An uplifting tale of existentialist discombobulation and death by disaffection.
Devereux awoke from a dream about nothing and sighed into a greater nothing. He moved his eyes around the darkness, comforted by its chill. The room was there of course, and by extrapolation, the universe, unobserved and waiting. Waiting for him to move, to crawl in slow motion from his bed and give it purpose with his pitiful presence, a mote of dust, floating in impotence with all the rest; dust galaxies, dust worlds, dust people. It was all the same. Nothing.
He turned on the light and what he saw did not improve his mood. The environment he surveyed - the dark brown, nicotine, cheap carpet, shared bathroom, sum total of a waste of time existence - was rented, borrowed or stolen, depending on where he looked. Mechanically, Devereux forced himself into another pointless burst of wakefulness, a necessary evil to use up unwanted energy, waste accumulated during the hours of sleep.
Dressed, Devereux focussed on the clock. Evening. Probably. He had spoken to no one in weeks. Melancholy, running unchecked, had his tired spirit surrounded. It was a dark world indeed for Devereux. He would go to the pub.
There was a noise from the garden. Devereux ignored it.
Earlier that day, just after dawn in fact, Wilson, Devereux’s equally reclusive house mate, had awoken and, in the spirit of Sartre, reinvented himself. He chose to be a worm. This planet and its troubles had concerned him for some time. He cared, did Wilson. He watched the TV and cared; he listened to the radio and cared. Wilson cared so much it hurt. He lay awake nights and worried that he could do nothing to improve the lot of humanity. He ached for the starving and the sea levels, carbon footprints trod dark across his soul. He felt a failure because there was litter in the street and shooting in Columbia. All in all, he carried quite a burden on his shoulders. When Wilson shed a tear, it was shed for all the world.
Hence the worm. Wilson lay still and smiled, imagining himself soaring slowly through the ground with nary a worry and the unsightly chaos of the surface far, far above. The soil would be his sanctuary and his food, the cool, filtered rain-moisture his drink and the darkness his friend. His metamorphosis complete, he got up, removed his underwear and walked, naked, into the garden. He looked around one last time at the too old Earth with its insurmountable symptoms of rot and neglect and breathed its complicated air. He lay down on the lawn, the morning dew pure and refreshing against his skin and, arms by his sides broke the surface of his new life.
The turf tasted brackish and bitter. It was difficult to swallow, which concerned him for a time, but Wilson was no quitter and so he persevered. By the time he had reached topsoil he had gained a taste for it and had learned to swallow the stones without trying to chew. From then on, he ate as quickly as he could, to get underground as soon as possible.
It was not long before he reached his first problem. He was full. He had gorged himself fit to burst and he had only a relatively tiny hole in front of him, not even big enough for his head. It looked like the going would be slower than he had anticipated. Still, Wilson had all the time in the world. He could afford to be patient and so he waited, quietly digesting.
Devereux did his bathroom things and headed for what they still called the kitchen, although what food had been in there had mostly consumed itself. This suited Devereux; food only made him sick. What he needed was alcohol, and the memory of humanity that the shared experience of its consumption brought back. Devereux needed the pub. This meant he had to go outside, and he needed certain things to be able to do this.
"Constants," he muttered to himself. Devereux had a rather complex view of the world and found it difficult to cope when he ventured astronaut-like "outside". He survived by taking with him reminders, little handkerchief knots for him to contemplate and thus keep his feet on the ground and his mind on the situation in hand.
He tried to open Wilson's going out drawer first, but it was locked. "Funny," he thought, he didn't recall being able to lock any of the kitchen drawers. Opening his own, he took out the things essential and, one by one, popped them carefully into his pockets. These were the things on which he relied, the unchanging lifebelts keeping him afloat on a sea of chaos. A lock of his dead mother's hair served to remind him of the past, giving him an anchor point from which to judge the perceptions of the world held by other people which would inevitably be forced upon him. A dead mouse was his hitching post to the present, as his attention tended to wander. It had been a live mouse once, but life in the drawer and the pocket had not agreed with it. It didn't really matter. The future was uncertain and thus unrepresented in Devereux's pocket. It would bring what it would, and Devereux was not in the business of guesswork. He also took a lump of cracked but mould free cheese, in case a sudden desire for food should come upon him after all. "Coffee," he thought then, and prepared himself a cup, watching the kettle until it boiled and then clicking a lid onto his cup before dropping this too into his pocket.
The odd noise from the garden came again. This time Devereux went out to investigate. The lawn was dark save for a square of light thrown onto it from the kitchen window, in the centre of which was what appeared to be Wilson. By now he was in a bit of a mess and his head was in a hole. Devereux could not summon the curiosity to be bothered overly much by the sight before him, but felt he ought to say something to signal his presence.
“Wilson,” he opened, his voice sounding odd out loud. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to anyone. “I’m going to the pub. You can come if you like.”
“Can’t,” answered Wilson, “Excreting,” and when it became clear that an elaboration was to be forthcoming, Devereux went back inside in search of his keys.
Outside, Devereux leaned into the wind, frowned bitterly and headed for the pub. Fitfully he fingered the contents of his pockets, the lump of cheese: hard, greasy; the cup of coffee: spilled, cold; the mouse: soft, dead and the lock of his dead mother’s hair, elastic banded and damnable if it didn’t bring back those memories. He stopped in his tracks and once more fingered the greasy lump that was his cheese. “Later,” he thought, and smiled. He broke wind, pleased that he did it with buttock-clenched control. Not a soul would know.
Devereux liked pubs. He could feel his tender bladder distend with delight and his throat tingle as he approached the final corner, admiring the chipped brickwork and squeezing his so relaxing mouse. He treated himself with the view to the left, the swinging sign and the huddled, possibly dead, definitely drunken slump of a true contender on the pavement. “Mmm,” he thought, and smiled. The wind was at his back now, and he wished he had left his fart a little later.
The blood red eyes of the slump fixed upon him and he stopped to gaze into them, pleased with the moment.
“Have you farted?” it asked. Devereux replied that he had, and thanked the slump for noticing. “I was in the navy once,” said the slump with the blood red eyes, “An officer.” Devereux smiled, leaned forward and prodded. The slump’s eyes closed and its face nodded forwards, into the darkness. “I remember places,” it continued, quieter and slurring, as Devereux prodded, “All those places…” Devereux kept smiling and prodding the slump as it’s voice faded and faded, smiling and prodding, moulding the dark clothes until the voice disappeared altogether and Devereux was prodding empty clothes, dark and cold on the pavement, moving in the wind. Alone, Devereux straightened and pushed open the dark wood door of the pub and savoured the warmth that exited as he entered.
The bar section of the pub was dim, crowded but hushed. This was usual. People didn’t mess about in the bar, it was a place of serious drinking and little energy was wasted on unrelated activities. Tables were full but no one looked at anyone else. It was doubtful that anyone even knew the identities of their immediate neighbours. The bar was, in fact filled with a low roar of sounds, but of a limited variety and all subdued. The air rattled with the muffled clink of glass against wedding rings and teeth, and the tiny thump of glass against beermat multiplied a thousandfold became a quietly intense rush of sound like the beating of many wings that quickened the heart and further whetted the thirst. The counter of the bar was inhabited by a steady one-deep turnover of unsmiling custom. The other sounds of the room were punctuated by low and toneless mutterings from this direction such as “Another,” or “No ice,” or “Keep ‘em coming.” The barman, silent, always active never busy, wore a black hood, only his eyes visible through devil-slanted slits, the blank, bored eyes of someone who has seen his fill of the depths of human degradation. Devereux sniffed deeply, savouring the warm scent of cigarette breath and beer with its undertones of unwashed human sweat. He was home.
Devereux generally started off in the bar, drinking slowly and steadily, smiling the only smile, unnoticed, fortifying himself against the adventure of the evening. He would purposely nudge those around him to see them shuffle further away without a glance or a word. He felt wetness against his hand where there should be none. He examined his glass, finding a fine hairline crack from the rim to the bottom.
“Barman,” he said, still smiling, as the hood passed through his field of vision, “Barman, I have leakage, a flaw.” He held up the glass for examination. The hood nodded once, and his drink was replaced, even though a third of it had been consumed. A man standing next to him, tall and unshaven with a top hat caught his eye, the first acknowledgement of his existence he had received from another customer since his arrival. Devereux smiled amiably and raised his new drink. The man averted his eyes and continued drinking. Devereux felt he had exhausted the amusement of the bar and headed for the lounge.
The door to the lounge faced north and was fashioned from a single piece of ash, the pale wood dry and unvarnished. The handle was also wooden. Devereux closed it behind him and surveyed the room. Again dim, but an altogether cleaner place than the bar. Wood panelled walls slightly deadened the bright conversation that came from the five-sided tables. A slender bottled champagne was the drink of choice in here, consumed from ridiculously tall fluted glasses, tinted sky blue to set off the bubbles. Devereux regarded the stream that bisected the room, babbling noisily from beneath one wooden wall to disappear under it's opposite. In the centre of the room, two men and a woman were grouped excitedly around a twitching rod, held by a third man who was fighting with the reel. Two of the men were dressed in formal evening wear, the third – the fisherman - in a lounge suit over the top of which he wore a white medical coat. The woman sported the half-armour familiar in the English civil war amongst those fighting under the command of Cromwell. Intrigued, Devereux approached. As he reached the group, a crimson fish was being deposited on the nearest table by means of a landing net. A champagne bottle was knocked over during the struggle, to guffaws from the group. Those seated at the surrounding tables glanced in their direction momentarily before returning to their conversations. As the fish became still, Devereux noted its singular beauty, from its bleeding moon, sickle-shaped tail, along its spearhead-curved flanks to the regal turn of its mouth and the calm of its eye, peculiar considering its present situation. The fish appeared to regard him as the hook was removed from its mouth.
“Why are you dressed in armour?” Devereux asked the girl as she broke from the group to refill her glass from the retrieved champagne bottle. She looked at him, startled. He smiled, one hand in his pocket delicately stroking the lock of his dead mother’s hair. The girl had his mother’s eyes. She blinked twice before speaking.
"Because of history, I am aware of the past," she answered, in his mother's voice. She paused, sipping from her glass, then spoke slowly, phrasing words carefully with a dreamlike diction. "I take refuge in the past, because that is what is in my books." She frowned slightly, took another sip, and then looked him in the eyes, "In books I can move through other worlds of years, treading the paths of forgotten forests and the streets of towns long dead." She looked down into her glass, the others had joined them now, the crimson fish having been weighed and returned to its stream. "I hear the sounds that haunted the nights of the people," she continued, "and smell the air they breathed." She smiled his mother's smile. "The paths always lead away and then the sounds leave me, and I remember I am alone and in this time."
“I understand,” Devereux nodded, using the tone his mother had liked to hear in the midst of her uncertainties, “We are all of us alone.” The girl smiled, but the white coated man, impassive until now slammed his glass down on the table, a sudden act of violence, breaking the stem.
“Understand?” he shouted, then composed himself, self consciously. “I have studied dreams all my life.” His eyes were arrogant, his voice intense and restrained. Devereux smiled, met the man’s gaze and thought about his cheese. “I have collected them like little jewels, coloured lights upon my understanding of the world.” He lowered his eyes and seemed soothed and fascinated by the broken glass and spilled champagne. “I am a psychologist and a mathematician, you see, and I model these dreams I collect. I assign values to their symbols and reconstruct them with numbers and equations. I take a little from one and a little from another, and I piece them together and see how they behave within their own rules.” He looked at Devereux again. Calm now, his eyes had gained the same lost, inward staring attitude of the girl. Devereux nodded once, encouragingly, and the man continued. “Mathematics usually comes from the conscious, you understand, so its rules are always restricted by the human viewpoint. The numbers work to the rules of the world.” Devereux found his piece of cheese and began to eat it. “With the mathematics of dreams though, the rules are constant only within their perspective. The representation of the world is not restricted by the world. The mathematics is therefore free from conscious human limitation and can rise above it, exploring those parts of our environment we cannot perceive. Mathematics becomes our eyes and our ears, probing the worlds beyond the one created for us by our limited, deceived senses.”
“So you take refuge in imagination,” Devereux commented, surprised at his enjoyment of the cheese.
“I move toward truth,” the mathematician muttered, looking down. He strode off to get another bottle of champagne. The other three left around the table had lost interest in his monologue, having apparently heard it several times before. They had already begun a conversation of their own, too mundane for Devereux’s liking. He became aware of suppressed, resonant laughter from behind him, causing him to turn. Seated with his back to the wall, facing Devereux and observing the situation, evidently with a degree of amusement was a young man, dapper in black Victorian formal dress, a silk top hat on the table in front of him. He stopped laughing, but looked as though he might recommence at any given provocation. The mood was infectious and Devereux found himself smiling the first genuinely humorous smile that had crossed his face for as long as he could remember. The man gestured for him to sit down and poured an extra glass from a wine bottle whose label was stained illegible with dust and time.
“It’s my favourite,” the man said, pushing the glass toward Devereux. His voice was clear and pleasant, untouched by the cigarette smoke, alcohol and self-loathing that polluted most of the speech that entered Devereux’s ears. He tasted the wine. It was exquisite. He glanced at the stranger's face as he thanked him, finding broad, honest features. The eyes were dark, black in fact, but straight and clear. Devereux introduced himself but the stranger laughed again:
“I have no use for names.” He sipped his wine, “But I’ll know you as well as you know yourself before the evening’s out, and I’ll be damned if I'm not the best friend you ever had.” Devereux nodded.
“A friendly sort of chap,” he said. The stranger seemed to find this hilariously funny, to Devereux’s discomposure, laughing uproariously.
“My sincere apologies,” he said, seeing Devereux’s expression, “It’s just that I’m much more used to upsetting people.” He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and recovered composure. “I'm always upsetting people.” He sipped wine and smacked his lips, tilting his glass in the direction of the bottle in appreciation. “But I'm a good friend to them when they need me.”
"And what sort of people are your friends?"
They were interrupted by last orders, the hooded barman appearing and hammer-striking a long iron cylinder suspended almost from ceiling to floor behind the bar. A strangely sweet note silenced the lounge, fading impossibly slowly. Devereux felt chilled, momentarily nervous. He assumed it was a reaction to the sound. He never liked time being called. It meant decisions would have to be made as to what to do next. Reflexively he reached into his pocket, but it was empty. Even the lint was missing. He rose from his seat but stood indecisively in his place.
"Everyone." The stranger answered his question, unperturbed. He fixed Devereux with his black eyes and smiled again. “I find everyone I meet comes around in the end.” Those pupil-less irises should have looked bottomless, intimidating, but instead they were filled with an embracing kindness and compassion. It was the smile that did it. The stranger seemed to throw his body and soul into the expression, sucking you along with it. A statue would have smiled back. His manner, open and honest and genuine inspired a trust that was a completely new feeling to Devereux, he needed to get away, to think about things.
“I have to go now,” he said. The stranger also stood, picking up his hat.
“I’ll walk with you. I need to speak with your friend anyway.”
“Friend?" Devereux was puzzled by the word, and then surprised. "What, Wilson? You know Wilson?"
“Is that his name? I’ll speak to him when we get there.”
“Ah yes,” Devereux thought out loud, “We’ll need to get a shovel from somewhere.” The stranger smiled.
“We won’t be needing a shovel.” He noticed Devereux looking around, puzzled, “And don’t worry about your coat.” He was still smiling, but his dark eyes were a little sadder. “You won’t be cold.” He reached out and touched Devereux's shoulder, lightly. "You're my friend now."
