User:Pinkville/Current

Colin MacWhirter						2054 words 3644 av du Musée #21					©2001 Colin MacWhirter Montréal, Québec Canada H3G 2C9 514-288-9135 rosa@generation.net

CURRENT by Colin MacWhirter

The sound of dripping water. The air... so difficult to breathe; heavy and filled with the smells of a dozen years of bad cooking and rancid clothes. In fact, with the rain, the summer humidity, the curtains were saturated. The helicopter-flapping of a fan with some scrap of plastic flapping against the grill. Now silent, the receiver off the hook had echoed plaintively through the apartment: “Please hang up and try your call again.”  Where, where was the tenant, the inhabitant? The sound of the stereo brightly playing her last CD again and again. Again, “Court and Spark,” the curtains hanging sodden, without allowing breath. Yet there she was weeping, weeping in her bed without knowing why, without any explanation as to.... So she wondered, what the fuck? What the fuck? am I doing? is going on? She’d never had this feeling before – sorrow certainly, but not like this. And why now? Why feel this deep, deep sorrow and fear now? When the stars seemed right, when the bank, for a change, looked on her account, smiling. Yet her tears.... And the flapping fan; the heat of summer night pressing down like lead. The pearlescent night clouds slowly greasing by. And she was unable to breathe in her room, in her bed of damp cotton sheets and a loudly ticking clock beside her bed. And the visions came... as they had suggested themselves before. But they now fully manifested themselves.... There began a tugging, a wrenching sensation. And with an involuntary cry of... she crushed her hands to her eyes. She felt the pressure deep in her gut of....

The morning sun smoldered through the grey dawn and she awoke, unrefreshed. She groped up out of bed and slipped on her underwear, her jeans, and a T-shirt... without caring for a bra. And she unthinkingly turned on the stereo, hearing last night’s Joni Mitchell with a rush of recognition, the shiver of recognition....  The tugging sensation, something in her wanting out. She clenched shut her eyes, only to see a pair of luminescent eyes look back at her, the mental discharge of her constriction. But just like a pair of eyes glaring back at her. “Ay!” But the quiet of morning restored her. She made her way to the kitchen, made herself some coffee and breakfast. She checked the weather, the news. She went to work.

On the metro, on her way home from work, she noticed how relieved she felt. Her work was stressful, yet circumscribed by circumstance and she felt the anxiety evaporate as each station sped into the background: Joliette, Préfontaine, Frontenac, Papineau, Beaudry, Berri-UQAM,....  She found herself singing a tune in her head....  Daydreaming, she imagined a man unreeling some wire... electrical wire. He was ruggedly goodlooking. Unshaven, with hair shorn close, and wearing a tan-coloured shirt. She had him smile back at her as he worked – obviously a technical task – he kept glancing away, playing out the wire. He looked up, a look of surprise flashing– Here was her stop. She climbed the hill to her building and thoughts crept up to her.... She saw walls of grey peeling paint, heard muffled cries, an order barked sharply at her. She spun round– no one there. Heavy boots falling on concrete– no one there. Her hands were trembling taking out her keys and distantly a country tune played on a radio she couldn’t see.

The apartment door closed, locked securely behind her, she breathed again. But what the fuck was happening? What was going on? These were not idle daydreams. They were not enjoyable. They were not of her choosing. She’d like to think of... a beach, the Caribbean, floating on the sea without a care, without any thought of another. The soft, salty air creeping over her like a silk sheet, a caress, the hand of someone comforting her as the shimmering pain subsided, the pain in her groin that reached up to her chest, to her throat, choking her till his hand smoothed it away, and it sloughed off.... So much better. “Thank you. Thank you.” And she realised there was, of course, no one there. She was home. Her empty apartment exuding a momentarily discomforting silence. She was alone. Now, neither threatened nor soothed. She flicked on a light. She sat at the table with tears mysteriously swelling in the corners of her eyes. She felt the rumblings in her gut of something like rage. Quickly quelled, rolled over into indigestion. Her heart beat hard; a speed metal beat. She thought, maybe she should call the Info-Santé number, find out if she was having a heart attack. But no, the beat quieted. The summer heat wrapped itself around her with the comfort of a scarf and she relaxed, considered turning on the fan, even. She sat at the table and began writing. She hadn’t intended to, yet here she was, with a pen: the black ballpoint ink committing her scratching thoughts to paper. Her thoughts....

It was an hour later; she realised she’d written pages of notes... incom-prehensible notes. Well, in a language she didn’t know. Yet she knew what they said. She had the images of them in her mind. Of the sodden hood being hauled over her head. The hand, like a vice, like an assembly line robot, thrusting her head back into the tub of ice-water. The panic rushed forward– Stop! Stop! She could count the stop!s like minutes... yet they didn’t stop. They carried on with her lungs quaking, most of all, her stifled voice shrieking, No! No! Stop! Stop! It did not stop. It did not stop till–

A cool breeze slid over her, waking her gently. She found herself flung over the dining room table but she woke with a feeling of uncomprehending relief. Unaccountably, something had gone beautifully right. She had found an escape from.... Here she was in her comforting apartment, the flapping sound of the fan testifying to its cooling efforts. She had no reason for nightmares and golden summer light filled the apartment. She looked about with a sense of newness, of wonder, even. How could she have so much furniture? So many books? A television and a VCR? Amazing. In the kitchen, more incredible yet. So much food! Rice and pasta, tins of fish. In the refrigerator there was milk and a cabbage, cheese, bread, containers of sauces and soup. At the same time, she had the feeling she needed more. How could that be? She made herself a sandwich and, finding a bag of ground beans, a pot of coffee, all the while soaking up the feeling of security leant by the place. Though she’d have to step out to get more groceries in a bit. More?

She was talking to her friend, Gus; she couldn’t imagine telling anyone else without them laughing or without their concerned but skeptical murmurs. Gus didn’t laugh, she didn’t even seem surprised; but that was just like Gus... unperturbable. “They’re not my thoughts, they’re not my dreams or nightmares. I have the feeling they belong to someone else.” “Like who?” “No idea. I haven’t got a clue. Well, I mean.... Someone who’s being held captive. Against their will. Things are being done to... this person.” “Torture.” “Yes. I think so.” Feel the wet canvas again going over; the oily smell not allowing any breath. All other thoughts suffocated but the panic, Stop! Stop! “Yes. Torture.” She produced her notes, they weren’t nonsense but she hadn’t any idea what they were. “Hmm. Listen, can I keep these for a few days?” Gus asked. “I’d like to check them out. You wrote them.” “Yeah.” “They’re not in your handwriting.” She hadn’t realised. Of course, they weren’t.

Days later, she had this unshakeable anxiety vibrating through her, knocking over glasses, dropping keys. She had bruises from falls she might not have taken. But she really was so jittery. Anything– “Gokana. Apparently,” said Gus with unimaginable certainty. “I checked the dictionaries in the university library and the best fit was Gokana, an Ogoni language. Nigeria. I don’t know exactly, obviously, but the gist of it is what you described.... The torture.” “It’s not a question of ‘torture’. There’s information that’s needed. And she’s willfully withholding it.” “Huh?” “Well that’s just what really pisses me off. Her time would go a lot faster if she’d just cough up–” And she realised she was speaking in some other voice, some baritone impulses punching their way through her as though she were a rice paper screen. She could melt in water, she could melt on the tongue and he would light his cigarette and smile with a grimace concealed in the smile, take a long drag thinking, not in fact uncommonly for him, what a brief pleasure was taken in her body by those guards. Taking her had taken them no more time than dressing. Could that be worth it? Good cigarette. Smoke curling round like a necklace. Wrapping like a scarf or like her electric cord, maybe. Her only item of clothing, so almost comforting now. Well, maybe if she ran hard enough towards the door it could slip her out of her misery. Get up some speed and– She could imagine again that strange world somewhere impossibly far away which even light couldn’t reach, only thought, that world of warmth and love not yet betrayed. If she thought of that it might give her the courage to spring from the wall towards the door snapping her head back sharply like it might with a laugh, seeing an excellent hand of cards: a gallery of clubs. He wasn’t really one to bluff. The round ended quickly, less profitably than it might have done. He excused himself and went to get another beer wondering what was wrong with him. Why did he have no sexual desire – in fact, only horror? What were the irritating voices in his head which he could no longer dismiss as those of his mother, his wife, his daughter, intruding upon his work – clouding his mind with doubts, hesitations, uncomfortable questions? How could he explain his strange dreams and who could he ask about his visions of domestic comfort? Which he now realised were not at all his own... because none of the details fit a Port Harcourt home. Not even one in Lagos. These visions were undoubtedly American. Or European. Not his own.

When he stepped back into her cell she was slumped against the wall. He took her face in his hand. And instantly, he saw his own hand rushing up– But there was no need for fear because this time was to comfort. His science was to alternate the beatings with comfortings. Her eyes opened again slowly and dimly, they were the eyes of a week-old fish at the market. He chose to look into those eyes, or try to. The clouds lifted, he peered into the space beyond her – she was mostly dead anyway – he peered into a moonlit room. The sound of heavy breathing halted... and resumed. He could almost step into this bedroom, almost lie down beside her if he’d wanted to. That would be almost amusing, for him. He just watched her troubled breathing as the moon vanished behind cloud, as a clock ticked some other time zone’s minutes away. He was startled as the door behind him opened– no, the door to the bedroom. And a woman entered and placed a hand on his shoulder– her shoulder. Whispering soothing words. In his hand, her head was now lifeless. The electrical cord was taut from the hook on the wall. He had a sensation of dirt, for once not inspired by the prisoner but by something else. He found himself weeping, unable to stop. The sound of his weeping and the fan down the corridor....

She woke up groggy, with an undeserved hangover. No more was she to be visited by visions of a distant cell. She turned on the TV, the news, and watched with as yet unused anger clawing its way up her throat. Another day. Another day of light to burn its way to the back of her skull. But now knowing, as she heard the roll call of atrocities, the most intimate lesions of what these reporters so blandly described.

The End