Nemonymous Night (part twenty-five)

It is difficult to imagine the world being better or worse than it actually is. However, without humanity to stain its pages, who knows what will then become imaginable or even real? There is a theory – to which I subscribe – that humanity “strobes” in and out of existence, selective collective-memory then forcing the ‘alight’ stage to forget the previous ‘switched-off’ one … time and time again. Mass consciousness flickering in and out of existence like a faulty lighthouse … or, indeed, a fully working lighthouse.

The Drill’s corporate lounge is empty and silent, except for the odd eerie shaking of the wall maps as its relentless path – through the ribbons of reality that is Inner Earth – continues towards the Core.

The jolt has finally finished, if one can actually imagine a jolt (by definition) that endures for more than just a few seconds. The rearward cabin is empty – as can be seen when the light slowly wells back into it. The window still simply shows the passing crazy-paved slabs of earth. A tortoiseshell hairbrush falls to the carpet, and becomes a yellow pig lung.

The city pub was empty. Merely that. The optics of the shorts gleamed as time threatened to begin another diurnal round with unforgiving dawnlight. The city started to thrum, but thrummed with what?

The top flat still retained its open curtain policy on silent runners. The empty Dry Dock could be seen, even in the dark. A tall tower-block in the distance winked like a gigantically based but underwhelming lighthouse light. A computer screen in the room blinked blankly in curious yellow. An empty veil fluttered on the carpet like a butterfly.

The covered market was at rest, its bomb simply being a pair of clogs with spurs and silver toecaps, the spurs still slightly jingle-jangling as if someone had just taken them off in a pique of feminine tantrum.

The city zoo echoed with utter silence. And a large human ear in the insect enclosure was still pitifully trying to bury itself.

****
Coda
The Loss of Loss

They all had names, but none knew any but his own. So, when one of them was accidentally lost in the dark, the others wondered what to call out.

And the lost one wondered whether to answer. It happened after one of those early frosts that often took sun-worshippers by surprise.

There was a summer which childhood made endless, when shafts of sunshine slanted across the meadows like the golden eye-sight of Ancient Gods. But this particular summer became accused of issuing a false promise akin to everlasting youth - until one among the disporters, called Lope de Vega, said that he knew all along that such sunny days could never have lasted, despite their seeming endlessness.

The questions with which Lope de Vega was consequently faced came thick and fast. Why had he not warned the others, if he knew? Surely, the unexpected frost had taken him by equal surprise? No, he maintained, since he had not considered it necessary to taint their holiday in the bright warm sun. Would they have otherwise raced between the makeshift see-saws and the prehistoric elfin hidey-holes, with such care free spirit? Would they, indeed, have been able to make their laughter heard above the tree-tops? The sky could never be blue, Lope de Vega maintained, unless it had thermals of real laughter to feed upon and help it clear the clouds. And he laughed, as if to prove that he at least could still raise such laughter.

The others stared back at him, victims of their own hopes ... until, from within, as it were, they reacted to the burgeoning need to work their joints, not in play, but in labour. Shelter was the byword, but none of them actually knew the implications of its meaning. They possessed some inkling that they needed to study the ramshackle hidey-holes which had previously been simple ingredients of their adventure playground. They clustered chatterless within the leaning shadows of cross-section chimneystacks which, for some odd reason, had originally been built taller than the trees. Many pointed and gesticulated - but none knew the reason for their own excitement. It was merely a component of their thought patterns which everyone accepted without the one obvious next step of asking ... why?

Then Lope de Vega, who had known all the time that this would happen, started to scale the nearest chimneystack, adopting a courage which should become a legend if any were left to remember it. The brickwork groaned as he neared the bright orange pots ranked along the rim of the stack, the climber's actions reminding many of the onlookers about games which they had once played amid the branches of the trees. His shape cast a lengthening shadow across the meadow. Once aloft, he straddled the pots and called out his own name ... as if nobody had heard it before. The others called back and received only echoes for their pains.

The stars were reborn in a still clear blue sky - but it was a darkening blue: a navy blue without the sailor's uniform.

The frost's colour, instead of depleting with the light, had seemed to grow whiter in desiccations of daisies. The grass crackled underfoot, as some of the onlookers heaved bricks from the prehistoric hidey-holes (except it was now known that "hidey-hole" was not the word to describe them) to another part of the meadow, to build their own - and Lope de Vega, who overmastered the campaign, still sat upon the smokestack which teetered further from true the more its foundations were unplumbed by the others. He knew, all knew, that, by night (and many now felt in their bones what was meant by the word "night") he was to die, death being the only real way he could obtain forgiveness for deception.

But he called loudly: How was he to have known they had wanted to be told? They had not asked him to tell.

But they had not known that there was indeed anything to be told that they could have asked him to tell, the others returned in answer.

If he had told, he shouted, they would have been miserable and not gambolled amid the sunbeams.

But at least they would have known (they retorted), and not wasted their precious time in false, longing dreams.

At that moment, the stack began to topple. As did the other stacks.

Many were crushed by the masonry as they rushed to catch Lope de Vega - which carnage was Nature's only sure way of allowing the new hidey-holes to have sufficient room inside for shelter.

By this time, the sky had become a shade this side of indelible inky blue-black and the survivors crouched within their newly created ruins; the shyfryngs of cold thankfully masked the more insidious ones of fear.

Lope de Vega, who had laughed and climbed, could no longer be blamed nor even praised, simply because he was the only character in the legend who was fictitious. They had even forgotten his name, along with their own.

Thus, they who thought themselves elves or selves did not of course expect him to be holed up with them in the basements they burrowed - and indeed he wasn't. They made a few fitful forays into the cold wilderness in search of a nameless one who was lost, but they soon forgot the reason for their desultory quest; they thought it was purely for the stories that could be told later in the benighted huddlecot.

The new season felt both seamless and eternal.

But, wait - that had also been said of the previous season!

One day, the absurdity of it all might make them laugh out loud. But, by then, they would have forgotten what laughter might accomplish.

FIN

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