Humor (3 page)

One rainy day whilst out shopping for groceries, I am surrounded by a growing crowd who are under the impression that I can fly. It seems that a dreadful mistake has been made: the local paper has printed an article about a gentleman who really does have this enviable talent, but they have put my photograph above the article. I am unsure about how the newspaper came to have a picture of me, but that is the least of my worries, faced, as I am, with this heckling crowd of strangers. I protest, but the crowd will give no quarter until I show them my incredible powers.

At last, I give in to them, and stand, flapping my arms and jumping as high as I can into the damp air. This goes on for some time, and I become increasingly frightened that the now-disenchanted crowd will attack me, believing me to be a self-promoting charlatan. But in the end they straggle off, muttering. Thanking my lucky stars, I rush home, too upset to continue my shopping.

That evening, alone, I once again try to fly. It proves to be a futile exercise, but addictive. Night after night I stand on my roof, flapping my arms and making small jumps on the tiles. Try as I might, I never manage to get airborne.

I find myself in a responsible position within a reputable institution, and my evening arrival at home is welcomed by my beautiful wife. We share many interests, and spend pleasantly frequent hours discussing cultural matters. Our house is more than adequate for our needs, although we both ruefully agree that if we were ever to have children a relocation could be in order. But in the meantime we enjoy our life together.

One evening I am suddenly conscious of a noise from the kitchen. I ask my wife to pause the video, and pace uneasily towards the door that leads to it. I walk softly in my stockinged feet towards the door. I pick up an empty wine bottle and slowly turn the handle. I feel more animal than human, more ready to deal with an intruder than I ever have before. I burst open the door, the neck of my wine bottle in my clenched fist.

There is nobody in the kitchen. I give the back yard a cursory check, but the flat feeling I have tells me that nothing will be there.

Determined to make something of my foolishness, I pointlessly grate some Edam cheese. I almost continue the grating until my fingers are bleeding, but I decide that it would be a futile gesture. I return to the living room for the rest of the video, leaving the Edam to curl and atrophy in the kitchen.

Despite my reservations, I am wandering the streets of the town in the company of several people with whom I have little in common. The evening has been dominated by seemingly random sallies into pubs populated almost exclusively by large men in vests, with whom I have absolutely nothing in common.

Every glance upwards reveals a sky that has been soaked the colour of lager. Every time I attempt to join in the obvious jollity of the occasion I am drowned out by the inadvertent yelping of my compatriots, and I resort to adopting a vacuous yet friendly expression whenever any enquiry is directed in my direction.

We stand in a huddle of indecision outside a brightly lit doorway, and earnest debate falls around my ears as I watch, with unbelieving nausea, a chef in the chip shop opposite shoo a flaming, but living, pigeon from the window of his establishment. The flying, sputtering lump of flame erupts from the window. My attention is distracted by an enquiry from my colleagues regarding money. I answer with rapidity, only to turn my gaze back to find the burning bird has disappeared from my view.

After an eternity of boredom we emerge from the club. The pigeon is lying in the gutter, curiously expanded, horribly burnt, utterly dead.

While I am searching for an old diary in the attic, I find a large cardboard box full of ring-binders, which, in turn, are full of notes I once made concerning the construction of an emotional puncture kit.

The find seems providential: my love-life is in tatters. Constructed almost entirely of half-truths, fabricated intuitions and vaguely remembered urges, my private life is transparently in desperate want of repair. If ever I needed the emotional puncture kit, it is at this emotional juncture.

Unfortunately, I need to locate several parts to build the puncture kit, and despite many pleading telephone calls to various ironmongers, greengrocers, bookmakers, stationery shops and butchers, I am unable to assemble the kit.

I look out of the window, and notice that tumbleweed is blowing past the house. The sight adds to my increasing depression, and I hasten to the town to actively seek the parts I need.

A pawnbroker’s catches my eye, and I step inside the musty shop. I explain my predicament to the papery man behind the grille, and he shows me a box that houses some small rodents. The pawnbroker tells me that the rodents may not replace my love-life, but they will love me if I love them. And if I fail to love them, they will punish me with their sharp teeth.

Not quite knowing why, I buy the rodents and hurry home. Once there, I tell them sweet things, and get them a saucer of milk.

Later, my husband returns. It seems that he has successfully sold my old diary to a major publisher. I am oddly unmoved, but then, I have my rodents.

I am commissioned by a wealthy opera singer to carve a marble sculpture of her torso. Without shame, she disrobes, and I make preparatory drawings, noting the lines of her voluptuous curves and the weight of her voluminous tresses.

An enormous block of marble is duly delivered to the velvety chamber where I am to carry out my trade. Confidently I take up my mallet and chisel, and begin to rough out the statue.

Days pass, then weeks, and after a period of many months I announce to my patron that the work is complete. She stares for some time at the fruit of my endeavours. Something is not right. I sense that she is displeased in some way. I shoo her from the chamber, order another block of marble, and begin again.

I am enshrouded in dust, I work through the night, until my fingers are raw and my breath comes in harsh rasps. Again, my employer is unaccountably dissatisfied.

I continue to order marble, and continue to carve statue after statue, while the years pass.

When, eventually, I create a marble likeness of the opera singer on her deathbed with my own wizened and arthritic fingers, she at last nods, smiles, and abandons herself to the relentless pull of eternal sleep.

I place my chisels carefully on the floor, and lie next to her, placing my dusty hand in her cooling fingers.

My holiday takes me to a resort for which I have distant but fond memories of innocent pleasures and fine bars. I wander the littered streets until I find my favourite cantina, now flyblown and murky. The proprietor fails to recognise me, and I order a coffee.

Sitting outside in the wan sunlight I am depressed by the changes that have taken place in this once-beautiful seaside town. Many shops are boarded up, the youth seem preoccupied with the dusty ground, and the cinema has been transformed into a seemingly unpopular bingo hall.

Worst of all are the diminutive vampires who bowl along the promenade biting the legs of passers-by. The only way to deal with these pointy-toothed parasites is to kick them viciously into the harbour. I entertain myself morosely in this way for about half an hour, sustaining only slight scratches from the fangs of these riviera nosferatu.

Things are not what they used to be around here. The thought reminds me uncomfortably of my ageing body, and my own desire to live vicariously the lives of others.

I realise that although I can understand the sad plight of the vampires, I cannot resist the urge to kick them, flailing, into the grey ocean.

I return to my room, and sit at the window. If there were an observer, I imagine that they might see the cloud-scattered evening sky reflected in my dark pupils.

I obtain a poorly paid job in a dusty laboratory. The afternoon sunlight falls into the room through yellowing venetian blinds, and I pass the time making tea and answering oblique questions desultorily during collapsed conversations.

As time passes in its tedious way I slowly become aware that the experiments taking place in the laboratory are at best sinister; and at worst evil. At least 80 per cent of the hypotheses are obviously invalid and intended to support revolting surmises.

I increasingly spend most of my time in the kitchen, staring at the limescale that bedecks the overflow of the sink. I fancy that I can see emergent civilisations in the crust that grows daily around the tap bases. The weeks fall through my fingers.

Eventually the experiments become too much for me to tolerate. Mice are being sacrificed to a nameless dark presence that hovers over the building, manifesting in the dust, colouring the minds of the scientists with whom I am forced to spend my futile daylight. Somehow the laboratory is filling my dreams with fear.

I soon recognise that it is the mouldering soul of the building itself that is engineering this mounting horror. Quietly, during my tea-making duties, I plan my escape.
I realise that if I mention my discontent to my co-workers all exits will be closed to me.

At last, with a daring flourish of courage, I attempt to effect my egress. It is with a dreadful terror that I realise the door is locked. I turn, and see the hollow eyes of the scientists upon me. There can be no escape.

Whilst on a walking holiday in remote regions, I chance upon a secluded valley, away from the popular walking routes. Some distance along the valley I come across a scene so breathtakingly beautiful that I drop to my knees in wonder. There is something about the serried ranks of deciduous and coniferous trees standing tall on the opposite bank of the river that sets my heart ablaze. The colours of the foliage are poetic, while the arrangement of species seems divinely inspired. Clouds swoop and whirl above the topmost branches, and the river sparkles through an uncertain reflection below.

Suddenly, the sky darkens, and along the river advances a flotilla of huge birds with menacing eyes. The size of the birds staggers me; one is as tall as a bus, and the others not much smaller. Their plumage is a shimmering blue, but their eyes are full of hate and looming disaster. With a horrible sinking feeling, I realise that the birds have noticed me. One of them clambers up the nearside bank, and waddles towards me.

I take to my heels, and scramble along the path. Gaining speed, I run at full tilt. Then I see people in front of me, running towards me. First one passes, then another, then another. They are wide-eyed with terror, and keep taking quick, fearful looks behind them. There must, I realise, be
something unutterably horrible in front of me, but my fear of the big birds compels me to carry on.

More people run past me, all with the same frightened expression. They are running towards the birds, away from something unknown. I am running from the birds, towards something unknown. Not for the first time in my life, I curse my bad luck.

I work as a personal bodyguard and I am employed by a gentleman who fears for his life, threatened, as he is, by dark threats of sickening violence delivered by unknown persons over the telephone.

After some preliminary investigations, it becomes clear that the telephone calls are an invention produced by the imagination of my client. Nonetheless, his fear is real and I begin to wonder if, despite appearances, there may be some truth in his fears. My hunch proves right when, one night, my client’s guttural screaming summons me to his bedroom. There, shifting from foot to foot and hyperventilating with feral excitement, is a foul creature from the underworld. The demon takes one look at me and seems to dismiss me as a minor player in this drama. He is waving a large machete at my client, relishing the fear this engenders. My client is blubbering at me to do something.

In fact, I had suspected that demons may have been at the bottom of this job, and have taken the precaution of acquiring a phoney machete of flimsy wooden manufacture. I tease the demon with childish taunts, and, as he rushes at me, I dextrously swap the machetes.

It is only very slightly later, when my client’s head is sliced off, that I realise I have made an error. My career is finished.

While drinking coffee in my usual bar I am joined by a group of friends. A couple of hours pass in a pleasant manner, and as evening darkens the sky I am persuaded to join them for a bibulous meander.

As the sun creases into a bank of simmering cumulus, consensus decrees that we visit a bar close to the meat-packing district. A relatively brief walk, and our destination is within sight. Pigeons scutter overhead, and I am reminded of my jacket which I must collect from the dry-cleaner’s. The blackened city curves over our passage, and we halt for a group consultation of the
A to Z
.

I notice a flash of light in the corner of my vision, and turn swiftly. Across the road, within the plate-glass windows of a large and busy pub, sudden flames billow and swoop towards the ceiling. I stare, clamped to the pavement with disbelief. A surge of light blasts from the pub windows, which are now completely filled with incandescence. I stand open-mouthed, unable to communicate the horror that is coursing through me, merely ululating monosyllabically.

As suddenly as they flared, the flames disappear. Within the pub, the customers continue their evening. With gasping breaths, I attempt to explain what I have just seen to my friends.

It is a nuclear-holocaust theme pub, they explain. Nothing is real. I am unable to deal with this, and make my way home through the echoing streets with tearful eyes.