In The Night Factory

Stevenson craned his head, neck and vertebrae, hexagonally to gaze at the pavement slabs in front of him. He tried to play imaginary hopscotch on the different sections, weaving about, jumping between one and another with the numbers popping up on the jagged squares and disappearing the moment he clapped and slapped his feet upon them. In this way he travelled around corners and up busy main streets filled with the hustle and bustle of noisy people milling about in front, with their voices swirling in the air and then fragmenting into the crowd behind. Taking his daily street exercises, moving his creaking leg and hip joints and bending his clicking back, aching from days of inactivity and indulgence after sitting upright on the backless chair in the flat, fearing loss of composure, having to square his eyes upon paper in the lamplight of the still night, in that silent but peaceful enclosure.

Once on the road it was a different matter. Those fragile days cooped up in the warm nest, listening to the grate of joints caused by the bending of limbs into a limited number of positions to navigate a short list of habitual spaces, had ended. He was now Stevenson outdoors, a different kind of animal altogether. Once a month the narrow public spaces of the small English town were briefly turned into a wide open adventure playground in which to flex his legs. A bright circus of activity and a fairground of surprises awaited him as he stepped from the door at 3 Walnut Place, to walk at his usual pace, into a fire cauldron of potential encounters.

He was a regular feature on the old flint stone road in town, legs motoring whilst arms stiff like toy soldiers at his sides. If observed from close quarters by local types he would be seen to be marking off posted lamps…one…two…three…four…with the left eye squinted, cocked up and swivelling inside its socket, the other being kept rigidly alert for cobbles and cracks while scanning for straying pedestrians accidentally venturing into his path. Walking the streets in tightrope lines and leaping towards one marker post, then towards the next.

Sometimes a casually wandering shopper who happened by chance, to glance, in a certain second, they reckoned, a strong and straight legged person swinging, a winging his way, with his legs as fast as a flicker and a flutter of the eyelids, wide open and aghast at the frowning, swerving hunch-backed figure flying past, "like a chariot" said Mrs Marriot from the shadowy interior of her fortune telling tent. "A perennial menace" said a stiff and strutting suited young man hurrying, he hoped, to meet Mrs. Ruttle for some tennis.

Marched with thunderous strides up bluebottle Street and swerved sharply at Cottage Road. Rushed through Blind Man's Alley only to stutter and skid against the rocks and boulders along the side path by the ladies green paint chipped frame, you could see she was out and the man with the blue and white umbrella was in – "Could this mean rain?" He stopped all of a sudden, staring blankly in front. A herd of people ignoring him and also the person to path-wide ratio, flaunting the hidden rules of ancient road law, set about to confuse Stevenson.

He had no option but to turn back and anxiously skip around the corner in search of a clearer track, one hidden from these rapscallions of the roadway. Galloping down to another end point and then peering around, searching to find which way was next, looking west, looking east, hoping not to find confusion along his path this time at least!

An excitement would boil up inside him and the urge was to stretch limbs and pulse blood and not look around and about, nor see who was ambling beside him. It was the result of a natural swelling of need he would think, crashing into labouring shopping haulers and hypnotised window gazers. Even the most avid bargain trackers would eventually fall away once they realised that Stevenson was hell bent on his own separate way.

Stevenson had walked these pavements many times before but each time it seemed they had changed. The slabs and cement lodged between them were aged and fragmented, chipped at the edges, worn by the stampeding rain and baked dry by the unfettered sun beaming down upon them. The general trampling of stiletto heals lodging themselves in the grooves, sliding and ploughing into the narrow troughs, gouging lines in the weathered asphalt. Sometimes you could believe the ground beneath was shifting slowly in indefinable movements. How could one tell sometimes, when racing forward, that the earth beneath him was not moving at least an inch? Did his rushing movement not have some physical impact upon the stones, not even if he leapt from one to the other? Maybe if he pushed hard on the stone behind the wheel would start rolling and he would be stuck at that point, rolling for ever?

It was while walking down the main street after doing several turns of the central square that he did suddenly stand to attention with his face frowned in worry. He did this in his customary manner not unlike a Mir Cat spotting a predator across deserted Quarry. Head held aloft from the steady stream of heads fielding an array of different hair-cuts bobbing in a tired march up the reclining road, nose pointing and eyes glaring, standing straight, one hand to spy into the distance and the other held strong to withhold the current. Across there in the distance a familiar bony and emasculated face was hinted at beneath a mop of reddish brown hair breezing around the attached scrawny shoulders. Three quick jabbing movements of Stevenson's head quickly scanned the nearby roadway for exits. Panic stricken, he was getting too close, he realised that it was too late; all alternative routes were blocked off! All he could do now is prepare for the inevitable, the meeting to strike. The fact that Stevenson had forgotten the persons name added to his discomposure as he moved now, with the crowd, drifting towards the fearful encounter, unable to hold back. His heart raced but he couldn't look away, "oh look there's some interesting oranges on that stall, those there!" Thought Stevenson.

He knew what was coming from experience, knew this person too well. He'd be standing there waiting to get going, and listening to Thing-a-a-me-jig's excited descriptions of his latest creative enterprise whilst all the time trying desperately to think his name, a simple language tool that must be the foundation stone upon which all conversations were built. First the name and then the rest followed naturally. If a person neglects a fellow's name then the structure flounders and wobbles and ends up flopping uselessly to the ground, splat! Bloody hell! Thought Stevenson.

"A name, a name?" he thought. "Rumpling…Dumpling…no! Bri…Brin…Brinner…um…no. Oh it's useless!" Like an unexpected guest he would pop up as if from nowhere amongst the crowd, hailing Stevenson over. He did not say Stevenson's name and Stevenson did not say his because they had both forgotten. The two beings staring vacantly at each other and trotting out the functional pleasantries while at the same time their thoughts were strangled by the search for a correct name. A lost name could be lying deep somewhere within the hidden estuaries of everyone’s brain, thought Stevenson.

# posted by Neil @ 11:49 pm

“What’s that noise? I hear a noise! It seems to be coming from over by the cooker? Right, if it’s those mice again, I'm going to get those ungrateful swine.” I get up and switch the light on. The naked sixty watt light bulb illuminates the fuzz of hundreds of hairs floating, a whole universe of glittering particles thrown up into the air by my bumping and creaking across the floor boards to investigate the rattle, now coming from the direction of the window. Then I suddenly realise what have I done; The light is now on, the window is open and the whole flying insect fraternity will now be alerted for take off, on route to my room in one encroaching mass. Hurriedly I rush to the window to cut off the only entrance. Just in time to see a growing bulge of stippled dots busying themselves away out there at house number six, readying for the charge. I take a lunge for the window with both hands to stop the surge, sending a cloud of white dust up into the atmosphere as I go. The frame sticks and so I force it harder, squeaking down the rail, scraping fragments of dry paint and dust onto the work surface to settle on various jars and plates strewn around. As I push down to the last inches my right eye takes a look out through the window and spots a white flicker of movement in the darkness. Before I have time to think about it, it is upon me and rushes into the room like Concord, arriving in one straight line at its destination, nearly hitting me in the face in mid flight. I am awed by its speed and size, shaking my head. My memory rewinding and playing back in slow motion; the wings are seen miming flight through the black silent night as it passes through into my space and out of sight. “You drift like a ghost through the smallest of gaps, wings flapping. I look at the clock, I look at the time. I was just about to go off to bed! The night will give me no peace, if I do not rid myself of this beast.” I mutter these words and many others, as I stand crouching and gazing questioningly at the room’s new occupant, my hands still clasping the window.

Its furry underside shone in the lamp light, the grotesque swell of the body, obscured by the incessant machine gunning of wings blurring. Seen from a distance it takes on the form of a crazed power ball jerking about at speed in the air, amongst the hair. As a comet following its trajectory across the star strewn galaxy, so this freakish thing has been delivered to my room, travelling along nature’s path to the hypnotic globe fixed to my ceiling. I decide to take action to defend my territory and begin at once to dance about my light bulb shaking my large unwieldy baton of a TV magazine. This is a tough one I say, missing with every swipe. You the master foilsman, a fast and nimble fighter, your figure casting a giant shadow at war with the soldiers patterned on the wallpaper, dipping and swinging while orbiting around the globe, charged by your attraction to the fantastically bright sun. "Fly in the golden wind little Icarus bird, you won’t escape me."

I find that this is the biggest one that I have ever seen. “Never seen you before? Not as big as you? You’re looking out of the window? You can go if you want to, go on. Maybe you would like some help with the frayed end of this weeks magazine would you. I’ll get you and I’ll make just one more smear on the window if I want to. Now just stay still there, come on!” The fur covering your body makes me wince and freeze still. Your soft feathery wings flutter with mad excitement and bounce like a space man against the phosphorescent glow. I could slowly move, as if making the slightest noise with my size elevens could alert its attention away from the bulb and send it battling in my direction with a few near misses. Then lift the window to give the animal an opening and while keeping an eye on it passing through the gap, reach around to place the world into darkness with a quick flick of the switch.

While stumbling, I feel a soft movement of wings somewhere and I blindly usher, what I think it is, out of the window slot. Ughh – the blasted things in my ear…ugh – ah – makes me shiver and flap my arms wildly, knocking into desks, finally coming to rest, by luck, on a chair in the corner, rubbing the dirt of the tiny mite off my upper arms furiously, shivering as if cold. I am now imagining wiping the grease, gathered from every dingy black hole in the planet, off every surface of my body.

The midget albino bird creature is now still in my room refusing my earnest gestures to rehabilitate it into the outside world. I find it attracted stubbornly, frustratingly, obsessively to the sixty watt bulb. Strangely intelligent the insect hangs around waiting for me to renew the source of its pleasure and will lie dormant. After a while I get fed up with knocking about and not being able to find things and the moment I reach one of my palms in the direction of the switch and press down - out of the silence goes the buzzard and around and around the bloody bulb it goes, “bugger”!
After a while of flinging my arms in soft human slowness at the laughing bestial imp I recognise the need for a rest in the proceedings. Let the moth play for a bit. "Only for a short while mind! I need to give some of my time to the washing of the dishes. But later, there will be none of these cat and mouse games, you understand, you horrible little sprite. You see this here towel, its straining at the bit, I’m telling you, straining at the bit. Twitch a muscle, move a wing!"

# posted by Neil @ 10:34 pm