THE MOVEMENT
by
Charles Shell
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Charles Shell at Smashwords
The Movement
Copyright © 2010 Charles Shell
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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*****
-- 1 --
I died during the short stroll from the company car park to the office building. I was only a few faltering footsteps from my destination when a shaft of sunlight weaved its mysterious way through the leaves of a weeping willow and caught my bleary eye. I hesitated for a fleeting, fateful moment. High above a window opened. An over-zealous cleaning lady dislodged an oversized software manual from the ledge and sent it on a collision course with the centre of my skull. The impact left me pole-axed on the pavement, an insensate jumble of flesh and bones that no medical man on earth could resuscitate.
Not many stories begin with the death of the narrator I know. And believe me no one could find the paradox more shocking than I do. I was a corporate professional unconcerned with what would happen should the Grim Reaper come knocking. Having made no appointment with my secretary he was not expected.
Death, let me point out, has absolutely no similarity to its portrayal in the movies. My life did not flash before my eyes like a 1950’s newsreel. Nor did an ethereal image of my earthly self emerge unseen from my body and watch dumbfounded as anxious colleagues tried to revive me. I didn’t even have the pleasure of appearing in the sky at my own funeral. Instead I found myself trudging, leaden footed, across a mist soaked marshland. Dark figures, vaguely human in form, haunted the periphery of my perception but vanished into the grey vapour each time I turned to confront them. After what felt like a lifetime, but was probably no more than a blink of the cosmic eye, the mists cleared and I was alone, floating in a void.
Then I heard a voice.
‘Wasting time, going nowhere, suffering without benefit. That is how you chose to live,’ it said.
Despite the cold terror of the moment I was seized by an overwhelming sense of indignation. I was, or had been, a senior manager, company director no less, responsible for the sprawling computer system of a multifarious multi-national concern. How dare anyone, even God, or a senior representative, construe my life’s work as waste of time?
My unspoken objection was cut short, brutally.
‘And that is why you chose to die.’
‘Death chose me.’ I screamed, ‘I had no choice.’
My words evaporated into the emptiness.
‘You are to be given the opportunity to learn the error of your ways,’ the voice continued, ‘by bearing witness to those who are living the same lie as you did.’
I comforted myself momentarily with the thought that this must be a compassionate though mistaken God intervening to save a wayward child. It seemed I would be given a second chance, a second life.
Then I learned the sickening truth. I was not to be resurrected nor even reincarnated. I was to return to the earth as a phantasm, a wraith who could be not be seen, heard, touched, smelt, tasted, sensed or even imagined by creatures of flesh and blood.
‘Use this opportunity wisely. It will be your last,’ the voice advised.
The mists closed around me but this time I thought I could make out the indistinct outlines of familiar forms, houses, tall buildings, maybe even the faint glow of a street lamp. I felt a sudden stab of nausea where the pit of my stomach used to be. A random thought flitted through my mind, ‘Cyrus will be waiting.’ A dark shadow was heading straight for me. I wanted to run but sheer dread held me in its clammy grip.
As the shadow approached it shifted and took on a most startling form. Out of the darkness came a vision of beauty. Voluptuous, blonde, provocative in contour-hugging cashmere and a tiny leather skirt, coat thrown open in defiance of the cold, Anna passed straight through me with just the slightest of shivers. I found myself able to turn and watch as the mists lifted and she hurried away along a desolate city street towards God-knows-where. A jumble of incomprehensible, disconnected thoughts scurried around my mind, a cacophony of conflicting feelings - sadness, (such terrible sadness), elation, desire, disgust, fury and foreboding - exploded inside my being before the voice spoke again.
‘You have been given the capacity to experience the thoughts and feelings of others as though they were your own. Each intractable desire, every disowned stab of resentment, mean-minded accusation or wayward urge will resonate with the clarity of a church bell through your consciousness. You are of course at liberty to ignore, expel or simply deny that which unsettles you, much as you did during your physical incarnation. You would though be well-advised not to avert your eyes.’
I was left with a single, final, irrefragable thought.
‘What you are about to see is your own reflection. Nothing more. Nothing less.’
The voice fell silent and I found myself chasing after the beautiful Anna along a rain-sodden street. She stopped in front of a crumbling building, gripped by a sense of foreboding. She let herself in and I followed her up two flights of naked stone steps to a heavy wooden door reinforced by steel panels. Anna’s keys jangled in the stillness like those of a jailer or an orderly in a lunatic asylum. Through the door she went. She needed all her strength to slam it shut behind her.
She stood for moment in the unlit corridor and listened to the sound of her own breathing. She put her hand to her breastbone and felt the pounding of her heart. Then she turned towards the darkness and set off along the gloomy corridor, her heels click-clacking on the bare boards. At the end was a worn wooden door with a cold metal handle. Anna pushed down the handle with her sweating palm and let the door swing open.
A single naked light bulb dangled by a thread from the ceiling. It cast its bright light upon an expectant audience, sixty people who were waiting not for Anna but for a self-proclaimed prophet who was about to begin his oration. Said prophet fixed his unwelcoming gaze upon Anna. She smiled, not at him, nor indeed at anyone in particular, and scanned the room for a vacant seat. For a single panic-filled second she thought all were occupied. Then she spotted a place, mercifully empty, in the middle of the back row. She pushed her way along, mouthing apologies, still smiling broadly, and slumped down, not daring to meet the glare of the crepuscular presence at the far end of the room.
*****
-- 2 --
Imagine my bewilderment, after being told I was about to look into the mirror of life and see my reflection, to find myself in the meeting room of a down-at-heel cult. I was a manager who expected hard work and loyalty not unquestioning obedience. I promoted no ideology, espoused no religion. I was a practical man not given to speculation about a possible after-life. Maybe this was a mistake. But I see nothing to link me to Cyrus Jones, prophet of doom.
Given all that’s been written about charisma and cult leaders he’s really not much to look at. He’s tall and emaciated, a middle-aged anorexic. And he’s not just bald, he’s completely hairless, like a corpse in the early stages of decomposition. His drab attire, a checked-shirt and ill-fitting cord trousers, only serves to emphasise the grey formlessness of his being.
There was a time, several long decades ago, when Cyrus believed he could attract a million or more to his cause. He had hoped to inscribe his name indelibly into the chapter headings of human history. Nowadays, as he approaches his sixtieth birthday, he’s having to settle for being the unquestioned leader of a depressed and depressing troupe of demoralised zealots no more than sixty strong. In his grudgingly beating heart he knows he’s unlikely to merit so much as a footnote in even the most eccentric chronicle of the doings of humankind and each time he addresses his followers he’s reminded of this deeply distasteful fact.
So it was that I encountered Cyrus at a so-called open meeting of The Movement For The Rebirth Of Mankind, a relatively rare occasion upon which the cult’s creaking doors are heaved open to admit any members of the general public foolish enough to search for meaning in the Prophet’s bargain basement of the verities.
The meeting room was appropriately inauspicious, bare wooden floors, hard wooden chairs, ill fitting, worm eaten window frames, chipped, cheaply plastered walls barely covered by peeling yellow paint. A chill wind whistled through the gaps between doors and floor and windows and wall.
Cyrus watched in malevolent silence as Anna stumbled to her seat. Then he surveyed his audience, waiting as several leaden-footed moments plodded by, before almost inaudibly enunciating the claim that it’s possible to relate the history of the world in two minutes. His bemused followers strained forward, fearful perhaps that a momentary lapse of concentration might deprive them of a speech of few words but incalculable importance.
Their fears were unfortunately unfounded. The Prophet proceeded to spend fully two hours expounding his impenetrably turgid and completely fantastic theology.
He talked of a time known in Movement mythology as The Great Confusion when, believe it or not, he wandered from one fringe religious outfit to another seeking ‘not truth but guidance.’
No sooner had this innocuous phrase fallen from his lips than he leaped to his feet, screaming, as though a rabid dog had just sunk its incisors into his cadaverous behind.
‘If you want the truth you’re shopping at the wrong store,’ he screeched, his arms held rigidly by his side, his whole body quivering, ‘go sit in a jungle and drink Kool-Aid. Buy a pair of tennis shoes and slit your wrists. The truth is not out there, or in here, or anywhere. And if you go looking for it you’re liable to wind up dead.’
The Prophet’s reasoning is somewhat abstruse, if not non-existent. That said, having asserted the deadly nature of the search for truth he, at least, seemed reassured. Indeed he retook his seat and continued his ramblings in a calm, almost whimsical tone, telling how The Great Confusion came to an end on the banks of ‘the big river that runs through this great city.’
There it was that the wandering Prophet-to-be was handed the mysterious Blue Book by an inebriated vagrant. As the drunk staggered back into the mists Cyrus sat himself down on the sodden turf and read the book from cover to cover, never so much as raising his eyes until he’d gorged himself upon its every word.
It was at this moment in Cyrus’ discourse that Anna found the courage to raise her head and look around. By her side sat an unfamiliar, unwashed, gangling waif.
‘The Blue Book doesn’t have a title,’ she whispered warmly into Colin’s wax-filled ear, ‘the cover is completely blank. And it doesn’t even have page numbers.’
Whether Colin heard her clearly or not I cannot say though her hot breath undoubtedly stirred something in the darkness that is his soul. A throat clearing sound from the Prophet indicated that those speaking at the same time as his illustrious self should cease immediately. All eyes turned towards the back of the hall and locked accusingly onto Anna and Colin.
‘You are in the temple of Inanna, Queen of the Earth, Goddess of all that lives and breathes,’ the Prophet informed them by way of reference to the seedy office suite that houses The Movement. He waved a finger over his shoulder, drawing attention to the strange, framed, computer-generated image that hung on the wall behind him - the head and torso of a black haired, green eyed beauty, naked apart from the snakes that obscured her breasts and leaped skywards out of her skull.
‘Respect the words of Her priest,’ the Prophet hissed.
Panic bounded like a predator through Anna’s psyche, scattering her thoughts and sending the blood rushing to her face. Her hand dropped involuntarily onto Colin’s thigh only to be pulled away the moment the contact registered. But register it did, sending Colin’s libido off around the room, turning back-flips.
Tonight was Colin’s first time at the feet of the Prophet and his first time in the presence of the divine femininity that is Anna. He’d been lured along by a message likely to drag only the most disoriented from their homes on a bleak winter’s evening. ‘A Watery Grave Awaits The Unfaithful, Follow The Earth Goddess To The Land Of Plenty,’ said the leaflet plastered to the window of an abandoned fish shop. And now, as Colin gazed down upon Anna’s tantalising thigh, he felt he was indeed only inches from paradise.
It was a strange moment. Disturbing, because I could feel Anna’s fear and sense only too clearly Colin’s desire. Was it just the sight of alluringly packaged human flesh that set Colin’s heart pounding or did the aroma of fear itself act as an aphrodisiac?
Unaware of my musings, or the pact being sealed in the back row of his ‘temple,’ Cyrus meandered his wordy way towards the prophecy that lies at the core of the Blue Book. He told of the coming of Inanna and the salvation of Her earth. But before Inanna could return mankind and womankind would have to be purged. It was at this moment that the razor sharp incisors of my metaphorical hound once again savaged the Prophet’s hindquarters and threw him onto his feet.
‘And there will be a flood,’ he screamed to the heavens, his arms convulsing involuntarily around his head as though beating off a swarm of killer bees, ‘and the scum of this Earth will drown and their bloated corpses shall be consumed by the creatures of Poseidon.’
The dire prophecy having been enunciated Cyrus retook his seat, gasping, short of breath, grasping at the water jug as though it contained the elixir of life. He slipped back into his less demanding whimsical tone and told of the good news. There is a way to avoid the awaiting watery grave.
‘Rally to the banner of Inanna, spiritual incarnation of vitality, fertility and renewal.’ Or put another way, ‘join The Movement.’
It was upon this hardly inspiring note that the oration came to its merciful conclusion. An inappropriately thunderous ovation from an audience that for the most part had heard it all a million times before brought the proceedings to a close.
‘Interesting, huh?’ Anna said, beaming with the radiance of a small star. Then she emitted a giggle, a strange high-pitched sound that came from her but was somehow not of her.
Colin nodded dumbly and ran a hand through his long greasy locks. He looked into Anna’s deep green eyes, the eyes of a feline predator, and felt himself falling. Moments later he was standing at a trestle table holding the Blue Book of which the Prophet had spoken.
‘It really doesn’t have a title,’ he mumbled almost inaudibly.
Anna sauntered around the table, hips swaying slightly, just the hint of a pout on those deep red lips, and stepped uninvited into Colin’s personal space.
‘Some things are unnameable,’ she said ‘and it really doesn’t have page numbers either. You have to read it all so why number the pages?’
A number of objections to Anna’s reasoning jumped into Colin’s head but, being driven by a higher purpose, he decided not to voice them.
‘Maybe we could get together,’ he said.
Anna’s eyes narrowed. Was she about to pounce?
‘To talk about the book,’ Colin explained, a waft of perfume causing his voice to rise.
‘You have to buy it first,’ Anna informed him, business like, edging a fraction closer.
Colin remembered his poverty. Then he looked into those gleaming green eyes and produced his almost empty wallet. He paid the price and pushed the Blue Book into the pocket of his shabby overcoat.
‘I should be able to get through it in a few days. A week at most,’ he said as the floor began to sway beneath his feet. Anna was about to tell him how the Blue Book constituted a lifetime or more of study when the booming voice of the Prophet cut short their fateful encounter.
‘Hey Anna,’ he yelled, ‘I’ve got a Queen-sized bed and a bottle of bourbon. Why don’t you come with me?’
Anna stood for moment as though rooted to the spot. Then she rocked, slowly, from side to side, the blood draining momentarily from her face. Just as it seemed she was about to collapse she turned away from her threadbare suitor and ran to the door where the Prophet awaited her. They disappeared arm-in-arm across the threshold.
*****
-- 3 --
It seems I have no control over who or what I witness. As the meeting drew to a close the mists descended, like a damp curtain falling on the first act of a bleak, black comedy, and I found myself once again wandering the marshland, glimpsing shadows, pondering my fate. Which is where I am now.
Oddly enough only a matter of days before my removal from the land of the living I read an article in a Sunday newspaper concerning the growing phenomena of religious cults. Written by a Rhodes Scholar of impressive learning the piece laid the responsibility for the irresistible rise of the likes of Cyrus Jones squarely at the door of the established churches which, the Scholar claimed, had failed to provide leadership for a populace floundering in a cesspool of amorality.
At this uncertain moment in my existence the failings of the feuding factions of the western churches do not concern me greatly. Of more relevance to my predicament is the learned one’s profiling of those subject to the influence of the false prophets. Top of his list were the lonely, the outcast and the socially maladapted. There were, doubtless, more than a few fitting this description present at that dismal meeting. Then of course there are those with low self-esteem or a feeling of inferiority who hope to be made whole by the healing powers of a divinely connected soothsayer. And lastly, concerned not to leave a stone unturned, the Scholar explained how even ‘perfectly normal’ people in search of a sense of purpose are prone to the pulling power of Cyrus Jones and his ilk.
Apparently unaware that he had identified almost the entire population of the western world as possible cult material the Scholar related how the ‘illusion of communion’ and the sense of ‘being baptised through an immersion in a higher cause’ constitutes the initial attractive power of these bizarre little groups. This though is merely the bait because, once a social misfit or, alternatively, a well-adjusted member of society, has been lured in he is psychologically demolished, his sense of self is dismantled and replaced by a dependence upon the collective and, by extension, upon the leader. As I jokingly observed to my wife the Scholar could have been describing the private school for which my daughter is destined.
It may of course be presumptuous of me to so lightly cast aside this erudite analysis because how precisely I am to benefit from watching edited highlights of the Cyrus Jones story is truly beyond me.
For the record I’ll acknowledge the superficial similarities between Cyrus and myself. He is a leader and so am I. He has sixty people in his little group. I had the same number, or thereabouts, in my department. And it could be that I was sometimes a little too hard on my staff during my previous incarnation though I cannot believe I’ve been judicially murdered for an all too common white-collar crime. And here we leave the insignificant area of common ground because in contrast to the Prophet and his benighted subjects I am educated, cultured and successful, a family man who gave his wife and child the best of everything. How can I possibly compare myself to this ideological second-hand car salesman who makes a living by defrauding a bunch of down-at-heel losers? Perhaps that’s a little harsh. At least as far as the Prophet’s followers are concerned.
What am I to make of Anna? She led me to the meeting and perhaps that will be the end of her involvement in this sorry affair. She cuts an incongruous figure though, a femme-fatale who would grace the cover of any glossy magazine caught in Cyrus’ slimy clutches. Her inane giggle and proclivity for sexual provocation might have inclined me to dismiss her as a brainless blonde bimbo had I not had the privilege of glimpsing her excruciating sensitivity. She’s a vulnerable, confused creature whose inner world seems almost completely divorced from her outer reality.
And then of course there’s Colin. He’s been doing the rounds of various fringe sects, searching for something that suits him. Has he found his home? Or is he merely a passing distraction, a shadow about to disappear into the mists? More to the point, what if anything can he tell me about my life?
Hopeless as the task may now appear it is incumbent upon me to find enlightenment within what I’m watching. This ephemeral quagmire, populated by the living dead is, I believe, my destination should I fail to unravel the riddle unfolding before my eyes. I have no desire to spend the whole of eternity, or even a part of it, wandering aimlessly amongst insubstantial shadows. I didn’t give God a great deal of thought whilst alive but insofar as I did I pictured Him as too gentle a being to mete out the horrors threatened by the established churches. It appears I was mistaken.
*****
-- 4 --
Following my reflections on my fate, or the lack of it, I found myself playing fly-on-the-wall in Colin’s dingy little bedsitter.
A naked light bulb that dangled from the high cobwebbed ceiling cast its harsh glow across a scene of domestic devastation - a few sticks of furniture no doubt liberated from the local rubbish tip, an ancient cooker held together by the rotting remains of countless grease-laden burnt offerings, a filthy enamel sink indelibly stained by decades of neglect and a hissing gas fire that might explode at any moment.
When I arrived Colin was lying on his dishevelled bed, his nakedness covered only by a pair of sagging underpants and a food stained vest. Fleeting images from an evening spent in the shadow of the Prophet Jones floated past his red rimmed eyes. He opened the untitled Blue Book Anna had seduced him into buying and read:
This is a book. It is only a book. It is not The Book. That is to say it does not claim to tell you The Truth. In this sense this book is not like the Bible or the Koran or the Book of Mormon, to name just a few examples, all of which claim to contain the definitive truth about our existence here on the planet Earth. This book is a guide. It is a guide to life. You are free to accept or not accept what it says. You can follow some of the advice given here without having to follow it all. You can ignore it all if you like. You can shut this book now and read no further. That would be very stupid but you can do it. It is your decision. You are a free agent.
The subject matter is arranged alphabetically by heading. There are no page numbers because page numbers are arbitrary. Think of the confusion it could cause if somewhere the book was to refer you to page 158 and in a new edition the content of the old page 158 is to be found on page 112 (because the print is smaller). The subject headings are large enough to find by flipping through the pages. Remember to try and think clearly at all times, but particularly while you are reading this book. In this way you will gain the most benefit. Once you have absorbed the content in all its various aspects you will find it much easier to navigate your way through life and through death.
Strangely, even drivel of this magnitude did nothing to remove the scales from Colin’s eyes. Rather than take this tautological claptrap and hurl it into the nearest rubbish bin he searched the numberless pages until alighting upon the section headed Women.
Women are in many respects superior to men. They are fundamentally spiritually different coming as they do from the more dynamic and sensitive aspects of cosmic energy. In today’s society women are better attuned to their emotional life than men. They are therefore better child-carers than men. They are better mediums than men. Their ability to recognise and accept their emotions means they are better in crisis situations than men, better able to deal with new situations. They are also better combatants than men because they are able to distinguish the important from the trivial and know, therefore, what is worth fighting for and what is not. It is imperative that men both respect and nurture the female aspects of their personalities if they wish to take part in the battle to lead mankind away from the abyss.
In his own hazy way Colin concurred with many of these somewhat banal assertions. He’d never admit it but he does find women intimidating, particularly those endowed with more than their fair share of physical beauty. The memory of Anna standing so very close unsettled him. He felt the urge to move.
A pair of shiny-seated corduroy trousers, a heavy pullover with no elbows, a grubby army surplus coat and an odd couple of battered brown shoes were lying conveniently within arms reach of the bed. Thus attired Colin stepped out onto the street.
As he walked he peered at the ground hoping to find money but all he saw were cracked paving stones and clumps of rain soaked newspaper blown up against the garden walls of the decrepit old houses by the freezing wind. In the distance the familiar, garishly lit frontage of his local bar beckoned.
It’s a depressing aspect of the poor that they spend much of what little money they have on non-essentials like alcohol and cigarettes. Colin is no exception although I should point out that he is not in the strict sense deprived, having a regular if badly paid job as a lowly local-government employee.
The bar is a drab draughty dimly lit affair with a lacklustre clientele, somewhere, if left to my own devices, I would certainly avoid. It’s invariably patrolled by a barrel chested, hairy looking man in an open-necked shirt. He’s a primitive type feared in the area for what the locals call his ‘short fuse’ or, in other words, his tendency to resort to physical violence at the least provocation. Being aware of this Colin tried to avoid using large denomination bank notes to pay for his beer.
As ever, when he drank alone, Colin sat silently in one of the dark corners and watched this little world go by. There was not much to see tonight. A few tables away sat an unshaven old man swathed in a heavy black coat. The man glanced uneasily around the room before pulling his collar to his mouth and mumbling urgently but unintelligibly. Had anyone enquired as to what exactly he was doing he would have been more than pleased to explain that he was delivering a report on his latest secret mission via a concealed microphone.
Apart from Colin, the spy, and a massively overweight man in an Hawaiian shirt who was pouring his life savings into a slot machine, there was only one other customer, a middle-aged peroxide blonde propped up unsteadily at the far end of the bar. She was clothed in the cast-offs of a washed-out streetwalker, a bright red bomber jacket worn over a tight yellow sweater, an embarrassingly short imitation-leather skirt, fish-net stockings and yellow high-heeled shoes. Her face was plastered with more make-up than the average circus clown. She was trying, with great persistence but little success, to attract the attention of the beast of the bar and thereby secure another much needed drink.
‘I’ll have a whisky. Make it a large one,’ she cried repeatedly and with increasing desperation, each word sliding uncontrollably into the next. From the hairy one came not the slightest flicker of recognition. He was a study in concentration, his mind focused without distraction upon the sports pages of a week-old tabloid rag.
Ignored but undeterred the woman turned to her public for moral support. Since senses one to five were clearly not in a functional state it must have been number six that guided her awareness to Colin. Oblivious to his attempts to avoid eye contact, the red bomber jacket and fish-net stockings headed straight for him.
She was swaying alarmingly as she drew up before his table.
‘Would you get me a whisky love?’
She attempted an ingratiating smile but her facial muscles were too relaxed to be pushed into any definite position.
Colin tugged at his ear lobe and considered his options. He concluded that the truth would almost certainly send her on her way.
‘I’ve got no money,’ he said.
She parried his thrust by producing a bank note from her grotesque imitation crocodile skin handbag.
‘That’s all right love, this one’s on me,’ she said, thrusting the money in Colin’s direction.
He was about to refuse the kind offer when he noticed that more than the bank note was coming towards him. The gesture had been too much for his benefactress’ badly overburdened sense of balance and she toppled forward, taking the table and Colin’s beer with her.
‘Right,’ yelled the barman, ‘that’s it. You’re out!’
He stormed across the room, grabbed his prey by the collar, lifted her to her feet as though she were weightless and frog-marched her to the door where he put his boot in the small of her back and kicked her out onto the street.
Colin, meanwhile, was also heading for the exit.
‘You all right mate?’ the barman enquired as the two passed.
Colin didn’t bother to answer or even look up. He stepped out into the drizzle, across the sprawling body of his would-be drinking companion, and trudged home, head down.
When he arrived he tossed his coat onto the floor and grabbed an unwashed glass and an almost full bottle of whisky from a shaky metal shelf. As he poured himself a large drink he heard water running in the next room. During his two years in the house he has never seen his neighbour though he’s convinced he lives next door to a woman (a certainty I can confirm). Colin knocked back his whisky and the world began to feel a little warmer.
The water stopped suddenly. Silence descended on the house. He lay on his bed listening for a while before once more seeking solace in the Blue Book. He studied a section headed, ironically, Knowledge. Here Colin was informed that nobody actually knows anything with any certainty, that hundreds of years of scientific discovery are of no value and that our surroundings are probably (because of course we don’t really know anything) mere figments of our over heated imaginations.
I find it hard to believe that an intelligent person could take this convoluted self-contradictory pseudo-philosophy seriously but Colin seems to. Even in his current very solid form he’s prepared to entertain the idea that the physical world is a chimera, a mental fabrication. I fail to see how he can draw any comfort at all from the belief that his poor surroundings are the product of his own poverty of imagination except insofar as it gives more substance to his alcohol sodden fantasies.
And indeed, as he drank, the harder edges were falling off reality. He drifted back to his youth, back to a beautiful girl with gleaming blond hair. She was so soft, so clean and so very beautiful. Tears rolled down his face and the whisky poured down his throat. He drank until the glass fell from his hand, until his body crumpled and his consciousness collapsed into a dehydrated stupor. Until darkness overtook him.
*****
-- 5 --
On the morning after Colin was awoken by the deafening ring of his telephone.
‘Hello,’ he croaked into the receiver, his throat so parched he could barely get the word out.
‘Hello. Peter?’ said the voice on the other end of the line.
‘Er well,’ was the best Colin could manage by way of a reply.
‘My God! You sound rough Peter,’ said the voice.
‘It’s not Peter.’
‘Oh, sorry, wrong number.’
Colin dropped the receiver and slumped backwards, fighting the urge to vomit. He pulled a soiled sheet over his head but couldn’t block out the cold light of day. Slowly but relentlessly the realisation dawned that today was a working day. He pushed his head out and squinted at his watch. It was already nine-thirty. He retreated back under the sheet, drew his legs up into the foetal position and rocked from side to side, moaning piteously.
It was nearly an hour later when he dragged his dehydrated body over to the sink and consumed his fill of filthy water directly from the rusting tap. Whilst there he made the mistake of examining his reflection in the cracked mirror. Staring back at the twenty-eight year-old was an unwashed unshaven middle-aged man on the edge of a physical collapse. I once heard a spiritual guru (an Indian no less! with his very own TV program!) make the incontrovertible observation that a mirror can show us only what is there. If our eyes are bloodshot and drooping and our skin is deathly pale, if our beard growth is several days old and our hair is matted by grease, then that is what we will see.
It was what Colin saw.
‘My God! You look rough,’ he said, echoing his telephonic accuser. He decided to lie in the bath.
The communal bathroom, shared by the four inhabitants of the ground floor, is in the same decayed condition as Colin’s room. The old green wallpaper will one day soon slide completely off the walls onto the filthy cracked floor tiles below. The air is permanently impregnated by the putrid smell of other peoples’ bodies and the bath is decorated by stains of various colours and textures, the origins of which are best left unexplained.
Anyone who has ever lived in shared accommodation knows that before running a bath it is first necessary to grit one’s teeth and pull that disgusting mound of matted body hair out of the plug-hole. Colin felt his stomach heave as he reached down and wrapped his fingers around his house-mates’ discarded tresses. He threw himself onto the toilet and released the contents of his bowels into the water below. As the stench of his own excrement hit his nostrils he wanted to stamp his feet and shout with self-loathing. The only consolation life had to offer was the prospect of bathing his sweaty body in murky warm water.
He ran his bath, lowered himself in and hung his lanky limbs over the side. He closed his eyes and drifted into a fantasy about a work colleague, a lovely young woman who sits only three desk-widths away from him. Her radiant smile greeted him one sunlit morning as he sauntered into the office. He handed her a single red rose and kissed her lightly on her soft, pink lips. He was about to whisper something seductive into her ear when her smile turned into a grimace. She slapped him hard across the face. Colin backed away. The woman waved a finger in accusation.
‘How your life is, is how you are,’ she said with unnerving certainty, ‘open your eyes and look.’
Colin’s eyes sprang open. He stared around as though searching for someone. His attention came to rest on the rotting window frame and the moist, cracked panes of opaque glass. Outside, a shadow seemed to pass by. Colin shivered though the water was still warm. He washed himself thoroughly, shampooed the grease from his hair and shaved the unsightly growth off his face. He climbed out of the bath and went to the mirror. It seemed he was about to smile at his reflection when he turned away and walked stark naked and soaking wet out into the corridor. A door opened behind him and a woman gasped. He wheeled around but the door slammed shut before he was able to make his neighbour’s acquaintance. He trudged back to his room leaving behind a tell-tale trail of damp footprints.
Colin dried and dressed himself and, having nothing better to do, decided to go for a walk. He wandered the streets aimlessly, absently pondering his isolation. He came here five years ago with his girlfriend, having studied, of all things, philosophy! He had hoped to find a job suited to his qualifications though I hardly need to spell out that there’s not much call for philosophers these days, anywhere. Poverty pushed him reluctantly into his current thankless occupation in a run down local government outpost somewhere south of the big river. His girlfriend, who was even less qualified for the commercial world than Colin having dropped out of a psychology course half-way through, took a job in a bar patronised by used-car salesmen and failed hoodlums.
The relationship had always been difficult based as it was on their common lack of direction. It fell apart when, in that very bar, a strange person claiming to be a safe-cracker informed Colin that ‘his girl’, (meaning Colin's girlfriend), was ‘servicing’ a local car-dealer. For better or worse Colin felt the need to put some distance between himself and ‘his girl’ so he crossed the river and took up residence in his current hovel. At the time he was also considering giving up his job so the idea of a long journey to work had not troubled him. Two years later he still hasn’t found suitable alternative employment and has consequently condemned himself to the daily torture of three hours on the city’s integrated public transport system.
The ache in Colin’s legs wrenched him out of his reverie. He spotted one of those cafés where the outside is invariably more inviting than the inside. And so it was in this case although, in fairness, I should say that the fresh white paint on the walls at least gave the impression of cleanliness. Colin bought a coffee and a sandwich from a small fat female in a white apron. As he sat down he had a vague feeling that he recognised the sad face of the young woman who was sitting on the other side of the otherwise deserted café. A moment later the realisation dawned that the sad face belonged to Anna. He waved with all the cheer he could muster. She smiled weakly in response as though lost somewhere in her own little world. Then a sudden, unwanted impulse catapulted her brutally back to reality. The face lit up, the vocal chords emitted a trademark giggle.
‘Hi,’ she said, ‘I didn’t recognise you for a moment. You’re Colin, we met the other night. I meet so many people, you know. Do you mind if I sit with you?’
Anna picked up her coat and bag and crossed the room like model on a catwalk, her voluptuous curves irresistibly emphasised by a tight green top, her luscious legs encased in sheerest nylon and obscured only by a tiny skirt of softest leather. She slipped into the seat opposite Colin, beaming from ear to ear, casting a warm glow into the bleakness that is Colin’s world.
Again I was confronted by the paradox that is Anna. The shiny, smiling exterior and the fearful, dark interior. Is the smile merely a mask? Or is it an expression of contempt for a world obsessed by appearance? She was though genuinely pleased to see Colin. He belongs to a world other than her own.
‘Do you live around here?’ she enquired, brushing a few stray golden tresses from her high cheekbones.
He took a very deep breath, as well he might.
‘Yes, not too far away.’
‘Oh really, what a coincidence, not that there are any coincidences, I mean everything is fated really, but whatever, so do I. Let me give you my address and telephone number. Maybe you could come and see me sometime?’
Anna broke into an irksomely high pitched laugh and reached into her bag.
She handed Colin a card.
‘You’re not working today?’
‘Er no, I'm going to call in sick. And what about you? Have you phoned in sick?’
‘No. Of course not,’ answered Anna, aghast but still smiling, ‘I’m on holiday, well that is I have to do something in our office. I’ll probably be there until ten or eleven this evening.’
Anna fixed her cat’s eyes on Colin’s bloodshot orbs.
‘Have you had a chance to read much of the Blue Book?’
‘Yes. It's very interesting.’
‘Good. Why don’t you come to one of our seminars?’
Colin’s mouth didn’t move. He was trapped and he knew it.
‘There’s one this weekend, tomorrow in fact. It only lasts a few hours but you’ll hear all about the history and philosophy of The Movement. We start at ten.’
Anna leaned across the table and touched Colin’s hand.
‘I’d love to see you there.’
That touch, that all too fleeting physical contact with the soft skin of a goddess, cut like a scalpel into the craving of a young man who hadn’t been held against the warm body of a woman in nearly two years.
‘Will you be there?’ he gasped.
‘I’ll be around. You know. I’m always around.’
She pinched Colin playfully on the cheek.
‘Well, better be going now. I’ve got work to do.’
She stood up, threw on her coat, grabbed her bag and headed for the door.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she said before disappearing into the grey morning light.
Though Anna was gone her touch lingered a while on Colin’s hand, on his cheek and in his loins. He breathed in the last fragrant residues of her perfume and dreamed of paradise.
*****
-- 6 --
Is Colin one of the Scholar’s maladjusted deviants looking for a home in the Prophet’s merry little band? He is without a doubt a poorly integrated member of society having no career, no partner, no friends and no money. And his self-esteem is not all that it might be. He’s a strange one though, a closet intellectual who, despite having picked up a first class philosophy degree without really trying, seems unable to see through the shoddy speculation of a burnt-out fraud like Cyrus Jones. And, even accepting that Colin is classic cult fodder, why on earth has he selected The Movement from amongst the scores of alternatives freely available?
Before arriving on the Prophet’s doorstep Colin spent some time talking to a tiny group of fundamentalists called The Church Of The One Saviour. It would be rash to say that they are stranger than The Movement though they do believe that Christ arrived upon the earth in the escape pod of an ailing, alien spaceship. They claim also that He arrived on a Wednesday and are consequently the only group having at least a tenuous connection to the Judeo-Christian tradition to celebrate a midweek Sabbath. This unique aspect of their faith means they find it difficult to recruit anyone in regular employment. They do though celebrate their holy day with great gusto, dressing in blue linen and dancing through the streets of the city maniacally roaring in unison the verses of their highly revised prayer book. Each recitation closes with the words ‘Praise be to the Lord, Praise be to the One Saviour, Praise be to the Elders of Saturn from whence our Saviour came.’ In the evenings this high energy but harmless band of eccentrics continue their observance by dancing non-stop to a never-ending tape of Glenn Miller’s Greatest Hits.
Colin had a number of meetings with two spotty male representatives of The Church Of The One Saviour before telling them that he didn’t believe in extra-terrestrial intelligence and could never see himself dancing to ‘In The Mood.’ Had they instead sent him a smooth skinned femme-fatale would Colin now be spending his Wednesday evenings tripping across the dance floor to the sound of forties swing? Can it be that he’s simply blinded by the light of Anna’s physical beauty? Is he really so shallow? A simple minded, sexual lemming whose desire will undoubtedly lead him over the cliff edge?
However I attempt to explain Colin’s behaviour I find precious little to connect him to me. I spent the last ten years of my adult life in a committed relationship, devoted to my wife and daughter. True my colleagues regarded me as a bit of a flirt. Women found me attractive. But under no circumstances would I have allowed mere sexual attraction to dictate the course of my life. And I was never an alcoholic much less an under-performer. So what precisely am I supposed to learn from Colin?
Could it be that I’m being shown the other side of life, not a parallel to my own but the very opposite? Is it my task to understand Colin’s pitiful predicament and thereby develop more sympathy and understanding for the suffering of those less fortunate than myself? It’s an interesting insight, a thought to be held onto, because God knows there’s not much else to give me hope.
*****
-- 7 --
After my prolonged subjection to Colin’s predicament I found myself back with the Prophet’s brood, in the meeting room, witnessing their histrionic high-volume monthly membership meeting. A few vignettes of life in the asylum taken from three smoke filled hours of a Friday evening should more than suffice to convey the texture of this disturbed and disturbing gathering.
The Prophet and his sixty or so brothers and sisters sat on neat rows of chairs that faced towards the front of the room. Staring back at them from behind a table was none other than Daniel Stocking, the national convenor. Daniel is one of the older members, forty-one to be precise, and at six foot four one of the tallest. He’s broad shouldered and sports a neatly trimmed moustache. Of particular interest are his round metal spectacles which steam up whenever he becomes emotional and his strong white teeth which he bares whenever his spectacles steam up. Cyrus has, on more than one occasion, described Daniel as brilliant. Daniel, Cyrus says, has written some of The Movement’s finest articles including one that explained the relationship between the cycles of the moon and outbreaks of social unrest.
It was Daniel’s responsibility to see that the meeting began at nineteen hundred hours precisely. He studied his watch with furrowed brow, noting that the big hand was on twelve and the little hand on seven. With a patience and precision he’s mastered over the years he sat stock still, waiting whilst the second-hand completed its circuit.
When the moment had come and gone he stood up slowly and glanced around the room. A hint of steam appeared ominously behind his lenses. The drama was about to begin!
‘Praise be to Inanna,’ he said.
‘Praise be,’ replied his audience, uncertainly.
A moment of silence hung heavily in the stifling air.
‘I’d like to start with the agenda,’ Daniel said, stressing each syllable almost to breaking point, ‘the secretariat finalised the agenda a few days ago. We let it be known we had an agenda and then we waited to see how many of the brothers and sisters had the initiative or the interest to come and ask what the agenda was. Not many did.’
An anticipatory tension filled the air as Daniel leaned forward onto the table, lenses almost opaque, teeth bared like a half-starved Rottweiler. He began to shout, not hysterically like the Prophet but with channelled venom.
‘What we need in The Movement are not lazy time servers but committed brothers and sisters who really want to serve, who want to drive us forward, who want to get our ideas out. How committed are you if you don’t even care what’s coming up in the next meeting?’
Daniel paused and glared into the gloom.
‘So now we’re going to find out who knows what the agenda is and who doesn’t. You have three minutes each to explain yourselves.’
Daniel sat down and leaned back in his chair.
‘Who wants to be first ?’ he asked almost jovially, ‘we’re a voluntary organisation so you can choose when you get to speak, but not if. We’re not that voluntary.’
Daniel chuckled and glanced at Cyrus who was positioned in the front row.
Further back sat an overweight young man with a puffy pink face and a burgeoning problem. Simon Monk, a wannabe member of the secretariat, was feeling that the prospects of his promotion to that exalted body (the supreme body of The Movement, apart from Cyrus himself of course) were receding at the same alarming rate as his hairline.
He did not know the agenda.
He sat motionless, frantically searching every nook and cranny of his censorious consciousness for an acceptable explanation of his ignorance. But all he found was the black cloud of confusion hanging like a demonic omen over the failing light of his reason. Ringlets of sweat formed little rivulets of anxiety on his high brow. He knew there was only one way out. Mental paralysis could only be overcome by action. He screwed up his pig-like eyes, scribbled a few incoherent lines of argument onto his notepad and waddled uncertainly to the front.
By way of preparation for his delivery he tossed his head back, opened his mouth as wide as it would go and swivelled sideways gesturing towards the wall with his right hand. Then he wheeled back to face his fate, yelling.
‘Brothers and sisters I am a member of your presidium. I have been a member of the presidium for seven years. I am a founder member of The Movement. I do not know what the agenda is.’
He paused for a moment, his mouth still wide open.
‘Do you know why I don’t know? Because I didn’t ask. Yes, I didn’t ask. I thought about it but then I forgot. That’s right I forgot. And we all know that you only forget the things you want to forget. So it follows that I didn’t want to know the agenda of this meeting.’
Simon heard a snigger behind him. He knew it emanated from Daniel. He felt his body temperature rise a little but pressed on regardless.
‘So I guess I have some thinking to do. We are dependent upon the collective consciousness of the membership. If that consciousness is lowered we’ll all go under. What’s at stake here is the survival of The Movement and maybe also of mankind. As Cyrus has said if we are not around to offer guidance where are people going to turn? So we’re talking about the survival of our species here. That’s a big thought and it’s kind of scary. So I’d like to thank Daniel for bringing it to my attention that maybe I need to work on my consciousness.’
Simon noticed that Cyrus was grinning. He glanced round and saw Daniel was grinning too. They were grinning at one another. His throat began to constrict as though a strong hand were closing slowly over it. He slunk back towards his seat, sweating profusely.
Before Simon had sat down the menacing and malevolent Melissa was on her feet. Prematurely grey, both inside and out, Melissa is feared and admired in The Movement partly because of her sheer nastiness but mainly because she’s the Prophet’s regular sexual partner. She’s a surprising choice for a man whose following contains a selection of far more alluring female flesh. Melissa is not so much overweight as out of shape, her flabby hips and thickened thighs being the result of a ravenous partiality to milk chocolate. And the ageing process has not treated her kindly. She’s thirty years-old but could be forty-five. Her sallow skin and grey hair belong to an older woman as do the black bags which dangle like dark indictments beneath her hollow eyes.
She seemed untouched by the tension, standing at the side of Daniel’s table with her hands thrust into the pockets of her baggy trousers. A voice that could pierce reinforced concrete was augmented by a stabbing right forefinger.
‘So Simon says he’d better do something about his consciousness. Yeah, I’d say you probably should Simon. That’s right, you’re a long time member of our presidium but you get up tonight and say you forgot to ask about the agenda.’
She paused briefly, drew air into her lungs, leaned in Simon’s direction and raised her already loud voice to screaming pitch.
‘You forgot to ask! That’s right! Forgot! Well maybe we should have you scrubbing the office floor with a toothbrush to remind you of what being a member of The Movement is all about! And I’ll tell you something else brother Simon, just take a look at yourself. Look at your clothes. Talk about bargain basement. What you’re wearing wouldn’t interest a garbage man.’
As Melissa drew breath a few of the brothers and sisters threw nervous, surreptitious glances at Simon who seemed to be trying to touch his lap with his forehead. Simon was actually not so badly dressed compared to the company he was keeping. He wore a blue shirt, stretched to bursting point across his pneumatic chest, off-white cotton trousers straining to contain his enormous behind and a pair of down-at-heel, slightly scuffed brown shoes.
‘When was the last time you had a shower Simon?’ Melissa continued, obviously not concurring with my more charitable appraisal.
A stunned silence ensued as many of the brothers and sisters furtively reviewed the state of their clothing, hoping no untoward smells were emanating from their inadequately washed bodies. But Melissa was not finished.
‘Simon’s stinking body is telling us something brothers and sisters. It’s telling us there’s something rotten in The Movement. It’s telling us it’s time to stand up and be counted. You’d better think about whether you’re part of the problem or part of the solution because we’ve got some clearing out to do. Maybe we should start with those brothers and sisters who’ve forgotten how to turn their showers on.’
Melissa’s venomous contribution set the tone for what followed. One brain-dead devotee after another offered a heartfelt mea culpa for not knowing the agenda. To a man, or woman, they promised to work on their consciousness and invariably concluded with a gratuitous verbal lunge at Simon. One particularly irate young man spent a full minute screaming ‘you stink Simon, you stink, you stink!’ whilst another proposed that videotapes of Simon in the shower be made available for scrutiny by the secretariat.
This then is the world in which Anna lives. It’s little wonder she’s scared. When her turn to speak finally arrived all she managed was the suggestion that Simon be forced wash the laundry of the entire organisation for a month. She simply forgot to mention the agenda, the supposedly central issue of the whole charade. And I think that’s probably how she survives. By closing doors in her consciousness, by refusing to acknowledge that which she finds intolerable or terrifying. During Melissa’s malicious outpouring Anna daydreamed about a dinner date with a dark haired young man named Phil, who happened to be sitting beside her.
And I should say, by way of balance, if balance is possible or conceivable under current circumstances, Phil’s three minutes lacked the unbridled viciousness of some of his more zealous brothers and sisters. He omitted to castigate Simon preferring instead a few vacuous observations on the history of the sewage system and rising standards of personal hygiene throughout the twentieth century. It’s hard to see what he’s doing in The Movement. The frailty of his physical form reflects a retiring nature seemingly unsuited to the unthinking psychological brutality I witnessed tonight. When he spoke his nervousness was instantly apparent in the stuttering, repetitive delivery and his habit of removing and replacing his spectacles. He has though been a member of the Cyrus’ outfit for more than a decade.
And of course no account of the evening would be complete without hearing from said Prophet. When the cacophony of condemnation had drawn to a close he rose ominously from his chair.
‘Brothers and sisters this has not been a pleasant meeting for me. It has been in some ways very painful. It is painful for me to see once good brothers and sisters straying from their duty. Because it is a duty you know. You are blessed with a priceless gift called knowledge. With knowledge comes consciousness and with consciousness comes responsibility. We are a voluntary organisation. You are free to leave any time you like. No one is forcing you to stay. If you choose to stay I can promise you a lot of hard work and probably some more fights like the one we’ve had today because I have a responsibility to make sure The Movement is not polluted by alien influences. I want to keep our doctrine, or to be provocative I’ll call it our dogma, I want to keep our dogma pure. But there are also rewards to be had here. To be able to fight for something you hold to be right is a great privilege. And there can be no greater satisfaction for a human being than to be in the forefront of the battle to save the species from possible extinction. That is what The Movement has to offer you all. The chance to live and fight with your eyes open. The choice is yours, brothers and sisters.’