Longland Jones had just painted his fence. He was very proud of the smooth, white finish. “That’s a pure surface!” he muttered to himself, admiring the wide stretch of the fence.

He cleaned his brushes, put away the remaining paint in his shed and closed the door on the job ... but not before giving another knowing look at the fifty yards of white wood, six foot high planks, separating … what from what? Longland had never considered the purpose of the fence. He had taken it for granted and, even now, he did not question it. In fact, Longland owned the acreage on both sides of the fence. He was indeed not a questioning man, but a true example of Voltaire’s Pangloss: everything around him, everything that happened to him, was for the best. Life was a gift of God, and all was as it should be.

The morning after the painting of the fence, Longland rose at about six. as the sun was peering over the rim of the horizon.

He drew back the curtains, to admire the world, and his part of it. He saw something that was not his! It scored a furrow in his soul. He saw a huge dirty black mark daubed over his newly-painted fence. One large agglomeration of tags and pieces in esoteric blotches. They were ugly marks. They were evil marks, ungodly marks, crude and greasy, not carefully applied. but splashed with cruel spontaneity over a great deal of the pure whiteness.

Longland was shocked? Longland was ... flabbergasted, appalled? No, he was insane with fury. He was undone, unzipped! He scratched his nails along the cement wall of the bedroom, in despair.

He rushed headlong from the room to his shed, grabbed the remaining white paint and the brushes so carefully cleaned the night before. He then proceeded to paint over those evil, black marks with righteous gusto; applied the paint in thick gobs, but he found it most difficult to destroy any impression of blackness behind the white. However thickly he plastered with his busy brush, be could still see a nuance of latent darkness, menacing, lurking, clandestine. However, after a while, he was satisfied with the rectification. He surveyed his workmanship and, although the previous day’s pride was slightly dampened, he still admired the pure white fence, stretching magnificently across his land.

He cleaned the brushes, threw away the empty paint-tins and commenced his day’s work.

Longland had dreams and, lately, those dreams had become rather vivid. He dreamed at night of his fence, his white fence. He saw storms battering it to the ground. He saw black patches seeping through the whiteness, spreading, ever widening. He saw the wood rotting, festering, growing fungoid. And he saw little night critters, fresh from burrows of Hell, with pots of black paint. But the fence in reality stayed white, or as white as one could expect with those hideous streaks and smears craving to escape their prison.

Longland grew quite disturbed. He hated nightmares. he had always hated nightmares. They made him feel ill, polluted. The fence became an all- encompassing concern. Each morning, he would peer tentatively from his bedroom window to see if it was still intact, unsullied, and it always was.

Longland, as each day passed, became more and more proud of his fence. To his eyes, it looked straighter, higher, stiffer, it was majestic, each plank stretching out to touch the sky, rigid with noble beauty, erect, upstanding. If he had not discarded it as being too far beyond the pale of reason, he would have sworn that the fence was growing, sprouting from the ground, an integral limb of the earth.

None the less, Longland’s fears started to grow alongside his pride. He thought of that ugly black stain behind the beautiful smooth white surface. There was only one solution. He would burn off all the paint with a blow-lamp and then repaint it with some newly-acquired white gloss.

He took the blow-lamp from the shed, advanced towards the fence and proceeded to burn off the paint. He felt the catharsis in his own body, as the paint dripped from the wood and disappeared. Whether the wood was abnormally dry, whether the blow-lamp was faulty, whether it was an act of God … the fence caught fire. It started with one plank and soon a blazing inferno spread the length of the fence. Longland Jones was helpless as he watched the planks crackle and groan in agony, as if the night critters of his dreams were squealing, sizzling sucking-pigs.

The fence crashed to the ground in flames. He could not believe his eyes. It was wholly destroyed and the ashes sank into the soil.

***

I knocked at the door, as the time for my visit had come. Almost immediately, it was opened by a young woman dressed in a white blouse and a pale blue skirt out of which two nicely shaped legs stood on the porch step.

“Yes?” she said, as she felt the weight of her dark brown hair, hanging long and curly over her ears.

“Hyacinth Manning, I presume... may I introduce myself - Longland Jones.”

“That means nothing to me. What do you want? I’m in a hurry.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you Just as you are going out,” — the time was about six in the evening — “but this was the only opportunity I had to...”

The woman looked puzzled at first, but when I explained my presence there, she gave me a cynical stare and surprisingly invited me into her office/living room (very respectable and conventionally decorative). “Sit down. will you?”

It was indeed conventionally decorative. but for one thing. Not owning a watch, I automatically looked up at her clock. The hands, big and small, did not move at all, but two sets of twelve numbers revolved on the perimeter, the outer circle for the minutes and the inner one for the hours, so indicating the time in that way. One can imagine the difficulties in deciphering the time of day on such a clock, especially as the numbers moved anti-clockwise… The hands were static at seven o’clock exactly, if the numbers had been in the customary positions of an ordinary clock.

“Now, Mr Jones, read on...”

The woman smiled coldly and relaxed back into the armchair.

I took the manuscript from my inside pocket and, glancing up at her pretty, dimpled face (decked with pink spectacles and a mole on her left cheek -‘mole’ is not the right word, having connotations of ugliness, for this mark set off her beauty, was the focus of her female symmetry, as it were). I read and this lasted for five or ten minutes. broken only by my coughs and slips of the tongue.

“Thank you, Mr Jones.”

“Well? What do you think? Can you tell from this one example of my work…?”

“Mr Jones, I shall be frank. You have delayed the start of my evening out. I suppose it’s my own fault - I never turn away budding writers, it’s so discouraging for them - but you have come here with absolute rubbish. The crude symbolism of the fence is trite and, may I say it, puerile. It’s one extended piece on a phallic theme, with no definite conclusion, no rhyme or reason — it just tails off…”

“Thank you for your time — I shall be leaving you now,” I said, disconsolate but unrepentant.

“No, don’t go! I still don’t want to discourage you. Have a cup of decaffeinated coffee with me — what did you actually mean to express?”

“My inner soul, perhaps.”

“Oh. dear, what idealism!”

I watched her, superior as she supposed herself to be, watched her bosom rise and fall with her breathing, watched her legs crossing and uncrossing as she spoke, watched her mouth wriggle out words of supercilious benevolence, watched her mole, watched it until I watched nothing else.

“Yes, idealism is your flaw, Mr Jones, or can I call you Longland? Longland, try and write for the mass market — forget your principles, your inner soul…”

She laughed. She squirmed in the armchair and laughed again. The mole laughed, laughed and squirmed on her face.

“A good detective story may suit you. From what you read tonight. I can see you have a modicum of talent, but channelled in the wrong direction, eh?” The mole jumped up and made coffee.

“May I say how enthralled I am by your clock?” I said, pointing to it with my left hand. “Where did you come by it?”

“Longland, you have not been listening to what I have been saying. I have been trying to help you, you know? The clock....? Oh, it was a present from my late husband.”

“Don’t you find it irritating?”

“Yes, at first. But after a while you get used to it. See, it is ten to seven at the moment...”

“Hum, I see. In ten minutes’ time the clock will be like any other clock in the country, will it not?”

“Yes, I suppose it will be.”

The mole sipped at her coffee. “I’m afraid you will have to be going now, Mr Jones, I’m sorry I had to be so harsh with your story, if story it was. Any way, I think you should apologies too, don’t you?”

I remained silent. I wanted to see that clock when it was seven o’clock. I just had to. It was now seven minutes to seven.

“Well, goodbye, Mr Jones. Write something else, and post it to me.” The mole rose. The numbers moved, minute by minute.

I remained silent.

The mole grew angry. “Well, are you going? You must go now. I have been very tolerant of you. as I am with all budding writers.” The mole quivered and turned red.

The numbers moved, second by second - the wheel of time. Six minutes to seven.

“Why don’ t you speak? You must go, you know?”

“No,”

“What? Please leave my house.”

“No, not at the moment. In a few minutes, perhaps.”

“Get out, or I shall call the police!”

“No.” - five minutes to seven — “no, I will not.” I placed my hand on the receiver.

She struggled with me, but I managed to hold her off. Accidentally, I tore her white blouse and caught a glimpse of her breasts, as she quickly rectified her apparel.

“I shall go at seven o’clock precisely.”

“No, no, no! Please go now. You will make me frantic ... I shall publish your piece, if you leave right now.”

The mole held my arm with her shaking hand. “Yes, you will be a famous writer.”

“I don’t want to be famous.”

She pummelled at my chest with her tiny fists. “Go! Go! Please, go!”

Three minutes to seven.

“I shall give myself to you – tomorrow night. You will be able to have me.” At this point, she stripped off her blouse, as if giving me a trailer for a film. Her pointed tits, firm and round, brought a fever in my body and a backwash of saliva in my mouth. But I withstood the temptation. She started to run from the room, but I barred the way, hugging her close, the aureoles of her nipples pressing into my chest.

Two minutes to seven. The numbers revolved on their axis, slowly, oh so very slowly.

“Oh, please, please go!” she screamed, her eyes red with tears.

I held her tight to me again, so she was unable to move. I absolutely refused to submit to my passion, though it was arising second by second. My veins were bursting with fire.

“Go! Please! I beg of you! Go! Go!” She was hysterical. Her brinkmanship had failed.

One minute to seven.

My passion rose and rose, hot and salty. It climbed, breathless and reeking with sweat. The female body nested into mine, as if into a cup of ribbed satin. My passion was on the point of complete victory just as the numbers swivelled into normality, as they circled, side-stepped to seven o’clock precisely. The clock synchronised with the world.

The mole disappeared. Not the body, but the mole on her face faded out. Passion cooled, as if with the dissolving of the very focus, the very core of her being. I was disgusted. physically nauseated by the thing I held in my arms, by the nub of the world’s venereus entropium…

As the numbers revolved out of line once again, as they embarked on their unwholesome journey of twelve hours, the mole began to appear again. It crystallized into being, but I remained disgusted. I threw her or it from me in horror, and rushed from the house.

***

The dream critters — they champ and chew as the night wears on around them... They feed off man’s unquenchable ambitions, off that ravening unwavering tunnelling of human endeavour...

There was one critter in particular, seated at her burrow, with round, open eyes, brown and old as the hills, and she force-fed her prisoner soul with her countless nipples.

Obsessions, obsessions, copy them out a trillion times and bring them to me after the lesson.


(published 'Auguries' 1988)