Brett McBean - Tales of Sin and Madness

I swallow. Taste blood. “I see no hole.”

“Yes you do. It’s there. It’s always been there. People don’t realize that anything is there for the taking if they look hard enough. Take this paper bag. I looked, and I found it. Now I’ll always have it, just like you’ll always have this place.”

“But I’m leaving this place.”

“As you wish.”

And then I see the hole. Just big enough for me to slip through, it’s like the spilled wine was acid and ate right through the concrete. “Where does it lead?” I ask.

“Hop down and find out.”

I get down on my knees. I hear the glass crunch, feel pricks on my knees and hands, but they don’t affect me. I peer down into the hole. I see a river rushing by not five feet from my face. A deep red river, with streaks of creamy white, like strands of milk have been poured into a tub of ketchup. It smells sickly sweet, like wine.

“Just hop down into the river, float away and soon it’ll be morning and you’ll…”

“Be free,” I finish. I wonder how long this river has been flowing; wonder if any of the other prisoners have ever swam its red tide to freedom.

“Go on,” my father urges. “You can do it. It’s your destiny. If you don’t, the night will never end.”

I nod. Go to say goodbye and thanks to my dad, but when I turn around he’s no longer sitting there.

But his smell still fills my head as I sit on the edge of the hole, then lower myself down.

I hold onto the edge of the hole until my arms are fully extended and I’m knee-deep in the river. I take one last look up at the small section of my world I can see, my world for the past fifteen years, and then let go.

I drop into the river, get a mouthful of saltiness as my heads dunks under and when I surface I see pipes flashing by overhead.

At first I’m scared. The river is flowing fast and I don’t know where it’s taking me. The water is warm, not cold and refreshing like I expected, and sticky.

The river snakes through the dim steel and concrete corridor.

Soon the surroundings get lighter. I begin to relax. I kick up my legs and lie on my back, letting the rushing river take me away.

The shade of night lifts and sunlight, so bright it hurts, is unveiled and finally the night is over and I smile. I cup some of the river in my hands and then tip my hands toward my face. Red runs down my arms like mini rivers and I laugh.

I wonder — will the guards see the hole when they come into my cell to tell me it’s time to rise and shine, knuckleheads? Or will it have closed over, leaving only the broken glass and spilled wine?

One thing’s for sure — I know that come morning, the guards will open my world and stand there looking at the empty cell and, scratching their heads wondering where the bottle of wine came from, say, “Why on earth would he escape? He was free to go today.”

They won’t know the real reason; that I had to, or else the night would never end.

And with a shake of their heads, they will turn and leave, the smell of piss and wine drifting in the air, leaving me in peace, leaving me to enjoy the morning light.

This story was born out of one night’s frustration at being unable to sleep. I usually don’t have much trouble getting to sleep, but on that particular night, I simply lay in bed, staring at the darkness, unable to fall asleep. As you’d expect, my mind started wandering, and I started thinking what if I could never get to sleep, and what if, because of that, time stood still and the night refused to end? What if sleep was the signal for time to continue clicking away and for night to eventually end and for morning to come, and since I couldn’t sleep, the world would remain on pause indefinitely (these are the strange things us writers think about whilst battling insomnia)?

Thankfully I did fall asleep, the world continued turning, and the next morning I sat down and started writing a story dealing with a person’s desperation at wanting night to end and morning to come. ‘Come Morning’ is essentially a poem written in prose form (I think of it as a hybrid, a proem, if you like), and although I don’t write many poems, this style seemed to suit the story.

The moment the meeting ended, I headed straight for the food and drink table. Though I wasn’t hungry for the assortment of biscuits and donuts, my stomach was grumbling, so I reluctantly grabbed an Anzac biscuit. As I took a bite, a crowd started forming around me. A low muttering buzzed around my head as the motley group of strangers indulged in banal small-talk, most seeming to welcome the change of pace after an hour of bearing their souls to their fellow addicts.

A figure sidled up beside me and snatched a Styrofoam cup from the stack next to the large tin of instant coffee. “First time, huh?”

I had swallowed the tasteless bit of biscuit and grudgingly taken another bite before I realised the figure was talking to me. Half-turning, I looked at the man standing next to me. He was taller than me, but younger, by about ten years. The young man was thin to the point of deathly — it looked like someone had stuck a Hoover in his mouth, pressed the ‘on’ button and proceeded to suck all the air from his body. His cheekbones were shockingly straight and pronounced, like two chiselled L shapes. A junkie for sure.

“Yeah,” I muttered through a mouthful of biscuit. I swallowed. Fought hard not to gag.

“So you’re an eater,” the junkie continued, tipping a couple of spoonfuls of dark brown granules into the cup. He then filled the cup with hot water and without adding any sugar or milk, took a thirsty slug of the instant coffee. “I was friends with an eater. Nasty habit. Are you still seeing movies?”

I nodded.

“Thought so. Wearing a jumper in this heat, I figured you were still exhibiting signs of the addiction. What movie’s currently playing?”

“An old black and white foreign film,” I said, scratching my arms — the woollen fabric was making my skin itch like crazy. “I think it’s Kurosawa, Seven Samurai by the looks of it.”

Frustrated, I tossed back the half-eaten Anzac and tried my luck with a donut. I tasted first the sugar, then the fried dough, and lastly the jam that oozed out like a cut and bleeding heart. It should’ve been delectable, but instead the concoction made my stomach lurch. After months of eating nothing but my peculiar diet, proper food, including sweets, now tasted like damp, mouldy cardboard. I looked for a bin to toss away the foul donut.

“Can’t stomach the real stuff, hey?”

The junkie had followed me.

I groaned internally. I didn’t feel like talking — I had done enough of that tonight. I simply wanted to try and appease my hunger with the free food and drink and then be on my way, back to my apartment and the cravings that’ll inevitably turn up as I lay in bed, trying desperately to sleep.

“I guess not,” I said, turning, trying to smile, but knowing it would’ve come out as a twisted grimace.

The junkie now held two Styrofoam cups. He handed one of them to me. It was full of steaming black liquid.

“My friend, the eater, she used to like coffee. It was the only real bit of nourishment she could stomach.”

“Used to? You mean she was finally able to kick the habit?”

The junkie shook his head. “’Fraid not,” he said. “She died almost six months ago. Binged on Hitchcock DVDs. She had a thing for Hitchcock.”

“They are tasty,” I said, swallowing back some coffee, hoping to drown out the memories of nights dining on Hitch’s lush late 50s period (they tasted like veal and roasted potatoes), and afternoons munching on his early British films (a more hearty taste, like stew and stout).