Laura Dockrill - Echoes

The day after that, he did the same, plonk, plonk, plonk, stare, stare, stare, thud, thud, thud, ate a cardboard salad, wasn’t enough, licked the air, thud, thud, thud, watered the plant in the gaffa-taped pot, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, fucking tap.

I’m going to get coffee.

It was a good-looking day, why didn’t they have a window? It was unbelievable, who decided that this was how the world worked? That you just missed the sunshine? That it was okay to ignore it? They needed fresh air, those pasty faces in that office, their skin like tracing paper could do with a splodge of daylight, could do with a…

A swarm of people came flooding through the streets, screaming. What was going on? Cars in upheaval, and then that noise, the road rippling, churning, cracking; cars and shops snapping like the body of a Coke can giving in to the swelling and the people turning into the air, scooping and falling like a scattering of confetti. It was unlike anything Albert had ever seen; different from his stories, his pictures, a…well, it was a monster. An actual monster. Oozing sticky, navy in patches, dark deep green in others, diabolical, sludgy, dripping after it was a transparent tar-like residue, like a globby snail trail. It had a tail too, this creature, sweeping the road as though the city were a calm lake and his tail the oar. It bat the buildings, knocked down street lamps, post boxes, people, animals, in long hard savage waves and it had these chunky arms covered in scales like a sea monster, that led on to mammoth hands and long spindly fingers and at the end of each spindle sat a stretched claw that was now blood-splattered and was doing the exact same job a spear would do, gutting anybody that came into its vicinity.

Albert, too afraid to even utter a word, scrambled, quick. He had noticed that although this thing was big and fucking scary, it seemed to be slightly…dim. Albert watched its drowsy, glittery eyes fazing over in long slow sleepy blinks and saw it seemed to be plodding, destroying with little sense of direction or care, it was though it didn’t really want to be here. Swaying, fumbling, lost, sort of. Albert knew if he began to run now he would be all right, he could get home, get his family, do what he needed to do but then what about Limps? They couldn’t even hear the carnival floats as they sailed by last year, they couldn’t hear a storm, they couldn’t hear a bird tweet, a fox cry. Why, they were trapped in their stone cube where they tapped and pushed buttons and waited for hundreds of copies of the same hundred copies to be copied. They wouldn’t have time to escape, time to leave, would they? Would they?

So Albert thought quickly, he typed his key code into the security pad and launched himself up the concrete staircase, his flat shoes tapping out his urgency.

He blew open the wooden door and screamed at the top of his squeaky voice, ‘THERE IS A FUCKING MONSTER OUTSIDE. HE’S GREEN AND HAS CLAWS AND A TAIL AND TEETH– HUGE TEETH–AND HE…IS…KILLING PEOPLE. ANYBODY, ANYTHING. YOU HAVE TO LEAVE, YOU HAVE TO ESCAPE. NOW!!’

Tap. Tap. Plonk. Print. Zuuuoooom. File. File. Shuffle. Shuffle. Bleep. Bleep.

‘DID YOU HEAR ME? I KNOW IT SOUNDS STRANGE. IT’S MAD, I KNOW. I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT MYSELF, BUT PLEASE, IT’S BIG AND IT’S SCARY. PLEASE.’

Plonk. Plonk, blip. Blip. Flick. Flick. Tap. Tap. Tap. Stare. Stare. Stare.

Albert clawed his hand desperately through his hair, as though something were creeping up behind him. He spoke again, his eyes frolicking about, rattling in his skull, fantastically psychotic, as though he were a main part in an excellent sci-fi film, ‘PLEASE!!!!’

‘Go home, Albert. Just go home.’ Mr Hurt gave up.

‘Go home? Go home? But there’s a…’

‘It’s because of ignorant people like you that things like war happen,’ Mr Hurt croaked out.

Albert frowned. Confused. Bit harsh. ‘Fine. Fine,’ he managed and went to leave, turned around again. Tap. Tap. Tap. Mr Hurt and his stupid face turned back to the screen. And then he saw his plant on the desk, now gaffa-taped up, rescued. And he took it with him, turned to the room and its grey contents and said, ‘And it’s because of negative people like you that nobody believes in a story anymore, and for that, Mr Hurt, I will never forgive you.’

And he plunged down the stairs, hurtling forward, catapulted himself out of the door and then changed his flurry into a casual stroll, whistling as he popped into a paper shop, then into Costa, and got that coffee he was after. He watched the road, the mums with pushchairs, gossiping, trotting past, the man on his mobile in a rush, the schoolboys laughing with their bags of chips, the cute girl with the beret. Albert picked up his pen and began scribbling down all the ideas he possibly could, excited, he spewed out phrases so wickedly; he could barely get a grip on the pen and he scrawled…

And then the monster got into Limps. He ripped off Mr Hurt’s head, and then squeezed his torso until his guts poured out of the open gash where the neck was meant to be, like a tube of toothpaste and everybody was sorry then.

…even if it was true, if the monster was there, if it did claw its way into the office and begin slashing throats and crunching bones, Albert wouldn’t have minded, he wouldn’t have tried to escape. It would be the most interesting thing that had happened to him. Ever.

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