Uo had never liked humans. Too rash, too unpredictable. Forever rushing through life.
He sat upon a cold and ancient seat at distant Altair where time and decay are less tightly bound together. Ages of discipline had engendered in him an austere sympathy with gravity. He practiced stillness and listened to the silence of matter and to the bryte song of outer space.
The sharp clack of heels on the basalt floor speckled the empty hall where he sat. It was a messenger from pathology. A flurry of protocol took place and after observances of title and the bestowal of obsequies the messenger entered the trance state that facilitated the emission an information cloud. This cloud was consumed by Uo. He tasted it meticulously. And commenced digestion. His features began to gradually arrange themselves in discord.
He descended the long obsidian spiral staircase to the commons, sighing Armageddon. He walked to the house of his wife Vae.
“I have received news,” he said.
“What kind of news?” asked Vae.
Uo sighed once more. “I must go down,” he said.
*
Johnny Sideways pulled slick the flashing plastic ribbon surrounding the nude packet of 20 Benson and Hedges. He snatched away the burnt gold wrapper and whistled out a clean white cylinder. The flame from his lighter caught and he inhaled.
Something was different about today, he didn’t know what. It might have been something to do with those weird flushes and twirls and all those sudden endings. What was the opposite of pregnant, he wondered.
“Johnny, get your shit together,” Ger Grogan, stationed behind the bar, broad and red haired, looked up from his newspaper.
“Whash?”
“You’ve been standing there staring into space for five minutes.”
“Yes Ger. I understand where you’re coming from. I’m considering developing an idiom… was considering developing an idiom.”
“And have you cracked it?” Ger lifted to his lips his mug of tea and regarded Johnny with solemnity.
“I’d’know. There was a lot of shit about puppets.”
“Pinocchio stuff?”
“Yeah. Real fucking Pinocchio,” said Johnny.
A cool breeze wafted into the bar through an outswung window blinding the patrons with invisible spring. The front door fell open and the rectangular portal of light became occupied by a blot of shade that became a human form. She wore a scarf, denims, dark eyeshadow.
“Are you the owner?” she asked Johnny.
“No.
“That is,” said Johnny, “I mean… well… now… you have me at a disadvantage.”
“How so?” the girl asked. She flashed a glance at her watch.
“’Cos, you know, you’re… so full of purpose,” said Johnny.
“Funny,” she said.
Some time passed.
“What do you want with the owner?” asked Johnny.
The girl eyed Johnny with her jaw.
“I need to use the telephone,” she levelled.
“That’s him behind the bar,” said Johnny.
Johnny mused through some curiosity the blue notion that his mind was now active in more areas at once than it had been at any previous time in his life. The girl stood by the dart board. She spoke in whispers into the brown plastic receiver of the telephone. Sometimes her eyes tightened. She looked taut; withered and elegant.
She brightened an instant, replacing the receiver onto its hook. Returning to the bar, she ordered a gin and tonic. Ger Grogan efficiently slid a beermat into place. The girl used her knees to sit. The tan sponge inside of the seat forced out through a torn plum polyester covering.
“Hey, ah,” said Johnny, “I don’t know if you’re driving, but there’s cameras a couple of miles up the road there.”
“No I’m not. Driving I mean. Thanks though.”
“You’re not from around here though?”
“No,” said the girl. “Just passing through.”
Later he found out her name. It was Ella.
“Can’t say I’m exactly taken with the mullet,” said Ella. The outer corner of her left eye smiled.
“Whoa. Harsh,” said Johnny. He brushed an imaginary crumb off the collar of his paisley shirt. “Alottalove, alotta care gone into the cultivation of the aforementioned.” Johnny again.
“The shirt works for me,” said Ella. She drained her gin and tonic and centered the empty glass on the beermat.
“Fuck it, get me out of here,” she said.
“Say what now?” said Johnny.
“I don’t want to be here any more.”
“Sure… I have a gun in the car. We could go shooting?”
“Perfect,” she said.
Ger Grogan raised an eye from his newspaper as Ella and Johnny walked out of the bar. In the paper there was a lot of mention of the term ‘off balance sheet.’
Johnny tapped the thermometer on the dashboard expressively. The temperature sat at twelve degrees. Ella gazed out of the passenger window, into the side of the road.
“Are we nearly there yet,” she said.
“’Bout a mile,” said Johnny. His voice whined with pornographic urgency.
They turned into an old quarry, high redstone walls. Streaks of hawthorn and alder clustered amongst litters of boulders. Johnny set two glass bottles on the front hood of a bulldozer decrepit with rust. He fished a pistol from the glove compartment. Ella slouched against the car as he aimed. The gun cracked and one of the bottles splintered.
“Now. Your turn,” he said.
Ella took the gun. She fired twice missing.
“Here. Look,” Johnny stepped in beside her and put his hand on her arm. His touch was cool and dry.
“Steady,” he said, “Try again.”
Bang, went the gun. Bangbang.
Elle swung around eyes flashing fury. “It’s too hard. I’m too far away.”
“And you’re out of bullets,” he said.
A wind separated them, bearing the promise of warmth and sweetened by the syrup of birdsong.
“I can’t go back there,” she said.
“No?” said Johnny.
“The old man is coming. I thought I could face him. I can’t face him.”
Johnny said nothing.
“I’m falling apart in the worst way Johnny. I want to drop, to go down, to go so far down. I’m tired. Tired of games and tired of winning and sick of having to love people.” She shook her head. “Ah… and now I’m just boring you.”
“No. You’re not.”
“I want to stop making sense. I want to get out, to escape somehow, to escape from… I don’t know… to escape from language.”
“No you don’t”
“I do.”
“No. That’s horseshit.”
They held each other and kissed; desperate, wild and immaculate.
“Leave me now,” she said, turning away.
“No.”
“I’m scared,” said Elle.
“Yeah,” said Johnny.
“I don’t know where yet, but I’m going to have to be gone a long time.”
“Yeah,” said Johnny.
“I’m going with you,” he said.
“You really don’t want to do that.”
“Ya I do,” he said.
“You don’t know. It’s going to be hell. Real hell.”
“Yeah.”
Elle raised brittle, flashing eyes.
“Why?” she said. “Convince me why you’d want to.”
“Ah crap,” said Johnny. He stared at the sky. “Well how about this… I’ll be your dark ages, if you’ll be my renaissance.”
They turned to face each other. All of the air was in the space between their lips.
*
Uo had never liked humans. Too rash, too unpredictable. Forever rushing through life.
He was received at the house of his wife Vae.
“You’re back,” she said.
“Yes,” said Uo.
“How did it go?” asked Vae.
“Not so great.”
“No?”
“No,” he said. He pursed his lips and smiled. “Trouble below.”
Trouble Below © 2017 Fergus Deffely
Fergus Deffely - Author 