F001/01
James Cooper
Late shift. Wet underfoot; steam rising from the grilles of passing cars. Neon spilling across slick concrete. Lonely men looking for someone, or something, to love. Dark towers braced against the sky.
I take my place in the night. Hat pulled low. Face numb with cold. No one special; just an ordinary man in a world full of them. Someone you’d not look twice at as you walk down the street.
A stray dog barks in the distance. The sound echoes through the empty city, trying to catch up with itself. Eventually the wind blows it away.
I hear the unfettered river crawling under the black sky. Midnight driven deep forever. The city’s violence buried at its heart. I hear the late-night barges working the current. Muscling their way through the water. Barely displacing the air.
This is the city I love; and this is the city I was always destined to leave.
I take a sheet of paper from my coat pocket. Hesitate. Unfold it. Fingers stiff. My own handwriting stares back. Uncompromising black ink on white A4. One letter; five digits: F001/01. Underlined for added effect.
Will they understand? Probably not. Just another meaningless signifier in a whole lexicon of them. In a world of devolving English and text messaging, one more example of recondite code will barely register.
But I know. I’ve been told. When I change, I adopt a behaviour pattern known as F1. A threshing of the cortex; an inexplicable impulse that darts along the brain and splits the mind into so many pieces it feels like there’s no longer anything left of me inside. A throbbing of the eye; a spinal reticulation. A vague awareness of how futile it would be to run.
Yet here I am. Running. Thinking back to some of the things I’m horrified a part of me enjoyed:
The green field splashed with blood. The child lying on its back. Its face undone. The scabs pointlessly healing on its knees.
The bus shelter and the cowering old man. Slumped in his raincoat. The head swiped clean off. An awkward roll. The mouth still trying to draw breath.
I close my eyes and remember. Seeing things I should never have done:
The pretty couple, fucking in the summer’s heat. The dark woodland sweating. The smooth flesh. Rough bark. A delicate flaying of skin.
My head pounds. All too much. That hand working the knife is mine. I remember every cut. It’s in there. Locked in my head. The synapses misfiring; neuron cones collapsing; the synthesis of abnormal protein clusters packing themselves into my brain: this is how it always begins. With a chemical imbalance I can’t control. The neural impulses blown.
I scream and it sounds like my personality regressing. Remembering what it was like to hold the knife…
I take the sheet of paper and pin it to my lapel. Before I forget.
I run through the city in search of the bridge. The river waiting below. I stand on the cold stone arch, a dark figure with the heat of history at his back. The bridge has seen this kind of thing countless times before. It recognises exactly what I am.
I smile. I fill my lungs with raw morning air. When I change I begin to weep for I am conscious of being suddenly free.
I glance down at the paper pinned to my lapel. The letter and the numbers etched there coalesce. I lose myself in their meaning. Find comfort in what I’m about to forsake.
I stand over the river, finally understanding why its heart is so black. This isn’t a story about a drowned puppy or a lost love. It’s something else. When it hits you, it’ll be much too late; the river will have carried you away.
END
Copyright © James Cooper 2008