H Story
A fly buzzed around the room, swimming through the air. It landed on the ledge near the window and lay, unable to move.
The room was saturated by darkness, with only the light from the small window cutting through.
There was a small wooden table with three chairs scattered around the centre. On the outside ledge of the window, three small plants sat, covered by snow.
H. was sinking into the chair facing away from the window’s light. His face stretched towards the floor, his eyelids drooped over.
The hand of the clock struggled and strained until it collapsed toward the next second. The “Tick” sound exploded like a bomb in the room and was quickly swallowed up. The room felt bloated for an instant but settled down again.
H. sat, neither thinking nor seeing only listening to the heavy hum of the silence. An iron bar seemed to push down on his back, against his hump, paralyzing him. The clock’s hand struggled again, and the sound shattered against the stillness. Before the room could recover, H. made his move.
He pushed himself up and staggered toward the door; knocking his knee against the table.
Once outside the room, he quickly dressed, went outside and locked the door. For a second he leaned against it, gasping. H. ran down the stairs, but then stopped in front of the window facing the street. He repeated his action of the night before and looked down at the entrance of his building. Seeing nothing there, he continued quickly down the stairs.
H. burst out onto the street - again the sound of the slamming doors was sucked into silence. He closed his eyes in pain as the light flashed before him, the cold air fled into his lungs. Once recovered, H. looked around the street.
Snow had covered the world. The buildings were bathed in manna, their forms now appearing twisted and true.
H. sailed down the deserted street, still infected by the room. Above hung an overcast sky, gray with fingers of black stretching from horizon to horizon, like a birdcage waiting to be dropped.
As H. walked, the three small plants still played upon his mind. They grew and grew over the world.
H. turned the corner and almost ran into Mrs. V. Both looked at each other with shock, surprise and recognition. Mrs. V. quickly regained her composure, her face resettling like snow: only her red rat eyes burning through the shroud.
Her smile floated out like a sour lemon, hiding the sneer on her face.
“Good morning H. What a surprise running into to you here. I was just thinking about you.”
Hands twitched over her handbag, scratching and clawing at the handles.
“How is your mother? We arranged to meet this morning. The poor woman has so much to do, I’m not sure we’ll find the time.”
Mrs. V.’s bloated tongue snaked over her teeth, past red plastic lips. Her eyes darted left and right but all the while glancing at H.
H. excused himself and hurried away, leaving Mrs. V. shrinking in the distance, her shroud falling way. She then remembered herself, wrapped the black shawl around her and hurried up the street.
The trees had had their branches cut away, to protect the telephone lines, leaving only contorted torsos bereft of limbs. They stood as broken bodies of a car wreck in imitation of classical statues. The brown sludge heaped up against them as some kind of offering.
H. stopped. Some sort of emotion ran over him; it cut through the sludge, through Mrs. V.’s bloated tongue and rat red eyes, through the hands that held his back. He suddenly knew where to go. H. hurried along the rows of frozen corpses.
Mrs. V. clambered up the hill, her body bulging and contorting. For a moment, she had wanted to kill the boy there and then, but he had escaped before matters had reached their conclusion.
At the top of the hill, Mrs. V. opened the door and felt the warm air welcome her. Warmth and safety permeated the walls, hugging and caressing her.
She passed two figures in the corridor, both glanced at one another for a second, and then moved away under Mrs. V.’s stare. After they had left, she saw the wisps of smoke beckoning her upwards.
Mrs. V. looked out of the window at H.’s door, seeing the two figures moving out onto the street, she turned and knocked three times on the door.
An eye appeared through the keyhole, frantically moving against the glass. The lock was turned, and an old woman appeared.
“Welcome, Mrs. V. Please come in.” said a tiny voice.
Mrs. V. entered with her smile sweetly soured. She greeted Mrs. H. and, while divesting her coat, slid past, disappearing into her darkness.
Mrs. H. followed in and put the kettle on to boil.
Mrs. V. had meanwhile taken one of the chairs scattered around and turned it back towards the window. The room looked once again in order. As she began to sit down, something caught her eye. She stood and began to walk towards the window, moving past the chairs and table.
Mrs. H. busied herself with the tea, all the while explaining the situation with her son.
“You see how he lives in this pigsty. He never leaves it. The other day I came to visit him, and there he was, lying naked on the floor, just staring. I thought he was dead!”
Mrs. V. continued moving toward the window, her hands nervously clawing at the handbag, held tightly against her chest. Her mouth, a thin red line against her wrinkled face and above, her bloodshot eyes narrowing.
“He hasn’t left in weeks. I bring him food and clean the place up, but he acts as if I am not here.”
The world poured into Mrs. V.’s narrow eyes as she peered over onto the widow sill.
H. slid, and then caught his balance again. The snow sucked in the sounds, sucked in the color until it was everything. Only the sound of his boots on the dry powder broke the cold white silence.
H. looked up to the small bridge that hung meekly over the river. On the bridge stood two figures. H. halted, as if he had come suddenly upon a cliff edge.
He felt behind him the brown sludge of Mrs. V.’s street and before him, the dead story of the dark figures. He remembered the unseen eye on him, and the footsteps echoing his own that had followed him up the hill last night. From the street window, he had seen the two dark figures open the doors and rush into the building. He had locked himself in the room in time and spent the night again praying to his window.
H. continued to look to his window until he faced the frozen river. The two black figures in the distance turned to look at him.
The snow began to dance down like fine ash from the sky.
There was no sound, no color, as the world poured in.
He followed.
Suddenly there was a sound, like the ticking of the clock. The stares of the black figures disappeared with the fine ash and Mrs. V.’s eyes into darkness.
The stillness had at last crumbled. The bar that had laid across H.’s back fell away as a huge burning limbless tree. Around the pyre danced figures covered in white sheets, glowing and blurred like snow in the darkness. The figures swirled around H., faces almost touching him, faces he almost recognized, only to be flung away back into the darkness.
Everything was left behind as he drifted deep within.
Faces upon faces, glowing in the cold blue water, were pushing him down into the darkness. H. closed his eyes, thrashed about, trying to escape the relentless pressure in his head. Patterns around him, patterns of places and actions, patterns on him, patterns of hate and despair, patterns within him, opening up until he himself was a pattern in the darkness.
Then a light broke the patterns and darkness.
Above H. was his window, his truth. Its light cut through the darkness to shine toward him. Pressure and despair transformed into pure love. H. hugged himself into the light.
