Fiction: Early Murmur draft at Unlikely Stories 2.0

3a.
the girl

We smoked a last joint outside the club and got inside as the bands were starting up. Apolo wasn't designed for concerts, but more as a ballroom, and its attractive but inconvenient booths, and railings that separated the dance floor, meant that people were splayed around the room in various positions and poses. We settled behind one of the wooden railings close to the overflowing dance floor, which gave a good vantage point from which to see the stage and also doubled as a leaning post as the beer and hash began to play together.

The Blues Explosion powered into their set and the room filled with the warm damp smell of sweat and smoke. The people in the crowd were all fans and the excitement was tangible in the heat that scoured the room. The band flew intermittently into view through the to-the-beat lighting; flashes of blue, red, white and green throwing blankets over the room, illuminating in silhouettes the band up on the small stage and the bobbing heads in the sea of people all around. I didn't know the band, but the sound, the energy and the atmosphere they produced, pulled me into the show. The whole room moved together in a perfect unison of chaos-music, light, heat and every movement controlled by one collective consciousness. To my right, Joan rocked, eyes closed and Roger gripped me by the shoulders, shouting, "Joder, Sam! Ellos son de puta madre!"

Abandonment, freedom, enjoyment. Life. My hands on the splintered wooden rail in front of me, I rocked more and more to the crushing flow of the wild noise that tore out from the stage. I became fixated on the drummer, afraid he would disappear and the music stop as the lights fell, leaving a black void in their absence, and my head lolled grossly back toward the ceiling. Bang, bang, bang. White, red, white. The drummer pounded the taut skins in front of him as though willing them to come back to life. Afraid, I tried to shift my gaze to the front man, but I was drawn back inexorably to the unremitting punishment being delivered by the drummer. Rocking faster and faster upon my axis on the rail, the heat billowed up in a gust of red light. Bang, bang, bang. The drummer slowed, Joan opened his eyes and I saw his profile in a skeletal x-ray, Roger gripped my shoulders but this time there was no shout. White, white, white. Black.

I didn't hit the floor. My spasmodic rocking had alerted Joan and Roger to my state, and Roger had pulled me back as I dived forward and over the railing toward the floor. I didn't hit the floor but I had gone for a few seconds. For a few beautiful moments all the noise and the heat had been left behind. It came back quickly but at a distance, as though everything was submerged in water.

Joan and Roger had supported me out of the main room, bought me a bottle of water, and gone back in to enjoy the concert, leaving me standing alone at the bar. I could stand, but my eyes refused to open. My mind was back to the madness of reality but my body wanted to stay with the fall. Sips of water felt good and brought some relief to my skin that was tingling like it had been through a bush of nettles. I knew that the bar staff, and people passing to the bathrooms were looking at me and laughing, but I didn't care. I felt amazing inside and my outward appearance was of little importance.

– Éstas bien?

– How do I look?

– Jodido.

– Well, I can't open my eyes to check, but I believe you. "Jodido", that's not very nice language for a lady.

– Qué pedo, wey? A lady? You're English, right?

– Yeah, I think so. Most things are pretty unclear right now though. 5 minutes ago I embraced and dived into oblivion, and now I'm blind at the bar talking to a Mexican.

– How do you know I'm Mexican?

– "Qué pedo, wey?" Only Mexicans say that, wey!

– You're weird.

– Thanks.

– Do you want to take a shot of tequila with me? It will help you to see again.

She smelled good. Her hands were delicate but firm as she held my own to cover the nape between my thumb and forefinger in salt, then place the chunk of lemon between my fingers. My body still shaking, I picked up the shot glass of tequila and she touched my arm to calm me and told me tranquilo or I would spill the good Mexican drink. Ok. Ready. Salt. Tequila. Lemon. Bang.

Inside my throat bile welled up in sickly reaction to the acrid power of the shot. I wanted to throw up, but my disdain for outward appearances didn't stretch that far. I swallowed back the temptation and took another bite of the lemon. My eyes screwed up at its bitterness, which then forced them open rapidly. Eyes flickering open to closed, adjusting themselves back to the impact of the brightly lit bar, the noise from the band and the people redistributed itself around me and I came up from my sea of darkness for a new taste of this dirty air.

– Are you ok?

The girl was looking at me, unconvinced and answering her own question; her right eye brow arched into a sharp V of doubt. She was beautiful. Silk black hair cut a sharp angle across the top of her face (one single strand had fallen loose and over her left eye) and came down tight and harsh behind her left ear, forcing me to follow it down toward her neck- elegant and proud, a small dark freckle halfway down. Small, red, slightly chapped lips. Dead black eyes. Brown but only at second glance. A glance that was hard to take as the eyes didn't invite you in. Eyes that were difficult to meet until she smiled and I didn't have to.

– Otro chupito de tequila?

– Why not.

Joan jumped on me from behind, stinking of alcohol, sweat and smoke, wild with the energy from the show that had just finished. Roger put his arms around us both and we all fell down together on to the dirty floor in front of the bar. As we struggled back up to our feet, Roger whispered to me, "Qué carbon! Quién es ésta chica?"

– Come on, shouted Joan. Let's go on and party at the flat. I'm fucking happy. I love you all.

The party was crazy. The 3 other guys we shared the flat with had also been out and had brought their friends home. As we zigzagged our way back up through the city on foot, we met 4 Russians and added them to our group; 3 girls and a guy who looked exactly like a famous German football goalkeeper. The flat was full of different nationalities and personalities. Joan produced tins of paint from his room and announced that the living room wall needed painting. Drunken people covered in paint, filled the wall with images and messages — SEX and LOVE being spelt out the loudest in metre-high letters in turquoise paint. A video camera captured the whole thing forever and was probably never seen again by anybody.

– Hey Inglés. I'm going to go.

– Inglés! Have you forgotten my name already?

– No, SAM, of course I haven't. I just got used to everybody else here talking about el loco Inglés!

– Ha. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing to be known as.

– I think it's good, it suits you.

– Anyway, why are you trying to run off so quickly?

– There are too many people here. It's too hot, I need some air.

– Air? I know where there's a load of that. Let's go up to the roof. Come on, follow me.

Inside the city nights never fell to black the way they were meant to. Either the sun didn't go far enough away, or the moon got too near, but nights in Barcelona never meant blackness. In place of the dark, there was a dull red glow that bathed the city at night, presenting the people and all the things under the sky as indeterminate copies and hues of the things they represented under the daylight of the sun. Things were beautiful and distant in this light but they needed to be touched twice for you to be sure that they were really there.

– Mira qué bonita es la cuidad. Your home, Pocohantas!

– Cute. Have you already forgotten my name?

– No, but I don't know how to say it properly.

– M-I-X-T-L-I. Think of the word mist in English.

– It's beautiful. Does it mean anything in English?

– In English, no. It's Azteca. I am Azteca. Mixtli is the Goddess of the moon.

– Well, I'm honoured to be in the presence of a Goddess.

– Thank you. I like my name. It's the only positive thing I ever received from my Grandfather. The pendejo who picked it.

– Pendejo?

– Asshole. My Grandfather the great Mexican hero. The general who would be proud to tell you that he once entertained Juan and Eva Peron at our family's summer home. Puto pendejo.

– So you don't get on well with your family.

– Oh, yes. We're the Mexican Brady Bunch. My Grandfather would probably be less wiling to tell you that he told his only son he believes his granddaughter to be a prostitute.

– Shit, that's tough. When were you last back there?

– I ran away from there more than five years ago, when I was sixteen, and I haven't been back since.

The eyes that were so hard to meet at the bar were not so intimidating under the ghoulish light on the roof. Mixtli turned her back on me and looked out over the city she was still a stranger to. She was just a thin wisp of a girl but standing there looking out blindly over the edge of the roof, she gave off a dark, angry strength that joined seamlessly with the strange night that enveloped us both. I stepped forward and placed my hand on her shoulder, unsure how she would react. She softened, let her neck fall slightly back toward my grip and continued to stare out over the city and into the distance.

– Y tu, Inglés. Qué haces aquí? Apart from passing out in public places.

– I don't do a lot. Read, watch films, go out, drink.

– Nice life, but what do you do for money?

– That's boring. Not worth us wasting breath on.

– Oh, ok, so you're too good for work like everybody else?

– Maybe.

– Haha. A thinker, then. A frustrated artist.

– Yes. I'm actually in training to be a clown. I want to grow up to be Henry Miller.

– Ok, so I can be Anaïs Nin.

– Well, you could try.

– But you must need a muse.

– Why, would you like to be mine?

– Maybe.

She turned back to face me and I tried to see through the wall that was the solid mass of those eyes, trying to get some indication as to whether this was real, or just another pretentious dance between two strangers playing their respective roles, showing off to their new expectant crowd of one.

– Would you like to walk me home?

Mixtli lived out of town; a walk and six Metro stations from where I lived. As she went to walk down the steps of the Metro I called her tonta and said that I thought we had only to walk to get to her place. She stopped dead, her face froze over in anger and she unleashed a flurry of Mexican Spanish at me that I couldn't understand, but whose message I could not fail to comprehend. I walked after her down to the track, asking her to explain what it was that she was so upset about.

– I go home now. Vete, ya! It's better if you go back to yours too. You don't call me that, ok. Just because you think you're smart, because you've read a lot of big books and been to University. I don't care, nobody calls me that.

I had understood tonta to translate to silly in English, and was glad I hadn't used the first Spanish word that had come to mind, estupida. I looked at her standing there, after her diatribe. A soft down of sweat had covered her forehead in the small space between her hair and her thin eyebrows. Five minutes behind me there was a party, full of my friends and other pretty girls, and I was standing on the Metro being shouted at for making an innocent remark. I looked her up and down and wondered whether this was really going to be worth the effort. Mixtli stood opposite from me, staring, fighting against her own anger but refusing to back down. The lights of the station flickered overhead, the tunnel behind filled with noise from the impending arrival of the old blue line train, I apologised, wiped the line of sweat from her brow, reached for her hand and walked with her onto the train.

Mixtli's room was small and untidy. Clothes covered the bed and the small amount of available floor space. A little wooden desk covered with drawing pencils and a large closed pad, and an overflowing ashtray, stood on the right hand side of the room against the wall. On the left there was a single bed, the mattress made up but lying on the ground. Three or four shelves on the walls above the desk and bed gave extra storage space, and were filled with photos, a Snoopy doll, CDs and candles. A large Frida Kahlo self-portrait print depicting the artist naked but mangled, her body meshed with the metal a lifetime of operations had left with her with, was hung in an expensive looking frame on the left hand wall. A small window looked onto the interior of the building. Opened up, recurring, retching coughs could be heard and the bitter antiseptic smell of ointments and illness filled the air.

In the morning, in the kitchen before I left, she jumped on me, wrapping her legs around my waist and arms around my neck, burying her head up against my neck, then whispered into my ear.

– Eres mi cocodrilo. That is what you reminded me off last night when you opened your eyes at the bar — a crocodile. When you leave, I'm going to draw you a picture. It'll be the picture of how I saw you at the bar. It is for you, but I will never show it to you.

Fiction: The Literary Underground

False Idols

It was Sunday. The day had started before then, though. Probably Friday. 
Possibly Thursday. Our pockets were empty. Bodies depressed, standing 
in the cold light rain of an ugly Manchester night.

"How we going to get home?"
"Get a black cab and do a runner at yours."
"Fuck that. Last time the driver buzzed everyone in the building and the 
police came. It was lucky my Mam wasn't in. I saw John on the stairs the 
next day and he said he'd kill me if another taxi driver woke him up 
because of me."
"Fuck off! Big John- the big black guy that just got out for murder?"
"Exactly. 16 years, please. He won't need much of an excuse to go back. 
It's the only home he's ever known."

The girl was standing there looking lost. Something switched on in her 
head, and she walked over and flicked Chris hard on the nose.

"What's wrong with your face, Ginger Balls?"

I laughed. I'd forgotten about her. She wasn't with us. She was supposed 
to be with Nick. Nick was supposed to be getting us into a members club 
around the corner, but it looked like we had seen the last of him. Now we 
were burdened with the lunatic.

"Sam, what you doing with her?"
"I'm not doing anything with her. She's a fucking idiot. She just threw the 
last of Nick's coke out of the window of the taxi on the Mancunian Way."
"No shit! Stay away from her, mate. I know her family: she's been 
sectioned twice."
"Cheers, Jimmy. But don't worry about it, like I said, she's with Nick."

The cars pulled away from us and along the street, leaving the wet road 
momentarily patterned from the tread of their tyres. The red rear lights of 
the cars mixed with the white light from the street lamps and the blues and 
greens from the shop windows, all shrouded behind the fine film of drizzle 
that it was almost possible to forget was there until small drops of water 
formed on the tip of my noise. We stood together in silence watching the 
street shimmering in front of us, sharing in all the futility of waiting and 
something that might have been beauty.

"Fuck this. Chris, come on, we're going to have to get a black cab."

Before he could say we had no money, I digged him in the ribs and looked 

at him to shut up by pointing my eyes in the direction of the girl. We had 
no money, but she looked like she did. The taxi she threw the coke out of 
had picked her up from an old, expensive house on Chatsworth Road. If 
she didn't have money on her, she could get it when she got home- we 
couldn't.

We pulled up outside the old, red bricked building where Chris lived- a 
converted Victorian school that would have been worth millions if it wasn't 
sitting atop of one of Salford's most notorious streets- and got out without 
needing to run. The girl lay half-crunched up in a stupor between the seat 
and the door with her back to the driver.

"She lives on Chatsworth Road, mate. Not sure which number, but I'm sure 
she'll point it out once you wake her up. Nice one, pal."

We entered the building through the old "girls" entrance and started up 
the wide staircase that wound up the front of the building and fed off into 
two corridors at each floor. Chris lived on the 4th floor. It was strange to 
see, through the large bay windows that gave back out onto the car park 
down below, that by the time we had reached the 2nd floor the taxi had still 
to leave. When we reached Chris' floor, the taxi had gone and the girl was 
walking unsteadily towards the entrance of the building.

"Chris, check her out. She's going mad down there. She's going to put the 
glass through."
"Fuck her. She should've just gone home. She's not our problem. I'm not 
letting her in ours."

The noise from the banging on the glass rose up to us on the corridor of 
Chris' floor. Buzzing and swearing swelled the crescendo of noise as 
through randomly answered intercoms she could be heard screaming, 
"fucking scumbags." I looked down to see she had taken of one of her red, 
high-heeled shoes and was using it to pound the wooden frame of the 
door.

"Fuck me, Chris, we can't leave her out there on her own. Anything could 
happen to her and it'd come back to us."
"Fuck that. I already told you, I don't want her in mine. Nobody told her to 
get out of the taxi."
"Whatever, we can't leave her at the top of Langworthy Road at 3 in the 
morning."
"You're a fucking soft cunt."
"Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it, I'll sort it out."

Dirty fucking scum bag is what she said as I opened the door. A pair of 
dirty fucking scumbags is how she qualified it later when we got up to 
Chris' flat. Her hair was wet from the rain and clung to the side of her face. 
Her nipples stood out through the thin material of the red dress she wore 
under a long unbuttoned heavy black coat. She hobbled through the door, 
still carrying in one hand the shoe she had attacked it with. She was angry 
and looked wild, but I was sure that even before the "g" of scumbag had 
reached my ear that a twisted little smile had broken across her face as 
she spoke.

Chris ignored her sniping and only rolled his eyes when I teamed up with 
the girl and berated him for being such a bad person. The girl began to 
enjoy herself in the warmth of the small flat and asked about the coke she 
forgot she had thrown out of the taxi window earlier. Chris made a long 
joint of the most beautiful smelling skunk weed, and under a musty red 
cloud illuminated by the cheap, sporadically flashing Christmas tree lights, 
calm and silence briefly controlled the room.

"Is the butter too hard, or the bread too soft?"
"Say again."
"Is the butter too hard, or the bread too soft? It's a question. Are you two 
stupid?"
"Sam, what the fuck is she going on about?"

The girl laughed and fell back into the hard brown back cushions of the 2 
seater sofa we were sharing. Chris stood up from his chair and 
disappeared into the kitchen.

As the girl lay back, eyes closed and contented on the sofa, I ran my eyes 
along her. Up from the small nail polished pink toes, over her delicate 
ankles and along her toned legs, shadowed in the ghoulish half-light of the 
room. Onto the frail hem of the red dress that stuck tight to her, defining 
the litheness of her body, and running up into hooks of thin fabric over her 
shoulders, exposing skin and inviting me to continue searching, following 
the cut of the material as it stooped down toward her chest. From my angle 
the inner protection of a powder pink and white dotted bra could be seen 
shielding pert and slightly swollen breasts.

Chris walked in carrying a red, handless plastic bucket, the brand name 
half visible where somebody had unsuccessfully tried to rip it off, and 
placed it on the floor in front of the girl.

"Here you go. I don't know what you were going on about, but you're 
obviously feeling a bit sick. Do it in there if you don't think you can reach 
the bathroom."

Chris sat back down into his chair; happy with himself at his own joke. I 
laughed and the girl opened one eye, sat back up from the sofa, placed 
her head between her hands and took in a deep breath. Sitting like this, 
her hair fell forward shrouding her face in a blonde veil, and her body 
became a weird beautiful object; headless, passive and brilliant.

"I murdered him, the bastard. It cost 2.6 and I got away with it all."

I moved slightly from my position next to her, shifting my weight on to my 
left side, to try and see her a little better. She threw back her head, 
splaying her hair back, around and behind her, and looked manically 
around the room as though taking in her surroundings for the first time. 
Chris' eyes opened wide in hilarity and he kicked the bucket closer to her.

"What the fuck are you on?" his voice a perversion of his own- high 
pitched and whiney, infected by the girl's madness.
"Who you talking about", I said. "Who did you murder? Where?"
"Who do you think? My fucking husband. In Sweden."
"What? You murdered your husband in Sweden, but got away with it. What 
cost 2.6?"
"The Trial."

I felt sorry for her, but I was amazed. I wanted to put my arms around her 
and make her be calm. I wanted to take her away from this shit hole; 
somewhere where she wasn't mad, or where we could be mad together. I 
wanted to take off her clothes, lie her down on a huge white bed and kiss 
her until she understood that there were only her and I in that world.

Chris had worked himself up into a frenzy of his own and disappeared 
again into the kitchen, then reappeared holding a large kitchen knife that 
he  placed on the coffee table in front of me and the girl.

"It'll be alright", he said with a sickening tone, then sat back down still in his 
chair, willing himself not to laugh.

My stomach turned and real fear gripped me. However many days of 
sleepless nights and long forgotten amounts of drugs and drink were 
being ended right now with this girl and this new madness. I believed in the 
dizzying grip of the moment that, yes, maybe this was the way things 
sometimes ended. A joke isn't a joke if it isn't understood. I looked at the 
black handle of the knife, inches from the girl's hands, and imagined her 
reaching out and thrusting it into my stomach; blood seeping out of me 
slowly in silence, the girl lying back, relaxed against the sofa as though 
nothing had happened, Chris confused, me dying.

"Chris, you're a fucking idiot."

Chris laughed, stood up, picked up the bucket and placed it in front of me.

"I snorted his ashes on camera."

Chris' face bubbled up in a hot flush and his eye brows melted away under 
the strain. A pig's grunt shuddered its way through his body, erupting in a 
wild uncontrolled laughter. Maybe it was because I was sitting next to her, 
but I was calm, trying to take it all in. Chris had lost it.

"Oh, fuck. Fucking hell. I've pissed. Oh, fuck me. Sam, no shit, look at my 
pants- I've pissed in my own pants."

My turn to laugh again. I looked back at the girl who seemed oblivious to 
everything apart from the madness that was going on inside her head.

"Look, look what you've made him do. He's pissed himself because of your 
daft stories. Are you alright? Do you want a drink or something?"

Chris left the room to change his soiled trousers and she seemed to look 
at me properly for the first time. A sly grin, the same as the one I thought I 
had seen when I opened the door, rode its way slowly up her face.

"What's your name?"
"I'm Sam. Do you not remember? I'm the one who went down to get you 
from the street."

She didn't reply, but moved towards me slowly and kissed me softly on the 
lips. We fell back together into the sofa and she lay quietly in my arms, 
running her hand across my chest before tracing out the features of my 
face.

"Right, she's going to have to get off. I'm getting my head down."
"Fuck off, Chris."
"No. No way. My Mam could come home at anytime and she'd go mad if 
you two were in here."
"Why you being a dick?"
"I'm not, but the fun's over", he said as he switched on the main light. "You 
can stay on the sofa, but she's going to have to get a taxi."

The intercom buzzed and I walked the girl down to the car park and the 
waiting car. There wasn't anything to say. The sun was coming up but 
there was little light and the drizzle had persisted. Chris had broken 
something when he switched on the light. Everything was too ugly and well 
defined, even in the half-light of the dawn. The only thing to do was to all 
go our separate ways.

"What's your name", I asked her.
"Amy. Bye, Sam."

I couldn't sleep on the piece of shit sofa in Chris' living room and when it 
was time for the first bus, I noisily banged about the flat looking for loose 
change for my fare. I hated his flat in the light. All over it were little statues 
of Mary and Joseph. A nativity scene beside the tree. And on the wall in 
the living room, a large painting of Jesus Christ bearing his Sacred Heart.

Before leaving I rearranged all the religious paraphernalia into some sort 
of twisted alter in the middle of the living room floor. I found candles in the 
kitchen and using the bucket and knife Chris had had so much fun with 
earlier, I set up a macabre scene that looked ripe for blood letting and 
religious sacrifice. Chris would sleep until at least 4 and I knew his Mum 
would be the first person to make this discovery. Merry Xmas.

Puddles of water ran through the aisle of the 37 bus that I took back home. 
Drops of rain formed like worthless diamonds outside the window then 
dropped intermittently to form little rivers that seeped through the 
seemingly sealed window frames. The smell was damp and the driver was 
a shadow of a man who must have only existed behind the wheel of his 
bus. Outside the window, all the people and things were infused by a dull 
sheen of grey. I kept my head at an uncomfortable angle to avoid seeing 
my own reflection in the glass. I thought of Amy and her red dress, her 
white skin, her blonde hair and her madness.

The following Sunday, I found myself alone at the bar of the pub we used 
to drink in. I was leaving for Italy the next day but unsure as to why. A tap 
on my shoulder and I turned round to find Amy smiling. Next to her was a 
small foreign looking man.

"Sam, how are you? Let me introduce you to my husband, Paolo."
"Ok, shit. Paolo, I've heard a lot about you. You look different than I had 
imagined."

About an hour later, Amy found me again at the bar. She squeezed my 
hand and told me that Paolo had left.

"That's funny. You must have been surprised by his resurrection. I'd 
stopped believing in that shit, but I think you've reaffirmed my faith."
"I know, it's a miracle. Why don't you come back to my house and I'll 
explain it all."
"I can't. I have to wake up early in the morning, I'm moving to Italy."
"Can I come?"
"No, I don't think you can. But I suppose I could wake up a little earlier in 
the morning, or maybe just not sleep at all. Let's go."

The taxis pulled up outside the pub simultaneously. Same coloured cars. 
One empty for pick up. One full for drop off. The drop off was at the front 
of the two. As I walked to the second car, my ex-girlfriend stumbled from 
the first. She lived with her fiancé, but called me constantly, and on nights 
like these often ended up spending at least part of the night at my flat.

I dived back into the pub, anxious to avoid confrontation. Amy stood 
confused in the doorway, and then came back in to find me. I hid from her 
behind one of the wood and glass partitions that split up the pub and 
decided that moving to Italy was probably a good idea after all. A prod in 
the back and I was faced with my ex. She was halfway drunk and struggled 
to maintain her anger as she put her arm around my waist and pulled me 
towards her.

"Who's that girl you were with at the door?"
"It was nobody. I was looking for Chris."
"It looked like you were waiting for a taxi with her to me."

I noticed the taxi still waiting in the car park and pulled my ex outside 
quickly and into the car with me.

"26 Acacia Terrace, please."

My ex fell back onto me drunkenly. I kissed her forehead and ran my 
fingers through her beautiful, long black hair. Outside the window of the 
car, the sun had still to set and there was no rain, but it seemed to me that 
the life outside was only a poor imitation of something else that I could no 
longer remember ever having truly existed before. I caught a glimpse of 
Amy's blonde hair in the doorway as we pulled out of the car park. I turned 
away quickly, fell further back into the seat, and caught the reflection of my 
face in the rear view mirror.

Fiction: Underground Voices

Rainbow's end 

Niente was a simple man. He lived alone in the middle of a place that had no name and 
which you would not be able to find on a map. For Niente, the question as to where he 
was was as irrelevant as to that which might have asked as to who he was. Questions 
like this, or of any other kind, never crossed his mind. 

He lived in a small, single floored, wooden house. He slept on a mattress on the floor, in 
a corner that was directly opposite the bare window from which the sun came each day. 
Outside and adjacent to the house was a garden in which he grew various fruits and 
vegetables. It never rained in this place, but Niente was able to tend to his garden by 
drawing water from a well on the opposite side of the house. 

In and around this place there was not any other person, or thing. The landscape was of 
an abject bleakness in all directions. The sky was a cloudless, pure, and relentless blue 
by day and by night there existed only a dead black, with neither moon nor stars, that 
enveloped all of the vast emptiness that could be seen by day into one whole, still, blind 
union by night. 

He took all of the things that he had for granted and never thought to ask himself how it 
was they were there, or how he had come to be using them. They were there and he used 
them in order to survive. That these things could one day disappear never entered his 
mind. Notions of any kind of lack were as alien to those of any sense of abundance. He 
was there as were his things, and this was how it would always be. Niente's world was 
fixed and in it there existed no possibilities of change, or surprises of any kind. 

Niente moved only between the house, the garden and the well. He never once thought 
to try and stretch the boundaries of his world and walk beyond the nothingness that 
surrounded him. He was, without any actual formal appreciation of the feeling, content 
with what he had. 

Whilst it was true that he never asked for or questioned anything, he was on occasions 
aware of a previous life that he had led before getting to this place.

From time to time, vague images and recollections of somewhere and some things, 
which were different to this place, would come to him as he carried out his daily tasks, 
haunting him like unobtrusive ghosts floating without direction through his windless 
sky. 

Once as he was leaving his house, the light from the sun - reflected of the glass window - 
had conjured up a dizzying vividness for him that was alien to the stoic life he lived on 
his small desolated spot of land. The outlines of new shapes formed, and bewitched him 
momentarily in a rainbow of colours that he sensed he knew, but whose names he had 
learned to forget. 

On another occasion he slipped and fell to the floor, while walking to his well, and 
became lost as he saw - in his wake - the dusty sand of the earth dance majestically from 
the floor, towards the empty sky, then fall back softly to the ground from which it came. 
This simple movement had pushed him back to a time where he had not been alone, and 
of another person who was not the one he knew himself to be. 

These reveries, or sporadic flights from reality, came and went without any regular 
frequency and possessed all of the significance that Niente attached to them, which was 
none. They were there whenever he wanted to notice them and would be lost, as quickly 
as they had come, as he looked around and was reminded of what he was supposed to 
be doing at the time. 

One day, while retrieving water from the well, he was distracted by one of these 
recollections of another history and walked absent-mindedly, in the opposite direction 
of the house and out into the vast expanse of the flat, arid land around it. A stray drop of 
water fell from his pail, onto the bare skin of his foot, and awoke him from his day-
dream. He looked around into the emptiness that surrounded him. Quickly realising his 
innocent mistake, he turned without a second thought towards the house and to his daily 
tasks. 

The next day, Niente awoke, lit up mechanically, as the sun's incessant rays rained 
down upon his face, bringing with them the first manifestation of life. He left the house 
to collect the water from the well, as he always did at this time, only to see that there 
was a man crouched beside the well. The stranger was replacing the earth over a point 
in the ground where it appeared he had just planted or buried something. Niente felt 
neither curiosity nor fear upon finding another man in what had always been, until this 
moment, this most solitary of places. He made his way towards the man only in order to 
carry out the task that he always did at this time. That the man was next to the well, and 
the well was the place from which he drew water, was the sole reason for Niente's 
movement towards him. 

Without any form of greeting or communication between the two, Niente proceeded to 
fill his pale. While doing so he noticed that this man's appearance was similar to the 
physical idea that he had of himself. However, as with the flashbacks of the forgotten 
past, this idea was soon displaced as he retrieved the now full pail from down the well. 
With his task complete, Niente turned his back to the stranger and walked to the garden 
in order to cultivate the crops. Later when he turned away from the sun, and as he knelt 
to take a tomato from the vine, he saw that the man was walking away, out into the 
barren desert. Upon returning to the well for more water, Niente failed to notice that the 
man had gone completely. 

The day continued as all of the others before it had done and with the swift 
disappearance of the sun, and the black enshrouding of the night, Niente slept. In his 
sleep he dreamt, if at all, of nothing more than the place in which he lived and the 
ascetic life he lived there. In his dreams he would see his hands pulling vegetables from 
the ground, or hear only the sound a rush of water would make as it fell from the pail 
onto the incredibly fecund earth of his garden. However, on the night that followed the 
day where the stranger had appeared, Niente was taken away by a dream that was not of 
the simple life that he lived alone on his empty plot of earth. 

He saw a new world grow up from the spot where he had seen the stranger covering the 
earth. A vast new world opened up to him, within his sleep, of vibrant colours, and it 
was filled with a cacophony of noise, and overwrought with the intoxicating smells of a 
pure nature. His stagnant land of sand and emptiness transformed before his eyes into a 
living place with fields full of the thickest deep green grass, which were surrounded by 
mountains and hills whose peaks and brows he felt compelled to climb and conquer, 
sure in the promise that on the other side he would find more of this new wonder. From 
above and behind came the onrushing of a roaring thunder, and under a thin veil of rain, 
he watched ferocious waves, from a great blue sea, crashing violently in white blasts of 
salty cloud onto the sandy shore. Wild animals ran freely through the forests and fields, 
and the laughter of little children could be heard as they played hide and seek behind the 
protection of the trees. 

Niente was lost in the feast of this new kingdom. Gasping for air, he awoke quickly 
before the morning light had the chance to come and force him to wake. He leapt from 
his bed into the void of darkness and ran to the door in furious anticipation of his dream 
having become a reality. Outside it would all be true, the stranger had sowed the seed, 
and the world he had dreamt would blossom into the most beautiful flower before his 
wild, ravenous eyes. He pulled open the door and tore towards the well and the spot 
where the stranger had been the day before. 

He had run for only a few metres when he stopped dead, under the blinding light of the 
instantly risen sun, in the realisation that all was the same and nothing was any different 
than it had ever been before. The only change being in himself and that his teary eyes 
were now unable to focus clearly upon the well and the spot where the stranger had 
stood, and nothing had grown. 

Niente fell to his knees and cupped his face in the hands he had only moments ago held 
outstretched to a future that he had already lost. The coarse sand offered little cushion to 
his knees and was now nothing more than ugly, yellow dust devoid forever more of any 
hidden significance or meaning. Now, he noticed for the first time that the hands that 
touched his face were wrinkled and old, and that the skin they touched was of the same 
weathered leathery texture. 

He stayed locked like this, frozen on his knees, and began to sob. The warm tears of 
sorrow flowed, searing into and tearing at his battered skin, as he slowly lifted his head 
up towards the reality of the irrevocable dead blue sky and screamed out into the callous 
void in which he was now forced to face his own solitary and simple desperation.