Sam Thompson - Communion Town

As I swallowed, the Captain and Dogg watched, appalled but intent, as they’d have watched a performer specialising in self-mutilation. At least I’d wiped their smirks. I took a step towards them, but I was hauling an anvil. I tried to drop the phial but sending orders to my hand was a long-distance call and no one was picking up.

‘What’s happening?’

They didn’t reply. Maybe they hadn’t heard. I didn’t want to see what was going on but my eyes were locked into the mirror. Cold was creeping in from the edges, terrible cold, and settling in my core like dread was a sensation of immovable weight.

So we come to this moment. I am fixed in place and my time approaches a vanishing point, slicing itself by thinner increments and thinner. What’s gone before is a past-tense prologue funnelling into this crux. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I tried to hurt her. I wonder if, in whatever follows, I’ll be able to throw down all these things I carry around with me, all these things I’ve done and wish I hadn’t.

Then what’s happening reaches my mind, and that too turns to metal.

Gallathea

To begin with, I was the world, which is another way of saying I did not exist, because when you’re that way there’s no need to mark lines between what’s you and what isn’t. Then the divisions came, and what was me began to find itself out. Everything I wasn’t broke away, freeing the shape of myself that had waited implicit in the block of the possible. The extraneous matter came off in fine scales as if worked away by a sculptor or a process of erosion. I was aware of the surface, the plane of distinction, sinking in towards my skin, and soon I was able to watch it happening, since the first image that presented itself was, of course, a reflection. I saw the roughly defined figure, stocky and stooped, moulded all out of dull gold. It lost definition as the coin-sized shards loosened and fell. Soon they were a cascade, clicking and jingling as they hit the floor. As the gold encasement thinned it grew translucent and I began to recognise what was inside.

He fell so fast away from me, clothing and hair, skin and superfluous flesh, all translated into soft yellow metal and splitting and opening to let me out. My bare toes flexed in a nest of gold shavings, and I brushed the last fragments from my palms: a first gesture.

They were waiting at the far end of the room, the tall and the short one, turning bashfully away. I could see they weren’t going to be much help, but still I cleared my throat and offered them my first hello. I couldn’t think why they wanted to be the way they were. I gave another hello to this woman who was watching me so cautiously, and, because there was something about her I liked, to her I gave my first smile.

A sweet early feeling; it must be the start of the morning or the opening of a new season; I had all the world’s time to do what I needed to, or what I wanted. With each exhalation and inspiration I was discovering more about what that might be.

The woman was wary, but eventually she gave me back part of my smile, and told me I looked well. While I stretched my waking muscles, she spoke sharply to the men so that they shuffled out of sight. She went away too and for the first time I experienced abandonment, piercing and inordinate while it lasted; but she came back right away with a bundle. She told me — I drank up her every word — that these ought to fit well enough.

I hardly needed her help as I dressed, and with every garment I put on I shed a layer of simplicity until I stood revealed in my sophistication in the glass, in pillbox hat, sharp blouse, pencil skirt and ankle-strapped tango heels. I thanked the woman as an equal as I accepted another gift, a smart rectangular valise; I asked if she had a cigarette to spare and she gave me the pack.

There wasn’t much more to be said between us. We had no quarrel. I couldn’t blame her if, in spite of her kindnesses, she was reluctant to meet my eyes, but I was glad that as I prepared to leave she wished that I would take care of myself.

The men faltered in again, and began to collect the scraps of gold from the floor. They insisted on heaping them into my new suitcase, telling me they were mine and it was only right I should take them.

Before leaving I asked the tall one with the grubby cuffs for a business card. He spilled a whole stack in his eagerness. I used his pencil to scribble on the back of one the advice that the woman had given me; I thought it might come in useful.

There wasn’t much more to do before I left the city, only a few appointments to keep and engagements to make.

As I stepped out into heat and stench, bristling faces turned in my direction and became avid. The maelstrom tracked me as I passed. I went by a stoop where they were sitting, sweltering, their chest-hair pushing out of their vests and their legs planted wide apart. Friendly voices called over to me, but they were too friendly, they were insisting on their friendliness, and they were asking questions that my friends would not have asked. So I straightened my back and walked on without giving a reply, my heels clicking on the pavement. The voices grew loud and disappointed, and followed me down the street, telling me exactly what I was.

As I crossed the city, others, young and old, well-heeled and scruffy, called out, or barked doglike, or they darted close and made muttered suggestions. Some simply stared angrily, as if I had given them personal offence. One of them, his pink face perspiring above a collar and tie, followed me at a distance for several blocks, so I kept to the middle of populated streets. After a while he gave up.

I stopped in at a café, where, standing up at the counter, I drank a miniature coffee and a glass of iced water. The waiter wouldn’t let me pay. Instead I asked him for some local advice and he gave me directions to a certain establishment nearby. I smiled at him and his eyes grew hooded and secret.

At the place he’d told me about, I spoke to a stout, sad-faced man and his blushingly tongue-tied brother. I explained what I needed them to do and paid them in advance. After thanking them and promising to take care in the contaminated streets, I went out again, having more business to attend to.

Later in the afternoon, near the docks, I stopped to watch two figures in huge coats and long leather masks going into a tenement. They were more witch doctors than medics, with their bell and their stink of garlic that drenched the street. After only a minute they came out again and opened up their bulky toolbag on the pavement. On the white door they painted a red diagonal cross.

As the bell beat I caught sight of a man approaching on the other side of the road, his face concealed by the brim of his hat and by the handkerchief he held over his nose and mouth. I stepped into an alleyway’s shadow while he passed. It wasn’t yet the moment to begin. I had many things in mind that were my concern alone, nothing to do with him; in my thoughts were futures he could never have hoped to imagine. Soon now I’d set out for other places and for the rest of what I planned. Let’s try this one more time, kid … Before that, though, I’d find him, and give him what he needed never to cease from seeking.

Work stopped a heartbeat back. There’s no hush like the hush when the machinery shuts off. It’s an uproar of silence. We keep our thoughts private. The workers remove their goggles, hard hats and earplugs, peel off their spattered overalls, scrub their hands at the sanitary stations and file to the exits. The concrete gleams. Clear droplets form on steel points, swelling and falling, mechanical, slower and slower. They don’t want to count away the time that’s left.