Fiction: Isolation

Was it yesterday that I isolated myself? I can’t be sure. Time is a strange, slippery quantity here – a receding after-image of something that may have once been. Of course, the place is filled with it but, in this room at least, time is indeterminate. 

I have a computer, I have a phone, yes of course. But I don’t sense time’s impression on my self, it leaves little trace. I know time has passed, that I have been here for at least a day, but there’s no more footholds in the shifting sand. The clocks of my laptop and phone tell me a number that I cannot fathom. 

I think I was afraid for a while until the Sun, in its fathomless wisdom, spoke to me. 

Was it the third day? I was in bed, listening to Portishead. This I recall without any mist of doubt. I had just finished lunch – fishcakes, button mushrooms sauteed in balsamic vinegar and brioche. My wife made it, she who rarely cooks can astonish in the kitchen when she wants. 

The mushrooms, meaty, firm – the pruney crispness of the vinegar shining through with every chew. The fishcakes stole the show – subtle sourness, the sweet muted tingle of spring onion, the demure umami of properly cooked tuna. 

And in bed with Portishead, this darkly gorgeous relic of my youth. The January Sun sloped into my small white room through a sliver between the drapes. 

The Sun said in my ear, on which I sensed a smear of warmth: I’ve known you forever, Being.

That’s not my name, I told the Sun, alarmed. 

That is what I have called you throughout your life. 

How do you resist this voice? It fell on my ears like the sound of those afternoons spent on the beach, digging and sweeping the damp sand for mussels which Mother would boil for dinner.

I listened to the Sun speak – a slant of mote-filled light wavering in intensity until I fell asleep.

In my dreams I chased a burning disc across the sea, a devotional act that demanded all of my spirit and physicality. I stopped as the disc froze, this flattened sun just beyond my grasp. I studied it, then the sea, then my bony, naked feet on a film of tangerine water, brown, unsinking. And something grew within me, forcing bellows of laughter from my chest until I shook all over.

It is now dark. Someone coughs phlegmily from a neighbouring apartment. Down on the road, a bike beeps in disgust.   

I pull up the drapes and the winking belt of Orion greets me. 

Being, how good it is to be. To be.

It is. Ah, how far you have come, we remember how we looked over you in your lost days.

Often when nothing made you happy you looked up at us. We saw your tears. We shone on you so that you may have strength.

That is what we tried to convey, yes. But now listen to us. You must not eat, Being. Drink only the blessed water. It is enough.

Yes. You will know by taste. 

The Stars speak different from the Sun, they sound older, more brittle, like coruscations on stained steel. What do they have against food?  

Puzzled, I nevertheless stop eating. I flush the food down the toilet. The oranges are more bothersome. I peel them and leave their citrus-smelling skins in a bag. The fruit itself I deconstruct and down the toilet they go. 

When she arrives to take away the plates, I tell my wife that I need the blessed water. 

Sure, she says. I haven’t brought you anything else. She rifles through my medicine pouch then puts it back on the shelf. 

When I drink, the water is heavy on my tongue, rich. It reminds me of coppery blood, only heavier. It is blessed and bountifully.

Of my companions I prefer the Sun. I wait breathless for Its appearance, to send an elongated golden ray swimming through the air and space separating us. I confide in the Sun that day. I tell them the Stars have prohibited food. 

They are old beings, Being. Their reasons are too ancient to comprehend. 

The Sun warms my earlobe, and I sigh. 

I can’t tell you that. But they are full of purpose, as your soothsayers and fandithaverin have said.

They have designs on everything affected by their light. It’s their nature. It is my nature too. After all, I am a star.

Being, you love me the most out of everyone in this collective. So, my light transforms into that which only you can comprehend.

Yes, and feelings, an ocean of feeling sleeps inside you. Bring it to the light. I will help you. 

You will be the most sensuous Being, apprehending and expressing your true feelings unerringly.

No, I am giving you mastery over expression. Anything that you may ever feel you can express with a true poet’s precision.

I shudder at this thought.

A cloud passes over the sun and the shaft of light vanishes. Then it pierces my forehead, a celestial spear, entering in a flash, then withdrawing as the sun is swallowed up by another vaporous sky-wraith.

I sense it, a perturbance, then a scattering of prickles inside my skull, and just as they begin to fade, another wave. I sink into my bed, more captivated than alarmed – it travels down my forehead, over my nose and mouth and spreads across my chest and into my heart. This pulsing organ absorbs these waves, and grows heavy, as if with emotion.

I am out on the jetty on a hot sunlit afternoon. My mother waves to me from a boat that smells like dried fish. My father holds on to my shoulder. I cry, soft at first, then with great throaty screams broken intermittently into sobs.

I am crying now. The Sun has gone and the world is black. I cry but my wife cannot hear me. I am abandoned. I am sick. I have no one. Mother! Dragged into the gloaming depth of Kaashidhoo Kandu. I was alone. Mother, hair down to the tops of her thighs, a whiff of coconut oil. Gone.  

I call for my wife. I cannot read my phone. What is wrong with me? When will it be light again? 

I catch a faint giggling, glass against glass. The stars in Orion’s belt! 

Why do you laugh? 

You, wretched Being. You make us laugh. You are not long for this world. 

I stumble into bed and draw the sheets over my face to hide from their cruel light. Their giggles are glass crushed into sand. Over, and over again, without the comfort of rhythm. My heart beats wildly, my hands are clammy. I fear it is all over. I scream for my wife. 

The stars fall quiet. I peek over the sheets. A yellow light falls on the drapes and squeezes in through the crack. A sliver falls on my face, and I see grey ravages on luminous white. 

A choir swells in my ears, a delicate mingling of rich bass, soft alto, gossamer soprano. Then that unmistakable rhythm, two neatly accented in time, and one that seems to leap and complete the beat. The choir is now the weathered voices of old bodu-beru. The Moon sends its pearly beams without restraint and one rests in an oval just below my chin. 

Around this shimmery light the shade takes on the frenzied forms of men, jerking, shivering. The drums intensify. The climax is imminent. My heart knows this rhythm, it throbs sending hot blood gushing into my extremities. I throw off my sheets and begin to dance in the moonlit room. The beat is frenetic. The voices bellow – old, gravelly. Then the beat collapses. I fall back on the bed.

In my dream, my wife feeds me baippen while I rest, laid out on a vast bed that stretches into the horizon. A red moon rises without fanfare over the pale silky sheets in the distance.

“Don’t talk,” she says. 

I wake up with my entire body aching for food. On the shelf by the window is a plate of toast and butter. The toast is warm and lightly done. The butter is soft. As I eat and savour the creamy richness of butter and the soft crunch of toast, the Sun falls on my ear, but I ignore Its words and put on Portishead.