The Apocryfan (13)

“The season has already started, with August, its high point, only a few months away. I sit here shaping my own monologue for a wider audience under the illusion that I am simply talking to myself … as time ticks by, evenings draw out and natural auras become more painterly. It remains dark at regular intervals, but night itself shapes itself towards shorter and shorter bites of the luscious light cherry. Given time to measure it.

“I do odd jobs for Robert Smee. Piecework. That’s how I’ve managed to get under a real roof again. (Looks up the foxed ceiling with a simple prayer for good weather!) Did I actually smile, then?

“You know Smee, of course? He has the eye for the girls. He’ll be in a hell of a trouble one day, I reckon. Meanwhile, he’s on a crest of a wave, with the over-spawning of the snoutfish. Can be disguised as primest cod with a simple nip and tuck from a gutting-knife. That’s my job. And going out at the ever-widening crack of dawn in my all-weather gear upon the high fin-full seas. It makes a man of me. Local economy is served. And thus eventually the Government itself. I sometimes think I know the Prime Minister personally. Most people shout at him from the safety of their TV dinners. I speak to him for real through the ‘wireless broadband’ of my brain. An extra brain that I sometimes think thinks things I don’t. Can say things I can’t. No watch and no mobile. But duration flows through my veins with a non-text communication like syrupy captchas.

“The sea’s humped with redoubts. Whales or even larger creatures swimming within Warm England’s territorial waters, I guess. Some say it’s the Government’s way of replacing landfills! Smee and I have the devil’s own job navigating.

“At least, Bonnyville keeps its character, even after the school was demolished. No need for a school they said, when nobody any longer spawns themselves back into being. Well, that’s the way my strange brain puts it. I don’t want to be googled to death, do I? I keep my words ungoogleable. Nobody would google ‘ungoogleable’ in a month of Sundays, I say!

“Now for the real reason I embarked on this monologue. Claura. I am now allowed back into the Sixpenny Queen, having apologised for my earlier behaviour last Christmas and I suppose getting a job, however unsteady, has helped towards my rehabilitation. I love Claura. Even though she has become matronly, I know where my heart lies. I can still glimpse the svelte figure hidden among the folds of new flesh and the chirpy flirty glances behind the dour frowns. We have a date tomorrow. Our first official date. We’re going to the pictures. They’ve reopened the bingo hall as a cinema on certain days of the week. Culture in a cultural desert. I bet the films are just DVDs, though! Never mind we can re-instate the art of backrow snogging! Did I smile again, then? (Looks towards the ceiling again as the humdrum of rain continues through the shortening night – shortening paradoxically by not sleeping). I wish I could sleep. I was thinking of animals and fish and how they saw their own minds. Perhaps the confusions of sleep and half-forgotten dreams represent a barely comprehensible preview of having a non-human mind should one be reincarnated as an animal or insect. Frightening. The true horror story.

"I wonder what pigs think? Do they believe they can fly?

"Well, with August not so far away again, I wonder whether I shall recognise the Summer Visitor when she arrives disguised within the company of all those other day-trippers flocking off the trains. Perhaps she is not a visitor at all, but here all the time?

"(Looks out the spattered window during the first signs of dawn. Sees a rising hump at sea with a large fat periscope). Laughs. At least I don’t have to get up early for work if I never go to sleep."

CONTINUED: HERE

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