Would you like some more time? [OT]

[yxnomei]

[Strong language and themes]

Well, everytime I write, I end up placing it here for whomever may still be reading my works. For those of you wondering what happened to Dick Whittington's Kalishnicov, the first chapter is still being worked on but that isn't much of a promise nowadays. I am also in the process of refreshing Degeneration, fixing grammatical errors and plot inconsistancies (if all else fails, plyplyply your greatest hour) but more so as an exercise than to be posted here.

Would you like some more time?, written at 0200, is perhaps a slight and somewhat meagre attempt to try my hand at writing again. Personally I do not think this carries some of my usual techniques and it doesn't have the same rhythm but the tone is still the same and should be read accompanied with non-intrusive piano instrumental. But, well, one can't have everything, can you? This is almost a piece of non-fiction. The woman hasn't commit suicide and Henry, Frank and everyone else doesn't exist. But there is someone and I hope they can read this themselves one day and understand what I'm trying to say and, it is true. London can be pretty lonely sometimes, even when you're surrounded by people. Hope you enjoy.


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It was midnight and the restaurant had just closed. The couple began walking towards the High Street, the lamps overhead flickering and they reached the Thames. The woman stopped, sighed to herself and looked towards the water. Christmas baubles of light shimmered on the surface in-between the ripples and she thought of the bitter air. In the afternoon London air is usually heavy with smog and the busy-ness of taxies, congestion charges and the population hotspots of the tube entrances. A foghorn blasted over Christmas and she let herself become a little shocked before realising it wasn’t convincing. Her date, a young man in his early twenties, had carried on without her. Eventually he came to live in Scotland with his wife, three years older, and had seven children, three from adoption. He works as a maintenance engineer and had a gambling problem. His wife’s name is Sarah and drinks in the house by herself when he’s at work. The children are all very different, none of them get along and the youngest is bullied at school.

She took a couple of paces from the edge, drew breath and started to run back. When she got to the safety barrier she stopped, gripped the barrier with his left hand and removed her shoes with her right. She couldn’t run properly in high heels and she certainly couldn’t jump. The Thames began to develop a soupskin of fog and the woman was passed by three drunk teenagers out celebrating A-Level results. Two of them had failed the entrance grades to their local college and one decided he wanted an apprenticeship in spot wielding. She stopped as they passed, wolf-whistles and shouting in-between gulps from lager cans and the soupskin thickened. Christmas began to disappear and she thought to herself, I’ll find somewhere else to jump. Yeah. That might be better.

Waiting for her back home is her cat, a slight creature with inked yellow fur and an answer machine message. The cat, Henry, named after the popular children’s character spent the morning asleep on the sofa, the television set to Cbeebies while the woman was at work and the afternoon lying on the park bench watching children and tired parents on the swings before chasing away some bluebirds from the water fountain no one drinks from since older boys vandalised it by urinating down the pipes. Henry doesn’t mind, he never drank from it anyway and strolled through Hyde Park with catlike non-chalance before returning home, the television set to Cbeebies. The message on the answer machine is from Charles, an American with a cautious English accent. He is trying to woo the woman but she isn’t interested. He’s seven years younger then she is, worked as a business consultant and has a masters in Economics. His firm in London announced administration five weeks past. He has had eleven girlfriends, eight of them from London and had internet sex with a man posing as Deborah. Henry doesn’t like the taste of his trousers.

Someone once told the woman that you can hear a piano playing in the background whenever you’re close to the Thames and there’s no one around. Don’t be silly, she said in response, when are you ever alone in London? By the Thames? She tutted, shut her eyes and tried her very best to hear the piano, hoping it was playing the theme from Pretty Woman or Footloose but didn’t expect much. You can be alone, her friend said, sometimes. At night. Sundays. For a big place London can be pretty lonely. No, wait... did she think that or was she just making it up? The woman, not the friend. The soupskin stopped growing, its fingers outstretched and the bitter air released its grip. Christmas came bobbing back to the surface dimmed and childishly stupid.

The man posing as Deborah during internet sex with Charles the American with the English accent and trousers was Frank, a long-distance truck driver from Sussex. He is recently divorced with no children and the connection on his £300 PDA is with Freeserve. His Yahoo! Messenger username is Debbie69. He supports Chelsea football club although he lives in Tottenham and drives a Renault Megane. When the woman’s date’s youngest son is fifteen, Frank will be fifty seven and they will fall in love and have a relationship together which Frank will outlive. Frank will start shouting and screaming I am cursed! at the funeral several times before collapsing on the floor weeping. Frank is cursed.

Is this it? she thinks to herself, she puts in gasps and shortness of breath herself. There are tears in the back of her mind but there is nothing in her eyes because she isn’t really crying and she isn’t really sad because she decided upon this around two weeks ago. She is really asking God whether this is it because she is scared and doesn’t know whether this is the right thing to do. She is procrastinating, fingers around the soupskin, around the safety barrier she finds momentarily ironic because she had to remove her high heels and thinking about the piano chords of the themes from Pretty Woman or Footloose and wondering whether she could play them properly because she has stubby fingers.

Is this it? she thinks to herself this time without shortness of breath or tears in the back of her mind. She imagines God responding, a large old man donning a thick swamp of a beard hanging from his ears, emerging thick from the soup and fingers, from Christmas of the Thames, his arm outstretched pointing at her and saying No this isn’t it. You will have so much more from life but he doesn’t. Nothing separates the soupskin and nothing makes Christmas flicker with the gentle tide and she almost feels more secure. Almost, she thinks. Just almost.

A young man wearing a dark suit appears behind her, she can hear his footsteps, and sits on the bench behind her. Clean shaven, well spoken and smells like Sanex shower cream, he says My name is supposed to be Johnethan but it isn’t important. She’s watching him behind her, watching him with her f*cked up mind and her back turned to him and she wonders What the f*ck is he doing here? Can’t you tell what I’m doing? F*ck off already! She wonders about what he’s doing but doesn’t seem to mind too much, she feels more comfortable with him and the foghorn than with the soup and weird Christmas from the originating lights she can’t find on the opposite bank. He starts talking in her direction but she isn’t listening. He tells her that she doesn’t know about Sarah or Henry or Charles and she doesn’t know about Frank or Debbie or her date’s wife’s youngest son yet. It hasn’t really happened, he says in her direction, and maybe it would be for the best. If you’re really this unhappy. Would you like to step away from the edge? Would you like to put your shoes on? Finally he says;

‘Would you like some more time?’

‘No, not really. Thanks but no thanks.’

And she begins to climb over the barrier.
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