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01.
ous Artists :: Music From The Park. Day 020. 1991 saw release of the first disc in the Day For Night imprint, introducing composer Eric Scott to new music circles with “3 Mains” (Day 001). A collection of fifteen suites and miniatures arranged for piano and ensemble, these record ings are constructed and emulated via lo-fi synthetics and samples in lieu of a proper chamber orchestra. For this moving collection of pieces, Eric adopted the genre “avantgarde-jazz-classical – an edgier and more insistent, anti thetical cousin to easy listening.”
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. 1991 saw release of the first disc in the Day For Night imprint, introducing composer Eric Sco, these record ings are con structed and emulated via lo-fi synthetics and samples in lieu of a proper chamber orchestra. For this mog collection of pieces, Eric adopted the genre “avantgarde-jazz-classical – an edgier and more insistent, antithetical cousin to easy listening.”
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ous Artists :: Music From The Park. Day 020.
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ous Artists :: Music From The Park. Day 020.
THE GIFT a journey with maps First of all, I must get past the first man. His face, bearded… Round this corner, I find two more men like him; I must hit them; knock the wind out, then stuff and fly them one by one down this open-mouthed chute. In a moment I will be free and all this will seem like a much-read book. For even now, I am still bemused by the familiarity with which I can take each of my new opponents. I know each of them like the same book; and like any great writer, I know that I too, shall vanquish. 1 Over the wall I go.
So quickly did the blood
rush through my ears, that I could barely hear the noise of my shoes slapping along the pavement. The sounds of my own huffing and panting now filled my senses, swelling out all other sounds. And this, for the second time in one month. The butcher, Mr. Pigleoni, part-time human Steam Roller, had been leaving his cubicle around 7:00, when he found me coming back home. When he took one look at me, his eyes raged and his nostrils flared. Something told me this time I was cooked. I had erred in my judgment today. Instead of crossing the hall where the back entry feeds onto the side lobby, I had instead cut directly across Pigleoni’s front mat. His door had opened; I can remember the
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. sequence quite clearly. His door opened; like a flash I crossed into the light of his doorway, and within moments, he was outside, bellowing after me. “Gerroff my mat, I told yer.” (It was the same phrase I’d heard him use to a school girl selling chocolates once. Not Welcome must have been printed on the mat; I’d never checked. I must do it sometime.) I flew, first toward the door at the first-story landing, but my hand had gone into my pocket and felt only lint; no key. The shortcut across this passageway had only proven futile, and I realized I would have to double back. His massive frame filled the hallway, nearly blocking my exit to the front lobby where I would have taken the stairs to go
up to my place. I sidled past him, neither looking nor speaking. I suppose it was an apology he expected; nothing would come out of my mouth. His hand came down on my shoulder, but here I had been ready and wrested away from it. “Oi, I saw yer crossing my mat. That’s twice now.” I made a quick right; I turned and went back out the door through which I’d come. I felt better, outside the building, now. The alley way was not very long. “Kick off,” I began, but just as quickly, my courage left me. I kept the thought to myself as I stared down at my feet. “Wot? Wotdidyou say?” His face came inches away from mine, and I looked up into his hot, steamy breath. It smelled of day old clams.
I stopped and spoke directly to him for the first time.“Kick off, you dim, fat bastard!” From the arse-end of the alley where I stood, I could see his gaze had now fixed upon me, and with determination, the Steam Roller began to pick up speed. But luck was on my side and I knew on that day that I would get away clean, as I had the time of our very first run-in. *************** I had called him Steam Roller since the day of our first encounter at the laundromat. He had waited at the corner, watching me dump laundry into a machine, and announcing himself with a cough, he had bumped rather heavily into me, offbalancing me and forcing me away into
a corner. “Fidgits,” he muttered, but when I made eye contact with him, he was indicating a dark skinned man entering with an empty basket, heading for a machine which had just stopped running. “Fidgits,” he repeated, as though hoping this would make a connection with me. I averted his gaze now, but in seconds, he was behind me, breathing down the back of my neck as he passed by the other way. His voice was now low, and the steam of his exhalations congealed on my skin. “Fidgits, they all are. Know what I mean?” I looked at him cold, my eyes set into his; his was a face I could not place. “Do you see him, eh, that there fidgit man? Doing his fidgit laundry? What does that make him? A flocking fidgit man?” I turned away, to move
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. to the exit, but he was right with me. “Eh,” he said, “wot are you? Are you one of those fidgit sympathisers we read about?” I was determined not to reply to him now. “Keep your arse clean, do you son? Keep yourself happy in little ways? You do all that, and more, eh?” Now out the door, I took a right, attempting to bypass him all together. Right behind me, I could hear Pigleoni just paces behind me. “You ought to watch who you make friends with. Those fidgits will give you the gloved finger, when you’re not watching them close.” Just past the grocer’s I came to a dead stop. If I could have done it quicker I would have, but the stray box of eggs was an afterthought. Opening the box, I flung three eggs rapid-fire at Pigleoni. They exploded on his beige gut like big
yellow squibs, and I broke into a run. I knew that I would have to return for my laundry later on. To my right, the mouth of the alley was the only way out of there. I made a sharp turn, skidding through the debris left by a careless garbage collector. I flashed ahead to my imminent demise, for while I skidded about, the human steamroller suddenly gained speed in those last few yards of the alleyway and let out a loud chuckle. I dashed into the fence, and with only a minimal toe-hold, I made a successful leg-up and scrambled upwards as fast as I could. At the top, I hit a snag; my pants leg tore against the open chain-link, and this faltering bought Pigleoni the time he needed to catch up with me. With both hands he took hold of the fence and began to shake it. I
managed to tear myself free, and finished going over, but my grip swung clear of the chain, and with the last big shake, I fell—not too comfortably, although some garbage broke my fall—but at least onto the opposite side. I reoriented myself, just in time for a fat, pinkish albino hand to come through and take hold of my shirt sleeve. With a sharp jolt, I was pulled backwards into the chain wall, and a second hand appeared from nowhere and went at my groin, an event set to the musical singsong of the pig butcher who was now singing joyously: “Little Tea-Boy! Oi, com’ere and I’ll give you a kiss that tastes of freshly-washed arse.” A tongue came at me through the chain link, got me in the eye. With one final go, I
smashed at the tongue with my fist and Pigleoni howled as he lurched away from the fence. I hoisted myself away and tore free, but I could hear the Steam Roller calling after me now: “Tea-Boy, you’d better watch out. I can hear you, Tea-Boy, I can hear your every thought.” Since then, Pigleoni had been a man of very few bright words, in my book. “You do understand why you are here, don’t you, Winthrope? You do know where we’ve brought you?” The speaker was a fat, bearded bastard named Lummey. At least, that’s what it said on his badge. Hell, who knows, his name could have been Geronimo for all I knew or even cared. As of right now, he was my captor and my incentive for getting out of.
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020.
It was to arrange for your safety. Your safety from yourself. Winthrope, it would make it much easier on all of us if you would just nod when you understand. I nodded, but not to make things easier. This was not in my best interests at the moment. 2 Hmph, rain... The image of ducks, winging their way south across a milkwhite sky, often comes to mind on days like today. Perhaps I’m only a bit less optimistic than you. I certainly don’t dot my i’s with hearts or put happy faces inside my o’s— I try to make an honest wage and stay clear of trouble. But I have reflected upon the ducks’ life
before; I have projected my own fears upon them, and have allowed their carefree movements to sway me from one extreme of solitude and depression at the noise of their call. I have heard the clamour of their quack as they skate across the sun’s happy little prism… I’m not a heavy person, mind you—I’m always up for a good laugh, as it goes; but more often than not, my life, in contrast to the ducks, seems leaden and dull. I have lived in this city all my life. My parents gone, I am staying in an old tenement flat that was recently re-converted by the council. Though the flats aren’t exactly luxurious, they were not deemed unsafe, either, by the commission, and what the commission agrees on good enough for me… I get this place
for £175 a month, which leaves me enough spare change to go grocery-shopping when I want and take in a show or two from time to time. When I first moved in, right about then, though it may have been a couple of months before, actually… that was when I received my first message. I will now tell you something which you must promise not to share… I’ve been glimpsing odd visions for three years now. Like the ducks, I will see ideas and phrases light up in my head, like from a large, illuminated scoreboard. Much in the way you watch stars—when you focus on no point in particular, a star can seem brighter than if you stare directly at it. The words that come to me are never predictable, and the glimpses are always brief. When
I am alone or distracted, these messages appear more frequently. Usually, the words like me my family cotton-balled tigers, ducks women but as soon as I begin to read them, they flicker and die away. Within moments I usually awaken to find myself alone, walking the tree-less streets of the metropolis. It is as though the sender is not speaking directly to me—although I cannot imagine to whom else. Not very many people out there have their eyes open, in my belief. I compare people to lemmings, mostly; plodding along all day, staring inches in front of their feet, never letting their eyes ever wander from the arrow-straight path that
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. life carries them down. A doctor I once saw told me that I suffered from VFS; a condition which allowed me to see the world around me from a unique perspective—that this could explain why I believed I was hearing conversations that were not really taking place, or why I would view events in this “selective context”. (According to him, I could also hear what people were saying in the next room without ever leaving my seat—he likened it to a movie playing inside my head in which I could interact with any of the characters.) I corrected him, and told him that it was more like waking up from a nasty hallucination, in which events would unfold like a bad vision; that I would see people and that they would speak directly to me; that events, even
unrelated ones, would take place in support of these visions, and that I believed they were really happening to me; that I would awaken from these happenings in a cold sweat. I told him that it was nightmarish. Then, as if the idea of ditching reality became justification for my going insane on a daily basis, this doctor quacked, “Well, I have always felt that too much reality is not what the people want.” He would not lower himself to call it imagination; obviously how he saw it. VFS - Very Funny Sherlock… 3 The first time I remember something like this happening to me. It was ten minutes after 4:00 in the afternoon, and I was lying at the bottom of a card-
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ous Artists :: Music From The Park. Day 020.
board box. I held a job in the darkened back room of a beautiful grey building in the oldest part of town. I went there every day to empty cardboard crates, putting their contents, mostly smaller boxes, onto a large belt where they would slowly creep away through flaps covering a mouth in the wall, off to a place where I would never see them again. I could only hazard a guess as to the present whereabouts of a day’s labor. I guessed that these boxes-within-a-box contained even smaller boxes, and that they in turn contained the things which people would find on shelves when they walked into a store. There was, of course, no real way to verify this, for my job was made clear to me on my first day—to empty the biggest of these cartons, to keep the place
tidy, to be finished by the next morning—not to worry about specifics. I would arrive each morning at ten-sharp to find the night watchman gone and the new shipment ready and waiting. I would empty the crates alone, staying until five, during which time there was never more than one large order to deal with. My employer had long ago told me that as long as the boxes were emptied he didn’t care what I did with my time. “Always too much of it anyway, know what I mean,” I remember him saying. As a precaution I would always clean out the room regularly in case there might ever be an inspection, though it had never actually happened yet. At the end of each day, I would let myself out with a latch key, usually before the night
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. watchman, who seemed lazy about showing up at six-sharp when he had to stay until nine in the morning. I had spoken to him only once; he was a silent man whose gaze said nothing, a man who preferred to read his books. I had once asked him what he was reading, and he had said, “Numbers.” I imagined at the time that he meant the page numbers, since he tended to flip through his book rather fast. The freight room was cold. Because of this, I always brought a coat. Because there was no supervisor around, I knew I could take a ten-minute break when I wanted to. Usually, I would crawl into the fortress of torn cardboard on the floor, and just lie back and gaze at the ceiling above me. Today, as I lay there, I could remember the sky having turned from a bright-
white to a dull-grey as I had come into the building that morning. Now I could hear the rain starting to come down as I lay on the warehouse floor; I could already imagine it streaming down the walls outside, mixing with the bat-coloured bricks into a dirty grey wash, dripping and pouring its way to the sewers, just beyond street level. I was uneasy about being discovered in the back room, lying on the floor, gazing. In the cardboard, I felt safe from most things. I generally felt I had job security, because I did good work. It was here, from my cardboard couch, that I glimpsed a pair of eyes fixed in the dirty blotched window in the casement. It was a sight that horrified me, that gripped me with panic. From where I lay sub-
merged in torn shipping paper, I could see the pale white face of a young girl. She was strange and disturbed-looking, eleven years old (somehow I felt sure of her age); standing on the other side of the glass, knocking to be let in. She was solemn; I stared at her eyes through the sheet of rain that hit the window… I knew I was hidden pretty deep in the cardboard, and I wasn’t sure if I should disclose myself yet. I could detect her eyes, scouring the four corners of the room as the knocking became more insistent. I wanted her to go away or do something else. I was afraid to let her in; afraid to move from where I lay hidden, to tell the truth, mostly because I was embarrassed that this had gone on for already so long. Outside, the sound of thunder muffled her sounds for a moment.
Her voice came distinctly through the window… “Marty? Please?” I prayed that it be a coincidence that she knew my name. In the approaching darkness of night, I could now only make out a soaked little figure; black hair tangled, face pressed at the glass, illuminated by flashes from the lightning outside. One of her hands was raised; it held a rose. The cold emotionless face and the cadaverous skin was streaked with blue shadow running from her eyes, a sign of a strange maturity that exceeded her youth by at least ten years. There she stood, crying and waiting. I continued to lay there in the dark, afraid to move or disclose my whereabouts in the dark. I clutched the cardboard flaps and sank deeper into the pile. Inside, I was sorry for
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. this, I even felt I might understand why she might be crying, but I also felt competely unable to help her out. I closed my eyes. I’m sorry, I thought, I don’t have any donations. I convinced myself that she only suspected I was in here, and that if I stayed put, the whole thing might resolve itself. The pattering on the corrugated tin above me grew louder. I kept my eyes shut, not wanting to meet her gaze. The room was now pitch black, and I assured myself that my inertia would not curse me. I kept perfectly still; the rain was turning into a waterfall, but this did not move me towards the shipping door. The rain suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes. Instead of this girl, there was a billboard;
the words lit up for only a second. I read off only a flash of it before it was gone. ’The answer to the dawn of religious punishmant (sic) have we in—’ …and these lights went out like a power cut. This angered me. I wanted to get out of there. I opened my eyes for the last time, expecting to see the demonic and hateful glare of this little girl boring holes into the cardboard around me, but to the tintinnabulation of the rain’s quiet piddle, I saw no girl, for there was no window actually there in the casement. I guessed it was safe to move now. Rain would sometimes just let up like that. “You realize, Mr. Winthrope, that they are going to charge you...” I couldn’t stop
laughing at the face of this man. He had a fat push-button nose and puffy eyes that looked like peeled grapes. I thought he had a face like a monkey. “Hey, Key Mon, nice attitude...” He gave me one of those perilous sighs that said nothing but mischief to me. “I really do not wish to have to spell this out for you but do you have any idea of where you are right now?” Idle ramble, I thought.... “I repeat to you, do you have any idea as to where you are?” Home, I thought. 4 My home is like a ribcage. It would just seem to swallow me up at the end of each day. I could never remember much about what it really looked like on the way in, I could never
remember it consuming me, I only felt like it was slowly digesting me a little bit more from day to day, such that one day soon I would just be left lying there, used up and shat out one day. This may have been because my only real love affair in this life was with this room and with understanding what made it tick when I was not there to fulfill its sense of purpose. It was located in an old building somewhere in the city where I worked. I ate dinner and moved to the corner table located in a small alcove in the wall. This table was part of the main fabric of my home. It lay at the epicenter of a number of curious and unexplained happenings. For one thing, located above the table in the wall was a wet little patch in the wall, and just above this stain was a moist
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. little chute where I could get messages from the outside. It was not a mail slot. The mail slot was in the front door. It was like a mail slot, but then again, I could never determine where the letters I received came from the hallway, (which lay on the opposite side of the wall) or whether it came from a room just above mine: a room having a similar hole to pass messages down from. Good Cyril, even I knew that the building was old, and that the insides of the walls were hollowed away by both the rats and the builder ants alike. I could easily conceive of a private network of holes from the day when this building had been a series of multi-storied office complexes. The extraneous stairwells must have been sealed off now, all remaining being one
or two eccentric openings in the building’s fabric, like this one peculiar chute. What made it seem strange was the fact that each and every word I received from the outside was from this person named Charlotte, who so far as I knew, or might ever actually know, lived in the room upstairs, directly above me. Every other day there was a letter, and on the Off-Siders, as I called them, I wrote back. I sat at this table—my opening to the private universe I shared with Charlotte—and would stick the messages I wrote into a little crack in the side of the damp opening, pushing them through so that they disappeared. The first time I did this I had feared that my note would be lost, but apparently, from the replies, I determined that each note had been received by the
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ous Artists :: Music From The Park. Day 020.
next day. I wished I could explain how the mechanism worked. I had always figured that my notes would slip down to the basement room just beneath me, where they would land in a chute, and from which she could collect them during the day when I was out at work. Today was Charlotte’s Day. I checked the chute, but there was no note. I began to have that sinking feeling again and I began to breathe heavily and nervously. There had to be some mistake, I thought, and put my entire hand in the moist hole and groped inside frantically for a moment, feeling those unexplained tears welling up behind my eyes. I felt a stiff pain in my throat and my chest. I wanted to lie down, but before thought had settled completely inside me, I
felt something dislodge and fall free into my hand. I pulled the letter out and sighed, clutching it to my face. She had been thinking about me after all. I was excited, and I wanted to show it, but then I looked to the walls next to me. These walls had eyes, if not ears, and I always felt a trifle embarrassed to let my excitement go uncontained each time I received a note from her. What if, for instance, she was watching me through an opening somewhere in the ceiling, and was gathering information about my dependency upon her as she went along. I couldn’t bear to think that she might be planning to control me somehow through this. It was only a remote thought. I mean, it was only a daily progress report, of sorts. I mean, she never told me that she loved me or anything like that;
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. that was not what this was about. But at this moment, I decided that I must be hopelessly in love with something or other, though I could not fully see what. 5 Before I went to sleep, I ate a piece of fruit. It was an orange. It was good. Yet it reminded me of something rather interesting and slightly curious. It reminded me of one day when I had been small. I was walking by myself, feeling lost in the confusion of the big city streets. There were some of those tall “nostalgia buildings” a block ahead of me, the kind of boring middle-class flats that always remind me of being a child and feeling like a child and hearing from others what I was supposed
to like. The rain, which I loved, made me shiver and turn my back on the coldly uninspiring sights around me, and I had closed my eyes to the sinister street—that sinister, finister street—and walked straight into a sidewalk market without really noticing. There was a sign which read, “Oranges—Special Offer, Today Only”, and I felt like buying some oranges for my mother and father. Only I was almost ready to abandon the idea because I was unsure as to what might happen if I did so and they didn’t like the oranges. It was only on THIS day, I now remembered, that instead of feeling like a stupid and naïve child, I went straight inside and bought some instead, not thinking about anything else until I got home. This had been a big step for me, and I
love this story because of that one moment. When I came home, I remember feeling like I should eat one of them, and I had sat alone in my parents’ dining room, and took one out of the grocery bag, and put it on a large white china plate. I was going to cut it open all by myself and eat it, I thought. I even remember meticulously setting a little place for myself to eat at; a fork and spoon and a napkin with a little mat, and a very sharp knife for slicing. I remember being afraid of the knife because it was so sharp, and wondering if I could trust myself not to be careless with it if I picked it up in my hand. It was getting dark out, and there was a window open. I can remember hearing this static white sound in the room around me, and I had kept on looking
out of it to the skyline from the 4th floor apartment where we lived. I looked down at the orange—the only colorful object in this white room, with a white chair and white table and white carpet with an ugly print on it, and me, a white person dressed in mostly white, ready to put it, piece by piece, between white teeth. I remember my father walking into the room and insisting that I go ahead and continue with what I was doing, probably because I had given myself away with fear when I had noticed that I was no longer alone. I remember him telling me to eat the orange because it was good. This is one moment at which I remember most what the phrase “feeling like a child” means to me.
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. Dumbly, I pointed the knife straight down, and I remember closing myself off from my environment. I was ready to eat for my own pleasure when Mummy’s panicked face had suddenly appeared in the nearby window, looking frantic. She was a young woman, and my mental picture of her is always at age twenty-six, the age she was on that very day. My father was about forty at that time. He had married her when she was eighteen. Her eyes dripped wet, blue makeup, from standing outside in the rain, and with a gasp she was quickly inside moving frantically. She warned me not to eat the orange, pointing out that it was a small and sad; that there was something wrong with it. Here my memory fail me slightly on the details. I remember curl-
ing my lower lip down angrily and moving away from the plate. I felt the knife being taken out of my hand as she took it from me and pushed the blade into the orange to show me what she meant. I remember orange juice spurting and gushing from the top of the orange, and then, to my dismay, sprawling between the open halves on the plate, writhed a small white creature, with six partial legs waving in the air at me, a fragile gelatinous body freshly dismembered by the intrusion of a blade, now making a shrill squealing noise in the quiet of the white room. I remember the shrieking going on for a long while as I sat, watching and waiting, until she led me away, hushing my crying and telling me not to worry and that she would put it in the garbage. At the time, the explanation for the
whole thing was that I had been in a dining room, which was for dining, not for eating foreign objects. I remember having been shown the creature again later on that evening, when I had quieted down. After the fact, it sickened me a little less than it had originally. Anyway, the interesting part is that I can eat oranges again now. I just thought I would take a minute and make that clear. 6 It was Tuesday or maybe it was Thursday. I’m not sure, I mean, it was a couple of days later. Anyway, I was walking home, thinking about Charlotte’s Day being
today again. Last night, I had written her a note, saying what I thought might become the start of a big thing. I told her, in the note, that I would like to see her at last. I wrote, maybe, this just might shed some light on some of the confusion I felt whenever I wrote to her, and would that be okay? Oftentimes, as I walked home, I would think about Helena. She was gone now, no idea where exactly, except that for all she was worth, I missed her in ways that I couldn’t quite understand at times. When I first became aware of Charlotte, and dig this part, groovy catmeisters, I thought she was Helena, come back to marry me. It took a lot of thinking to rule this possibility out. I mean, Helena couldn’t
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. come back now, not a year and a half later after the day she had stepped out for that breath of air, and the only explanation that made sense was that either Charlotte was the soul and spirit of Helena, or she was just her exact clone. I don’t even know why I might have assumed such a thing, it just sort of made sense, it added up, from all the things Charlotte would tell me about herself in her notes. So vague, but just enough to make me think that she might be Helena, having come back to marry me. I suppose it was wrong of me to assume that she, like all the other women I had ever wanted, was basically evil or anything, or to assume that she would take any chance available to kick me, make me slip and tumble me hard onto the ground.
I contemplated the issue here, something about the motive for changing one’s belief system. I mean, if that were possible, wouldn’t it be just like deliberately abandoning luggage at a station and taking someone else’s just because it came in a nicer binding? I asked myself about words like hypocrisy weakness goodness-seeking and whether I was the kind to do good only because I was, at heart, evil, begging to be freed from the pain that naturally follow the course of evil. Right then, a poem came to mind: White sky, humming bright, humming loudly Bird flies, cross the sky, skeeming sharply Cross your twigs, cross your
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sticks Keep to feeling humble Bastard cheese, won’t you please Get me through this jumble? Like I really know what that means, I’m sure. 7 I remember walking home. I’d been walking home from the place where I worked, as I had been saying, before I branched off into that tangent. I felt ashamed when I stopped walking and looked into the glass of a window, for the proverbial reflection on my thoughts, the window to my soul. I would have been horrified to think that these notions, notions which I dumped so readily like
an old tub of bath water, might ever become public, like in print, to anyone who might like to glimpse what real humiliation was like. My face, in the glass, was pale, but I was glad to see that I had an expression on my face at all, it was reassuring that I was only making up confusion for myself, perhaps in wanting to be unique, or to be coldly different. Perhaps all this was merely my way of avoiding the trappings of a boring lifestyle. Now it had become quite a boring idea to me. 8 A hypocrisy, is what this was. The word just wouldn’t come to me at first, and left me dangling there like The Misplaced Modifier, my childhood
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. hero. Instead I experienced the nameless fear of looking into somebody’s window. A thin, gauzy apparition, a whey-faced human was suddenly before me, only inches from my nose. The torn face was snapping violently with rage and dragged the veil-like curtains quickly shut. The look in the eyes was such a hateful one that it actually kicked me backward onto the pavement with fear. I was losing my balance, and shooting my head around like a flash, I felt myself going backwards into the traffic. The terrific squealing sound told me that brakes were locking suddenly, jarring at my nerves, and instinctively, I flattened myself. I even visualized my blood flying from beneath the tires as the world stopped to watch me lying there, unsettling and about to die.
The man in the car began to yell at me, something like “heywhoareya” and “getthehellaway fromthestreetchabastard,” and I rolled over onto my side, not looking into his eyes. Hurriedly, I picked myself up from the base of the wall, covering my face and my neck, realizing that the chill I felt down my back and the bumps on my skin were just my recovery from yet another one of my lucid visions. As I quickened my pace, I touched the tops of my legs through my pockets. They were goose-pimpled as well as my arms. Moments later, I could no longer picture the grey face, and in trying to remember suddenly suggested to me that it might not have really been there at all, perhaps just having been some sort of mundane and ungruesome, like a head of lettuce, or
block of wood, or a monkey, or a cabbage—like I said, something mundane. 9 I kept walking, and remembered this, now. Helena had actually been on the bed, watching TV. I thought, from where I had lain on the floor, of her body having been in the same room, there, for me to hold. Really. I want you, you know. I want you now. I want you now. To be mine. Can you hear me above the TV? She had said this. A high shrill noise like the sound of a malfunctioning appliance filled my ears, but I had heard and nodded from where I lay. Then I had looked from the TV to the bed, and back and
forth again. Come here, lie down next to me. I got up then, my pulse pounding, but as I passed the window, I was stopped by a shout. I saw that two garbage men were not emptying garbage and were stopped, looking up at me at that very moment. Two big men (made of garbage perhaps) whose voices I could hear very clearly. One bellowed deeply from the bottom of the alley. Hey is my Rosalie in there? I was not looking outside anymore, I did not like watching people from above. Hey faggot! You heard me! I looked at Helena on the bed, watched the curve of her body, a curve I had not ever yet touched. Or am I gonna have to come up there and find her? There was laughter from down below, and I moved away from
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. the window, for I know there was nowhere safe in this big city where a guy like me could stay out of trouble form guys like them. Hey faggot. My buddy doesn’t believe what he’s hearin’… My buddy thinks he’s gonna have to go up there an kick yer ass! Helena shifted sensuously on the bed, crossed and then uncrossed her thighs. I am going to go up there now. And I am going to kick his bottom! I could hear the BOOM, BOOM! of their throwing down the trash cans and their grunting laughter as they dropped the metal cans. I could hear the fire escape starting to creak and shake and as the burly one rattled it with his weight. Helena stopped this by appearing
at the window wearing her robe, now pulled shut. You two goons get down off of there. The building ain’t strong enough for another earthquake! She stood there right where she was, hands in pockets, watching them. Haw haw haw! Hey babe, you’re gonna need rebuilding when we’re done fuckin’ ya!!! Her legs were goose pimpled. There was laughing. Just laughing at what she saw coming up at her from out of the window, laughing from down in the street below her. I was now too far from the window to see anything. I lay on the floor, turned away from her, covering my eyes with my arm. I wanted, more desperately than anything in the world, for her to have stayed a hundred thousand miles away from that window.
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ous Artists :: Music From The Park. Day 020.
But she was standing with her head through it, whistling. Honeybuns, let’s see the crack of yer ass! Ooh, hey lookit there! Now ain’t that one fine piece of ass! Hey that ain’t yer Rosalie! No, but fuckable!! I could still hear their grunting laughter rising in pitch, as the wall of the building began to tremble with the clatter of their footsteps and the lecherous grunting of their laughter, getting faster. Helena turned to me and whispered sensuously, Watch me… it’ll take one second, but then it’ll all be over… My mind, all of my insides were screaming no as I lay curled on the floor, at the other end of the room, waiting for all this to end. Like always, I knew exactly what
my worst fear at that moment was, and I could see it was about to happen right then and there. The last thing I remember seeing was Helena as she turned to give me a reassuring smile. She put one naked leg through the window and stepped right out onto the fire escape. She turned outside on the metal landing, looking sensuous and beautiful. Her cleavage was visible through the opening of her robe, pushed together by the way she had her arms forward. She leant backwards on the railing, like a forties’ model and blew a kiss down to the creatures below. The shaking of the landing was incredible. It just wouldn’t stop. She sat on the railing, pulled her robe open, and uncrossed her legs. The din from below increased, along with the huffing. You boys want a little of this,
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. maybe? Helena winked at me sensuously, gave me a teasing kiss, which she blew at me through the window, and waved bye-bye. Then she disappeared from the railing. There was this sickening thud from below. Gawd. Lookit what you done, Lee… I didn’t do it. She wanted to get fucked, and then she jumped! I shut my eyes. It was just like I always pictured it. The rattling began to decrease, to the panicked cries of a plan underestimated, another plan gone desperately wrong. And then the sound that a trash truck makes when it has been filled and stops to chew its food. The sound of exhaust before it drives away. I was driven to my feet and racing to the window now, I could
see nothing but a bloody trail leading to the newly-departing trash truck. And no Helena, no men made of garbage. That was almost two years ago. It must have been more than an hour before I moved away from the window, and I remember never having looked out of that window again between then, and the day I moved out a week later. I put my trash out a day early, now; I also recycle. 10 It’s been almost two years since i last saw a grown woman naked. I found myself standing by the pond’s edge in Huntsberry Park. It was the only place name i never forgot. i can’t even remember the name of the street i used to live on, or the name of the street where i work, i just
know how to get there from here. Huntsberry i remember, because, when i had been a child (earlier on, i mean) i had used to think that there was such a thing as a huntsberry. Then when my mum used to take me to this park, i used to go off and play, hunting for huntsberries. That was why i had figured the park had gotten its name. Only there weren’t any, there were gooseberries, the kind i ate, and i made the mistake for years of calling them by that stupid name. The edge of the pond. Yes, that’s where i was. i had been walking and thinking for so long, telling my story over and over in my head, that i crossed several streets and went into the park. The pond was full of ducks. Grey ducks, black ducks. One white duck. Sitting alone, in the middle of all the others.
Something at my feet was blown up against me in the cold breeze, and i looked and saw that it was a long sheet of tissue paper with a piece of shit wiped fresh on it, that had left it to cling to my leg. Four inches to the left of the paper were also a pair of feet belonging to a pair of dark grey trousers which sprung up from out of them in an almost human shape. The shoes had apparently crept up alongside me when i had not been looking. He apologized suddenly as i looked him in the eye. “YOURS, SIR,” he said, shoving a small yellow package at me, as though he believed i had actually dropped it. Before i could really reflect upon this act, the man had turned and walked away; like the wind, he had vanished.
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. Empty handed, emptyheaded, he had vanished. Perhaps he was miserable now, i mused, looking at what i held in my hands. It was more like he wished it had not been someone else’s in the first place; that he was handing over something of greater value than he would have ordinarily wished to part with. I hated this man. He filled me with contempt and loathing, for now i held in my hands something of value where he held nothing. Whereas i would gladly have returned it to him if he hadn’t left so fucking quickly. Anyway, nothing in the world really belonged to anyone. The clothes you wear; if they were yours in the first place, then how could they get stolen? And why would you have to ever pay for them if they were truly yours?
You lose everything you try to keep. And you end up keeping things, ideas, memories that you wish you’d left years ago. Now, this invisible man was gone. Another fucking memory to live with. There was a bench; and next to this bench was one of those little bins LITTERBINS-Cyrilfuckingdamnit!!! litterbins. Why does my mind never work the way i want it to…? Litter bin, litter BIN. There was a bench; and next to this bench was one of those litterbins. i walked through the man who was now invisible, over to the bench and stood midway between it and the litterbin. I stood, my mind festering, almost, waiting, and decided that it would be the best thing to
first open the package, and then to throw it away, immediately. So i opened the package. Inside it was a book. Just one book. i looked one last time at the unmarked package and tossed it. The book had some big words printed on the front cover. They were in gold embossed letters, and they rose up, majestically over the image of a thunderous looking mountain, like they were supposed to be the words of Cyril himself. They read: WHO AM i THAT ONE OF HIS CHILDREN SHOULD DIE FOR MY SINS??? Now this was the sort of thing that had never pissed me off before today, because i had never thought too much about whether i was really a bad person or not. i lived my everyday life, from day to day, i didn’t do anything
to hurt anyone, i didn’t think so , anyway, so why was this GIANT FUCKING SLOGAN in my FACE all of a sudden? I felt like the innocent fool who spends his entire life in purgatory, repenting for sins he never committed; like the religious zealot who screams Cyril’s FUCKING SLOGANS all day long and spends so much time knelt in prayer that she doesn’t even find the time to wash her FUCKING KNEES!!!!! I felt like the lamb who unwittingly lays down next to the wolf to have his heart torn out; I felt like the cursed dog who is forced to sniff the shit on his own lawn crapped out by the neighbor’s dog. So why was i to carry this book? Today, this assumed meaning. i hated this invisible man. It gave me a mean vision,
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. a vision of slews of thousands suffering by MY HAND, and it was GREAT! i mean, FUCKING GREAT! How could someone even go and put an idea like that in someone’s head? I hated this invisible man. i wished he would reappear so i could give him back his effing book, and give him a firm knee in the bollocks for my trouble. But that was not the problem. I wanted to drop this book in the garbage, drop all these Questions. But i felt too sorry for the book to have been brought into existence and suffer all the sins of the bastards who had written it. 11 There was this one time, however.
There was this one time
when I came pretty close to running into Charlotte. I have this phone, see, and it’s connected to the outside world. I mean, I always thought so. I don’t ever get to use it much, but once I tried to phone down to the computer lady with the correct time, and it worked. That’s the only time I ever used it. Anyway, this one time, I did all the usual, came home, walked straight into the Ribcage, digested, got shat out, and sat at my kitchen table… I was feeling rather excited. Somehow, I knew there would be more in store for me than the usual when I had woken up that morning. Anyway, it was exactly 18:22 and I was putting my hand in that damp little hole… There was no letter. Charlotte had not put an envelope down the hole for me today.
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ous Artists :: Music From The Park. Day 020.
I was momentarily in shock; the fast breathing, you know, all that, but then my fingers touched a torn piece of paper that was wet, almost pasted by moisture to the inside of the little spout. I pulled it out, and there, in this exacting handwriting that I knew to be hers, was only one thing. The paper said, 55 1 59 6 6
so who s the clam? 2 am.
and that was it. Well, it was certainly obscure enough that I made a guess, an approximation, and that night, I pulled the old phone-machine dialing thing over to the hutch where my mattress was, (it was a narrow alcove space between two walls,) and I lay there in the candlelight for what must
have been hours, looking at that piece of damp paper, which I had tacked up by moisture onto the section of wall at my feet, right under the poster that was once a page from an old Sears Roebuck style catalog from the forties. There I lay, looking between my toes at it while the small flames across the room traced shadows that danced vaguely on the wall of my little alcove. When I sensed that the candles were just about to burn out and I could otherwise keep my eyes open no longer, I rolled over and looked at the little clock in my kitchen. It was time. I had guessed that she was going to be up at this hour, and this cryptically drawn number was hers. I was going to know for sure. I picked up the phone
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. machine and looked at the little ear-piece as I prepared to dial the numbers. I had worked out what I was going to say all night, as I lay waiting. I was going to tell her that it was destiny that she had come into my life this way. I was going to tell her that I had always known who she was and now was the time to meet. I was all prepared with my clothes nearby and a floor plan of the building, in case she asked me to come up and see her where she was. There was no telling what was in store if she expected me to try and find her in this building, I was equipped and ready for all, flashlights, tubing; the building had no power between midnight and six in the morning. I removed the little earpiece and as I brought it forward, I could hear a clicking sound. I replaced it and lifted it anew,
choosing my moment carefully. It was clear now—I spun the rotary dial and waited, my breath trembling. …RRRING. …RRING. …RRRING. …RRING. …RR - click. …RRRING. …RRING. …RRRING. …RR- click. Silence. I said, “Hello?” feeling all the more nervous about this phone business now that I had started to play along. I never liked the phones. You never knew if they were going to work or not. I repeated, “Hello?” “Hello,” replied a voice. I was in silent ecstasy. I pulled up the paper on the wall at my feet and began to read it. “Um… Is
this 5-5-1, 5-9—” “You called—!” Her whisper was full of hushed excitement. “You gave me your number… I couldn’t believe—” “Wait, shh, wait!!” Her voice hissed a panicked urgency and I heard a hand clapping over the mouth piece on the other end. There was some hushed whispering on the other end, beyond the hand. Maybe a man’s voice, I thought, but it was not the least bit certain. Then her voice came back on the line. “I need you!” I cut in. “I have to meet you some time, to explain everything to you properly.” “Yes, but it can’t be now. Not for a little while. Please try to understand. It can’t be now. Not until…” “Are you… alone?” I
asked, gulping with unease. “…Not until later… OK?” The clicking on the phone set was getting gradually louder, covering up the voice that was so passionately trying to explain what I had been waiting forever to hear. “Charlotte?” I clicked the hand set. “Charlotte? Do you hear me?” Marty? A lost-sounding voice had replaced hers on the other end. My mummy’s voice, one so bizarre and distant that it actually filled my heart with cold terror, and panic. Marty… However this voice could have gotten through onto this line, I still do not know. It was mysterious, pleading, disconcerting. Marty? Are you having problems, Marty? You know we’re going to have to cut off this line if you are.
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. You know what I mean, Marty. We can’t bear to see you this way. You’re hurting us… …Humiliating us… …Play nice. I couldn’t really take any of this in. Play nice, Marty, or we’ll have to come back onto the line and disconnect you. I waited, cold, wet and terrified. After a moment, I uttered, “Charlotte?” but the line was as cold and silent as a dead one. The fear in my heart was so sudden that I could not even speak properly. I couldn’t see whether my mother was now working for the phone company. It was all too strange to take in. Too chilling. Trembling, I moved the receiver back onto its cradle and went under the sheets, waiting for it to ring again. Waiting for it to ring again.
Waiting for it to rring again. Waiting for it to ringagain. Wait…for…. Waiting for…. Wtng for it to rrgng ag Wfritornnnng. RRRING. RRRRINGGGGG!!!! The sound that awoke me was not the phone, but the alarm, getting me up for work. There were no explanations for what had happened with the phone thing. I have never been able to figure it out, as both my parents disappeared eight years ago and the voices that I heard were too real to be ignored. I don’t make calls after midnight now. Chilling. 12
Still walking. My thoughts were still pumping, all from some religious booklet called “Who The Fuck Am I To Be Caught Dead In The Same Room As Cyril???” Or something. I could be meeting Charlotte soon, I thought. If I wanted badly enough, maybe she would meet me at last; I had visions of her coming alive, warm and erotic in my arms, all mine, naked and real in front of a glowing TV. Maybe this was due to what had been coming down between us. I knew I was ready for her. Maybe she was ready for me now. I knew she must want it. And from me. Yeah. Any woman who could write something like:
“Withered rose of passion, you melt my alarm clock The tick goes moo moo mooing Your tock feels hard as a rock,” was clearly ready for night’s hard fucking. Or a free ticket to an institution. The fact that her poems never made a bit of sense, and that she wrote one every other day in her notes to me, made them all seem a bit lost, Perhaps meandering. And to me, the thought of the sexes interacting, that question, you know, (physically) just seemed so horribly, horribly… distant to me now, something in a moment to be only shattered perhaps by a natural event; a disaster. A rumble in the ceiling, falling plaster, walls crashing down over the image of frail human bodies
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. (my building is an older one.) bodies climaxing, and the image of my neck craning backwards and up from the subject below me to see nothing more ever again. That sort of thing. Confusion and destruction. From this thought, I came to again, next to the pond in Huntsberry Park. Well, these ducks were at least happier than me, in that they didn’t spend days on end indulging horror fantasies of death or hallucinating self-torture. Not at least, as far as we knew. For a duck, I mused, a useful life was one spent far away from the question of purpose; of whether or not there was even any sense of waste. I envied the ducks because they would never believe that knowledge stands in
the way of inner peace. The ducks were quacking at me, loudly, to feed them. The white duck was no longer in the middle. His corpse lay by the pond side, where two of the more carnivorous grey ducks had already begun to savage him in lieu of bread crumbs. I was a tiny bit shocked; perhaps I had missed the fact that this white duck might have been ill for any length of time, and that the other ducks might have been waiting for him to succumb to the food chain. 13 It occurred to me that I wanted, and needed to be good. Somehow, I needed to touch home base now. My feet crunched and
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ous Artists :: Music From The Park. Day 020.
sloshed through the wet gravel, as brick buildings moved by me, and houses marched past, heads hung low, as I searched for the alley that led to my own. I laughed as I passed the dark corners of the brick walls where I knew that my imagination waited in the shadows, lurking, trying to trace green, puffy monster’s faces onto ordinary men; bloated, fat, even cowering with hatred or fear. Today I would forge on; find my way out. Ahead I could see my apartment building. Yes, it was mine because I chose to designate it as such. Perhaps in that sense of the word, possessions were merely those things we consent to calling our own. Providing we are willing to assume the responsibility. In that sense, I suppose, the hallucinations were mine,
too. I certainly could not pass them off onto anyone else. The biting question was why on earth would I choose to hallucinate an unpleasant image, such as that of… I was walking beneath a shadow, now… I looked up, all I could see was that a figure had just propelled himself from the roof of the Stineway Building. He was looming high above me, quickly gaining speed— there was a shrill screaming, that of a woman on a fire escape, wailing uncontrollably. The body was twisting and flailing, I dashed and before It was was couldn’t too late
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. I was standing, gasping, beneath the awning of the pig butcher’s shop and a small group of residents were watching what used to be Mr. Pigleoni, the pig butcher, twitching and flailing in two pieces on the concrete next to his shop. I couldn’t bear this sight it was insane lots of people kill themselves in the big city Nobody should have to. The worst part was that as I watched him die, I imagined that for his last waking moment, he was having a hallucination that the ground was his friend, and that nothing was important enough to stop him doing this. I needed to go home to talk to somebody to find Charlotte.
14 I need a tactic. I need to uncover all. This was the place and time. I had it all worked out by the time I got to my door. I entered, double-bolted the door, and headed for the table. It was 19:04. I sat down, two feet firmly on the floor, and reached into the hold. The note I pulled out was in a sealed envelope. I opened it eagerly. I read: Andre The truest axiom of lovers there are Take me ’twixt the highest Walters Bag me ’tween the deepest skies If you have a penny, lot lest ha’ a farthing I
(pant) Make your move while receivest I” In wait, 5515 966 It was the second time in the history of Charlotte’s Notes that she had left that number for me. And the first time, there had been some unexplainable nightmare halfway through. Should I try again? I asked myself. By Cyril, she had signed it “In wait,” meaning she was ready to hear from me now. I had no choice if I intended to meet her. I dialed. Holding my breath, expecting the nightmare to resume, but with this time, nothing. Not even a ringing tone. Could it be the phone? Dead? I tried again. Nothing. It was plugged into the wall, and today it did nothing.
What an injustice… What a fucking injustice. I had not paid the note on the phone thing in a little while, but here now, they had decided to take it away from me. Like my clothes, my phone, perhaps consent was not really an issue in ownership. I took the broom, I began to sweep. I wanted to clean this mess up; to turn it into something else, but I couldn’t bring myself to move from where I stood in the kitchen. Something I had never thought of before. Carefully, I placed the wooden chair on the kitchen table, smack in the center. I put a stool next to it on the floor, and used it to climb up first to the table, then the chair upon it. I stood, towering above the
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. room, suddenly able to see into all the corners. My face was only a few inches from the ceiling. I still held the broom. Firmly, with both hands, I touched the ceiling. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. Four times I hit the ceiling. I waited. The air grille was just about a foot to the right of my head. I leaned over into it. “Charlotte?” I whispered. “Charlotte?” I knocked four more times, then whispered her name again, this time a little louder. “Charlotte? Can you hear me, Charl—” The sound of a piece of paper hitting the bottom of the hole and fluttering out onto the floor interrupted me. I almost jumped down from ceiling, in my haste,
and flipped the paper over. door s open. X O X O X I wasn’t sure exactly where the door was, but I now understood that it was open. Door… to her heart? Door… to her mind? To her place….? I had never been upstairs in the building. I had never thought of going up and looking. I was afraid to. Now that seemed to be the only way. The stairs were old, musty and disused. I had never seen anybody on them, nor had I ever seen anyone enter or leave the building. I could only imagine that the small brown stains on the steps that formed even-sized drops led either up or down to the scene of the crime. The rug was a worn, old Indian print,
eroded to the point of transparency at the middle front edges, where everyone had at one time put their feet. There were two flights of them to get to the fifth floor. at the top of the landing, beside the window that looked down upon the alley, an old disused railway sign read E PERICOLOSO SPORGERSI DEFENSE DE SE PENCHER NICHT HINAUSLENEN DO NOT LEAN OUT! I peered through the window, which was open, to the ground below. I could see an ambulance picking up the pieces that remained of Mr. Pigleoni. I kept on climbing. The fifth floor was an exact duplicate of the fourth. All the doors were unmarked by numbers, names, or any extra-
neous markings. I asked myself now how many times I could have accidentally miscounted the number of flights on my way up and accidentally spent the night in someone else’s room. Same rug on the stairs, same cracks in the wall, same light green paint, same decrepit chandelier midway down. I walked to the door which corresponded to where mine was; that was the only way I knew how to find it. I had only this clue to determine where she lived, to pretend I was going to my own place. There, at the back end of the corridor, second to last door on the right, was the room that would have been mine on the fourth floor. My breathing was starting to get hard; my penis already was. I decided that this must be right.
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. When I touched the door, I could see it was shut; when I knocked, however, there was no answer. I turned the knob gently, and opened the door. The room was dark, but only because some of the shades were drawn. my room had no shades, for no windows; in this regard, this place was strikingly different from mine. It was softly decorated. Warm, fuzzy-wuzzy things hung from the wall, objects decorated in lace, a large bookshelf filled two-layers-deep, from top to bottom, with books that looked used and second-hand. There was a kitchen nook, just like mine, with a wooden chair. And the hole in the wall—the Moist Hole—in this room was a giant gauge; almost an orifice, it had clearly been
made by the occupant of this room, evidenced by the nature of the excessive chopping and hacking that had destroyed much of the wall’s surface in order to produce it. Most of the wallpaper here was torn away, almost as though this insane room had been fighting desperately to breathe on its own. I stepped part way into the space and stopped. “Charlotte?” “In here.” I stepped through to the back corner of the space, where the back wall gave way to the same sort of alcove where I had put my bed in my apartment. In here, too, the room had been converted in the same way; the mattress jutted out from the little space in the dip of the wall, and there, in the bed, was the person whom I assumed to be Charlotte.
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ous Artists :: Music From The Park. Day 020.
She lay naked under the covers, a sheet and two blankets drawn just up to her neck, her bare arms outside, smoothing down the covers to trace firmly the outline of her body in the bed. Her hair was thrown about on the pillow, and in the dim light, I could see that she was smiling at me. I fidgeted, I couldn’t quite smile back, for my heart was beating too fast. “Come here, Andre…” she said, beckoning, but I couldn’t really move or anything. I could see the outlines of her breasts through the linen; she had pressed the sheets down to trace the outline of her crotch as well. I stood, in awe, looking at the elderly woman in the bed, and wondered how this woman could be masquerading so freely as Charlotte. Didn’t she know she would be discovered so easily?
How did she live with herself? 15 Over the wall I go... These may seem like familiar words, maybe to you, but to me they are once again a reality. From above the short wall, I can see that I must make a clear escape from my captors. And I shall vanquish! I am turning about in my skin; I am unleashed from this robe with the tresses; free to blow like the wind, free to find my Charlotte. But first, I must get past the first man. His face is the bearded one...Around this corner, I find two more men like him; I must hit them; knock the wind out, then stuff them and fly
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020. them one by one down the open mouthed chute. In a moment I will be free. All this seems like a too-familiar book. I am bemused by the familiarity with which I can take each of my opponents. These corridors are all white; white space, like the margins of the book; white, as in unwritten. And I will now write the ending. It ends with me taking Helena, or Charlotte as she prefers to be known, squarely and securely up the ass. I will take her from the rear, as I am taking these flailing peons who stand in my way...just a grab of the hair, pulling the head back towards me, as such, and *snap* you can just about hear the crack as I tug the skull back, then swing the loosened body round and into a headlock and take them down for
the count. I can take each hurdle, like the tension mounting in my prick, and I will send it home, ease her on nice and slow and good. See these frail bodies? Anything they can do, I can do better. I windmill around, I run, I spin, and they fall to the ground. All in the good name of reclaiming my fair Helena. 16 Running free. [In which Andre runs free, for his life and sanity as it were. He sits on a park bench in Huntsberry Park, sees the man in the distance, and convinced that it’s the same one, finds the man who gave him the book, and kills him with his bare hands. He runs; finds himself lost, sitting on the bench where the chapter began.
He finds things relatively unchanged. Sees the man walking, and wakes from his hallucination.] 17 Home. Perhaps there was no reason for me to have ever assumed that she might look like Helena, talk like Helena, or have any of Helena’s physical attributes. It was kind of fucked, I thought. I was in the fresh air of Huntsberry Park again. The sun wasn’t yet down, the air was still charged with exhaust. It wasn’t a full day yet, and I still had some time to think, to reckon things out. I could go back, but the thought gave me the willies. I decided to think about the ducks instead.
They had it good, maybe, but maybe not so great after all, either. Okay, so I did have a talent. My imagination was the gift I now held, something I could doubtless be proud of. Now it no longer seemed as convoluted a matter. In retrospect, my hallucinations were nothing more than a pathetic onslaught of disturbing imagery. Perhaps, I decided that day, instead of boxes and crates, I should give my heart to the harnessing and polishing of these nightmares and images, all else having become absorbed into me. I was lucky. I had forsaken nothing. All for the sake of this, this one attribute. end
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020.
Ronan Hyde :: The Gift. Day 020.
Rhythm Factory Day 020 :: Music From The Park Release Date: 8 May 2007 track title
01 Rhythm Factory 02 Rhythm Factory 03 Mr. No-Logo 04 Found 05 Mr. No-Logo 06 Mr. No-Logo 07 Salvador Dalek 08 Rhythm Factory 09 Found 10 Mr. No-Logo 11 Salvador Dalek 12 King FM 13 Mr. No-Logo 14 Mr. No-Logo 15 Found 16 Mr. No-Logo 17 Found 18 Mr. No-Logo 19 Künstfabriken 22 Found
tempo time
Ether Ore 100 0:42 AESM : Light Remix 140 3:56 Burn Me (Mix 2) 125 1:48 The Human Letter 109 1:28 Breakdown 75 1:40 Macrobatic 90 3:06 Polyanalacolyte : Expandedmix 120 2:25 The Invisible Boy : Edit 170 5:58 To Kiss Her Lips : Edit 104 3:01 Mook 89 0:54 First In Three : Adventuremix 120 2:16 Smell My Professor (Mix 3) 90 1:50 I Don’t Dream In Colours Anymore (Mix 2) 125 4:48 Miscreant (Mix 2) 100 1:46 The New Math : Wandsworth Mix 91 7:00 The Grunt Garde (Mix 2) 119 2:02 Beta (Baderdédé) (Mix 4) 91 3:32 Arts Et Metiers (Mix 3) 76 3:32 Come Beat! (Mix 2) 170 1:45 The Human Letter 109 1:28
17.