A collaboration with Simon Woodward

 

First published in 'Lethologica' 2000

 

The room was bone-achingly black - yet it seemed to scorch the eyes like sudden bright sunshine. The only known fact was that it contained a stuffed antelope. Asquew assumed the situation was an intelligence test, one part of which test required him to identify that it was in fact a test and another part to ascertain  what was expected of him to prove that he had passed it. Bluff and double-bluff were merely two of the layers in a much larger scenario; this whole exercise, Asquew convinced himself, was to clarify the thought­ processes, thus allowing him to plumb logic to its very bottom.

 

It was somehow logical, therefore, that he was unsurprised to discover the antelope was neither alive ­nor stuffed - but, if there were degrees of logic, even more logical when he established it was not an animal ­at all. And as it slobbered at Asquew's mouth, the degree of logic somehow hit the optimum level upon realisation that the searing darkness did not possess the boundaries of a simple room ... nor, incredibly, had there been (now or then) anyone answering to the name Asquew in this non-room to describe, let alone fathom, such shaky logic.

 

This logic, with the sharpness and heft of a sabre, cut the final thread, and the unwinding – which he had no recollection of initiating, for he no longer had a conception of self – was complete. The blackness scorched ever brighter, keen to evaporate the remnants of his mist thin essence. It encouraged an absolute terror to vibrate between the spreading motes, agitating them to a speedier parting. There would be no restoration on this occasion.

 

But he was saved by his last thought: why?

 

The profundity of his ignorance was cloying enough to clog the vibrating terror, and half the dissipation. A clumsy frame hand - like a badly connected dot-to-dot - formed and grasped the metaphorical final thread as it wiggled towards oblivion. He hauled himself back towards the stuffed antelope. The black room folded around him with origami precision.

 

Why? It's always why? You really are the most original, said the stuffed antelope, its baritone voice rich with sarcasm.

 

Asquew - the very act of pulling himself back automatically alerted him to the fact that he may have once answered to this name - had not yet reconstituted enough to reply.

 

I'm sure you'll do such wonderful things with this knowledge, said the stuffed antelope, running its tongue over the doughy flesh of Asquew's newly formed face. It wrinkled its nose and shuddered.

 

I will remind you once again of a fact you seem incapable of retaining - unanswered questions are the chains holding you here. Answer the questions and ... the stuffed antelope made a poof! sound and blew out a cloud of straw fragments. Do you still want to know why?

 

Asquew tried to nod his head but his doughy chin stuck to his neck and he had to prize the flesh apart.

 

Why do they always send me the difficult ones? said the stuffed antelope. .

 

Asquew's joints blossomed a searing form of bursitis. His knees and elbows were indeed so in­flamed, the pain was visible as light. But, with his home town nestled between three dark hills and, by means of strange configurations of the earth, it was deprived of light for most of the day. The son of each father and the mother of each daughter would be the representatives of each family to venture forth each dusk (a dusk which was darker than most other people's nights) and to hang out dirty washing on each clothes-line. In this climate such grubby frocks and skid-marked smalls were cleaned by frothy night dews and rinsed by invisible starwater. In many strange ways, such a process caused the dusks to be yet darker than ever.

 

By morning, the father of each son and the daughter of each mother (as well as having to unpeg the washing and shepherd it home) collected the swill which the tail-end of night had deposited along the fur­rows of the fields. Such stagnant troughs of sludge were said by oldsters to be full of the same consumable goodness as black porridge. When heated up, it was even blacker, but the scorching temperature gave it the consistency of living matter.

 

At high noon, when one could actually see a hand in front of the face, the grandparents (who out­numbered the rest of the population tenfold) tentatively grouped in Black Market, handling wads of unlaun­dered money. There was so much hard cash and filthy lucre to go round, they were able to lend it to each other at ridiculously exorbitant rates of interest. Meantime, amid all this haggling, the grand­parents' own porridge became too cold to absorb, having irreversibly congealed and stuck to the platter like a mass of incurable impetigo scabs. It was somewhat illogical, therefore, that only grandparents survived to a ripe old age in Asquew's town.

 

Straggling bursitic bouts of sleep make life become more illogical. And that, thinks Asquew, is why he finds himself seeing each thing as another thing - neither of which is real. Yet, as even sleep grows se­nile, all distinctions blur, with waking and not-waking balancing each other upon a fulcrum of dreamed-of logic. The stuffed antelope finds itself within such dreams - because its body tends towards the tenuous flat­ness of Asquew's mind and, eventually, there's no possibility of being seen other than by the means of sleep: a vicious progression because, generally speaking, lack of sleep gorges upon lack of sleep, circum­scribing thought.

 

Not only nothing in Asquew's head, but nothing outside it, too. The landscape a mudground of monochrome which the stuffed antelope also sees, if with more understanding than Asquew. The act of dreaming through Asquew's eyes, which the stuffed antelope performs, adds greater purchase of perspec­tive by dint of the angle that its set of eyes creates to the angle of his.

 

"Why do you stare so?" Asquew asks of his wife, who he sees as a stuffed antelope.

 

She shrugs and twitches a dappled ear. "I'm trying to remember when I forgot who you are."

 

"Oh," says Asquew, who's already been forgotten by several wives that he could no longer remem­ber. "That again."

 

 

Asquew hobbled through the town's tar-thick night. It was thus dark because his joints were ban­daged but he was quite sure, without walking in the correct direction, he found his way to the Main Street. The fissure still zig-zagged down its length. For no reason other than a lack of reason he resolved to follow its winding course through the town.

 

When the fissure first yawned into existence, its breath rich with loam and lava, the grandparents of the town had tried to suture it with fat rope and giant needles still warm from their hasty forging. Tug-of-war lines of elders, spindly legs scrabbling for pavement purchase, strained to draw the tarmac together in puck­ered lips. Asquew had been a young child at the time. He remembered clapping and cheering as the great stitches snaked through the ground and the earth growled its resistance. But, in his memory's eye, even at that tender age, he had been taller and wiser than he now was. A woman had sat beside, hands waving imaginary pom-poms, and Asquew was savouring the memory of her taut and aroused body. His parents curled foetal and fragile within the woman's womb, but he would not know this for a few more weeks. As the fissure closed in his memory - the grandparents venting a rattling cheer of triumph - he curled his fingers be­tween the woman's and squeezed.

 

Over the years, tectonic tenacity had worked the stitches apart, leaving a cat's cradle of tarmac-­clogged rope suspended over the bottomless bright-black of the fissure, and it was these intricate rope con­figurations that Asquew pondered as he hobbled onward.

 

He found himself at the edge of the town. Here, the fissure continued wide and undarned through the countryside, bisecting two of the three surrounding black hills and disappearing into the blackness of the world beyond.

 

Asquew stopped and cocked an ear to a pleasant watery sound. Just away from the fissure, but ob­viously arising from it, he found a spring bubbling to the surface to form a wide pond. He had never laid eyes on it before. Working his feet into the muddy ground that marked its perimeter, he leant forward and peered into its waters.

 

He saw the reflection of the back of his head which quivered slightly as wind wiped the surface of the pool. Below this reflection was another reflection of his balding pate, and deeper and deeper the reflection multiplied until one must have been ­close enough to kiss the molten core of the world.

 

Lips parched by such thoughts Asquew scooped a handful of sparkling water from the pool and sipped it ... then un bandaged his knees and elbows for a ceremonial dipping.

 

"I'm trying to forget when I remem­bered who you were."

 

Of course, they both must have dreamed this her reply, bearing in mind that he first needed a mouth to have the ability to ask the question to which she must re­ply ... but, instead of which, his whole body, let alone his pate, was nothing but a rippling bald cushion of featureless creamy-pink ­peppered with flickering gill-like slits - ­breathing, if only to suffocate on air.

 

If life is only one of the many channels of logic and reality, then Asquew thinks he has found another. He was involved in a road traffic accident, whereby his body was lodged between two large fiery engines that were tantamount to be welded together by the crash. He supposes he should have felt dead or, at least, in terrible agony. However, it was more like a dream with nothing touching the sides. It was as if he is his own wife, fortunately left unscathed by the wreckage, looking down at the round bald-topped face she'd loved and, sometimes, hated, for all her married life ... and he feels scorching tears running down his cheeks. Black tears from the eye shadow.

 

No, they were wine red, as twin knees - like suns - set upon an animal kingdom he'd never seen before. Beautiful beyond words.

 

Asquew had heard of claustrophobia. But when his wife told him that suffered from a cosmic strain of it, he was so embarrassed he just didn't know where to put his face.

 

In fact, as far as he could gather, when he asked her to elaborate, she often resorted to crouching in ­the broom cupboard under the stairs to escape from the sheer oppression of the open sky – pretending to be a stuffed antelope.

 

"Are you sure you're not suffering from agoraphobia rather than claustrophobia, my dear? It sounds as if you might be."

 

"No, I feel I must escape the universe itself, you know, to put my body beyond its constricting margins."

 

Asquew laughed: "Maybe, death is the answer..."

 

"Yes, it may be, but what if it isn't - it's a bit rash to try death out, before exhausting all the possibilities.”

 

 For no reason whatsoever, Asquew's mind wandered regarding her phrase about "exhausting all the possibilities" and he visualised barely viable ichthic creatures lying all over the place panting desperately for breath. Then, it struck him that one of the creatures had a slit so big it invited credit-card swiping through.

 

He now knew where to put his face.

 

"I don't think I'd enjoy torturing people."

 

Asquew's opening conversational gambit for a new attempt at making himself felt as a tenable existence was startling to say the least. The fact he'd thought about such a thing in the first place told his wife a lot about him. She thought of the other variations of what he could have said:

 

"I don't enjoy torturing people." "I do enjoy..."

 

"I think I'd enjoy ..."

 

"I think I don't enjoy ..."

 

In whatever way he had happened to phrase his preferences regarding such an unsavoury subject­matter, Asquew had damned himself in her estimation for ever more - and how could she thus even consider hoping he'd think about muscling forth from such unlaundered fantasy into the currency of marriage with her? Before she could make some witty repartee to his reality-striving remark, they were interrupted by many im­puted relations trooping into the dining-room, carrying bags of dirty washing.

 

One little girl was in the custody of Asquew's grandmother. As the food was then served, silence reigned, because everybody's mouths were too full to speak. But it didn't stop Asquew's wife thinking aloud.

 

"Some say objects do not exist until they're observed," said the ever-logical Asquew. "So, you see, a non-observed object is only a mass of possibilities."

 

His daughter was not very well behaved. She was too young to appreciate such rarified concepts.

 

The question of logic and reality was the furthest thing from her mind. She was more concerned with the doll­seyes glinting in the dark corner of the nursery. She couldn't wait to start playing with them again ... when her father had hobbled off for his lunch. Philosophy this morning. Latin this afternoon. Most of it was over her head.

 

"I wish ... I wish ... your body had no bones and then you'd be so ever so baggy," trilled the girl, skipping from the room.

 

Without thought, Asquew allowed the girl's words to speed him to another place.

 

No bones?

 

Baggy?

 

Not quite. He was slack and twisted, his bones' praline was inflame-fractured and shifting as he wormed between concertinaed metal. Broken glass close to his eye blinking with amber pulsing light. Three sides. Three equal sides. A perfect equilateral triangle created by the mathematical chaos of collision. This comforted Asquew. Precision from chaos. Method. Reason.

 

A scream, a soul-tearing wail of agony and grief, leads a charge of ambient noise. Rain on metal. Boots scuffing on tarmac, glass popping and screeching. Urgent voices issuing orders and encouragement. Clumsy elbows in faces. Heavy breathing given form by cold air. The scream again, closer. A loved one? Sparks fell around the glass triangle and were immediately extinguished with a momen­tary hiss by the damp road. Sparks from a screaming saw as it bit through twisted bone-metal.

 

The saw screaming for him. The saw ...

 

"Please," he pleaded.

 

Asquew's wife screamed as he gently gripped her hand and sought to pull her from her hiding-place beneath the stairs. Once again, he was defeated by her liberal application of scented hand lotion, her palm and fingers slippery and limpid as squid.

 

"I cannot," she hissed, wild-eyed, withdrawing to the conjuring shadows which fashioned her face into that of the stuffed antelope: a presumptive with which she claimed kinship. "The space will crush me. And I only had my hair done on Monday. Don't you understand?"

 

Standing in carpet slippers and cardigan, shivering with psychological and emotional impotence, something failed and Asquew sobbed. He opened his mouth to reply but only released a defeated sigh. The antelope stared back at him, unblinking.

 

The front door, swollen - like his knees - to an ill-fitting size by the wet weather, juddered open.

 

Rain hammered on the car roof. He scooped his keys from the little pot where they were always kept and stepped into the rain.

 

Light -lit and lightsome - steps skipped skipped across the carpet. And skipped yet again. A girl's voice: "I wish ... I wish ... your body had no bones and then you'd be ever so baggy."

 

His heart skipped a beat but Asquew did not trouble himself to look. Even if he saw the little girl it didn't mean she was there. And, if he didn't see her, well, what did that prove? He did not feel the rain slap against his pate, he was too deep for that, wrestling four dimensions of logic into three dimensions of possi­bility. Wrestling with a bursting heart and broken down brain and ripped joints. He turned the ignition key. He could still manage that.

 

"I'll see you after lunch, my dear. Meanwhile, I would like you to think about what we have discussed this morning."

 

"Yes, Daddy."

 

 

Asquew left his daughter with one single glance. As the nursery door closed, hundreds of worm creatures reached out from their own writhing, wriggling nucleus for individuation, rolling slowly upon each other towards the dark corner ... where a meticulous possibility was consolidating into the the likeness of a stuffed antelope which could only cry real tears if on its back. The anatomically complete doll next to it could only laugh on its front.

 

Through the blurring blow of land-locked clouds there churned a solitary motor car, louder than the distance looked. Asquew had driven into a lay-by for a sparkling leg stretch and to look for his wind­scattered laundry. The world at large was only himself in various stages of mental snake-skinning ... until he heard the car's approach. Such sound indicated that the countryside was merely a disappointing screen for civilisation elsewhere. Squeezing his eyes, he saw a ghost car tailing the original one, even more blurred and casting feathers of visible air in its wake. By means of his innocence (for he had already dismembered the body-function portion of his persona), he wondered if machines could have ghosts, like people have ghosts. The woman driver of the second car was a ghost, after all; Asquew could see through the eyes to the back of her brain.

 

The roar of the surrounding motorway was like God hoovering. The drizzle settling from the low clouds scorched the belly-up animal as it oozed out a black porridgy foetus - once to have been Asquew's little bone-fire of a daughter.

 

====================

"Logic often produces a sense of anti-climax, a sense of incompletion like thighs separated from calves, yet Illogic - Logic's necessary hinge or foil - often summons up holistic truths. In the same way, the trawling of swamps (mental or physical, geyser-hot or floe-cold) can gather impossibilities to be stood up and surveyed from any skewed angle. Only then, can opposites be weighed.”

 

Rachel Mildeyes (from THE TAXIDERMY OF MYTHS vol. IV Smoking Joints)