The Bridal Trail

The dark of night renders the bridal trail unsafe for a lone walker like me. There are things - dangerous, malevolent beasts - hiding in the grassy verges, watching, waiting, ready to pounce.

I am not making this up.

There are creatures here that can slither half way up a man’s leg before he realises what has happened. They can wrap around a man’s throat before he has a chance to scream.

The full moon, gravid mother of light that she is, only makes things worse. The teaspoon of warm milk she stirs into the black-coffee night deepens shadows and gives life to inanimate objects. By her light I see a snake in a nearby tree, its tail wound in voluptuous coils around a horizontal branch, its mouth bent to the ear of Eve. That snake is woman masquerading as man; its sibilant whisper tells Eve of life without Adam, sex without sex, power without machismo.

The snake turns her cold eyes upon me, and, with a flick of her forked tongue, steals my strength. I try to run but my enervated legs fail me. I am in a nightmare: I am all action and no motion. The sweat rolling down the bony riverbed of my spine is like the touch of a dead man’s finger.

I beg my legs to take me away from that vile place - away from the snake and her sandpaper syllables. I move, slowly at first, but gather momentum as I go. I run as if pursued. I dare not look back until the lights of my home are before me. Then, when I do look back, there is nothing there but the bridal trail and the macchiato night.

I run panting through the back-door, dazzled by the artificial light, glad to be safe within my own home.

My wife enters the room and asks, “How was your walk?” I keep her in the corner of my eye and make my way towards the shower.

The Meeting

The meeting was innocuous enough; seven men who spent most of their work days surfing the internet, had gathered around a table to tell their manager how hard they had been working, and to reassure him that they were focused members of the project team.

Six of the men sat with straight backs and poised pens, but one of them, Mark, did not. Mark sat slouched back in his chair, his right foot resting on his left knee, and his arms crossed over his chest.

He despised his colleague’s pretence, the false way they accounted for their time, but he had already decided that he would join in their fiction. He would lie about the quantity of work he had completed in the past week, and he would build on his workmates stories of diligence and professionalism.

As Mark’s turn to speak drew near, his right foot, the one suspended by his left knee, began to jiggle. He wasn’t aware of it at first, but, when he looked down and saw it, he perceived his discomfort was the phantom controlling it.

His foot moved rapidly but he did not try to stop it. He thought someone might remark on it, might ask him if he knew that it signalled a desire to run. If they asked him this, he would say “Yes,” and he would demonstrate his desire by running out the door, out of the building, down the busy city streets, on and on, faster and faster, until, at last, he would reach the ocean’s edge and he would plunge himself into its cleansing waters.

But the foot went unremarked.

The Hidden Hand

He was sleeping as she sat down next to him. His hands rested on the tray table in front of him. Next to them lay an uncapped pen and a page of neat handwriting – a letter perhaps. She could have read it, but she dared not.

She watched his hands instead. They weren’t the kind to fidget, she decided. She thought that there must be a calm mind controlling them, a mind at ease with itself and at ease with life. She looked down to her lap where her own hands lay trembling. She imagined lifting one of her hands and lacing her fingers through those of this stranger, but she dared not.

The engines roared. The plane surged forward. Gravity’s unseen hand pushed her into her seat. Fear overwhelmed her. She gripped her armrests. She could not breathe.

She did not relax until the fierce engines lowered their voices and the plane levelled out.

He slept as the plane lifted off the ground. His hands, those comforting hands, did not hold hers, did not give warmth to her, did not provide safe shelter for her.

She turned her head to look at his face and realised that she was already in love with him. She told him this as he slept. She told him that he was her safe place in a time of trouble. She spoke softly, her voice hidden beneath the sound of the aircraft.

His eyes opened then, and he smiled at her: the kind of non-smile one stranger offers another. She thought she would say hello, but she dared not.

The Sound of the Sea

“Listen,” my father said. “Tell me three things you hear.”

“I hear the wind,” I said.

“Yes?”

“And I hear the sea.”

“Yes?”

“I can’t hear anything else,” I said

“Listen.”

We sat at the end of the old seawall in the place where the ocean splashed against its wooden railway-sleeper slope. My father’s feet were close to the surface of the rippling water and his gaze was fixed on the distant horizon. I imagined that his ears could hear everything, even people talking on the other side of the world.

I strained to hear what he heard. The gentle breeze played its sibilant song around my head. The ocean rolled over and over, scrapped across the seabed and then leapt and lapped against the seawall.

“The sea is lots of sounds,” I told my father.

He smiled at me.

“Yes,” he said.

But that was not the answer he was looking for. “What else?” he asked.

The sea was so bright: a million mirrors in the mid-day sun. I closed my eyes to shield them from the glare and turned my face towards the sky. Red light, warm and rich, shone upon me.

I listened.

My eyes flashed open. I jumped up and pointed along the beach, beyond the seawall, to the place where a small group of children were building sandcastles at the ocean’s edge. How had I not heard them earlier?

My father laughed and bundled me up in his arms.

“Well done,” he said. And he carried me on his shoulders as he walked back to the car.

I Travel

The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller. – John Milton

I am far from home.

At night, after a day of mindless work, I find a small corner in the hotel lobby lounge, and watch other travellers relax.

They are louder than me. They wear their travel well.

I long for home.

They flirt with the girl behind the bar. They ask her when she finishes work. She smiles but does not answer them.

They are trying to make the journey from alone to not alone. That is a journey I cannot make. They are trying to fill their emptiness. My emptiness is unfillable.

I watch them.

They drink. The noise they make drowns out the silence inside them.

They will end up alone tonight, but they will not feel alone. They will go back to a dark room that looks like other rooms they have slept in. They will lie on a bed that thousands of other people have lain on. Sleep will escape them. They will think about the future: the glorious future. They do not think about the past. They will get out of bed and drink strong liquor from a tiny bottle. They will watch infomercials on television. They will see the sun as it rises over the city’s tall buildings and they will not long to see the sunrise over the ocean.

They will shave. They will call their wives and not tell them that they love them.

They will iron a shirt and pack their bags. They will collect their cars and they will travel.

They will travel into the glorious future.

I watch them with envy . I am envious of their ability to put their loneliness in the future. For, while I am like them in many ways, my loneliness is not in the future. I cannot escape my emptiness, no matter how much I travel.

Mr Stanthorpe and the High-Speed Newspaper Perforator

James swung himself down next to a wispy-haired old man and closed his eyes. He would have preferred to sit alone, but this was the last free seat on the bus.

“Good evening young man,” the old man said.

James pretended not to notice.

“Allow me to introduce myself: I am Mr Stanthorpe, inventor of the world’s only high-speed newspaper perforator.”

James looked up and nodded at the old man.

“James,” he said.

James was about to close his eyes again when Mr Stanthorpe picked up a newspaper and began waving it in the air.

“My invention allows its user to remove the main fold of any newspaper,” said Mr Stanthorpe.

“Individual pages are far easier to manage, don’t you agree?”

“Hmmm,” James replied.

“Thanks to my invention, people can read their newspaper on the bus without disturbing the person next to them,” said Mr Stanthorpe.

“I read the newspaper on the Internet,” replied James sardonically.

“Oh,” said Mr Stanthorpe.

Right at that moment there was a tremendous bang. A truck had smashed into the back of the bus. The passengers were thrown forward but luckily no one was badly hurt.

The bus began to fill with smoke. The driver tried to open the buses doors, but it was no use, nothing was working.

People began to panic.

“We’re trapped!” someone screamed.

Mr Stanthorpe reached into his bag and pulled out a black box that looked like an overgrown hole-punch. He pulled the base off the box and held it up to the window.

“Cover your eyes,” he warned James.

James heard the window smash and felt a rush of cool air.

“How did you do that?” he asked Mr Stanthorpe as they climbed out the window.

“I used my high-speed newspaper perforator,” said Mr Stanthorpe proudly. “It also breaks glass.”

The bus crash was headline news the following day. James decided to buy the morning paper as a memento.

“Would you like me to perforate the fold for you, sir?” the vendor offered.

“Yes thanks,” said James.

The Leviathan Sea

A ragged cliff marks the place where Land concedes defeat to Ocean. The cliff stands stoically, a monument to the effects of time: crumbling; weather beaten; eroded. Overhead, iron clouds hang heavy and foreboding. The light that passes through them is pale and insipid. Nearby, a family of seagulls drifts on a strong breeze; beaks and beady eyes turned towards a grey and turgid sea.

There, on the rocky foreshore, a man stands alone.

The chill of the day, the movement of the sea, the keening cry of the seagulls, fills him, envelops him, wraps around him, and gives him peace. There, in the midst of the world at its work, he stands and meditates.

He feels his blood pumping through him; the warmth inside his gloves; the chill on the tips of his ears, his nose, his cheeks. He feels alive.

The sea is wild that day. It is a mighty leviathan beneath an enormous grey net. The man feels this, feels the movement of it hypnotising him, bending his will to its unyielding purpose. The man feels the sea’s anger. It is the kind that brings calm and focus. He feels its hunger. It is the kind that fills a man with force and purpose.

He feels the line of the sea extending beyond its natural boundary. It passes through him where his nose meets his forehead, permeating him and becoming one with his mind and thoughts.

He feels the wildness of it, the aliveness of it, the freedom of it. The force that keeps the sea moving is the same force that keeps the blood flowing in his veins.

The bracing breeze that comes from the ocean winds around him. It winds around his muscles, binding him and holding him. It makes him stronger, squeezes the miasma from his lungs and fills them with fresh air: cool, salty, and alive.

He has come to this place in search of these things. It was these things, the essence of life that he is here to fill up on. He will lock these memories away, ready for the joyless days ahead of him. He will store these feelings in his heart, and, one day, he will close his eyes and return to this foreshore, to this land, and he will remember. He will remember.