Through The Broken Gate

For the getwriting saturday flash challenge. I sit down to write and I have no idea where I'm going.

***

In his head. He thinks, and there's a space, there's a place where he could go. He could see it clearly, but he never quite makes the decision to walk through, walk there, to see. There's a whole world out there, or in there, in his head, but he never quite sees it and he walks past everyday.

His shoes scuff and his stylised jacket hangs from shoulders that don't quite manage to be broad. It's long, his jacket, a treasured possession. He allows it to define him sometimes, or, he wishes it would. The leather isn't new because he couldn't quite afford new, but unfortunately it's not quite old enough to have that worn look of cool. His shoes scuff and his jacket hangs above his ankles as he kicks up dust, walking past. In his head.

There's a book, in his head, and he reads it like an A-to-Z. A lost A-to-Z that never managed to get listed. He lives from it, wandering, checking it next to constantly. It has clean pages. A map of white blank places that have nothing in them that he must work out how to get to. He always walks, he never drives, but it's all about pollution and how to get from one place to another just to besmirch. White blank spaces are the answers he finds, and every question's in there for him, thumbing clean pages between the worn covers, looking for the delineated shape of appropriate answers.

Yes, Ana, he did remember to empty the washing machine.

He passes the gates every day, and he's never turned to the page where he thinks they lead. They're blank and white and white and blank and he never wants to look closer, doesn't want to see because maybe they're engraved or maybe they got dirty, and that would be disruptive. He doesn't think about them; he has to make effort to make sure he doesn't, but he keeps them away from his thoughts in his head. The gate in his head not in the thoughts in his head. Are they smooth, do they clink? Would they spin, should he... what?

They feel like paper. He doesn't know how he knows this, but they feel like the paper of his A-to-Z. As far as he's aware he's never touched them, never even brushed up against them. They're crooked a little and he walks past every day, making a point of not looking. Everyday on white pavements, map in his back pocket and laptop bag computerless, stuffed full with papers. He'll have to get the strap replaced, and his tied doesn't match the shirt his mother bought him last birthday.

So the gates are broken and he's never looked close enough to find that out. It's written in childish pencil, scribbled in the cover of his A-to-Z next to the phone number of the last hairdresser's he went to.

They didn't cut it right. Too long at the back.

The gates are broken and if he pushed, even a little or a bit or at all, he could walk through or climb over or a combination of the two. He doesn't want to, he's never going to. And he doesn't look closely, because he doesn't even want to know about the space where he could go.

Maybe he put the gate up. Maybe he knew enough to break it. So that, if he were to look closely he couldn't help but see through to the space behind it. Never going to. It hasn't always been there, but it's been long enough that he knows not to walk through. Walk through the gate, incorporeally, large heavy spikes staring up at the sky of his mind way above his head, wide and imperial. Something solid him walking through, in his head.

He stands in the street and sometimes the rain hits, sliding disconsolately down his slightly greasy hair. Not offensively greasy, just the natural oils. The neatly ironed folds of his suit start to hang themselves out, and his one piece of rebellion, his out-of-place jacket is a dark spot against the suburban gardens adjacent to the bus stop. Number 40 arrives and he steps on, weak ineffectual hand discreetly caressing the handrail, needless firm and self-assuring.

Maria is a pretty girl. She's only 5'1", curvy and mouthy. She has shocking dark hair and a small turn-up nose, and she gets the same bus everyday. Somebody won't talk to her, won't ever say hi. But she's a very pretty girl.

Posted by Missiedith at July 18, 2004 12:39 AM | TrackBack