Hammerport

The letterbox. Already jam-packed with other pamphlets and junk mail, it was clear that no one lived in this house. The faded fence and the peeling paint confirmed it. He looked inside his hold-all. It was still full of flyers.

Henry tried to force feed one into the letterbox, but it was like trying to feed a dead patient: the leaflet crumpled against the door’s lips, no longer hungry. Folding the leaflet over and over to give it a fighting chance against the existing paper residents didn’t work either. Push, crumple. Push, slide, shuffle, crumple. He released it, hoping it was ensnared anyway; it fell to the sodden, broken stone doorstep.

His tummy rumbled but he was determined to see his flyers through today. Another day bringing flyers back and he’d be out of a job. Mum was so cross when he was out of work. Back to the fortnightly trip down to the dole office, facing either disinterested stares or accusations of being the one and only thief of “taxpayer’s money” until proved otherwise. Lancashire hotpot. Mmmmm. Potatoes. Mmmmm.

He knew his boss was watching him from somewhere. His boss always knew when Henry had discarded some of the flyers into a wheelie bin or a drain. He had to make sure these flyers were delivered to each and every address in his sector. He grabbed hold of the paper gag in the door’s maw and pulled. The mass was jammed in there tight; he increased his grip and leant backwards.

With one final almighty tug, a wad of paper ripped away and scattered into the air, fluttering around him like dazed, dirty moths. He swatted at them, worried they’d stick to his clothing and Mum would shout at him for getting so mucky. But he’d only manage to peel off a surface layer of the paper mass. What he’d revealed was congealed solid, stunk like a skunk, and also pretty nasty.

Henry surrendered.

He looked at his leaflet now wet and dirty on the ground: “Want to earn extra *MONEY*? Phone the number below to take part in an exciting business! All materials supplied! Work outdoors! *EARN* as hard as you work! Get *RICH* through your OWN EFFORT!” The number was that of his boss’ office.

He was delivering leaflets to advertise the job of delivering leaflets. Then he wondered if he had been duped into hiring his replacement.

Henry kicked the door in frustration, grunting. The door swung ajar, creaking like only an abandoned house could.

The stench that erupted from the gap made his eyes water and he tried holding his nose. Horrific. It smelt like urine, lots and lots of urine. Maybe this place had squatters. If they did, he thought, then they really ought to check their mail more often.

He held his nose, but the smell penetrated his defences. He hoped it wasn’t getting into his clothes. Mum would freak out.

Although he had no intention of going into the piss pit itself, he did at least want a peek. He gave the door another feisty jab with his foot and it swung the rest of the way open.

Henry then got out his mobile and called Mum, to tell her about the dead woman he had found.

‘This is really good stuff, Evie,’ he said, eating with his mouth open, juice and pulpy bits dribbling down his chin.

Eve dismissed him with a wave and closed her eyes again. She concentrated on her sunbathing and sighed. Adam was a boring twat at the best of times. Every time he found something new he’d dance around like an idiot, demanding attention. The world would be better off without him. And that stupid thing hanging between his legs like some sort of rotting fruit, Je-sus. She wished he’d cover it up; it made her want to wretch. “Intelligent design”, my arse, she thought.

‘Try it,’ his voice boomed above her as Adam’s shadow moved to block out the sun. It was a little chilly.

Suddenly, weight pressed down on her stomach. Her eyes sprung open to see Adam sitting on her about to force the green fruit into her mouth.

She smacked the fruit away and shouted, ‘What is your problem? I totally, like, need my space.’ She motioned towards his groin with disgust. ‘Get that fucking thing off me.’

Adam didn’t budge. ‘This is really, really tasty. I want you to just take a bite, you’ll like it, I know you will. Go on, just for me, go on. Look, it’s either this or… my little monster here. And I know which one you’d prefer.’ He snorted with irritation.

She could sense the beast stirring, tossing about on her midriff. Oh God no.

‘Alright,’ she said, ‘just one fucking bite and then get you right off.’

Adam lowered the shiny, green fruit to her mouth and she took a bite. It was quite sweet, delicious really and the citric tang gave it a bit of oomph she hadn’t expected. The skin was a bit dry.

‘It’s okay, I suppose.’

‘Just okay?’ Adam sounded as if she’d just criticised a meal he’d spent fifteen hours preparing. It was just a bit of fruit, for God’s sakes. Hang… the fuck… on.

Eve asked, ‘Where did you get this from?’

:: WOULD SOMEONE CARE TO EXPLAIN WHAT BEFELL ONE OF MY SPECIAL APPLES ::

‘Oh you shit, Adam, you twatty shi-’

:: YOU KNOW, FROM THE TREE THAT BEARS THE RATHER UNAMBIGUOUS SIGN ‘CAUTION: BEWARE OF GOD’ ::

Adam leapt up with amazing dexterity. ‘It wasn’t me, it was her.’ He dropped the apple as if it were hot.

:: WELL THAT DIDN’T FUCKING LAST LONG DID IT ::

Eve formulated a plan.

She pointed at the thing between Adam’s legs and said: ‘It was the snake. The snake made me do it.’

‘Are you scared of death, Earl?’ asked God.

‘No, sir, I am a believer in Heaven. I’m scared of pain, y’know, that sort of thing, that’s all. Death? No, sir.’

‘Really.’ God paused, pensive. ‘You should be scared, Earl. You should be.’

Outside, the night had grown a little chilly; there would be a layer of frost the next morning. The student asked the girlfriend, ‘What are you frightened about?’

She slapped him across the face. His face was coated in shock; before he had a chance to gather a thought, say something, anything, she slapped him again. Her furious glare seemed to heat his face more than the double-slap.

‘You’re a real bastard godless shit,’ his girlfriend said. ‘But I suppose I should thank you for bringing me here. I’ve never seen so much stupidity in all my life. They all really believe that.’

The student put a hand to his hot cheek, rubbed slowly and asked again, ‘What are you frightened about?’

She pulled her jacket a bit tighter and stepped away from the thinker’s apartment block. ‘I don’t know, really,’ she said. ‘It’s just so weird. I feel like something else is going on. Maybe the president was threatened or something. Maybe the “status quo” is coming back and will take their revenge on the America that voted for the president, you know, just like after Bush. I don’t like it. This kind of surprise… it’s not kosher.’

‘I know, I don’t get it either.’ He paused, and then added, ‘I’m sorry about being such a fucking moron. I’ve been going through some stuff. You know. Fucking retard.’ The words were too light in his mouth, refusing to convey anything of import. He was sorry and he wanted to prove it.

‘It’s okay.’ She sighed. ‘It’s okay, I guess. We all go through stuff.’ She sniffed back the sloppy mucus that was the aftermath of her earlier tears. ‘I’m just glad we can move forward. I understand a bit more about what’s going on up there. I don’t really, like, agree with all that stuff you were saying. But… but you were right about… you know, the sex. I’ve been feeling uncomfortable about that ever since.’

They crossed the road, devoid of traffic, heading towards campus. She continued, ‘You made a point and I suppose it made a sort of weird sense. It was nice seeing you so… I don’t know… strong? Confident? It’s like we’ve been… hollowed out people before, with no real feelings. Now….’

‘Now we seem to have some life in us. Anger and humiliation does that to you, I think.’

‘Yeah.’ Her anger appeared to be breaking down, dissolving in a strange, new soup of emotions. The student felt it too; the presidential event had left them both struggling to understand the future, albeit for different reasons.

The student said, ‘I don’t know if what I thought makes sense any more. The President bowing out like that took the wind out of my sails. I’m more confused now. Shit.’

‘Oh you can’t stop now, even though I don’t believe what you believe. If I was as paranoid as your friends in there, I would probably be wondering right now whether “Paragon” could keep his nose out of politics.’

Electric lights flickered over head. He hadn’t given it much thought, events having mesmerised him. He found the shifting ground terrifying, because, even though it was what he wanted, it wasn’t on his terms. The president was to become a religious adviser to the government instead of leading from the front. Advising? How much control would the position of the Paragon have? It sounded like none at all. The president didn’t seem real any more. What threat was he?

And then the student’s girlfriend was kissing him. It wasn’t a kiss of love; it was of loneliness, one of affirmation and connection. Her grip on his arm was solid, needing. In returning the kiss, he was affirmed and connected. He didn’t know if he actually felt anything for this girl, but she wasn’t as dull and obedient as he had mused. That had to count for something.

She withdrew an inch from his face to whisper, ‘Do you want to try again tonight?’ and then returned to caressing his lips with hers. Neither of them were smiling and there was a disturbing emptiness about their intimacy, different from the emptiness of before. It was like he had ended all the play-acting, cancelled tonight’s performance, revealing the naked, bare stage. There was nobody there. Part of him missed the play.

The unknowable complexities of the world were as frightening as he had said, and they had to be challenged. But everyone needed a shelter, another body to bury themselves in for a few hours, to relax and escape the turmoil and torment of reality. He was okay with two hearts of empty holding each other in the dark.

She pulled away again and said, ‘We can always try again.’

He nodded in agreement, ‘We can always try again.’

The student’s arms wrapped tightly around the girlfriend. His arms were bindings, constricting her, preventing her from moving away, moving at all. And she played to it, enjoying not just tolerating, pressing herself even harder against him, desiring more pressure, wanting his body to crush and break hers.

And here endeth the lesson, he thought. We pretend to crave freedom, but our fear prefers to indulge in cultural sado-masochism, wanting to be constricted, throttled to choking point, to be punished, pounded, prodded, punctured. Belittle me, tell me what to do. Strike me and I will bark like a dog, happy in your service, master. In the end, it really is all sex.

Bliss. I understand.

The student couldn’t bear the repeated clicking of the remote – the thinker had kept channel surfing for the last hour, as if trying to prise out some truth of this strange and, frankly, unbelievable turn of events.

‘PRESIDENT RESIGNS’

The President’s chin and calm, friendly white teeth smile filled the screen as his recorded address calmly explained his reasons for standing down and handing the reins over to the Vice-President. Talking heads droned over him, as usual adding nothing to the reported news, but subtracting everything they could to bolster their own celebrity status.

‘God fucking dammit,’ the thinker said. ‘God fucking damn this fucking fuck thing to hell.’ He threw the remote across the room. ‘Fuck!’

The thinker wasn’t the only one feeling wronged somehow. The student felt like he’d taken a punch to the gut, all his fire and plans – pissed on by this second-shit preacher whose chiselled jaw bulged with ingratiating smiles. It just didn’t make any sense to throw away all that power, not now.

The athlete said, ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘Oh will you change the record,’ said the musician, trying to straighten out some wrinkles in her top; her rainbow didn’t seem to be smiling any more. ‘None of us believes it.’

‘No, I mean it. I really don’t believe this. Is this for real? This kind of thing is, well, unprecedented, totally.’ He pronounced it unpreecedented. ‘He was a popular guy. We were underdogs.’

The thinker growled. ‘That’s the problem! The face is changing but his plans are still in motion. Now try getting people on our side. They’ll all say, well, look the guy you’re worried about is no longer in power, so take a chill fucking pill, man.’

The student got up to leave. He wasn’t even sure he believed there was anything worth fighting for either. More than a face had changed. The Vice-President wasn’t the same man at all. The student remembered him squirming when facing some questions on the CNN over the British fallout from the ethical signatures, the sweat resting on his brow.

‘Where are you scooting off too?’ said the poet, who had remained fairly quiet throughout the news. His only discernable reaction was the act of folding his arms.

‘Campus,’ the student replied. ‘I can’t sit here and watch this crap all night. We’re supposed to talk about how we change things for the better. Things are changing faster than we can bloody talk about changing them. I can watch TV anywhere.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ said the athlete.

The student’s girlfriend, looking shell-shocked by events, stood up too. ‘Yeah, let’s go. I need to shake my head of this.’

‘We’ll still meet up, guys, right?’ said the thinker, desperation seeping in. ‘There’s still the cause, right?’ He raised his fist in a distant, weak echo of the student’s bolder thrust earlier.

‘Whatever,’ the student said. ‘You have to fight for something real.’ He pointed at the TV bearing smiling white teeth that bobbed and weaved in slow motion. ‘He isn’t real any more. I’ll come back if you have something to fight for.’

He gazed at each one of his compadres, and noticed the only person who was pleased was the cop’s daughter, the first smile he’d seen on her face since attending these meetings. She was the only genuine one here, her only goal to change how things were. And things had changed and she was happy with that. An honest challenger with no ego invested. He saw that everybody wanted to change things because they simply wanted to reshape life to suit themselves and to hell with other people: a mere excuse for narcissism.

Perhaps he should be happy too but his map of personal destiny was in tatters. Bliss’ attentions had prodded him forward inch by inch, and now he was in the middle of nowhere, falling into an unmarked pit, waiting for the bottom to claim him. Suddenly – he was alone.

The student left the thinker’s apartment, with his girlfriend in tow.

The student realised the thinker didn’t understand at all. It was the very pure, bestial freedom that was being eroded and lost every day. Animals act on instinct. The more humans progressed, the more they second-guessed, worried, self-mutilated their minds over simple decisions. Mental self-harm. It was natural to outsource the worry to a higher authority. But that authority was not holy, it was human, with all its flaws and desires. Those who take up the mantle then besiege the confused, panicky population with dark slogans: Life is dread! Every waking moment a peril! Fear the freedom of others to do things to you, fear your own freedom to undo you! Donate your freewill to the higher cause – and our instructions will lead you to the Holy Grounds!

His friends seemed to fade into the background and he just let the sentences spill out of his mouth, unguarded and unashamed. ‘We’ve dragged ourselves out of the swamps and into the bright sunlight of intelligence. But we’re just frightened rabbits, right, in the sun’s headlights and we don’t know what good or evil mean any more, we don’t know what we’re supposed to do at all. All we seem to be really good at doing is finding out more and more and fucking up our brains. The puzzle gets bigger and more complicated. So much information to take on board, the internet drowns us and we scrabble for dry land, anything that can keep us afloat. Faced with the enormous complexity of life, nature, science, art – fucking everything – we feel like turning back, putting up our hands and resigning. But we can – we should – make our hands into fists and roar at the universe that we don’t give in that easily.’

He stood up, raised a fist at the air itself and shouted: ‘Fuck you, universe!’

His eyes watered as he hadn’t blinked throughout his little rant against the faulty human system. He glanced across his friends through a gauze of tears, and saw that his fellow anarchists had been stunned into silence. Were they impressed or just shocked? He sighed aloud, for he was still alone after all. There was potential in this group, but would the thinker prove to be an ally or a hindrance in the long-term?

But his girlfriend. She stared at him with an expression that was neither pitiful nor hateful, just intrigued. He didn’t understand why – did she get it now? Did she understand? The group hadn’t been happy to bring a zealot into their midst without some grooming… but he was hopeful she could be turned around. There was always an elegant consistency to her perspective; if he could puncture some of her views, then she might, just might, re-arrange everything to see things their way.

The athlete broke the silence with a sharp change of subject, saying, ‘You know, what’s really worrying are the current rumours about the Paladins-’

‘Holy moley moley!’ the musician shouted, who had been playing with her cell.

The thinker shouted, ‘Good God, enough shouting for this evening! Could everybody please stop shouting!’

‘TV, get the TV on right now. Any channel, any channel at all. You are not going to believe this.’

‘Believe what?’ said the thinker.

The musician was lost for words, gasping for something, stuck with just: ‘TV!’

The student hauled himself up off the floor, wandered over to the TV, switched it on, saw two words in bold, white lettering on its plasma display and felt his jaw drop.

‘Get out of the fucking way,’ yelled the poet, ‘we can’t see a bloody thing!’ The student jumped aside as ordered.

The thinker retorted, ‘Stop shouting for God’s sakes! Will you please stop the’ –he saw the same two words that had stunned the student– ‘oh you gotta be kidding.’

‘Oh sweet, you owe me 1400 bucks. Welcome to Pennsylvania Avenue!’ shouted the poet.

The cop’s daughter handed over the cash, casual and cold. The student didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile in or out of that coat, but then again out of all of them, she was the only one who was in real danger. She was still quieter than normal, though, and he knew that was his fault. The cop’s daughter kept eyeing the cross dangling from his girlfriend’s necklace with suspicion.

‘How did you find the group?’ the girlfriend asked the student, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him.

Before the student could answer, the poet said, ‘I brought him in. The group finds you!’ He sniggered, childish yet disarming. ‘I saw him scribbling nudes one day on his notebook in one of the lectures and I thought my mate here had fallen out of the system.’

‘Nudes?’ she said, unable to mask her surprise.

This was a moment for her discover some of his new truth. He said, ‘Yes, nudes. This is who I am, don’t you get it? We’ve been way too clinical with each other, holding back our thoughts and feelings, keeping ourselves pretty and pious. When we lost our virginity together I bet you felt the same as I did at the time – with instant regret that we’d spoilt what we were. You ran straight for the shower, right?’

The girlfriend said nothing, her face blushing, eyes drifting away towards the board.

‘But it’s true. People shouldn’t behave like this. We’re meant to be alive and sexual creatures that hunger and lust. We’re all supposed to be having fun and making babies, not wearing camouflage. When did tying instinct become part of the human condition? It’s not what the real God would have wanted. Your religion… the President’s religion… it’s a lie, I tell you. Am I right or am I right, everyone?’

No one said a word. In fact, all of the gang seemed to be more interested in their Monopoly cash and property cards. The girlfriend’s blush spread down her neck.

He moved closer towards his girlfriend, intent on making his point now that it had arrived. ‘Sex is like dirt under the fingernails. That’s why I draw the pictures. It’s to challenge me, to prove that I don’t care about the rules of society. Christ, we didn’t even leave the light on. Fumbling in the dark with bits we can’t see. That’s not sex, that’s play-acting. Did you make noises at all the right times? I think I did.’

His girlfriend was shrunken and motionless, bowed away from him as if in prayer; a few tears dropped from her face and spattered against the board, flooding the Reading Railroad. Then he realised he was an idiot, talking about their private affairs in public. He had sought tears earlier, but not here, the odds were stacked against her – fool. He might not have had inhibitions, but she still had, and one angry, open conversation in a clique of strangers wasn’t going to work. Way to go, asshat.

The thinker broke the silence. ‘Economy being flushed down the drain too,’ he said. ‘Fed Europe’s imports being crippled by that ethical signature shit. China doing it’s best but America is not getting what it needs any more, you know. Being poor is getting really dangerous now and that means more crime… and more crime means harsher punishments….’

The girlfriend, with a wet, red face, broke out of her depressed torpor. ‘You can’t be serious,’ she said, angered. ‘Things are getting better. We’re in the country of Rising Morality. We-’

‘Don’t sound bite me,’ the thinker interrupted.

‘Let me finish. We don’t accept goods obtained through immoral means and we don’t tolerate garbage in politics anymore. Why do you think we all voted for that man and then prayed for him through civil war? Are you telling me none of you voted for him? Turncoats, all of you. Hypocritical savages. Crime is down, people are happier. Business now thinks for its people.’

The student was surprised, heartened perhaps, that she was suddenly punching for her side.

‘Listen, there’s only one type of business that thinks for its people, Goldilocks,’ the thinker said, leaning backwards against a sofa behind him. ‘Government. Business is being controlled so much that it is becoming government. Some companies – think Microsoft – are being nationalised, swallowed whole and absorbed by the Whitehouse. Stop watching “Fucks” News. You might think it’s good for the people, but this is not going to end well while that God-fearing President of ours is in power. Actually, I take that back. I don’t think he fears God at all.’

Everyone snickered – everyone except for the student’s girlfriend.

The student thought again of the bound woman, smiling, comfortable and pleasured within her straps.

He jumped into the fray again, more animated than before, ‘It’s nice being told what to do and what to think – it frees you from the burden of decision. You can never make a mistake, because you never have the opportunity to do so. Your life is as good as it can be, because it is prescribed. You can be very happy like that. But One Flew… we’re not happy with that. We want the freedom to be wrong and make mistakes. We want the freedom to learn. The generation of our Mom and Pop want it put down, like some lame dog, but every dog has his day!’

The thinker interrupted, as if he were concerned the student was stealing his own illustrious thunder, ‘Think about that. To take away our capacity to err, to be cloaked in warm, thick control, to see merely fences around us and wonder, frightened, what might lie beyond. To make us all just toilers of land, with nothing to cry or think about – we become beasts of burden. It is guilt and blasphemous wisdom that sets us apart from the rest of the creatures on this planet. Everyone wants a simple life, rules telling them what to do – it makes us no better than animals.’

The door opened an inch and the poet’s eyes peered around the side. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘Cool. This the lady? The more the merrier.’ The student noted the sarcasm; none of the group were particularly happy with him bending the recruitment rules. But all rules are the undoing of man, the student thought, and a rule is a rule is a rule.

The poet opened the door and let the student and his girlfriend into the thinker’s flat. Inside were the rest the group, huddled on the floor around a game of Monopoly – the musician, the cop’s daughter, the athlete and the thinker himself.

He stood up, moving awkwardly beneath his tired and torn beige leather jacket that was far too big for him, and moved to shake hands with the student’s girlfriend. ‘Hello, hello. Welcome to our group of like-minded young Americans.’ The poet coughed. ‘Well, mostly Americans, we’ve been infected with Europeans too. We call ourselves One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.’

Each one introduced themselves to her. The thinker said he did nothing for a living, which was how he liked it, jilting the system that was happy to smother him in its bosom. The student still hadn’t the faintest idea how the thinker subsisted.

It was then the musician’s turn. She parked a short denim skirt at the top of her polished and waxed legs, and wore a childish yet playful top with a picture of a smiling rainbow. She explained that she played the piano although her parents wanted her to be a geneticist, so decided to run away from home and play music in the street, in bars, anywhere people would listen to her. Animated and lively, the student loved her positivity.

The cop’s daughter was the musician’s antithesis. Wearing a long, crumpled, grey trench coat, hiding every inch of flesh, her sentences were stiff with tension and flecked with hints of a larger story. She introduced herself as the daughter of a cop and then, after spotting the cross around the student’s girlfriend’s neck, her words stopped dead.

The athlete took up the slack and said he was a lecturer in the meteorology department at the university, and while he looked like a lecturer in his conservative suit and tie, he was hoping to quit soon as he enjoyed running and hurdling much more, especially since all the new regulations and came in trying to turn universities into an ‘extension of church’.

‘The rules,’ the thinker said, ‘are what we’re all about. I formed this group and we continue to get new members all the time. Like your schizoid boyfriend here.’ The student was a little taken aback. ‘Oh come on, don’t give me that, you freak. We don’t know if you’re coming or going. There’s something up with your head, alright.’

‘Hey,’ said the student, ‘I have a lot on my mind. I have to consider whether I’m going to give up on my education.’

‘Oi, stupido,’ shouted the poet from behind them, still acting the doorman. ‘Give up and do what? I’m not quitting my course. Don’t make a grand show of things just for the sake of it. Bloody purpose, that’s what you’re missing, dingbat. The others here have chosen their paths.’

The student’s girlfriend interrupted, pulling at the student’s arm, ‘What do you mean give up on your education? You wouldn’t get finish your degree? Do you know how stupid that is?’

‘Whoa, whoa!’ the student shouted, under siege. ‘I’ve hardly been to any lectures recently. I’ve nearly missed a few of the three tens-’

‘Oooh, big man,’ said the poet, moving past him to sit down at the Monopoly board. ‘I’ve slept through morningten for two months.’

The thinker put his hands out towards both the poet and the student. ‘Now hang on, guys, our lecturer here will back me up on this one. It may seem like happy-go-fuck-lucky days now, but you’re all being observed. Your behaviour is important. That’s why we meet in my flat rather than out in the open.’

‘I think that’s a little paranoid,’ the girlfriend said. The student noticed her eyes glance up with unconcealed disgust at the giant poster on the far wall which he hadn’t seen before. It was a pornographic image in which a sultry model was stretching out her labia, forcing the viewer to look right down her hole, a deep red abyss that was nightmarish rather than sexual. Probably a European import that had been smuggled through the trade restrictions. The model’s name, printed across the bottom in cursive type, was ‘Lady Liberty’.

‘It’s true,’ the athlete said, starting down at the board with disdain. ‘You’re all being monitored. Homeland Security is all over our shit these days. The tens are more than just praise for Mr. MIA up above. They’re using it to isolate aberrations, non-conformance. There are worse rumours coming down the pipe than that, though.’

The student was alarmed, not thinking that more than his peers might be scrutinising his activities or lack of, and the silence that came over the room emphasised the seriousness of what the athlete had just said. Why hadn’t he said something like that before? Maybe he had and the student just hadn’t listened. Your schizoid boyfriend. Pull your head out of your ass!

His girlfriend ended the silence, gesturing towards the board. ‘Are we playing a game here or what?’

The student stood waiting in the lunch queue at Fifth Column; he was almost inside now. A vast hall filled to the brim with antique tables of all shapes and sizes, the actual food was sold at stalls that lined its walls. Tall, bold windows towered over the proceedings, swelling the hall with natural light. It had the overtones of a Mövenpick Marché restaurant but without the good food. The popularity had nothing to do with the food and everything to do with meeting new people. The spacious interior encouraged the café’s patrons to open up and fill the space with their voices.

He bore his teeth at the queue, tensing his jaw, angry at the slow-moving queue. And his girlfriend hadn’t shown – like she had stood him up. Even though he’d had no intention of putting in an appearance himself, having changed his mind, he couldn’t believe that she hadn’t turned up. She was the one on the firing line right now, not him. If she didn’t turn up in the next five minutes then the plan was off and baby cheeks was history. He didn’t need her.

It was with a sense of irony that the student laughed for allowing himself to be locked into a queue – the epitome of self-oppression – and dependent on someone else to turn up. So much for his own aspirations of freedom. With that, he relaxed and turned around to see his girlfriend standing behind him.

‘Hi,’ his girlfriend said. Her words were drained of emotion, like she expected little good to come from this meeting. ‘You said we could talk at lunch, right?’ She was avoiding his gaze. If he were to catch her eye, he knew that an involuntary, instinctive smile would be pulse across her face, and she would lose her temper with him for making her smile when she didn’t want to smile, bastard. He focussed on her mouth instead; he didn’t want a confrontation right off the bat.

‘Yeah, I did say that. Why are you late?’

The queue ahead lurched forward and the student’s girlfriend filled the gap that had opened up. ‘I thought about not coming,’ she said, with cutting bluntness.

Part of him was excited that she’d pushed back, but his ego was also bruised that she could discard him without a fight. He saw her outlined in black, blotchy ink.

He cocked his head to one side, conciliatory. ‘Well, I’m glad you did come.’

‘What’s up with your head, madman?’ Friendly words, but delivered in harsh monotone. Especially as she wasn’t really looking at him, her busy gaze always shooting past his face as if more important events were going on around them.

‘Trouble brewing.’

That pulled her in; looking straight at him, she said, ‘What kind of trouble?’

‘I can’t explain it,’ –actually, I doubt you would understand the explanation, he thought– ‘but I see things different now. It’s all messed up and I can’t go on as I’ve been taught to. I feel like I’m being smothered by society, a warm pillow on my face, deadening sensation, fading the world to black.’ He paused, tasting the words in his mouth before letting them free. ‘There’s more to life than queues, suppressed tears and formal language. We live lies.’

‘We all want more,’ the student’s girlfriend answered, moving forward again as a new gap yawned open in the queue. ‘What makes you one of God’s special snowflakes?’

The student frowned; she’d gone on the offensive. Bitchy, bitchy. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to reach her if she’d bolstered her defences like this. If only she’d stopped listening to her friends in the herd. ‘I wish I knew, baby cheeks. But I can’t be what I’ve been any more. That means… we can’t be what we’ve been either.’ He noticed his hangover had dissipated and his head was clear.

‘What do you mean? Do you mean you want to split?’ Her steely expression faltered, conceding fear again. The student was elated, but kept his demeanour serious; she was still frightened of losing him.

‘It depends – you might want to come with me.’

‘Come? Come where?’ She seemed completely baffled.

They reached the first stall and the student grabbed a tray, refusing to answer straight away, to build up an air of suspense. A cook, brandishing a large, metal ladle as if she were conducting an orchestra, held point on the other side of the stall; it was covered with brushed metal bowls filled to bursting with uninviting, dull-coloured salads.

The cook grumbled in a tired, weary voice, ‘Lord’s rations, whaddya want?’

The student said to the girlfriend, ‘Please come to a meeting with me tonight.’

The cook tapped a bowl that held greasy pasta with the ladle, panting with impatience. ‘Honey, just go with the boy here so we can get on with our lives already.’

The student’s girlfriend bit her lower lip, blinking nervously, and said, ‘Alright.’