Brittle wires

“If it captures anything, it’s an essence of mankind; an inkling of a moment’s despair transfigured over hundreds of pages, infecting each and every character it comes in contact with like a plague rat.”
Deborah was half listening. She hadn’t heard what book he was talking about. She guessed a classic, Dickens or Dostoevsky perhaps. It could have been; he liked picking on them. She almost bothered to point out that it was fleas rather than the rats themselves which spread bubonic plague. Not worth the effort to do more than nod or mumble an agreement, though. Better still to look out the window and sigh low enough that he couldn’t hear her.
What strange things pass through those wires, she thought. The truncating junction of collections of cables, attaching themselves to unseen abodes: she stared hard at them, like she could understand them, like she could see the sparks and waves that flowed within their casing.
Patrick had been talking, all the while. His little sparks and waves had become all too lost in tiresome evaluation. He had become a bore, before he’d really grown that old.
She turned around and regarded him in his rigid brown pullover and smart trousers. He looked like he was about to go and lecture, but it was Saturday. Saturday, for God’s sake, Patrick. But Patrick didn’t remember Saturday.
He saw her looking at him and was pleased. So she had been paying attention. He liked the feel of eyes paying him attention, even if they regarded his clothes and not his face. Clothes maketh the man.
“I’m just going to make a phonecall.” He half whispered this, like he was already on the phone and didn’t want the person on the other end to hear. He pointed at the telephone he held in his left hand, as if she might be too stupid to know what it was. For some reason, he swapped it to his right hand to make the call.
She turned around, back to the window, so slowly, like the air in the room had thickened and started to set during the last ten seconds. She slumped her chin back onto her waiting palms, arms resting on elbows, elbows on window-sill.
Now she could hear exactly what those sparks and waves meant, exactly what they were transmitting via their metal tendrils. Downstairs, the washing machine was kicking in to its final earth-clattering spin cycle. She got up, because she knew it was almost over.

The black rock

The black rock called to me that day. Its sentience crawled out from under it and spoke to me across the waters. Its thick syrup of a voice sped across the breakers coming at me in engulfing waves, begging me to swim.
In a skyline devoid of rubble, except for the strange crust of souls that jutted high above the wicked sea, everything about the rugged peak inflamed my mind. I had to see for myself, I had to see what spoke to me from its burnt coal heart.
So I swam. I dropped as many of my clothes as I thought I needed and I waded into the surge. With each fresh wave that swamped my body I was refreshed for a moment and knew my recklessness, my insanity, but then the voice of the island craned its neck once more and carried its message still clearer so my ears could hear it anew. I had to press on.
It was a grave struggle. Never in my existence have I fought so hard; against tide, against exhaustion, against my own spirit and conscience, telling me to turn back.
You might think the waves would roll smooth and pitch less mountainous, less torrid than at the shore, but you’d be dread mistaken. I was buffeted and tossed by forces so great, forces I’d never feared and respected as I ought. And yet, as I drew ever nearer with every aching and despairing paddle of my arms the sound in my head turned to wondrous song and the voice became multiple. But the water was choking my lungs as I gulped of it again and the spray was singeing my eyes and I had not a stroke left in my muscles.
When I felt the strong arm of the lifeguard around my chest, I tried harm to raise my arm in defence, or perhaps even attack. With each firm kick of his legs the song died a little in my mind and I gritted and ground my teeth in such despair. Yes, I think I would have killed that saviour of mine if I’d only had the strength. I would have smashed my elbow into his face and drowned his body or dashed his head onto the rocks, if I’d had the power to. And as the voice of the rock faded forever, I cursed my guardian angel, this enigma of the sea, this lifeguard, with a tongue as black as the enchanted rock itself.
He left me there on the shore, screaming and ungrateful; begging of the black rock to call me forth, solemnly, once more.