Mother

[Psimon]

Mother

*************

We were sitting in the coffee shop on Courtney Place when James came in and told us that Thomas was about to shoot himself. We were stunned. James said that when Thomas told him what he was going to do he could think of no reason to dissuade him.

“Are you going to do anything about it?” I asked.

“No.” He ordered a latte and sat down to await the sound of the shot.

I glanced at him as he sipped his latte as one who had lost hope long ago. James had already finished his coffee and was walking to the door, an unlit cigarette, his fifth of the hour, between his trembling fingers when the shot finally came. The sharp report caused him to drop his cigarette, and he paused before bending to retrieve it from the floor. It was some few moments before he moved again, reaching the sanctuary of the doorway where he could safely light up without fear of disapproving looks or the impending doom of prosecution for smoking in a public place. After several attempts at lighting the filter James threw the cigarette into the street and swore as his shoulders sagged in his black suit jacket. We stared at our friend before checking the levels of our own coffees, unsure how to begin to offer condolences in such a situation as we found ourselves that afternoon.

 

James and Thomas had always been closer to each other than to any of us. There was an unspoken camaraderie between them that had no room for a third member. While the rest of us lounged in our hideaway in the pine trees behind Room 3 pondering how we might steal a glance at Miss Garmonsway’s ample cleavage, James and Thomas whispered together of deeds that were far more divisive. They spoke of revolution, not evolution, in Biology, and of Marx, not marks in History. They walked to a different drummer’s drills. The sweat of the proletariat was upon their brows as they ran the school cross-country, imagining that around every corner lay some ruling class pansy that needed a damn good kicking from the boot of the down-trodden. And kick they did. They kicked the Somerset boy like he was a miscreant dog, and kept kicking him until Mr. Humphrey hauled them bodily away, saving Somerset from total annihilation. As it was, he never returned to our school, or any school for that matter. He had suffered enough of a beating that he was unable to add two and two or count the moments between the times that his mother had to wash his wasted body, or feed him another spoonful of pureed apple, or wipe his arse after he had soiled himself again. Served the privileged bastard right, James and Thomas had blustered to us and we stared slack-jawed at the most evil pair of juvenile delinquents we had ever laid our eyes on. They were two of our number, but even we had to acknowledge that they had crossed the boundary between schoolboy fantasy and prison yard shiving with unnerving ease.

 

It was ten years before any of us heard from them. Thomas phoned Michael one evening, and Michael, according to his recollection of the event, nearly shat himself when Thomas revealed who he was. Thomas was more softly spoken than we had remembered. The State system can no doubt claim a measure of success in the rehabilitation of such a seemingly unsalvageable piece of human flotsam, but whatever the reason, Thomas seemed a different man. A man now, yes, but somehow less than a man. Some element of his being had been carved from his soul and expelled. Some fragment of his psyche, perhaps a bloody big fragment, had been sheered from the glacier of his being to come crashing down and lay broken into millions of razor-edged pieces at the base of his humanity. He seemed, and this is a cliché, I know, a shell of a man. A façade. But he was pleasant company, liked a good latte as much as the rest of us, and though he never told us what had happened in those intervening years, he felt safe to be around.

 

 

James was a wreck. His experience with State care had left him fragmented but, unlike Thomas, his shards had stubbornly refused to fall away, clinging to his mind like a collection of irritating psychological scabs. James was now in community care, having been institutionalised for much of the time he had been away. He rattled off the names of his prescription drugs like a compulsive gambler reading the form guide for the coming week. A glacial sheen covered his eyes as he named his new best friends, licking his lips and twitching his forefinger and thumb together as though picking each lover from his harem of the day’s dosage tray. We were never too sure about James, but we accepted him as a prodigal son anyway, embracing him, enfolding him within the bosom of our coven as though little had changed between us all. It was all illusionary, of course, but when one wishes to escape the realities of one’s life, it does no good to simply embrace another reality, does it?

 

So there we met at the coffee shop on Courtney Place every Friday, ready to fall headlong into another weekend of café get-togethers and cultural experiences that defined the young urban set. We’d catch a play together, or roll along to the latest boutique theatre offering, preferably with subtitles because the English-speaking world makes crap movies about crap characters leading equally crappy lives. Who wants to go to the movies to see themselves?

 

When we were together we presented the United Front against an unjust and uncaring world. We were the People’s Liberation Front of every ilk, the Oppressed People’s Party, and the Order of the Skull and Bones rolled into one. We represented a horrifying reality for the powers that held sway. We were the underground.

 

When we weren’t together, our lives were as diverse as they had been in school. A DJ, whose speciality was the kind of techno/ambient/rave/trance that allowed its aficionados to pop pills by the score, take another litre of water and hit the dance floor without ever missing a beat; an IT uber-geek, l33t in the ways of haxor – a BOFH whose knowledge of protocols far exceeded his knowledge of social etiquette and whose bank balance far exceeded that of many a small, Pacific island nation; a goth whose complexion made Bella Lugosi’s look like a Bermuda tan, with a scowl to wither Michelangelo’s David; an independent internet journo whose blogs named and shamed the oppressors with gay abandon and CIA subterfuge; a psychiatric refugee seeking asylum outside the asylum, whose personalities were now legion and whose tenuous grip on what we all took for reality was slipping by the hour; and Thomas. The mysterious, yet somehow altogether together Thomas, whose role in life was as illusive and illusionary as that of the members of the long-defunct X-2. Wheels within wheels within wheels tumbled and turned behind his eyes as he observed all yet gave nothing away. He watched and recorded all, I am sure, collating notes and cross-referencing ruthlessly. But something must have been missing. Mother killed herself today.

[Wyvern]

This is a powerful piece of prose, Psimon. :-) It not only documents the effects that a prison system can have on an individual and the folly of youth, but also gives a very strong personal impression of Thomas from the narrator's perspective. The way that you interject the narrator's personal views through vivid language never felt forced to me and was beautifully phrased for the most part, particularly with the last paragraph and its Joyce-ian style of free association. My favorite segment of the piece may have been when the narrator described the crime of Thomas and James and spoke about their fall from grace, as the manner they got carried away felt true to life and the narrator's altered impressions of them only added to the effect.

 

I didn't quite understand the reference to Thomas as "Mother" at the very end, though it obviously must be important to the story given the title of the piece. Is there some reason the narrator chooses to give him this nick, or is it just a detail I overlooked? (or a different character altogether?)

 

Very well-written, Psimon. :-) Thanks for sharing this here, it's nice to have you back.

[WrenWind]

Very dark indeed my heart.

[Elvina]

Well written, good hook, dark prose. I also didn't understand the reference to Thomas as 'Mother', and that made the ending a little flat to me. Otherwise, your writing skill quite impressed me.

 

Btw, Wrenwind - Your avatar looks extremely familiar.

Edited July 29, 2007 by Elvina