The Desperate Light
John Carey
Copyright 2013 John Carey
Cover by John Carey
The Desperate Light
By John Carey
jcdefixio.wordpress.com
I wrote this over the course of a single evening, a long night in which I attempted to emulate Kafka’s ‘night of creativity’, in which he wrote The Judgement. The idea was to discover whether writing in one solid period of time was more profitable, in terms of either literary worth or word count, or whether the ability to second-guess myself, to have the time to go back and change my original sentences into those which might add some greater meaning to any point within the short story.
Thank you for reading.
The small metallic shapes, bastardised beyond any recognition of honest currency, fell into the concave curvature of the dashboard, into the space cut by a single awkward ridge of grey plastic mere inches in front of the steering wheel. The driver’s hands delve back into his pockets, grasping up the last few dividends of copper and tin and adding them to the collection in a rattling cacophony which ends too soon. His wallet, a new possession, thuds atop the pile and he pauses, rubs his eyes to fight away the fatigue, focusing them out of the window in hopes that some restorative power might flow from the very sight of the natural world.
The moon had given in to its jealousy, as it so often did, and was lit with a yellowing light. A reflection of the sun, trapped within its greedy atmosphere, gave it that visage, delivered to it an unearned title. He couldn’t see the moon as it clung above him like a spider to a ceiling, the angle of his position and the vehicle’s roof denying him that sight and so, instead, he stared towards the ocean. Within that black amorphous mass he could find some sporadic pleasure at the reflection, of a yellow celestial orb trapped in one of the resources which wasn’t being burnt away. The face of the entity within that orb was in pain, the crater of its mouth was open to a torturous degree, its eyes glaring down at the ocean in panicked gestures of futility, if not impotence. It was the face of an injured bird he and his brother had once rescued, or so they told themselves, of a crippled creature attempting to fly away on broken wings, of screeching out in terror at soft, dirty hands clutching at it as though another toy for them to fight over. He shook the image from his head, ignored the not so sudden flash of guilt, one accompanied by the recollection of an over-sized black suit and sympathy disguising disgust.
He lifted a cup from its holder, resting his little finger along the underside of the container to judge the temperature of its contents. It was cold but he took a sip anyway, there was nothing else for him. It left a gummy texture between his teeth and his gums, a cold adhesive for a vague sense of unease. The taste was weak, the strength of service-station teabags leaving much to be desired, as had the price demanded of him by the short youth behind the counter, running a hand along the close-cut hair as though it was a new acquisition; as though to assure himself that it was not a dream.
His companion shuffled in his seat, the motion drawing his attention for one sobering moment, but the breathing remained the same. He had found himself waiting for the death-rattle, for that final evacuation of the lungs, as though a dead master freeing the last of his slaves, a final expression he had no more reason to expect than anyone did. He expected it anyway, he knew it would emerge from this lips one day and his only wish was that he would not be there to witness such a passing. He would give the boy the very last of his breath if he had to, he would poison those childish lungs with his own abused supply that he might see the sun again.
He stole a moment from the night, to rest his head against the steering wheel. His forehead found itself between the two sweat-stains his hands had left there, as they gently shook their way across its textured surface. His arms folded, and he clung tightly to himself as though mere pressure could provide some comfort for the two of them, even over the distances of inches and years. He closed his eyes and lost himself for a time, allowed himself to float in the ether, in the blend of consciousness and its antithesis to be found in hours like this, in the moments between the late night and the pre-dawn.
The shaking followed him, pursued him through his attempted dreaming and struck at his psyche with gavels of judgement, with hammers of such burdens as it had no authority to make. He fought to keep still, he allowed himself to twist in his position but he kept his eyes closed and his head to the wheel. His fingernails dug into the cold sweat of his palms and his shoulders swivelled like those of a creature possessed, by divinity or by demands which could not be fulfilled. He wanted to scream but dared not for the sake of his sleeping companion, he wanted to cry but could not let himself do so; his eyelids grew tighter, forced against themselves until his tear ducts were as nothing, a mere pinhole hidden in the abolition of flesh.
He stayed like that for some time, minutes or moments or until the world was swallowed by the sun and the universe caved in on itself until fortune brought it back around, until chance removed its ugly claws from existence and fate was all that remained. He tasted water at the edge of his mouth and peeled his eyes apart, allowing free reign to the liquid secreted behind his eyelids which spilled around his lashes and ran to the corners of his mouth in smooth twin lines. He opened his mouth, unsurprised to feel the tug as dry lips separated, their love purer than any warring underage tryst could have been, and allowed the liquid into himself. It was water, water emerging from his eyes and lacking in the bitterness of tears. He rubbed it away, using the back of his hand to streak the moisture across his cheeks, the occasional molecule caught in thee hairs of his stubble. That which had already made it to is lips he caught with his tongue, bringing it into his mouth with something approaching desperation. He made to pour the tea into his throat, some weak satisfaction for his body’s demands, but some instinct made him pause. He took another sip, just enough to slip into the back of his throat and offer some small respite to his burning muscle.
With a shaking hand he rolled down the window, catching a sudden breeze from the ocean against his skin. He felt somewhat better almost instantly, such punitive demands as his body could conjure momentarily numbed by the introduction of another force. The water, that ephemeral prison, shifted loudly, assuring him that it had not slept whilst he had sought respite, whilst he had fought himself. It had been the only witness to the beginnings of his destruction, and who would the waves dare to confide in, save each other? Let the rumours of his madness circulate the oceans for generations, let it whip past the hulks of splintered ships, through the eyeholes of skeletal sailors, still dressed in their military finery, against forgotten cities and abandoned gold.
His legs were cramped, the shuddering of his musculature clenching the reddish matter against itself until it compacted, leaving him as a cripple atop the tarnished leather throne. A Fisher-King secreted beneath flimsy defences against the open skies. As that thought struck him, he turned his head upwards, out of the window that he might feel the breeze without his meagre shelter, the shelter that was all he could offer his sleeping companion. He opened the door and swung his legs out with a stifled hiss. He held onto the steering wheel and part pushed, part dragged himself to his feet. He stretched and took pleasure in the ghosts of pain such an action provided. He waited a few moments longer, for the breeze to buffet at his clothes and the last remnants of agony to fade away.
He found himself at the shoreline, at the border of sand darkened by the water, compacted into the thick slime, a natural protoplasm, rather than the segmented collective of gravel and stone and dust which formed a majority of the land around him. The water crept up to his shoes, and he felt a little seep through into the sieve of his sock, felt the one hole around his toe give way insta
ntly to the gentle, if chilling, onslaught. He could see the moon efficiently now, unburdened by the chains of second-hand evidence the ocean had offered him.
It had taken on the golden-sheen more commonly associated with its counterpart, projected that hue of yellowed light, though it was a used kind of light, the light summoned from the very last spark of a dying streetlight; the desperate light, if ever he had seen one. If ever an object deserved the title of pretender, more than any petty usurper lounging on his stolen throne, then tonight, the moon was the pretender.
He had a notion then, one hardly alien to him, to drive into the ocean. He could get back in the car and accelerate across the gravel and the stone and the dust, he could fall into the waters and close his eyes and let the headache and desperate thirst and the rapid staccato of his pulse fall away into foreign waters. And would that not be better, be easier, he asked himself in silent tones of desperate pleadings, could I not leave a better future if I were to simply vanish into the waves? I could drive, or even walk, and let men ask where I have gone. I could hunt down Atlantis with the last of my breath, I could live forever amongst golden halls where tin and copper are vile rumours and nothing more.
He peeled the coat from his back and dropped it in the sandy water. Its weight held it in place for a few more resurgences of the waves, but finally its grip failed and it moved away from him, on the beginnings of a journey he desired for himself. For some time he stood there, watching the cheap material spiral gently atop the water, rising on the waves and hitting the face of the water again, with a meagre splash.
He felt the sensation of weight return to his right hand, his entire arm gently shaking to hold the appendage in place. He clutched at his forearms, overcome by a sudden chill, a crippling ferocity disguised as ice in the blood. His legs buckled and the sand cracked open as his knees impacted on the thinly-weaved molecular tapestry. He fell, spinning in sickly cartwheels in a parody of a foetus, shivering through the abyss beneath the mind. He felt his hair catch a final breeze, then nothing. He knew he spun, though the darkness around him offered no landmark to signify thus. For a time, he found solace in memory, he hid from the abyss in happier times, in his first kiss, his mother’s wedding, his grandfather residing in his high-back armchair like a seer atop a mountain peak, the smell of cigarette smoke and coffee and electricity burning holes in the wires. He fell into the old man’s lap, still curled in some desperate attempt to soothe himself.
He found the other memories soon after, spitting out at him from the shadows of tightly-locked eyes. The silent fury of his first breakup, the vague sense of unnecessary terror as she looked at him, the meeting with his father, a stranger in a brand new shirt, the funeral, a pretence at severity for a man he never knew, the long nights when there was nothing to eat and only water to drink, his fruitless torturing of himself, repeated with disgusting regularity. He tightened his hands around his forearms, a weak grip but, to his shuddering extremities, it may as well have been an immovable vice. He trapped himself there, amongst past horrors, with nothing more than closed eyes to stave of the immeasurable abandon, the unknowable suffering.