon a bookshop. I was
barely able to see through the windows, stacked as they were with books, all of whose spines faced inside, as though they were not meant to entice customers inside, but rather block their view.

  Above the door hung an old-fashioned wooden sign. It read “The Burning Leaf” in a curious old font that you might find on the cover of a crap fantasy novel. A curling green leaf was painted below, the tip of which was aflame, like an oil lamp. I might as well take a look, I thought, maybe there’ll be something to make the trip less worthless.

  III

  In which David is offered a book three times, and thrice refuses.

  I opened the door and a small bell tinkled above me. It felt like being on the set of some BBC costume drama, the shop looked rather like it too, as though it were straight from another century. I couldn’t see any of the usual shelves of paperbacks, everything seemed rather rarer, and more expensive than that, most of it behind locked glass cabinets.

  The owner was a different story. He was sat behind a fine Georgian writing desk, with a drawer on top of the desk, with banknotes and receipts sprawling from it. The stale smell of sweat that could be detected behind the musty scent of books could be traced to the man behind the desk, with his greasy black hair tucked back behind his ears. He was of indeterminate age, somewhere between thirty and fifty. His “Jack Daniels” t-shirt and gaudy silver rings on every finger suggested more a biker, or a rock music fan, than a book-dealer, I thought.

  “Hi there,” he said, cheerfully. “Have a look about. We’re having a closing down sale, everything’s half price.”

  “Yes, er, hi,” I said. “Closing down sale, eh? Great. Why are you closing down?”

  “Oh, it’s the building,” he said. “Desperately in need of some work—has needed doing for years, but there comes a time when you can’t put it off any longer, doesn’t there?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” I replied, scanning the shelves to see if there was a particular specialism to the stock—there wasn’t.

  “What you looking for? Something in particular? Something special?” he asked, opening a desk drawer and pulling out a cheap TV listings magazine. He pointed at a wire basket in front of the desk. “There’s a good selection here in the ‘Bargain Bin’—only 50p each.”

  “Oh, no, I’m just browsing,” I began. “Well, actually, it’s not anything in particular I’m looking for, but it is something special.”

  “Yeah…” he said, urging me on.

  “Well, you know, something different, something unusual,” I said, struggling to describe what I wanted. “I’m just so fed up of the same old stuff… the same… well just the sameness really. I haven’t read anything in years that wasn’t either pompous high-mindedness or frivolous nonsense. I want a book that somehow captures everything; the breadth of perversity and honour that is bubbling and bursting out of households in every street of the land, a work that combines the best and worst of us all, and something—just the faintest glimmer—of every beautiful and dreadful moment of every existence, from the most grotesque grub crawling in the most fetid swamp to the most magnificent and rarest of creatures in the deepest oceans or highest of mountains. I don’t know… I need something… something else… if you know what I mean.”

  It had come pouring out of me like a lorry unloading gravel. I felt embarrassed.

  “Well, it’s a common enough feeling,” he said, sucking at his teeth and flicking the pages of the magazine over quickly until he found a Sudoku puzzle and reached for a pen in another drawer to fill it in.

  “Is it?” I said, feeling rather offended that my special kind of misery might in any way be more generally shared.

  “Oh, god, yes,” he said, not taking his eyes from the magazine. “I’ve read virtually every book in here; business isn’t so great, these days, as you can probably guess. And, for my money, there’s not one of ’em that’s taught me anything that wasn’t blindingly obvious from the off. But, as I say, why not have a rootle in that bargain bin, I can see something from here that’ll be perfect for you.”

  “Really, there’s not a single book that you have found instructive or revelatory in any way,” I asked. The possibility of a kindred spirit glimmered briefly.

  “Nope,” he said. “Not unless you count all of ’em.”

  “I’m sorry?” I said, a little irritated.

  “Not… unless… you… count… all… of… them,” he said, slowly, and deliberately.

  “Yes, I heard you the first time,” I said. “But what do you mean?”

  “Well, they all count, don’t they,” he sighed, pushing the magazine away. “You know, in thinking about stuff, and changing the way you look at things. You don’t need some special book to do that, just every book.”

  “Every book,” I said, still not following.

  “Yes, any book,” he said, clearly as exasperated with me as I was with him. “That’s why I mentioned my bargain bin. I can see that one on the top would be perfect for you.

  “This one?” I said, picking up what seemed to be more like a small slipcase than a book.

  “Yep, that’s the one,” he said. “It’s a seventies reprint of one from the 19th century that’s in the British Library, but you’ll get the picture from it anyway. It’s only 50p, they all are, in the ‘Bargain Bin’.”

  I read the front of the slipcase, which was only a few inches tall, The History of Little Fanny exemplified in a series of figures. I slid the small booklet from its case and opened it to find a facsimile of a child’s paper doll book. There were seven scenes, each with a different outfit to be cut out for the heroine. I put the booklet back in the case and the whole thing back in the “Bargain Bin”.

  “A little girl’s doll book?” I said. “You’re really serious.”

  “Yep,” he said, taking up the magazine again and tapping the pen on his teeth.

  I left. Within a few minutes I was back on the bus heading home.

  IV

  In which David is puzzled by the shopkeeper, the shop and the book.

  Even by the time the bus had swung round the corner of Gildwell high street I regretted not picking the book up. I kept mulling over the things the man had said to me, seeing all sorts of meanings that probably were not intended. What the hell was it about The History of Little Fanny that he thought was so relevant to me?

  He was just playing with me, I thought.

  Of course he was; he’s bored, the place is about to close down for renovations and he’ll probably sell it on to some developer who’ll turn it into a coffee shop or restaurant. What does he need to worry about keeping his customers when he’s sitting on a little goldmine. Yes, he was just having a joke at my expense.

  By the middle of the evening, thinking about the book, the shop, the owner, and everything he’d said in those few minutes I had convinced myself that nothing like that was the case. It was not a joke!—there was something much deeper at work. I had to have the book. I had to ask what on earth his cryptic comments meant. I had to have the thing, and I had to have some answers about it.

  My sister was coming up from York in a couple of days to look for a new house, so that she could be closer to our mother who she thought “wasn’t doing so well” (implying that I wouldn’t be much good at helping look after her). I knew my sister would have me running around all over the place to help her look for somewhere and so I wouldn’t have a chance to return to Gildwell and look at the little book for over a week.

  I was still mulling over the whole strangeness of the encounter (or its utter irrelevance) throughout the following day—at one moment thinking what a load of nonsense it was, and the next thinking how stupid I’d been—for the sake of fifty pence—not to have picked the book up. Finally I knew I had to act and so hopped in a taxi and was there in about 15 minutes. It was past five o’clock and I ran down the little street in the hope I would catch the place as he was shutting up. It was still open and as I entered, and the little bell tinkled above the door, I found the owner in the same positi
on I’d left him the day before.

  “Hello there,” he said, not looking up from the magazine. “It’s still there—in the basket. I haven’t had a customer since you came in, so there’s no need to rush.”

  “You aren’t closing then?” I said, apologetically.

  “Oh, no, not for a while yet,” he said. “You take your time.”

  V

  In which David reads The History of Little Fanny.

  I took the book out of the bargain bin and sat down on one of the set of steps that were placed about the shop to reach the higher shelves.

  There were seven sections to The History of Little Fanny, each one accompanied by a colourful sheet from which you were to cut out the different costumes into which you could insert Fanny’s head, which had been included on the first sheet. In that first section she was pictured clutching a doll and the text that went with this image made it clear that this was a tale of moral instruction designed to encourage the child to read, for Fanny was, apparently, too fond of the decadent world of dolls and toys, rather than the edifying pursuit of reading, “for play’s her passion, idleness her joy”, as the good book declared.

  The following sections then showed Fanny as she disobeyed her mother who would not allow her to leave the house in her fancy clothes (that formed section two of the cut-outs). Then, after slipping away from home against her mother’s wishes, section three found her reduced to being a beggar girl in a red cloak, with her hat in her hand, pleading for bread. Section four found her repentant enough to be employed as an errand girl delivering fish for a kindly woman who frees her from her life as a beggar. Sections five and six saw her moving up in the world as she delivers milk and bread and then finally is sent to her mother’s house to deliver butter. The final section sees her reunited with her forgiving mother and reinstated to her former world, wearing a lovely pink frock and reading a book, having learnt the lesson from her trials that she should be “pious, modest, diligent and mild”—all qualities to be gleaned from books and not from idle play with dolls.