Beginning of an incomplete story

There are occasions when reality cracks, when everyday life ruptures, and something sterner and more vivid comes through, wrenching itself into being through great violence or extreme anger, and everything, all the cluttered contents of life, your personal possessions, your shallow list of idly-pursued loves and hates, grows suddenly pale and looks flimsy and meaningless in comparison.

The whole force of these occasions is that they are unexpected and overwhelming. The fabric of reality seems momentarily to warp, and all the old certainties are toppled over while a cold stab invades the belly. Individuals who experience these moments see in sudden sharp contrast the vanity of all they strive for.

M wasn't expecting it. It was about four or five in the evening and he was lying on his side in his grey-sheeted bed, dreaming listlessly. He half-dozed, fantasising, blinking as if troubled over some puzzle. It was chilly in this dusty attic room and he had put on a thick woollen jersey and turned up the collar of his shirt before huddling beneath the blankets. Shadows deepened on the dirty plaster walls, the ragged cardboard boxes full of junk that cluttered the floor. The room was disordered but cosy, although too long spent in it would reveal its curiously bare atmosphere, like a storage-room long disused....

UIST (dream)

Uist is an island in the Hebrides. I went there with a party of men, like old shabby Victorian scarecrows, and old disgraced mothers with disfigured faces, or faces shrouded and not seen. Not modern mothers, more like Sicilian widows.

We are stranded and on the run. It is eve. A brown and twinkling twilight, from ancient squibs of almost Oakley primeval tree. Like in a Hammer horror we gain an old Victorian mansion. A Chekhov "stately home" of dark rolling lawns like a St. Andrews... A setpiece, almost a period drama cliché but way darker.

On the run. I escape from almost protesting mum who seems now modern, in august t-shirt, and is collaborating, in that senseless way, with the Victorian moguls and rogues, the dark "villains". A jumble of emotions, i can't tell whether recent or new-formed. There are lassies there too (downstairs) past the oak panelling n dusty curtains. Sexy lassies or my compadres. Perhaps other dark women, all dark-clothed.

I go upstairs and hide by a window overlooking the very lawn. Detection is very near. I hear muffled voices, and strongarms almost collaring me, though i hide, weasel-like, in this closet feebly twisting myself inward, holding breath. I from somewhere have got a mobile phone, owning to the owners of the house, "o" the owners, old lady vacant, with dead wedding cake n bedraggled dress be-phantomed in rooms. A cool dark mobile phone.

I press again and again the numbers "999" "beep beep beep" "999" "beep beep beep". Anxieties behind the shrouded curtain. Maybe the phone don't work. Evil red digital numbers.

I can see the villains down there on the lawn. Tophat and teeth, dark mustachio'd like 1910 movie villains. Thin, and my traitor mother maybe in their number? Or other confused captive family members.

NINE NINE NINE. "Police please", breathed very quiet. The blonde receptionist, operator wife, slinky and unworried. But i can't get through, and might be found if i speak out loud. My voice might travel through the thin pane of glass.

On the shadowy phone i find the imprinted address, or stuck on with identification sticker. The address as if common brown Gaeltach farmer, an old Hebride fussiness. I discover the place we are at is called UIST. A proud brown island, pouchy brown of inslets and crinkly maps, like a slob of the sea. I realise that the emergency services are ineffective or sleepy upon Uist (might've been "South Uist") the red light on the phone twinkles in vain.

But upon discovering the address, and subsequent phone number, i hit upon the vital idea of ringing up area code and random numbers thereafter, to contact some other humble Gaeltacht fishmouthed farmer, for big emotional rescues. Area code round zeroes threes.

......... Tension mounts. At same instant, the "villains", those shadowy figures outside on the lawn, notice me behind the window and shout up at me (i am discovered).

The men have hairy Robinson Crusoe faces.

Memories of Ruth

Up in his springtime room Ruth comes to visit him. A brunette girl about five two, roundish face, soft skin, eyes violet. An old childhood friend, last seen years before. She stands ambiguous and relaxed, sturdy legs in her skirt, unsmiling as yet. Above, the yellow electric bulb, bare in its socket, has been switched on.

He feels excited and embarrassed to see her there in the disorder of his room, his hair shaggy and unbrushed, his mouth eagerly, sharply smiling, eyes peering from behind his tinted glasses. By the wall is set his brownwood cabinet of shelves, on which sits his TV, stereo, and ranks of shelves, wide and deep, strewn with accumulated junk; piles of magazines, scrawled-upon pieces of A4 paper, books, photographs, ID cards, all of it haphazardly and loosely arranged.

Ruth and he sit before the TV in that intimate darkness which is like the darkness of winter. Colour TV, the only bulwark of reality. The news is so precision-sharp, the cathode rays so clear. Comforting and maternal, the box.

But sitting there he is seized by a compulsion to find "memories of Ruth"... Something that will relate to their childhood together, some document or physical thing, something scribbled down, best of all a distant photograph of her, looking sweet and trusting, proof of their one-time affection. Ruth stands non-commital, is making ready to go perhaps. He passes his hands among the shelves and rummages in the assorted debris. A panic is on him.

"What're you doing?", a bored half-smile. "Looking for memories!". Under pages of A4 paper, blue-scrawled, almost revealing to Ruth the edges of glossy porn mags, or their backs festooned with glossy phonesex ads. Is this all there is? Nothing pertaining to their past, their great closeness, no photo of her, no documentation or evidence even of his brother, who she also knew well back in the day, to flourish, to show her, to revive something of the link between them, to rekindle within her some fellow-feeling, some warmth?

Apparently not. Instead he can only find pictures of himself which must do... "Well, pictures of me!" Some ID cards, like laminated credit cards, each one glossy, hard, shiny-efficient, bearing the digital image of his foolish face. A bunch of photobooth pictures taken at various stages, done in black n white in groups of four, some ludicrous or unrepresentative, some snipped-off to be attached to interview forms. In one he is wearing an ersatz crown from the college's drama department, his face inclined upward in three-quarter profile, mock-regal. Uncovered suddenly, it looks incongruous, like a dunce's cap.

These unexpected images of himself, tumbling forward, seem like a hidden substrata, a suddenly gushing wellspring of his own folly.