The Hawler (part four)

Mike watched the bus turn the corner, its top blown off like a sardine can containing explosive sardines – just the bars of the seats being seen from where he stood. It must have just gone under a bridge too low for its height – or the driver had – and those passengers seated on the top deck were either crouched low or decapitated. Mike winced. It would be in the newspaper tomorrow no doubt – but why hadn’t the bus stopped? Or, rather, why had it now slowed? Not because of a bus stop, but because it had self-evidently just had an accident – or the driver had. A serious accident. Mike watched it wheel round the corner, thinking, as he did, of hit-and-run situations and where the bridge was likely to be. He couldn’t think of a low bridge in the area. Hit-and-run. Like having children, then forgetting them … only for them later to become your friends and you don’t remember them, so they are real friends, not your children, because your children can never be your real friends: too much customs duty to intervene…

He was on his way from work. He usually walked – and only caught the bus when it rained. Office work had its own life and customs; people who worked in offices were a certain breed. Mike wished he could work outside, like a labourer could or someone in an open-air market. Office-workers, on the other hand, not only watched ‘Big Brother’ on TV but talked about it in the office the next day. Office-workers had ambitions – of sorts. But the ambition usually involved jealousy rather than the intrinsic need to be promoted. Mike had been promoted beyond his own capabilities (as most office-workers were). He had the healing power – to make himself ignore how he was wasting his life in competing for petty duties … although, these days, he and his wife Susan were often invited to office receptions to entertain clients. This was a godsend to their social life and no obvious need for sitters, as nobody knew if they had children. They’d just watch TV otherwise – and bicker.

Mike’s office was just round the corner whence he had just turned. It was an Advertising Agency with some really creative people - but Mike worked in Administration and only allowed creative jobs from time to time. One would never have known it was an Advertsing Agency, because the building was a plain Sixties-built tower block with nothing to recommend it. It wasn’t like that open-walled Eastern European market that plagued Mike’s dreams as his real workplace but one he could never find afterwards. He wasn’t paid much – hence the need to work overtime, which he had been tonight. He shivered as the rain set in – and he wished he had caught the bus despite the vision of the freshly topped one that had disappeared from his memory by placing a street corner between it and Mike – or the driver had.

****
That evening, Mike returned to their home. It wasn’t the top flat that some people dreamed about – with all those feelings of forbiddingness and sexual peccadilloes that shouldn’t be entertained. It was the same flat, perhaps, as the one in the dreams – but now with redecoration apparent, nicer fillings and a slightly better position in the building, and a slightly better building itself.

“It’s been a helluva day,” said Mike. “Did you hear about the incident on the underground?”

Susan nodded as she placed his dinner on the table. He was red-faced from climbing the stairs from floor to floor (the lift being left unattended if not out of order) - and she was red-faced from the stove. They were apparently in their middle years, not yet having reached the bruised look that old age had in store for them, given a glimpse into the future. They had lost the youthful sparkle and any body-hair was tarnished with discolour or no colour at all. Mike was – and, probably, still is – a forthright man, but kept his distance and downplayed any passions. Susan, equally, but her eyes often sparked with anger for some, and anguish for others.

“Yes, terrible wasn’t it?” she said as she sat down. The wireless played softly from the kitchen as she had forgotten to switch it off.

“That station that looks like an open market, round the corner from the office…”

She nodded, having previously heard Mike’s description of it, although she never visited Mike in the area where he worked. Sometimes, she wondered if his description of it was the result of a dream, and it was merely a coincidence that it fitted in with the news report she had heard on the wireless.

“Well, when they started coming out the sides from under the roof … they were covered in blood. Even the walking wounded were terribly bloody, as if they should have been on stretchers. Soon, it was a whole army of them. We did what we could, till the ambualnces arrived.”

A crimson infantry, was not an expression that came easily.

“Did the air ambulance come?” Susan asked.

“At least one did but the roads are so narrow round there for landing. Its rotors were inches away from the office’s back wall – and actually sliced through the open empty edges of the station itself.”

Coincidentally, last night, he had a dream of being flown in a helicopter. It was unclear now but he had not before been in one in real life, but it was just as he imagined it. He was normally afraid of flying and, in his dream, the dreamer vaguely recalled this fear from real life … as it slanted close to some trees, almost entering amongs its branches – and he fully expected it to crash, but it landed in some Italian Villa.

The air ambulance, that day, near his office, also looked precarious as it landed between the buildings, looking really huge compared to its air size.

“They took away some of the wounded but I couldn’t see how they decided which patients would go by air and which by road.”

“First come, first served,” she suggested.

****
Later that night, Mike lay awake trying to imagine sleep away whilst sleep itself imagined him awake. He got up for a sluice; and saw that the floorboards in their living-room were bare. The floor itself was several floors up but, tonight, the instinct was different. They were very close to the ground without even space for ratruns or airflows. This was no dream. It was so real.

He wondered if a burglar had stolen the carpet. But why? All the furniture was still in place.

He found himself delving into the wood of the floor as if he had found an opening in human flesh – a natural vent, rather than one he had forced open with his fingers.

That babies were to emerge, one by one, not twins, but multi-aged siblings, did not occur to him until he discovered himself delivering them … through the floor. The ground was speaking by giving birth. Thinking, too. And he felt its thoughts as if they were his own thoughts.

****
When Mike and Susan suddenly found themselves with children, they thought they always had children … ones named Amy and Arthur … hauled to the surface from the coal-face of the world’s creation.

Mike listened to their crying from the cots in another room. Susan was off working in Ogdon’s pub. Mike had never visited the pub because he didn’t really want to see the conditions of her work … he’d feel guilty. Working in an open-air market was far below his own original ambitions as a child. He had the ability to get a far higher paid job, even it were in an office. Once his creative abilities had almost allowed him to secure quite a high position in an Advertising Agency. His CV had let him down however and allowed someone else (similar to him) through the back door, leaving Mike with a destiny he would not normally have chosen.

Tears came to his eyes as he looked back at the various paths he could have picked on … chipping away at the cornerstones of Fate so he could make the turning towards the goal he had once set himself.

In the distance, he heard the lonely sound of a helicopter – vanes clacking lugubriously – followed by the equally lonely drone of an air-liner as it passed empty over the city. It was the deep echo that made it sound empty.

Air-liner? Hmmm. He laughed.

Susan wouldn’t be home for some time. Pubs had funny hours these days. No licensing restrictions – and Susan mainly served the night people.

****
Arthur remembered his father, with tears, too. None of the families at this stage in their trees could recall the names of forebears, none of which was written down. Nobody cared to dig into the past to find their roots. That had grown deeply unfashionable with the genealogical obsessions fizzling out into inexplicable mass suicides. Such family research was now banned, naturally.

Arthur looked across at his wife Amy. A mere coincidence that it was his wife because having sisters was not a recognised relationship any more, following the genealogical obsessions. Arthur’s hands were covered in his own tears as they had brought his fingers too carelessly near his streaming eyes. He was utterly nemonymous.

****
Mike woke from a dream. This had been a real dream. Others had not been dreams. They had been visions thrust upon him by some narrative trickery with a wild weirdmonger trying to force him down byways which his destiny had no right to encompass.

Mike knew a real dream from a false dream. The former often contained words he’d never use, words he didn’t understand. Or was it the other way? Distinction was clear, if not the terms of the distinction.

He straightened the direction-finder of his reality, although this was a subconscious act as he shrugged off any aberrant forces working on him. He was a worker, a drone. He worked in a hive. He laughed. He worked at an Advertising Agency, he had a lovely wife, two lovely kids and plenty of money – and lived on the ground floor of a palatial block of flats on the edge of the city. His wife was homemaker. This was the truth. All else was dream and subterfuge. The compass point pointed steadily at it.

Until the next time.

(continued as part five)

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