Hierarchy Of One

He padded through the deserted corridors and hallways, calling and not caring who heard him.  Darkness followed uncertainly behind him, waiting to reclaim the space he lit up, not daring to  challenge his authority.

Any voices he heard, be they prayers or curses, were beacons for him to home in on.  His greetings always boisterous, overpowering in their affection.  Often he bore gifts, the carcasses of those who had come to his notice while hunting. A reversal of the traditional relationship between god and worshipper.  He would bring the bodies to us and ask questions regarding them.  What manner of creature were they?  What purpose did they serve?  His curiosity insatiable, but mind too distracted to take in the information given.  He would perform his own investigations, often forensic in nature, then leave dissatisfied.

I wish you could have seen him before they got to him.  

Here’s to you dear.

I was drunk enough to accept what you told me, and lonely enough to help the illusion along. I made it past the photographs of you and your partner, the open wardrobe with two people’s clothes in it, and both toothbrushes in the bathroom without stumbling over a single emotional tripwire.

Of course, I hate you now. In the space between sex and sleep you left me to feel. This morning I’m back to my usual frozen self. I’ve helped myself to breakfast and am sitting, watching you turn uneasily in your dreams. I’ll enjoy seeing you wake, your blurry confusion, the desperate attempt to remember my name.

We’ve no use for each other in the cold morning, a sense of inevitability shares the room with us. I’ll leave you my number, which you won’t call until you’re next drunk and alone in the night-time. Your call will wake me, but I won’t answer.

There’s a feeling I associate with these nocturnal sleep-disturbers. The pleasure of being thought about, tempered with the knowledge that I’m not being called to ask how I am, or if I’d like to go on a date. Each time I’ve picked up those night-time calls, the invite is always to a house or apartment, never a restaurant or theatre.

What lovely words you used last night, and the expense! I almost felt sorry for you. Once you’d paid for the drinks and the cab, and spent the evening fussing round me, all you got for your time and money was a feeling that didn’t last as long as the ice in this gin.

He walked. A dust covered man in a land of burnt crops and howling winds. Rainless storms passed with jagged lightning striking the ground. The scorched earth smelt bitter, and was crisp to the touch.

This place was a hell. To Samuel F. Johnson it was a place, like most places, to be passed through, never to return. Occasionally a feral dog would howl from inside an abandoned farmhouse, and Samuel would clutch his button-less jacket, holding it tightly around him. These dogs were danger, left to survive as best they could, their territorial nature and extreme hunger meant that their territories widened as far as necessary to feed themselves. They found shelter in the heat of midday, but in the early morning and the cool evening they hunted. Passing within two miles of a farmhouse at the wrong time of day could lead to confrontation.

The valley was long. Samuel had descended into it four nights ago, with supplies that he hoped would see him through to the other side. Now his supplies were running low. He had begun to walk at night when it was cooler, in an effort to preserve his water supplies and avoid the risk of detection. The sand-coloured mountains that marked the edge of the valley had become noticeably closer, the air smelt of mould and citrus.

Samuel began to climb the foothills, leaden-legged and thirsty. It was then that he heard it. Piano and violin, sombre and yet powerful, playing a melody so sparse and distant that he wondered if he were really hearing it. His original intention had been to pitch camp, his muscles were beaten and his feet painfully sore. Instead he climbed on, his feet crunching on the uneven stone. Stunted yew bushes that smelt of the sour earth acted as handholds as he pulled himself up.

He had been without water for almost a full day, and yet the music gave him strength. It was as he worked his way around a jutting outcrop that he first saw the source of the music. A precariously perched cabin, brightly lit from within, only a few hundred feet above him. He resumed the climb with renewed energy. It seemed to Samuel that the closer he got to the cabin, the easier the climb became.

Samuel felt as though he had floated up the last hundred feet of the escarpment on which the cabin was perched. And then he was stood on the ledge, with the music playing so loudly that he could feel it through his feet. When he looked to the east, the dawn was coming.

My grandmother suffered from dementia. I lived with her in the period between it becoming unsafe for her to live alone, and the time when she required care of a nature that was awkward for a grandson to give.

It was a warm June day, with a breeze that blew the treetops in her garden when she first mentioned them to me.

‘Can you see those people, sitting on the branches out there? It can’t be safe.’

I peered from the window, looking at the trees that lined the garden. There were leaves certainly, and the breeze was moving the limbs of the trees, but I could not see people. I said as much.

My grandmother was incredulous. ‘Can’t you see them? I can see them. I'm going to ask them to get down.’

I followed her out into the garden.

She engaged the tree-dwellers with great dignity and consideration, her concern was primarily for their comfort and safety. Would they not step down from the trees and join her in the garden? She was happy to make tea.

I could not see a soul. She continued to make eloquent and increasingly impassioned appeals for those nesting to disembark and return to solid ground. As she became upset by their lack of communication, I guided her inside.

Inside, she rinsed the teapot and talked of a family that picnicked in the back garden on a daily basis. I had been living with her for several months at this point, and had never seen or heard this family. She spoke of their lives, their habits, their impeccable manners. How the father of the group always removed his hat when she ventured out to them, and how they always spoke pleasantly and at length of their own hopes and fears.

It was several months after this that her care became more than I could cope with and I moved out, allowing professional carers to perform tasks that I, as her grandson, could not. There were several more months before she died. Found at the bottom of the stairs, having had a combined stroke and heart attack, by the carer that visited her in the mornings.

All I can tell you is this:  It felt that it was I, and not my grandmother, whose senses failed them in the back garden of her house that day. I watch the trees for dipping boughs with no obvious cause. I wonder when I will be granted the wisdom that allows me to see those family picnics in Edwardian dress. It seems my brain applies the filters that it believes necessary to live now. I'm not yet sure how to override it, but I hope I find a way before the evidence of my eyes is discounted as senility.

In joining the conspiracy to keep you reading from a screen, I feel that I am a traitor to myself and to you. When Google unveil their hierarchical organisational chart of the world, I hope I won’t be alone in rising from my desk and giving them a slow handclap. Will they remember the dotted line that stretches from everyone to everyone?

Will psychologists and counsellors simply recommend hitting the reset button, or will Tabula Rasa still be achieved via gin?

As our technology continues to improve, and our microscopes attain greater levels of magnification, we will have ever more metadata. At the same time our displays will increase in resolution, and our networks will become exponentially faster, allowing us to display images of our navels in ever-increasing levels of detail. Friends, strangers, companies and governments will store this data, seeking new ways to monetize us.

It was busy in there.  You were sat alone by the fire, just another night, staring into the embers.  We were all together, talking loudly; I asked if we could sit at your table.  You gestured your acquiescence.  You seemed quiet, lost in your own space.  We wanted to draw you in, help you feel included.  Somebody invited you to join our conversation.

You spoke.

We staggered away from the table, some sobbing, some laughing hysterically.  Each of us left alone that night, and walked in a different direction.  The shrapnel from your words lodged into each of us.  You remained impassive, eyes on the fire as I left.

I have never been back, but over time your words have worked deeper.  I have often thought of you, was there relief in a burden shared?

The fluorescent lights overhead pulsed as he accelerated into the tunnel. He watched dispassionately through the windscreen as the light striped above him. His tongue absent-mindedly probed a loose tooth; he tried to ignore his headache.

The vibration of the tyres on the poorly surfaced road caused a low level rumbling. He ran his tongue around his upper teeth. They felt misshapen and flimsily attached. The same for the lower set. He kept his foot pressed firmly onto the accelerator.

At first she thought that he was just digging in the garden. Pretending to plant flowers and vegetables as he played make believe, dressed in his cowboy outfit and scooping up soil with his bucket and spade. After a while she noticed that every now and then he lifted something to his mouth. When he turned toward her, he seemed to be chewing.

Leaving her vantage point at the kitchen window, she ventured to the patio door and called out to him. ‘Michael, what are you eating?’

‘Spaghetti!’ he shouted back proudly.

‘Let mummy see darling,’ she said.

At her request he reached into his bucket and proudly pulled out three pink juicy earthworms. She screamed and ran toward him, pulling him up and away from the border while kicking the bucket across the garden. He burst into tears, aware that his mother was terrified and angry, but not understanding where the threat was.

Inside, she tried to explain to him that worms were animals and not ‘live spaghetti’. He frowned and listened and tried to understand.

…

At first she thought that he was just digging in the garden. Planting some seeds for the summer, dressed in his old gardening clothes. It was good to see him out there and active, he’d been listless since the diagnosis.

Every so often he would stoop slowly and painfully, reach down, then pop something into his mouth and chew. After a while she grew curious, and stepped out through the French doors to see what he was doing. She gasped as she drew nearer, where the daffodils had been was an eight foot by three foot hole in the ground.

‘What my mother failed to appreciate,’ he grumbled, without turning round, ‘was that nature is cyclical.’

He climbed down into the hole and lay flat on his back, closing his eyes and crossing his arms so each hand lay upon the opposite shoulder. One eye opened briefly and fixed his wife with a steely stare. ‘In capitalist Britain,’ he remarked, ‘the spaghetti eats you.’

‘What are you doing?!?’ she exclaimed, ‘Get out of there!’

‘Eliza, my love. When it’s time, when it’s really time. No casket please.’

We crawl from under our duvets, amputee spiders whose webs have been disturbed.  It is always our animal needs that force us to move.  Bladders, bowels, stomachs.

A peek beyond the curtains, eyes water in milky sunlight before we retreat as if stung.  Happy New Year. 

Sitting, stomachs of butterflies and bile, too lethargic to leave our den, we drink water and contemplate solid food.  We're not ready yet.

This is our fresh start.  A soap opera omnibus and the brief cessation of internal hostilities.  Then the traditional New Year breakfast.  ‘Shall we go out?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Why is it that the sunlight seems brighter here, and the sky a clearer shade of blue?’

I thought I saw you shrug, not knowing and not caring.  I couldn't really see you, laid out in the long grass; all I could hear was birdsong, punctuated by an occasional aeroplane.  

I picked a stalk of grass and chewed thoughtfully on it.  The grass tasted like the memory of grass.  At lunchtime I'd eaten fresh bread with some cold chicken and salad.  The bread had tasted like the idea of bread.  

Look at this, there are thousands of ‘em.  Scratching in the dirt, hunting for seeds, vegetation or insects. 

They move across the dust, the strong ones in front getting the best of what’s left.  The rest follow behind.  The weak, the old and the sick straggle at the rear.

Occasionally one of them decides they’re not up to the struggle.  They fall back and are abandoned.  They don’t survive long.  Lean famished things glide over the ground toward them, or shadows fall upon them from above.

The boys don’t strut and preen like they used to, there’s a hungry look in their eyes.  Even the toughest of them move with economy.  The girls look beaten, dusty and dishevelled, the days of easy living are over.

Ripped apart, fucked beyond understanding.  Crumpled on the floor, surrounded by fragments of glass and hypotheses.  A physical manifestation of a lack of structure.  There’s a fragility here that has wider implications when viewed via the geometric patterns of molecular biology, but is neither detectable nor comprehensible when magnified more closely, or viewed from far distance. 'Before you try to speak sir, are you certain that you speak with the agreement and authority of every cell?  We replace many of the cells in our bodies over time.  Are they vetted for their political views, or potential for cruelty to animals?  Is a discarded cell from Fidel Castro finding its way into an elderly Republican the true definition of cancer?’

He coughs and tries to speak, but is unable to articulate beyond a groan. ‘There are a number of ways this could go.  You could persist sir, you could sit in meditation and heal, while a succession of moulds and parasites make your body home.  You could even give yourself up to a higher power, a third-party of your choice.  Your triumphs and tragedies would no longer be your own, but you would have an idea to talk to in the dark.’

An eyelid flickers, an abortive attempt to move. ‘You know your own mind sir, even now, which is a great comfort.  There’s little more we can do for you. Baby steps sir, we wish you every success.'