Reggie Chamberlain-King’s Recurring Dream #23
I have a dream…
I
Stan sank his hari-kari blade into the envelope and, with a right, then upward motion, plied it apart. Inside, a number of small note pages were folded, one within others and upon each was an urgent handscrawl.
Handwritten contents always require scrutiny, for they are, invariably, of greater importance than off-printed duplicates. And, of course, between the mortgage forms, tenancy agreements, CVs and advertising pamphlets, any personal communication is short reprieve from the tedium of death-mail sorting.
This general type, like the one in hand, quite frequently carries the incorrect postage costs. People always seem to undervalue their mail, never overvalue. They probably have more pressing things on their minds or are rushing towards a more important engagement or activity.
When a letter of that variety arrives, the contents are first shaken to loosen any cheques, valuables or trinkets that may be concealed. In this particular, there was nothing. Nor was there a return address in the top corner. Nor an ‘If Undelivered’ direction on the envelope’s reverse. There is little that can be done, unless the letter’s origin is revealed somewhere within the body of the writing. Otherwise, it would head to the cull. Or, if suitably amusing, filthy or preposterous, it would slide under the supervisor’s nose and to be slipped into Stan’s breast pocket.
It read:
Dearmost reader,
My utmost apologies for the state in which you find me. Usually I take such care over my appearance, but, naturally, I have had no means to perfect myself in my current situation.
You find me thus for I am bored. It is tedium that kicked my chair and no pleasure that tugged my legs. And amidst all, experience suggests that it will get no better. No action or inaction is likely to please me in such a way as I would wish.
T’is no great misfortune, for it was always thus, from birth at least. I could live with inactivity all too well – I am experienced at that. The trouble resides, I know, in too many people – not in the sense of over-population, but on a more personal level; I know too many people and this appals me.
I have a mobile phone. Its address book is filled, not with addresses, but with the names and numbers of folk I have only briefly met and even more briefly cared for. Come New Year, they may send me a congratulations, but for the rest of the time, naught. All this from casual interruptions in bars and cafes, because other people are desperate to be known to have friends.
The same is true of my paper address books and computer contacts – my acquaintances are legion; they are a whole multitude of swine. And to give the necessary care and consideration due them all, I must spread myself too thin. To desert any of them, after they have feigned the kindness of showing interest in me, would be the height of rudeness, so, for me, that is no option.
By acquainting with so many souls – the modern malady – I find that I repeat the same charming anecdotes until they are meaningless, overuse witticisms until they clunk.
Unsure of what I have said to whom, I worry about boring everyone and, in the process, bore myself. There is no chance to refine, rarefy or re-enforce, for I am on mere verbal nodding terms with all.
M. Durkheim concluded that suicide was most likely to occur amongst those with no support network to recline on, no friends or family or such. The current problem, then, is that there are too many people in one’s social network – a specious Foucaultian governmentality, I fear – in which the infinite webs of everyone you know delicately interconnect, but, where you to fall back on them, the whole would all give way, for not one of your relationships is strong enough to hold. It is a trust exercise in which I am too paranoid to partake…
There is a true love, of course. To her my kindest regards and the pick of my chattels. To the needy, the rest. Goodbye cruel world…
“Bloody stupid,” thought Stan, but he was young and still considered life worth living. He called over Mr Pungent, the dead letter office manager, to advise him. Mr Pungent was older and held a different opinion.
“No return address,” observed the old man plainly, as if the youth had no idea what the processes of his job were. “No value or trinket.” He checked the front of the envelope. “And not the standard for the Littlewood’s Catalogue complaints department, I imagine. Probably someone’s idea of a joke. I’d bin it. Would you?”
II
The milkman disturbed the bin, as it had been positioned awkwardly between the gate and footpath, with neither one, seemingly, determined as its final resting place. He did this each Monday morning, so had, by now, given up any preventative measures regarding noise control. That today was Tuesday hardly struck him as odd, as it is always Tuesday eventually. He strode gently down the path, a basket of bottles in his hand, making toward the front door.
From one of the empties on the doorstep there protruded a small tube of paper. It was there, he had small reason to doubt, to instruct him in some new combination of milk deliveries. Thus was certainly the convention.
Unrolling it, he read:
Dear Sir/Madam of the Littlewood’s Catalogue complaints department,
Fear not. I have no cause to grumble over your excellent service; in fact, the opposite is true. I write this letter solely to commend you on the top-drawerness of our correspondence, your customary professionalism and your quick-to-amends of aught-gone-wrong. For my various v-neck sweaters over the years, thank you. And many blessings for the swift reparations made after the Irish Thornproof confusion we all long to forget.
With this in mind, I will break all communication with you. Know that is it due, not to disgruntlement or animosity, but to simple facts – I will not be needing you anymore.
Good will. Yours…
Unable to determine whatever alternate directions this message hid, the milkman left the regular lode, along with the note, now replaced in the bottleneck.
III
Mrs Bench knocked three times, with intermittent pauses, indicating that each was a separate warning of her presence, rather than part of one prolonged furious rapping.
Upon no reply, she let herself into the hall of 29 Mount Pleasant Street. The cheque for this month’s rent sat squarely (well, more rectangularly) upon the telephone stand, as it usually does when the tenant is not there to give it to her by hand. She took it and signed the accompanying rent book.
She thought then of the tenant, so frequent in his graciousness and so giving in his candour. And more, she thought of what he’d done with her property. He had taken it truly in well-manicured hand, furnishing it with just the right bijou or doodad, straightening along the hidden length of the room or contrasting the exact colourways to make one welcome or at ease. He had the time to eke perfection out from banality.
This hallway was just right; not how she could have imagined it before her husband died. Nor even when she became a widow. The carpet was the same and the paint was unchanged, but his choice of umbrella stand, his selection of this old telephone and his curatorship of the prints, posters and wall-hangs. All he’d really done to the place was live in it.
O and what he’d done with the living room too.
She looked towards the living room door and noticed it was set a little ajar. There was a residue of plaster upon the treadboard in the doorway and powder along the jamb. Fascinated, she walked in. There, upon the floor, lay the ceiling. Or the great majority of it, ragged round the edges, where some weight had tugged it from the upper storey. In the centre, where the light fitting would be, the plaster seemed to crack upward into a small mound. A hand sat indifferently to the side, as if it had tried crawling out, but had grown quickly bored. A wrist disappeared back into the splintered wooden beams and plasterboard.
Mrs Bench didn’t much like manual work, so thought it best to leave all that to the police, once she called them. He’d dressed up for the occasion, she was sure, and it would be awful to see all that effort spoiled by some tonnage of building materials.
But, for completeness sake, she made her way across the ruin to pluck the small square of paper that was planted between two of the cold fingers.
It read:
Nothing for me today.
The old lady sighed. “Some people have such empty lives.”
And then awake with a shudder.
A Note From The Author
Don’t worry, reader, I don’t think it’s me.
