The Invitation

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I’m walking down an unfamiliar high street. I know it’s a high street. I know its kind. And so there is the familiar about it. Familial even. This is the sister I have not yet met. That makes me think I’m in a city. I’d say London, but I don’t remember the train journey preceding this moment and there’s something about this place that differs from the London I know and tolerate. 

The unease I’m feeling goes beyond my not quite knowing where I am. My compass spins but my inner voice isn’t criticising me for getting lost. The brooding silence within me is a worry. A cat has taken the tongue that so readily lashes me and plays with it in the shadows. I need that birch branch right now. A kick start that may well see me running.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

The sound is there and was there. A persistent chatter that agitates me. I think it’s behind me but I’m not so sure. The quality of the sound is chaotic and rude. Like the siren that accompanies blue lights. I can never locate the source of that warning until it’s almost on top of me. Phones do that to me too. I don’t think I’m alone in this. 

But I’m alone right now.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

Where is everyone? Daylight and an empty high street. Have I inadvertently wandered onto a film set? Is it 4am on a cool Summer’s morning? There’s no sound of traffic or of birds advertising their availability. I look up and the sky is as empty and hollow as I am feeling.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

Closer now. Right behind me. It has to be behind me. And I think I know what the source of the sound is now. I’m not alone after all. 

And I wish I was.

You have to turn around don’t you? 

You have to know.

They say we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality. The faceless and nameless they. Anonymity is a strange and wonderful thing. It emboldens the liar. Truth does not hide. We hide from the truth. 

I don’t want to turn around.

I’m afraid.

Most of all? 

I’m ashamed.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

Is that morse code? Three dots and three dashes alternating in a sigh for help. 

S O S O S O S O S

Save our sausages!

I wish I could laugh. There’s no fuel for laughter right now. All supplies exhausted. I’m hobbling on empty and I’m crying as I force myself to turn my body at the waist and direct my head backwards. I continue walking. Hedging my bets. That’s me. Half arsed all the way.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I don’t recognise the blind man tapping his white stick on the pavement behind me. But I know him. And I know why he’s here. 

He’s a collector.

Payment.

Where his eyes were, there are silently screaming caverns, and he mocks my own tears with dashing red tears of his own. I want to run, but the fascination I have for his ruined face holds me in place. And now that face is up to something and too late I guess what he is about to do. I mistake the movement of his lips as the early stages of the formation of a smile. But the lips are parting and a white ball is pushing forth. I hope that he’s playing a prank with a table tennis ball. That’s what I want it to be.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I don’t get what I want. 

I never get what I want. Even when I believe I have it in the palm of my hand.

The white orb rolls between his widening lips and a single eye stares at me.

The blind man sees me. He sees me well enough.

I desperately need to get away.

In my desperation I feel the danger. My bladder threatens to let go. But I can’t let go of anything. Not even now. I can’t let go of the scream tearing at my insides and clawing at my throat. 

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I lurch away from that stick. It’s alive and I make the mistake of glancing down at it only to see the twin of that blind man’s eye staring balefully up at me. And the stick is rising. Squirming in the blind man’s gloved hand. Pulling backwards in a lazy S. Then it strikes and I fall away from it. From the force of a hate that would kill.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I’m awake. Cocooned in a cold oily sweat. I feel filthy and at odds with myself. Holding the duvet cover at my chin as though it will shield me from my attacker whilst covering my shame.

I’m awake. And I have brought with me the self-same feeling of terror I experienced as I fell. 

Pain.

Always the pain. 

And a painful injustice that removes me from myself and loses me in a prison of confusion.

I am sick with pain.

I have this knot in my stomach. I should have gotten it checked out long before now. But I’m afraid. Afraid that the doctor will give a name to my nemesis and in naming it, it will become real and I will be done for in the casting of that medical spell.

Better not to know.

And there’s something else.

There is always something else to distract me.

A conveyor belt of depravity that drags me down into the mines of hell.

The list of my trials and tribulations sits upon a warren of self-obsessed rabbits. Lewdly self-populating despite my best efforts to cull them.

I sit up and wince. There is a novel pain to add to the pile. I twist my shoulder and look down to see a single puncture mark.

It figures. The single eyed snake, a snaggle-tooth. I am terrorised by the incomplete. This is my punishment for the mistake of my being born to a long line of secret criminals who all evaded the consequences of their transgressions. Willing the price to be paid over to me. Kicking the can of worms into my life. This the sum total of the love they were ever capable of.

My bed is a coffin and I have no script for this living death. And so I remain where I am. Inaction the order of the night that has been so rudely interrupted.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I freeze and a pathetic whine escapes from my lungs as the simple trio of sounds assail the last vestiges of peace I’d mistakenly believed were the beginning of something new and worthwhile.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

The insistent sound will not be denied. Only a fool would stay put and provoke the wrath of the source of this infernal noise. 

And so I wait.

There was a time upon the distant shores of my childhood. I slept and dreamt of a magnificent magpie. The bird was mine. A magical creature destined to accompany me on life’s journey. My familiar. My spirit animal. The missing piece in the puzzle of me.

Caw! Caw! Caw!

“That’s the sound a magpie makes.”

The voice came from the nowhere of the dreamscape and rudely roused me from a fantasy that made living bearable. 

Caw! Caw! Caw!

I tore open my curtains and there on the window sill was a magpie. He stared at me with contempt. In the real world, this was my magpie. Come to greet me before fleeing my lost cause and depriving me of the happy ending of the completeness of companionship.

Caw! Caw! Caw!

Heralding a lifetime of loneliness punctuated by the ulcerated wounds of lies and intentionally inflicted trauma. My spirit animal crushed my spirit in a moment of glorious spite and betrayal. But I ignored him and the warning he brought to me that beautiful Summer morning.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I find it within myself to face this dread music. Better to go to it than for it to come find me. I want to hide all the same. Curl up inside myself. But there is no safe refuge within me. The storms of life have put paid to that.

The handle of the bedroom door is cold to the touch. It sends shivers down my spine and tells me more than I want to know. The landing beyond is impossibly long. I traverse it in a matter of a few steps. 

The light here dances under the lazy waves of a stagnant ocean that drowned me at birth. Reaching for the light switch is a heresy I will not commit. 

For a ridiculously sweet moment I celebrate the absence of sound and tell myself I have escaped consequence at last. At long last I have won the lottery of life. I am blessed. I prepare to embrace the ignorance of this blessing.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

Too good to be true. I am the corrupted shadow of that truth.

I stand at the bottom of the stairs to the loft room and the years fall away from me. I am small again. This a reminder that I have always been small. Above me are the adults in my life. My wrathful gods. I bring no offerings. I have nothing to give. They took everything from me. Stripped me to the bone and crowed at my pathetic nakedness.

I was made nothing.

I am nothing.

I will always be nothing.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I watch the three steel ball bearings drop to the third step from the top of the stairs.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

They repeat the chorus as they hit every third step. Metal marbles. Mini cannon balls. I paint them black in my mind’s eye and write bomb on each one. They will explode with truths that will open my chest wide and shatter my diminished heart. 

When their song is ended I venture up the stairs. 

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I stop. I’m halfway through the climb to the summit. The index finger of my right hand denies my weak will and with a will of its own it wipes the three drops from my cheek. 

I expect blood.

The liquid on the pad of my finger is all wrong and there is a ripe smell all around me. I cannot help but look up towards the source of those three drops of liquid. The feet point down towards me. Singling me out. Accusing me. Accusing me of crimes I know I have not committed.

I am guilty all the same. 

And he can’t be here.

He’s dead.

I laugh at the absurdity of this thought. 

The sound of my laughter is not laughter at all. This is the sound of my unravelling. And underneath the last of my wrapping is a madness that consumes. A hunger that will not be sated. 

I turn at my half way point and I sit. 

This is as good a place as any.

For what I do not know.

I am sitting at a travel stop. No bus or train will come this way, but I will travel from here all the same. 

And so I wait.

I wait for the sound that will signal the next stage of a journey I’ve never had a say in.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I run back to my bedroom and with the same energy of the boy I once was, I tear back the curtains to reveal a darkness that goes beyond the gown of night time. I stare at my reflection and wonder why I am here and what is happening to me. 

Tap! Tap! Tap!

My reflection has raised its sullied right finger and tapped on the pane of glass with a blackened fingernail. I glance down at my limp right arm for confirmation of what I already know.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

The man at the window is impossibly pale with terror. He forms a single, silent word that I hear in the confines of my reeling mind.

RUN!

And I am falling backwards. Windmilling my arms as the floor beneath me dissolves and hell swallows me whole.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

My landing knocks the air from my lungs and I moan in protest. Rolling to my side with the intention of becoming a foetus once more. As with many things in my life, I cannot translate bare thought into clothed action.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I am subject to a rude awakening. And now I know I really am awake.

I’m on the floor of my bedroom. The bed has gracelessly vomited me from it’s maw. I give it a disparaging look which changes nothing. My impotence in the bedroom frustrates me.

Finding my knees I wish for the release of wakefulness and a return to mundanity. The anxiety of a past life of pain has gifted me with dreams that I can only hope are catharsis. The bleeding of wounds to rid me of a poison that was intended to be fatal.

I remind myself that I got out. My escape imitated the honest thief in the night, not the cunning thieves of souls that masquerade as smiling rescuers.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I swoon as my reality returns to the living nightmare I was once imprisoned in. 

I got out.

I told no one of my plans.

No one knows I am here.

These fading thoughts are voiced by a frightened little boy who sees the adult well. Sees him and despairs. There is no help here. Only a lamb trembling in an abattoir.

On unsteady legs, I go to my slaughter.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

They’re waiting for me in the dark living room. There is no living here. But they are real. This is all real and it is a nightmare. My nightmare. A torture chamber carefully crafted to suit me and me alone. The craftsmanship of the instruments of my torture is exquisite. My attraction to my torturers mystifies me and excites me in equal measure. Resignation seems the only option now that they have found me.

They will always find me.

I am marked by them.

Unfinished business.

I enter the room and see the first of my tormentors. She stands statue still in the shadows. Her head canted to one side in an uncomfortable pose that speaks of broken neck bones. Her posture is all wrong. Her entire body knotted and bent with a poisonous hatred that has forged her into the most dangerous of animals. Her eyes bore into me. I feel their intensity and when her lips open to reveal her teeth there is no smile upon her face only the snarl of a ravenous predator.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

The second of the unholy trinity steps forth from my right side. Her heels beating a tattoo on the wooden floor. She takes my limp hand in hers. She is dry and cold. I urge myself not to look at her. Not to suffer the loss that will result if our eyes meet. 

I feel her gaze upon my flesh. It should chill me to the bone. Steal the warmth from my very spirit. My confusion dizzies me as she draws closer and I feel a warmth that cannot belong here. 

Hypothermia of the soul.

The first continues to study me as I am guided to the sofa. Real or imagined words of comfort and distraction are poured into my ears. Deafening me to the cries within. I shudder but there is no chill now only the pleasure of capitulation.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

The third is sat to my left as the second takes her seat to my right and embraces me proprietorially. I look down towards the source of sound that hammers a warning upon my skull. Knocking at the door of my sanity and reminding me of the warning. Yelling one word that is the only course of action. The action that I undertook in the dead of night to escape the fatal intent of these three.

Run!

I hear the far off sobs of the little boy I once was. I am detaching from my flesh and no longer understand that I am crying. Weeping as I mourn the loss of me. 

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I tell myself I cannot run as I look upon the heeled foot that is distracting me from myself. My eyes trace a lingering pattern along the shapely calf. Taking their time as they move upwards. I am living in a state of anticipation and I no longer care about an end.

Sex and death. 

Blessed relief from the pain. An end to the running. And the pain of the running. The ceaseless struggle with no available destination other than conclusion. 

Confused, I desire an end to the chaos.

Desire is the poison running through my veins. 

They’re burning me. 

I take my cowardly time. Tell myself that there is safety in this escape of lust. Blind eyes travelling the curves of her body. Averting my gaze from her face and the endlessly dark holes where her eyes should be. 

Then her mouth is on mine and she is probing. Looking inside me. Searching for the last of me. She slips her hand across my chest as a lover would. The gently building force of her touch catches me unawares. 

She always caught me unawares. 

She caught me.

And I invited her over the threshold of all my boundaries. 

Sacrificed myself before I was aware of the price I was paying.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

I am pinned like a butterfly for her collection.

The third joins us now. 

I am enveloped and drowned in their dark embrace.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

Three knives rising and falling. Clumsily finding ribs before slipping over in fresh meat and offal.

I will never run again.

But my legs don’t get the memo. They flutter in one last act of flight. 

Tap! Tap! Tap!

And then the pain ends.