CIVILISATION By Peter O’Connor
http://peteraoconnor.blogspot.com.au/ https://www.facebook.com/pages/PeterA-OConnor/360839490599334 © Peter O’Connor 2016 All rights reserved.
Civilisation I take a deep, deep breath. Slow in. Slow out. Calm down, Marco, I tell myself. It’s a new day, a new dawn. I reach out gently trembling fingers to the first of the locks on the door. Today is not a good day. It could be a good day, give it a chance. Needle sharp shocks shoot through my muscles urging spasms, suggesting shivers. The cool metal of a lock is beneath my fingers. I wish I could just hold on. Be a part of the coolness. It might be easier if she would just
shut up. Who knows? I obviously don’t. I‘d like to. I’d like to experience an absence of her. When she’s like this. When her words are like a sandstorm, flying out of her searing mouth, lashing everything in their path. This isn’t her though. Not the woman I met and fell in love with. Same as this is not me. I’d never give her cause for such an outburst. But I have. I know by the knot in my stomach. I know by the pain in my heart. Better I just go. Return focus to the cool lock. Digging into my flesh now. I release the pressure. I wish. I undo the locks as she screams. Things smash in the doorway of my
cave but I only see the shadows. Something hits me as I finally get the door open. If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. As I walk down the hallway to the lift I see someone punching the call button, smashing their fist into it like it’s responsible for their lateness / unhappiness / crappy life; one of my neighbours I think, I don’t know, I don’t know any of them. Throbbing, alarms are going off now, pulsing like a migraine in my head. It’s going to kick off now. I hope I can make it to the stairs. Somebody explodes out of their door and sends me flying; a woman
wielding some sort of stun gun. She goes to zap me with it but thinks better of it and settles for an attempted kick in the face. I’m calm today. It’s not a good day but relatively speaking, I’m not too bad. So I settle for swiping her back foot from underneath her and sprinting off. I’m sure that when she thinks about it she’ll realise what a magnanimous gesture this truly is. More doors are opening as people emerge from their cocoons. The caterpillar of internal vitriol emerges as the butterfly of fury. The door to the stairs is to the left of the lifts. I am almost there when the lift button
puncher decides to bolt this way. The lift door then opens and the four wardens within lock eyes on me. They have stun guns as well, but of a higher calibre than the woman who attacked me. The wardens decide it must have been me vandalising the lift. Before I can protest my innocence, before I can argue against the injustice of it all, before I can do anything I’m rolling on the ground squirming in agony, foaming at the mouth and generally not having a very nice day. There may also be kicks landed but when you’re being electrocuted who would notice? I seek solace from the realisation that I pay the wardens’ wages.
An hour and twelve minutes later I emerge from my apartment block spitting venom. I’m still vibrating and twitching like a raging freak. I try to maintain a level stride. I feel like crushing the ground beneath my feet. Smiting it. Smiting every rotten crumbling crappy thing. Idiots. God help the one who did the lift-buttonpunching. I can’t even remember what he looked like though. Feel so bloody impotent. I did get a reluctant apology from the superintendent. So that was nice. But I can’t drive now. Too shook up. Kill myself if I try. This is why I get up at four in the morning; ‘cos of all the shit that goes down every day. I’m still probably going to be late but not
as bad as I would’ve been had I got up at a reasonable time of say six o’clock. The trees in the park are shedding their leaves, their bony fingers reach for the freedom of the sky. At least they can have it. They can have a bit of it, even though their feet are stuck in the ground. I’ll cut the fuckers down. No, I don’t mean that. There’s black smoke on the horizon and the sound of car horns fly through the air like frightened birds circling with nowhere to land. Someone is kicking their dog in the foreground. They better not come near me. The dog turns on them and it looks like it could be a good fight but I can’t stay and watch. I’m rooting for
the dog though. The tube station slinks into view. I start running towards it to make up time but have to stop again when my spasming leg sends me sprawling. I narrowly avoid landing in the mud. My hands are gashed though. My soul destroyed. I need to get to work on time. We’ve loads to do. So much. Impossible amounts. But there are no problems, only challenges. You should have seen it last night; it was indescribable. Truly it was. Such a convivial atmosphere! Such symbiosis! I only finished at eleven-thirty and it’ll probably be the same today. I took the
decision to call it a day after realising that the clump of hair I discovered between my clenched fists must have come from my own head. You’d think things would slow down. You’d think that someone, the government, God, would let people chill. It can’t go on like this. It just can’t. My reverie is disturbed by the revving engines of cars cutting across the field. Once one does it, others follow. They’re not doing the grass any favours but it’s not like the first time it’s happened. At least they give me a wide berth. I was only reading yesterday how a guy was up in court for running over somebody walking
across a pedestrian crossing. What made it worse was the guy had slowed down but decided to speed up again. His defence? ‘Those fuckers cross when the light is against them so why shouldn’t I?’ When I reach the tube station I’m feeling weariness like mist seeping into my body. The lights are too bright in here; the sounds too sharp. I pass through the bomb / poison gas / happiness detector and the bouncers, seeing that I have none of these let me pass. One of them stares hard at me willing me to start but I avert my eyes humbly. Why? I’m mid-way through the ticket gate
when alarms shriek and the gates slam me back. Luckily the person behind me is a school kid. He’s a bit of a weed as well so he says nothing as I shove my way past him. I’m about to give one of the tube employee’s the benefit of my opinions on their modern technology when a sickening thought worms its way into my brain. My ticket is out of date. Perhaps I was in denial about the fact. Who knows? My sub-conscious is very good at hiding things from me that I may not like. It’s either that or the fact that I’ve got a head like a sieve. Or a colander. There’s a queue of about twenty people waiting to
renew. They, like me, have opted out of allegedly easier option of renewing online in favour of indulging in the joys of the Automatic Ticket Machine. The rules of the ATM are thus: You have 15 seconds to complete your transaction. If you do not complete your transaction in 15 seconds then you may reconsider your dalliance at your leisure – at the back of the queue. Any attempt to extend your transaction will result in (a) the machine spitting out your credit card and (b) the bouncers who stand guarding the machine beating the crap
out of you and then depositing you to the back of the queue. Any sign of aggression towards the ATM will not be tolerated. Merely pushing the hallowed buttons at too great a velocity will result in claxons, flashing lights, broken bones, fines, imprisonment, social purgatory, not to mention humiliation. Hence the fact that lots of people come to face this task with a degree of apprehension. It was okay. I’d be fine. There were possibly twenty people in front of me. I had time to prepare. My fingers, shaking gently, sought my wallet wedged into the tight front pocket of my suit trousers. You need these tight
pockets to counter pickpockets. My fingers nicely trimmed to the ragged bloody quick throbbed with a pain now echoed in my temples, but they did their job. I already had my tube card at the ready. All I needed now was my CredCard and my ID card. The queue was shrinking rapidly. It gave me quite a jolt / shock / spasm to see only eight people before me. Just my luck to be grouped with the world’s most efficient citizens. Usually you could count on at least one beating in twenty. It was kind of a gauge. If there hadn’t been a beating in the previous nineteen people there was a good chance that the beating was going to
be visiting you. I was struggling to extract my cards out of my wallet. The problem was my lack of nails. I tried to use the pads of my fingers to slide my CredCard out but they were too slimy with sweat. Reluctantly I tried to use the stubs of my nails. I winced with pain as plastic bit into the exposed nerve endings. The pain and the fear of it caused my reluctant fingers to shake and the task became impossible. My fumbling, spasming digits betrayed me and with a girly yelp the whole wallet slid from my grasp. Now my cards came out. They all came out, skittering across textile / fake marble /
tiled floor, their poxy, plasticky, slidy sounds, scraping across the floor like gleeful cries of freedom. My internal heat distribution system chose this moment to send waves of prickly heat to my epidermis, leaving the core of me an arctic winter. Frigid. Numb. I bent over. I must have done because the grey sparkly floor realigned itself in my vision. Limbs somewhere to the periphery fumbled about on the floor; claws, useless. Something like the arms of a tyrannosaurus rex. I’m waiting for it. I’m dreading it. What am I dreading? The horrible inevitable. There’s a ‘Tut’ and a grunt from the unseen hordes
behind me. I can’t see them but their presence is there like a baying mob of repugnant / angry / contorted fuckers come to witness my execution. Their voices rise up like flames behind me. I’ve got my cards though. I’ve got them between the spongy pink tentacles at the extremities of my upper limbs. There is no more time though. It’s my turn. I leap to my feet and am about to spear the start button but remember to apply the brakes to the javelin mid-flight. You have to be delicate with these precious machines, got to treat them right. I can feel the flames of wrath behind me. There are lasers boring into my skull from either
side. In my peripheral vision I am aware of the bouncer’s tendons straining / crackling / stretching into readiness. They expect me to fail. The scumbag mob expects me to fail. Fuck them. I’m not going to fail. I take a deep breath. Nanoseconds pass. A computer before me – robots behind me – I lick my lips and press a button on the screen. Somewhere far away I can hear a child crying. As one sorrow ends another begins.