“What’s going on, Max?” I ask my friend, but he too has disappeared now.
I find I am now walking alone in a different place. A street full of flashing neon signs and blasting dance music. It is so loud, I hold my hands over my ears.
“Don’t worry, honey, it’s not too loud in here!”
A girl wearing only a black bikini beckons to me from a stool in front of a red neon lined doorway on one side of the street. Her face is covered in make-up, yet she looks honest, and her white skin looks supple and soft. I want to touch her.
She waves again and I move towards her.
“What’s in there?” I ask, standing before her, indicating to the nightclub behind, not really wanting to know.
“Let me show you,” she says, standing up, her eyes filled with the promise of pleasures. “Come on in and I’ll let you get even higher with me.”
She takes my hand in her delicate fingers.
“Hmm, what’s this, hey boy?” she winks at me, rubbing the ring on my fourth finger. “You been promising the universe again? Been giving what you can’t give?”
She pulls me to the door and I can’t resist.
I flow inside the place, a great tide of men all around, all going with me. My ring grows hot on my finger, its golden light leading the way as she rubs it harder and harder.
“What a nice big ring you have,” she says. “Big and expensive. A wedding ring too! Jeez Louise that turns me on. Come on!”
We reach a dark stage and she climbs up, pulling me with her.
She begins performing a dance, raising her arms above her head, clicking her fingers, bobbing her chin and smiling seductively to herself. I step and I sway, trying to follow her moves. Only occasionally do our eyes meet. She pulls and pushes me to the rhythm of the music. The crowd claps and cheers.
“Go on, give yourself to me tonight,” she whispers in my ear. “I’ll be forever yours to dream of.”
I so want her, but I know that there will be a heavy price to pay.
“Just give me that lovely ring of yours and you can have me,” she says. “I have a special little room upstairs…”
She rubs my ear and a bolt of electricity jolts between us, binding us in waves of bright, pulsating power. There is a burst of florescence all around. The stage, the club, the white room, my old house, the whole city lights up. We are not kissing or touching, but our minds are now connected. We are sharing an imagining of all the things that could be done, revelling in it, both knowing these shared desires of the mind are far more intimate than any ‘real’ doing.
The crowds roar with approval at our now frantic dancing. Our eyes meet again as she turns her head delicately this way and that. The room pulsates to our rhythms.
Then, through this electric union, I am afforded a strange vision, my frontal lobe receiving a picture from the deepest recesses of her mind. I see her room upstairs, and in that room, a wardrobe with drawers inside. She is opening the bottom drawer, crouching, alone in the dead of night. In the drawer is a briefcase with a combination lock. She carefully unlocks this and takes out a jewellery box. She prises it open, sighing. Inside is a collection of gold bands, wedding rings, and diamond earrings. The gifts of love and of marriage. She strokes them. “Just one more,” I hear her whisper to herself. “One more and I can buy myself into hell.”
The dance turns sour now. Her expression is one of triumph.
“I’ve had enough,” I say, pulling away from her, fearing the intimacy that has been established.
But her hands grip me too tightly, and the crowd are now staring at me, silent and grim.
“It’s time to go upstairs now,” she whispers.
We are pulled upwards, floating through the thick sweaty air to the pair of chandeliers above. They slide aside as if on rails, allowing us to pass through the ceiling. There is no hole, no passage. We move through the murky cracks, unlocking and interlocking our atoms with the dirty concrete, through unknown spaces and creaking floorboards. Rats scurry to and fro in the underfloor. Balls of hair and clipped and bitten nails sink in dust.
Then we are in her room.
It is exactly as I saw it, dimly lit by a single light bulb, the brown, beaten wooden floor dirty and unreflective. I see the wardrobe standing there, beside a single stained sheet covered bed.
I look at her, feeling kidnapped, wanting to hurt her with harsh words. I open my mouth, but her expression has already transformed. The triumph has left her, leaving only a defeated expression and sad, smudged make-up.
“Please do it,” she says. “You can do it now. And give me your ring. I need your ring. It must be a real ring. Give it to me, please.”
She pulls up her skirt and lies on the bed. I run to the wardrobe with the drawer full of rings. I swing open the doors and jump inside. I have a vague, desperate hope that I may find a secret passage, that I may escape.
“Please, I need this!” she cries. “Do it to me now. However you like. Just give me the ring. Please! He said I only need three more. Please, I can’t take any more of this. I want to go home!”
She is wailing uncontrollably now.
Desperate, I finger the mouldy rear of the wardrobe, scratching for an opening. I can hardly breathe. The jackets and dresses push up against my face. I can smell cheap perfume mixed with the cologne of many men. She has had them all. I can smell unfulfilled executives, managing directors, stock brokers, gamblers. Somehow, I can see them all as they were, writhing next to her, shaking uncontrollably, their rings falling from their fingers and their pockets.
My hands probe at the edges. Finally, I am rewarded with a small button.
I push it.
The wall caves in and I fall through into a black chasm.
I turn, suddenly afraid. I reach back desperately, holding out my hands to grab something, to grab anything. A thin, white arm flicks out into the darkness. Fingers coated in Vaseline clasp my left hand. They slip off my ring effortlessly and let me go.
I see the girls face now, tiny and doll like. She smiles down, waving to me as I slip away, falling powerless into an endless, windless void.
For a long and sombre time, I exist in pure and empty darkness.
I don’t know up from down. I hardly even know if I am breathing.
Eventually I feel something taking a hold of one of my feet.
There is a sudden gravity. I can sense the heavens beginning to move around me. It is as if I am being held upside down by my foot, hanging there in the nothingness.
The feeling of movement increases, and I sense that whatever is holding me is waving me. It is waving me up and down and to and fro across the expanse. It begins to swing me with ever more ferocity, with ever more violence. Soon it is yanking me so hard this way and that, my head spins and my stomach turns and little pink bubbles pop in front of my eyes.
“What happened to your ring?” a voice suddenly screams.
The swinging stops. The air deadens. I breath in sharply.
I know that voice. It is my wife. She has me by the toe.
I can barely see her in this upside-down position, but she is there, she is giant somehow, and she is angry.
“The ring, damn you!” she cries. “I know what this means…”
Now she lets me slip from her fingers.
I fall, really fall, unambiguously, from up to down. Far below I see our bed. It is rapidly approaching, closer every second. I am scared shitless. I will break my neck, surely.
“I’ll show you!” she screams.
The bed rushes up to meet me at high speed.
The impact is hard and bone crushing, yet it bounces me straight back up, propelling me into the air as if I’d hit a trampoline.
As I fly up I see her there above me, her nostrils flared, her eyeballs white and vein-ridden. She turns her frame around so that her dressing gowned backside faces me.
I fly straight into it, slamming into her arse, my neck twisting at an awful angle.
Now I fall again, only this
time forced down, stuck to her, an extension of her bottom as she executes a swift downward momentum, directing me straight back onto the bed.
I land with her huge mass right on top of me.
I am trapped, and painfully so.
I cannot breathe. I am only able to move the tip of my left little finger. I can see nothing, only faint browns and purples. This is not my wife, I think, she would never do this. This is a demon, a witch.
She doesn’t move an inch, and what air remains in my lungs is quickly exhausted. I feel as if I am dying. I realise with horror that I am dying. Without air, in a few moments I will be dead.
I concentrate hard on moving my limbs under her weight, however that might be possible.
Move, God damn you! I will my arms and legs, but without any effect.
My fear and helplessness are amplified with every passing second, weakening me, making it less likely that I will ever be able to move again. I can feel her body shuddering on top of me, she is heaving with deep, cynical laughter.
Who are you, witch, to do this to me?
I try to send this evil witch my dying thoughts.
What have I done to you?
Oddly, I hear her reply.
“It’s not what you’ve done,” she says, “it’s who you are.”
“I am only a man!”
“Exactly!”
And then I realise a truth.
You are not my wife. You are a witch and a demon. A caricature.
And caricatures aren’t real.
I feed on this dawning realisation, drawing strength from it.
This whole situation isn’t real.
Then it hits me.
I am asleep on my bed! This is a Tuesday nightmare!
Move! Move, damn you! I will my toes and fingers. I am literally suffocating. Not only is this imaginary demon-wife sitting on my body, she has closed off everything inside it as well. My heart is no longer beating, my veins no longer pump blood, my brain is losing all electrical activity.
I make one last epic push, scrunching my eyes, crunching my teeth together until it feels as if they will disintegrate like chalk.
Finally, I take a single, deep breath. And…
Success!
My deadened limbs begin to inch into movement.
With immense effort, I prise my eyes open.
The ceiling of my bedroom flashes into view. The tacky Christmas lights.
I am awake!
Now the struggle to move the rest of my body.
I concentrate. I push.
With a heave, I flutter my lips.
Slowly the blood returns elsewhere. My legs and arms twitch.
Forcing control over my muscles, I manage to lift them, to lift myself.
I turn myself over in bed.
The first rays of dawn sunlight are turning my curtains translucent and golden.
I stir the other way.
I look at my wife.
She is sleeping as soundly as ever.
I look at her and I wonder.
What the hell are you dreaming of?
Without the Simple Science
Gavin made very sure that any talk of science was off-limits that day. This was to be their final gathering by the sea. There should be no reminders. Just a beautiful, pure, sad moment, stripped of all rationalisation.
He arrived early to prepare, staking their spot, laying out the thermos flask and cups, and building the fire. There were newspapers and leaflets strewn here and there of course, amongst the stones and other beach rubbish: the beer cans, bottles and plastic bags. He gathered all written material into a pile and buried it. See no evil, hear no evil. There should be no distractions.
Following through with this thought, he sent out a whatsapp at the last minute:
So I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided. No digital devices guys, OK? Why? Because I say so. Because it’s the only way we can make this time count. Humour me would you?
Consumed by his quest, Gavin had only been vaguely aware of the irony of sending a social media message to announce a ban on social media. But it had its intended effect. When Tim arrived he offered his device to Gavin.
“Here you go mate,” he said. “My ticket.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Gavin. “Just put it away. And make sure it stays away till we leave.”
Once the fire was lit, they all stood in a big circle around it, warming themselves against the chill, helping themselves to the hot mulled wine from the thermos, all thinking how ridiculous that old term was. Global warming. What a joke. There was no talk of science, of course. But it was freezing cold. That old term really was a very poor joke. So far from the reality. The actual consequences.
Gavin gazed along the stony beach. Hundreds of little groups such as theirs were stood as far as the eye could see. Thousands even maybe. All of them huddled by fires built to protect against the freeze of an icy black sky, the last escaping rocket ships blazing trails that criss-crossed high above. Without even so much as a good-bye, thought Gavin.
Looking out over the mass of lost and grieving humanity below, Gavin had an idea that amused him, and broke his rule quite early on. He dug up the newspapers and leaflets that he’d buried and he dumped them in the fire.
“What are you doing, Gavin?” one of the group asked.
“Burning the future,” he answered. The past was already in ashes.
They were all good readers and shared tastes in many things, including books. So they shrugged off that frightening sentiment with healthy swigs of the mulled wine, and thought of numbers: of 1984, of Fahrenheit 459, of Lot 49.
“Well, here’s to dystopia,” one of them said, raising a steaming cup.
“To dystopia,” they all said, laughing out loud, suddenly fearing again. Suddenly afraid again.
And so the moment had come when they should just stare out to the sea and to the stormy distance. Appreciate. The time had forced itself upon them.
They all held hands, facing the water.
They allowed their imaginations to take over. The sea was a cauldron, thought Gavin. Magic bristled there, deep down, invisible underneath the waves. And what were the waves but the angry cracks of Mermen whips?
The sky deserved a whipping.
He stopped himself in that train of thought. There was to be no science.
Instead, he let himself dream. Of the whales, of the octopuses, and of the sharks. Of the corals and of the shipwrecks. Of the old man of the sea.
Just of the sea.
He thought of his childhood, of summers spent splashing.
The Unbelievable Death of Joseph Goldberg Page 6