Last Chance

Bright colours, speeding past in a blur of motion. If you don’t focus on anything, the promise of the outside seemed exciting, unknown. Things are so much simpler out of focus; everything blurs with eachother, so you don’t know where the sky ends and the trees begin. It’s in detail that the wonder begins to fade with the colours.
I don’t know how long I had been sitting here, on the train. I don’t know when I got on, where I got on, or where I was supposed to be going. But I think that was the attraction of it, why I stayed here, refusing every familiar station. I didn’t know what was going to happen next for once. Maybe that was my plan. I got on some random train to wherever just to see where I would end up.
Yet I still seemed to be haunted by the sameness, the monotony, of real life at every station. The train begins to slow as it approaches; the clackety-clack of the tracks increases to a near roar as each dimple or dent, each imperfection magnified, when the speed drops, the excitement wanes, and the details come out of hiding.
Graffiti stains the cracked and dirtied brickwork below a rusted tin roof.
And the passengers get on the train.
The siren sounds.
And things are simple again.
At each stop the blur recedes, and for those few moments I seem to watch the same sequence of events play out beyond the metal and glass of the train. A group of people would be conversing (although the conversations would always seem rather one-sided), a messenger, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, but usually only one of them, would speak to another, again of varying gender but also in age and number, eyes cast downwards as if being the bearer of some ill-fated news. And each time the older of the listeners would attempt a brave face; even if the only one they would be hiding from were the messenger. Then they would be alone to mourn for whatever had been lost (for it seemed that something always is), when the messenger leaves of politeness, embarrassment, or some other appointment.

Sometimes the messengers are the same, station to station… or look the same; sometimes their audiences return, mixing and matching, and the outcome is always the same. Sometimes they look like people I know, or knew.
And the passengers get off at the station.
The siren sounds.
But things aren’t simple again.
My memory’s playing tricks; I swear I just saw…
How long have I been here?
“Too long”
I spin, surprised to hear such an alien sound. Next to me on the train sat a man, I don’t know how long he had been sitting there. He looked like one of the messengers, clean-shaven and sporting a white coat, jet black hair close-cropped, but tired, worn down.
I don’t know how long he’s been sitting there. Did he come in at the last stop? How did he-?
You’re talking to yourself, he says. “I’m just answering your questions”.
Sorry, I tell him, I didn’t realise. I let out a nervous laugh to cover my embarrassment.
“It’s all right”, he assures me, no one ever seems to. And he smiles.
I don’t want to talk to him, so I turn back to the window. You’re not supposed to talk to people on a train. It’s one of those unwritten laws that everyone abides by; it’s just not done. But there are always those people that feel the need to vent on a complete stranger. They come to you with all their grievances, all their insecurities, and they unload on you. At first in nervous and disjointed small talk, but soon in voluminous rants, secure in the fact that they will never see you again. And all the while you’re stuck there listening to their inane problems, like you don’t have any of your own; too uncomfortable to pay close attention, too polite to just walk away, in case they blow a fuse, shout, and draw the piercing and unwelcome gazes, interrupted from their won solitude.
The girl up the back has the right idea, headphones jammed in between a plethora of piercings. iPod, the great isolator. And suddenly there is a role reversal: if someone tries to talk, you simply feign ignorance, and they will be the ones feeling awkward, getting the looks, making fools of themselves.
“Where are you going?” The man in white asks.
I need to invest in an iPod.
I don’t know, I tell him, still facing the window, hoping he will get the idea and leave me alone.
“You should go home”, he continues, before… he trails off.
Before what? I don’t bother to hide the contempt in my voice. I didn’t want to talk to him.
“…it’s too late”, he finishes. He doesn’t take any notice of my annoyance, he just stares at me, eyes boring their way into mine, as if what he has said should profoundly affect me.
Too late for what? What could you possibly know about whether or not my timing will have some kind of affect on my life? Because it won’t. Nothing changes about whether or not I get off at this station or the next except how long it’ll take to get back to where I started.
I’m facing him now, his calm composed expression burning a hole in space. He put on like he knew it all, worn down by the burden of knowledge. I didn’t have to put up with this.
You need to go home, he keeps telling me, your family’s waiting for you.
Home. Family. He says them like they’re things want to go back to.
And the passengers get on the train.
The siren sounds.
And the man in white is still here.
It all keeps going around, outside this capsule. It’s like it’s all an endless repetition; people get on, people get off, people are unhappy, people are depressed. But it’s all they’re used to, so they just take it in their stride because they don’t know any different. All I want is a change, to escape this monotony that seems to be chasing me.
I tell him this, I think, but his expression, like the world outside, never changes. Like he understands.
You don’t want to do this. You’re not ready to let go of everything. There’s so much you’ve left behind, left undone, left wanting. So much promise to turn your back on; are you really prepared to do that?
It seems absurd, but I think he’s pleading, throwing ideas at me to force me to some decision. Like anything I do would make any difference to anything. Like I ‘mattered’; I’d always been told it, but I’d soon understood the term for what it meant. As long as you have something to give. As long as you have something to take. I was sick of being used.
I guess you can only run in circles around something for so long.
Time is running out. I’m not even sure he said it; the words, barely a whisper, ushered through near unmoving lips. The man had his head bowed, almost submissive, like he was defeated. And then I feel it, that unmistakeable rattle in the flooring. It grows, slowly, to a rumble, and the train shakes. I can hear the squeal of the brakes barely tapped as the cracks start to form. The man in white stands, grasping a clipboard under one arm, and looks ahead, down the train. Perhaps he glances at the girl, or the man holding steadfast to his newspaper, I don’t know. We’re approaching. He looks down at me one last time, his eyes filled with a kind of resigned sadness.
Leave; he warns me, this is your last chance.
But it doesn’t sound like a threat.
Graffiti stains the cracked and dirtied brickwork below a rusted tin roof.
And the man in white waits for me, expectantly.
The siren sounds.
And I never move from my seat.

He’s gone now, left behind in a blur of colour and motion, along with everything, everyone, else at the station. There are almost no passengers anymore. I’m here, the girl up the back is here; there are a few others, but I don’t know about the other carriages, whether they too are carrying people still. The train begins to rumble, so soon after leaving the station, but it doesn’t slow down. We accelerate more the further away from the station we get, and the shaking only seems to get more violent.
And all at once things are suddenly simple again. We have left the tracks behind, shooting out into the open sky, gliding through clouds, the green and yellow patchwork of farmland and pastures criss-crossed by strings of blue water far below. Eventually even that is left behind.
The endless black stretches in every direction; illuminated here and there by pinpricks of light. We could drift forever in this, leaving the insignificant blue-green ball millions of miles behind us. I study the others in my carriage; a man with a scarred lip steals furtive glances out the corner of his eye, from behind the safety of his newspaper, at the darkness beyond the barrier. Others do the same, not risking embarrassment by pointing out the impossibility of what had happened. I wonder how long it would be before someone spoke to another out here; how long before we coupled off to screw and reproduce; how long before we had to decide who to eat when the food ran out. It didn’t frighten me. I just sit here, the barest hint of a smile playing on my lips, content with the wondering and the not-knowing. It was different. It was what I wanted. I had made my choice.

***

The Doctor walked out of the room, his white coat billowing with his pace, clipboard in hand, clutched to his chest. Dealing with the families was the part of the job he hated most, when was forced by procedure to deliver the harsh news.
“In light of the severe brain injury sustained, and the duration of time spent by the patient in this state, the likelihood that he will ever awaken is bordering on zero”.
This man, the woman’s husband, the child’s father, had been trapped in his mind too long; it was too late, he had missed his last chance. Or rather, more appropriately, they had missed their last chance. This woman would be torn, a widow whose husband was not legally dead, between her oaths of marriage, her love for this man, and the acknowledgement that he may never return. Then there was the boy, a child abandoned by a father who had never even left, who, in fact, the boy saw every day. They had lost their last chance at living a more simple life, where you knew when to move on, and not feel guilty; because hope can be a terrible thing.
And like every time he had to give bad news, he could barely ever meet the families eye-to-eye. Instead he always had his eyes transfixed on his shoe, like there was something more interesting stuck to its lip. But it was when the tears started to flow that he had to leave, for his eyes would be dry, and he couldn’t bare the silent accusation he had once seen in a family’s eyes. You could have done more, they’d tell him, how could you be so cold? And it would seem like they meant to say that he personally had been the cause of their ill fortune.
Yet there was a light spring in his step; he knew that he had done what he could to the best of his abilities, but some people were just stubborn, some people never changed.
His eyes wandered over other patients in the coma ward… there weren’t many; comas aren’t as common as in soap operas, and even then they usually only last a few weeks. Those in the long term are transferred here, where some would waken to blinding lights and white coats, and some wouldn’t. He wondered if he could have helped those that wouldn’t: the man in Bed 14 with the scarred lip from some childhood accident, or the teenage girl down the hall with pinprick dots along her ears where her numerous piercings had healed over. But he didn’t know them… they weren’t his patients.
And the Doctor left the ward for a dying man’s bedside, for someone who would accept his help.
Somewhere a train sounds its siren.
Somewhere.

Threnody

He woke to the smell of burning; and perhaps he might not have bothered to move were it not for the smoke. His breaths deep through his nostrils, drying his throat, filling his lungs, enveloping him entirely, without and within. He choked, tumbling from the couch, retching involuntarily, forcing razorblades forth from his heart, tearing at him from the inside out. His body taken over, base instinct stretched out his hands, feelers searching desperately for escape, his legs moved of their own accord, pushing him across the floor. The carpet singed him though it was not yet aflame, his shirtless chest rubbed raw with each thrust towards the door; that reminded him that the now was real, his body sobered, his suffering made flesh, that in a stupor he mused for a moment that he might have found Hell, or rather it found him. His guilt manifest that had lurked in wait, a shadow behind every action, stalking silently since his brother.
But no, he didn’t want to think of his brother.
His hand pressed against the wallpaper, it bubbled and peeled back from the heat, from the flames or from him, he cannot tell, and he hears a scream, almost inhuman. And as darkness imposes itself across his sight, he doesn’t realize the voice is his own.

He found himself gasping desperately for air, had he passed out for a moment there? He was outside, his fallen figure silhouetted against the roaring beast. Sirens sound somewhere, neither close nor far as yet, and the motel room glares at his body, its windows burst in abject rage, its mouth agape, frozen wide in hunger. A tongue of flame licks out across the ground towards him, and he thinks how it would be so easy to let it take him, to let himself roll back into its embrace, launched into that demon that had driven him across the world for a foolish purpose, a whim of no regard.
But he had dragged himself out, as surely as the room devoured his belongings. His world was witness to a string of same-such rooms, each one over time blending into another, an endless repetition of the same clothes, the same objects, the same stock characters in his Punch and Judy play. And before him they charred and melted in the face of his past. A life spent in escrow now quivers in fear, the inevitable reach of a foolish act unmarred by time drawing him ever back, come finally to claim him, that it had stolen all else he’d loved. And here he hopes, as the paramedics wrestle him across the road from the mouth of the demon and faceless shadows dart back and forth with hose and bucket, that she had not suffered. That she had been taken in her sleep, unconscious to the crackling of the forest aflame, and the home she had built crumbling about her form so deathly pale.
The oxygen mask is forced over his mouth, and the world explodes white, a high-pitched squeal drowns out the metronome beep of his heartbeat in the corner. He knows then that he must face her, though the ruins be the only remainder of her body.
She calls to him across the void.
“Mum?” His muffled gasp escapes in answer.
“Fucking junkies”, exclaims the paramedic, examining the track-marks, “always leave such a mess.”

[3 months] Status Quo

...a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. Mirrors within mirrors. Every eye a looking-glass; and every thought behind it...

...there are some things you just keep, but there are some things you'll give anything for...

and the way best intentions breed foulest ends...

is a master of the art of self-deception...

and how 'comfort' is a deceptively BIG word...

and an innocent game between 15yr olds getting high...

...you'll never love me, as much as I do...

knows that when Will Smith says: "Aw Hell No", shit is about to go down...

...if myth and legend has taught us anything, the union of god and man breeds only monsters...

would rather live in rhyme than reason...

is playing leapfrog with consciousness...

...when Diet-Coke tastes like gravy, you know you've got cancer...

and the deepest pockets...

is hearing you loud and clear...

...go to sleep without knowing if you are amongst the lost or the found, the living or the dead...

‎...nothing was to be regretted, for there were more days to come...

and a crooked smile...

returning to real life...

is getting political...

and this is our life, scattered on a footstool...

tracing the path of the stars...

Justice, we are your friends...

patrolling in the snow, beneath one hundred million stars...

and so much deceptively cunning spongebob...

and these shoes so green from all them pinstripes...

and a flying kick to your grandma's face...

has reached a stage in his life where he thinks: "yes, i DO need a spice rack in the kitchen"...

and how everything burns...

thinks it's weird watching the kids play golf on Wii saying 'I love this hole'...

...'Matambre' literally translates as 'hunger killer'...

‎...there is no phrase in Spanish for 'hurry up'...

...the greatest thing about the English language is the abundance of verbs at our disposal with which to illustrate varying degrees of enthusiasm for anything...

won't be taken to a place where he makes sense...

‎...there are roads for the dead and there are roads for the living, but sometimes i get confused by that distinction...

...we've known each-other for centuries...

is a weapon of self-destruction...

and a chorus of the mourning dead...

and the word of the day is: Ramshackle!

feels like going Robin Williams, walking into the center of Box Hill and screaming GOOD MORNING VIETNAM! at the top of his lungs...

failed right up until we won...

just crossed the Murray for a bro...

has laser envy...

knows there's nothing Bruce Willis can't handle...

...nothing is as far away as one minute ago...

believes that Batman retired to become Clint Eastwood...

will trip and fall in this dark house, one loose shoelace will be the end of me...

and the backyard refrigerator called the outdoors...

intriguing ink...

setup, complication, resolution...

never jokes about pants...

into the great laugh of mankind...

...did he fall, or was he pushed?...

and those bright green shoes...

wonders if we'll ever make it past Track 2...

...who remembers Victims, who are but a body-count? We remember Villains...

Capital H

Bass.
A beat.
He wonders to himself, lounging in those much-loved couches outside, the sun closing on its set, bathing the sky a warm orange until it bleeds blue farther from the horizon, clouds sitting upon it lightly as if only smears in the painted sky. He watches the sun's descent between the tin carport roof and the bricks of the house and he wonders why he so enjoys these quiet moments in bass. Though not quiet in the traditional sense, the beat shakes his body about, no, it was a beat that was for him alone, plugged between headphones, and for once his voice is at rest. Like this with his friends conversation was rife, spiraling off on tangents and miraculously finding their way back to the original stream of consciousness, like waves breaking on an ocean shore, but on his own there was no reason to talk, and so he went inwards. To the beats of the music he would reflect, on times recent and times long passed, taking memories and weaving them into prose, tales that can stand alone and be a part of something else, something bigger, something more complete. A full picture of a life, for a life is far larger a thing to measure than one would expect.
He had been seeing a therapist for a few weeks now, and though he had originally intended to see a councilor regarding his study management, he found the sessions taking on a life of their own. By the time she asks him what he wants out of the sessions, his intentions have changed completely and the focus becomes about him, all of him. As he illustrates to her at one point, the appeal of the sessions was that he didn't have to hide from anything, pure selfish indulgence, the license to open oneself without fear of judgment, an isolated connection completely devoid from the web that so consumed his life, for to everyone in that web, every single one, a different face was shown, perhaps only the slightest of changes, like the way he held himself, to the greatest shift in personality. Every one of those people see him differently.
So for a complete picture of a life, each of these faces must also be recorded, for it is a part of the puzzle, a perception just as real as the true thing.
Each eye a looking glass; each thought behind it.
And we are only able to record this perception in the reflection of our own perception of they, telling the tale of our own relationship with that person to see how they see us. A reflection of a reflection of a reflection. Mirrors within mirrors. A life is bigger than you think.
When the bass kicks in he journeys inwards to the beat of drums. Imagined worlds take form and crumble beneath him, streams of thought meander through his mind through the real and the pretend, fiction fused with fact, dreams take form behind his eyes like a veil, he stares, not asleep, but not quite awake, off in his own world and stuck firmly here. An infinite landscape between headphones; the only direction his thoughts might have, the emotions, the moods, that the music evokes.
In a beat.
And bass.