Cycle

Published by: Grindstone Literary Press
Awards: Shortlisted Grindstone Literary Prize

So then. Time. Stopped.

Nothing special really, that time. Seems silly to have obsessed over it so long. Obsessed, past still. Thought about it so much it was always bigger than it was. Think. Is. No real distinction any more. It’s all make-believe: made to believe that one thing leads to another, that this led to that, that everything runs in a single line and all we can do is to shuffle along and think about what the front might look like (end more like) because how many people are ahead of us still? Glancing nostalgically at those gifted enough to be joining now, oblivious of length, knowing no end. Knowing nothing of end. They will soon. Inevitable lights out, the one thing we’re all so sure about and yet even that…well, that’s all you see.

Until time stops.

When time stops, you realise two things: you realise that it never was and you realise it never will be. Maybe three things: you realise it is. Everything happens. Everything is happening. Every single moment of everything ever, right here, all at the same— Well, not time. Point then. So that as time stops now (really stops, doesn’t exist in fact), time is also flowing like stormwater from a drain so that I’m sitting on that rock with the sun coming up and everyone around is readying themselves for morning prayer – the chants and the breathing that hold our minds like frightened rats, loosening grips, until we’re sure we can feel those tensed creatures soften for a moment (just for a moment) as if they’ve finally accept their fates and so we let go, sure that this time will be different, but they’re off, here there everywhere, eating, hiding, gnawing, anywhere but here. Anywhere but where you want them. Frantic rat minds. And so time doesn’t exist and yet at the same time I am there, on that mountain, wrestling my mind. But I am also here as a young man, hair cut real close (not as close as now – the future – also now), entering the corner shop with kicked boot to battered door base, stuffing my pockets with chocolate bars, packets of crisps, telling the owner to just Fuck Off and Go On Call The Fucking Cops and seeing his fear and feeling invincible and telling the boys about it, sitting in the park where no one goes, spray paint drying, passing around the bottle that burns, and they’re smiling and laughing and slapping me on the back, sharing my haul, crunching wrappers, loud sloppy bites.

So I am there.

And I am also dead. I can see that the time between when I was and when I wasn’t is no time at all. That I have been dead for a while now. That I have as much been dead forever as I have never been dead at all. But dead is what I am (and was and will be), no body really, no mind as such, just energy, a pulsing light that makes no sound and yet makes every sound I’ve ever known. And I am that light because that’s all I have ever been, even if for a while I am caught up in this body – in it’s folds and creases and scars and hurts and pleasures, its sprouting hairs and turgid spots, sagging eyes, creaking bones – I know that I have never really been anything other than this light. And yet I know nothing of it. In ignorance I close my eyes for that last time and the mantras rise and the cool air whips through the mountains, pine needles shuffling like fingers over fabric, and light strokes my eyelids – neon motel signs against tired red curtains in a room where I am, that girl beneath me, who I know so well and yet have never known at all, and we are fucking with a desperation that makes me punch the walls (another mark of thousands), and we are taking off our clothes, and she is in the bathroom freshening up, and I am welcoming her at the door, and I am looking up as I hear the crunch of her tires on gravel, and we are yet to meet and I am waiting for her to arrive, and I am sitting in that room flicking a card with the naked Asian woman whose tits rest on stomach rolls and thinking about calling, and although it’s not the first time I’ve paid for it, it doesn’t make me resent it any less. And now we are crying together, me and that girl, the smell of sex in my nostrils washed away with falling tears, her tears, my tears, and she is telling me about her father and how she got away and got here and why she needs the money, about why she needs my money. Jack, she says, the man waiting in the car, the man that owns her. What a name for a pimp, I think, but I do not say, instead I tell her about my own mother – not so different from her – things I’ve never told anyone, things pour out like they’ve been waiting behind my lips my whole life.

But at the same time she is gone; she is the gentle stinging in my crotch, the feeling of my tired, empty wallet and the sob that escapes my lips, turns to a wail, no one to hear although walls might as well be paper, and anyway, they’ve heard worse, surely. And as the hot shower runs cold, and I close my eyes I am also closing my eyes on that mountainside, letting that mind rat free and finding for the first time in all of the times I have come to sit on these rocks, waking up early at the sound of the gong and screaming into my pillow, not loud enough for anyone to hear, but loud enough for that frustration to slacken slightly because you can’t even wank in this place without someone turning up their nose (all these things happening right now of course – the taste of washed linen in my mouth, smell of morning dribble, zipping up under judgmental eyes, spitting at their feet), in all of that time I have never felt that rat so docile, I have never truly felt it settle so, and although there are teachers sitting before me as a younger man, cross-legged, back hurting, dying for a beer, regretting that mum ever sent me here, regretting I didn’t put up more of a fight, that I agreed to come, that I am agreeing to come, in front of her now, tear-stained cheeks, black eye swallowing mascara, pupil bathed in blood vessels. You need to go honey, they’re going to come back. Just do this for me, ok? Jack always comes back. And so here I am nodding at this orange robe, the smell of incense making me want to sneeze, and I’m exhausted. Exhausted of running, of months on the road, of blisters, dirt, food poisoning, of honking horns; I am half-listening to Mr Oh-So-Holy, hearing his stories, the things they claim to do, what they claim to notice, the thing they strive for. And I nod enthusiastically whilst thinking of ways I might escape this place, agreeing with forced smiles but believing none of it. Believing nothing and yet believing everything because right now there is no time, there is nothing, and so they were right of course, right all along but perhaps only in their understanding of right, academic right, right in their pen and paper reality, because surely if any of them had experienced… were experiencing… No. Only theories. But right nonetheless, because it’s been an illusion all along. Time.

Time is illusion.

I am illusion.

He is illusion, this man, the man beneath my fists, telling me to stop but I can’t because blood is pulsing through my ears and he owes me money, owes Jack money. I’m in front of him too – Jack, no second name, probably not a real first name either, Jack the pimp – You’ve damaged something of mine, he says. I owe a debt and so he owes a debt – the man beneath my legs – straddling him like a table dancer, beating left and right, because as I catch him and clasp his arm, as he turns towards me, I realise I’ve seen him before, that he’s been in my house, that he was there with my mum. That he is there with my mum. There. Thud. With. Thud. My. Thud. Mum. Thud. And he recognises me too and so I have to stop him from saying anything, I have to force those words back into his mouth and even though I was told not to lay a finger on him – expressly instructed that there would be consequences if I touched him, that I just had to insinuate violence, to purport punishment with no actual violence to take place on either my part or his; even though I was told these things, even though I am being told these things right now, in this moment, the only thing I have to stop those words of his, thud that memory of mine, thud that thing I don’t want to remember, thud, don’t want to think about, thud, the only thing stopping that thud is my fists because these pills aren’t letting me form any words in my mouth thud nothing but foam and dribble and violence thud.

A rhythmic beating. Pendulum fists. Blood spatter white shirt.

Thud, thud, thud, thud.

The thud through the walls, my walls, the room that is my room but no longer feels like it. Feels like a prison now. Blu-tack gives, dragon poster falls. Stuffed toy in my arms, hugged to death, one eye missing, white insides over carpet like snowdrifts that I collect in a little box to put back together one day. I am listening to those sounds from the other room, those bestial sounds, those moans of a wounded animal that I don’t understand but somehow understand perfectly. The monotonous thud through the wall, always rhythmic, always building, building, always followed by silence, mumbled conversation, door closing, car starting up outside. I don’t go out because sometimes there is another straight after. I wait for mum to open the door, to look in and smile at me, lipstick smudged, hair ruffled. Let’s go grab a bite to eat, she says. Stab of pain in my chest at the sorrow of something I don’t understand. Pain like the pummelling burn of the tattoo gun against my cheek bone, forming black tear, black and blood now, faded blue now, maggots and soil now.

Tears fall.

Time.

Stops.

It stops as I hold my child in my arms. It slows to nothing, not in the same way as when time actually stops of course, when time unwinds itself and reveals that underneath its glittering gold threads that have driven us all to madness there is nothing, nothing. But in that moment time stops as I feel her warmth and look up at the mother who looks different to how I remember, from that motel room, sounds different from how she did on the phone, different without the drink and drugs in my system, clearer maybe, younger certainly. I look down at my child and she looks up at me and she starts to scream, and she claws at the air as if she is trying to get away and I am pushing her into her mother’s arms, done already, enough, already, Just Take Her, shouting now, and she is reaching for her, holding her to her breast where she clamps on. A bizarre flash of lust – to push my daughter aside, take her breast for myself, but no, I am giving her money (again), shoving paper notes into her fist to keep things ticking over, and she tries to kiss me, forcing her tongue against my teeth, and for a moment I am back in that motel room and I’m staring into her eyes and there is a depth to them that I have never seen anywhere, a blackness so complete and empty that I feel as if I might die down there with no rope or flashlight or any memory of anything else. I’ll Be Back, I say with my daughter screaming, but even then I know I won’t, and now I know it even better, and she shouts after me, I can’t hide her from Jack forever! And all I’m thinking about is how do I even know the kid is mine? When it is her job to— Because there must be countless men in a single day who— Surely I can’t be the only one that didn’t— Because what’s to say— Because I never even knew my father and so why should it be any different for this thing. Jack always comes back but right now I just need a drink or something to drown it all out. And yet I need nothing at all on that mountain.

I am here and I am everywhere and I know I have been here for days, years perhaps, but I also know I haven’t aged a minute. I know that the others are getting up to leave, that they are returning for the afternoon prayer, that the sun is setting now and they are here again the next morning and still I haven’t taken a breath, my lungs are yet to move, I am yet to suck that virgin air because I am provided for here in the womb, growing fingers, sprouting toes, floating, no conscious effort, it is as effortless as the breath I am yet to take, a nose, eyes behind lids, I feel that now and still no breath. And the nothingness is as complete as the nothingness of my death because there are no thoughts, I am nothing. I am pure and time does not exist. I am my mother’s beating heart, the nourishing life that flows into my stomach, I am my own heart growing in my chest, my mutating brain impossibly complex and ready to be flooded with convoluted notions of race and gender and right and wrong and life and death and time, infinite time, stupid clumsy one-directional time. Ready to be flooded with thoughts of one thing leading to the next and everything running in one direction.

But not yet.

Now I am everything and nothing and I am big enough for the world, a girl this time, grown enough to fall into the waiting arms of a midwife, to feel the cold air again, the gasps, the beeps, the buzzing lights.

Then I scream.