Blackout-Copyright Robert Fullarton- 2008

Blackout

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2008

The final remnants of the day disappeared over past the city’s boundaries, above churches, schools and council houses. Above in his bedroom chamber James Moore sat in solitude, calmly reading his novel. The young pale skinned creature was an avid reader, and a self professed intellectual, with a sharp mind full of facts and great stories to tell. Lying adjacent to his bed, stood a large wooden chest of doors, packed with books on everything and every topic, with encyclopaedias and dictionaries and with manuscripts on short stories which James composed himself in solitude alone .

Outside the window James watched the great menagerie of the night, as the sun set and faded into obscurity and the birds all rushed frantically off onto the canopy of the oak trees at the border of his garden. When the sun retreated, it left behind a residue of rubies and clouds coloured in red wine, with a sprinkle of pearls above at its mantle.

Almost every room within the house was empty and the streets were vacated, peaceful and quiet. The midsummer moments of a rather humid and placid evening in June had left James in a state of comfort, for the sun dried days of June leave a hopeful residue of confidence in the human heart itself.

James began to make his slow descent down the winding stairs into the kitchen to collect his black leather jacket his baseball cap and his car keys for he had made special arrangements to go for a drink and meet up with an old friend from secondary school whom he only barely got on with but had decided on the state of affairs to surprise his old friend and give him a phone call to make the arrangement.

                                                                                                                    Down at the bar, the typical scenes of old country gentlemen could be seen, these men are decorative for a certain stereotype which many cannot argue against. They wore shabby brown tweed jackets and drank extra large measures of Jameson and skulled back pints of Guinness while they pestered the barman with conversations on the weather and the economy, which they would discuss with absolute distaste and ignorance in a less than sober state of mind. The mundane atmosphere of the bar was replaced on many occasion with the visitation of loud, crude, rude teaming packs of young energetic whippets who suck and swallow all the laughing gas in the bar and drink the old men under the table. When the pub was packed it was filled with glamorous, over confident women with boots and these women would parade around for sport to seek attention from the rugged burly robust young men that watched with admiration to the lovely ladies which played hard to get to any offer made by any foolhardy young lad. Even the old men would typically say “women drinking pints of lager and cursing what’s next?” Such were the observations to be made from the caricatures at the bar. All the social athletes would gather and joust in confidence and mockery.

James entered through the door at half past nine to meet his friend in the far right corner of the bar. His friend immediately waved to him and made a signal to suggest that he had already paid for the drinks. The pub was about two thirds full and many couples sat deep in discussion. As James walked cautiously through the bar across to where his friend sat he heard a chorus of ladies laughing in the background and a pair of old men staring rather bizarrely into his eyes. The great decorum of the pub, practically covered entirely in freshly made rows of wood with a scent of mountain ash stood as a setting to the lavish spectrum of bright pale light that scattered across the room, to fringe on the perimeter of the pub. James always felt uncomfortable in pubs and bars as he felt such a horrible anxiety and an uneasy feeling around his young peers and particularly around young ladies who often would whisper cruel remarks into each others ear and then walk out on him on the sly, hoping that he would never catch them in the process. Such slippery young ladies with their nasty habits had left James in a sort of mental purgatory when around women; they would always show his inferiority complex and reflect how much he hated himself.

“James it’s good to see you after all these months apart are you keeping well?”

As his friend inquired on his well being, James gave out a forged smile of confidence and happiness so to be civil towards his old friend.

“Well Shawn, I’m still living, still breathing and still in my capacity.”

“Good to hear, you’re keeping well, James. Oh by the way I’ve ordered a round of drinks. That bloody French bloke serving is definitely as slow as a snail, I don’t understand why he’s even been hired to work and he’s also as rude and crass as my Uncle Tom.”

“Shawn, whose drinks are those”, inquired James pointing to a couple of extra drinks that lay on the dark black table as if specially arranged for someone.

“What James.”

“See those drinks there do they belong to someone or have they been here before you arrived?”

“Don’t worry James, those drinks belong to my friends Kevin, Sarah and Laura they are out having a smoke at the smoking room, they’ll be back in five minutes”, said Shawn half looking at the giant television in front of him in a state of complacency.

“I don’t even know you’re friends, I mean I’ve never met them before”, sated James out loud to Shawn as if to suggest something intentional to him.

“Don’t worry James, relax, you aren’t in bad company tonight. Just talk to them and be yourself”, said Shawn spelling out his lack of apathy and interest in James for it could all be seen in his eyes how he truly felt about his so called friend.

Over came the Frenchman himself with a look of callous indignation directed at Shawn, while in the meantime James showed off his indifference to the situation by discussing the evening’s football matches which were being watched on the two televisions by a crowd of overbearing Londoners who roared in ecstasy anytime someone came close to the goal lines.

Five minutes later out came Shawn’s friends who had disappeared for a good part of the night on an over extended visit to the smoking room. A young, tall bloke about twenty something was followed by two overdressed beauties that were dolled up and glamorised in their expensive clothing and their fancy hairdos. Both the women were confident and far too attractive to James for him to tolerate. When James spotted their advance made towards the table, he immediately felt his heart drop onto his stomach. He said to himself, “here’s the inquisition”.

The three new arrivals immediately crowded round the table and greeted Shawn with hugs and laughter, and a mindless exchange of false pretence. The women wore glittering silver dresses that were quite impressive to the watchful male eye.

James noticed how he was outside the conversation and how the other four were seemingly ignoring his very presence as if he were some inferior creature, invisible to the eyes of the social athletes.

“Hey I don’t think that we’ve been properly introduced yet, my name is James, James Johnson and I came tonight with Shawn. By the way what’s you’re names?”

James started to make and attempt to introduce himself to the others and to try and flaunt his mere offer of friendship.

The four finally turned around and looked at James and paused from their boring conversation and then they final gave out smiles of welcome, subtle but effective to display their lack of interest in James.

“Oh hi, it’s wonderful to meet you James, I’m Kevin, this is Sara here beside me on my left and this is Laura here on my right”, as he introduced himself both of the girls waved hello to James for the briefest of moments and they went back to their conversations once again, almost in an attempt to exclude James from the scene.

The Girls laughed in sequence whenever Kevin told a paddy Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman joke and they played and twirled with their hair as if in trance to the good looking Kevin who seemed to have the unique power of being able to woo the girls.

James got the attention of the group by tapping Shawn on the shoulder so to signal to him and the others that he was going to tell them something humorous.

“I was watching a funny program the other day about certain men in America with strange obsessions and interests in bizarre collectible items. One group of men, collected blow up inflatable love dolls and one of the men enjoyed slapping his love doll around and tried to get old bits of cotton wool and hair at the barbers so to stick on his love doll to make it more hairy and attractive as he stated himself”, said James trying to amuse the crowd with a humorous anecdote on dysfunctional society. This was an attempt to get the girls to open up to him; he sought to have their fancy and to make himself into a witty, young man.

“Oh that’s hilarious”, said one of the girls half hearted.

“That’s not funny in the least bit. No one wants to talk about inflatable dolls; we come to the pub to talk about normal, more interesting topics. That’s stupid and weird, you’re talking crap”, said Shawn who frowned with an unimpressed look at James.

The others were quiet for a moment and then they continued to chat to themselves while James sat annoyed with a red blush all over his cheeks. Anxiety swept up all throughout James body and it left him crippled and torn both emotionally and in the mind.

James felt his heart sink further down his shirt, as little dribbles of sweat began to move down slowly from his wet brow.

Once again the two wrinkly auld fellas that sat crouched at the bar, looked, almost fixated and amused, and seemingly ready to applaud him and clap, to his floundering antics with his eternally bemused company.

“Oh look! I need another drink Kevin”, said one of the girls, while nudging Kevin on the shoulder, trying to gain his attention as he chatted in full concentration.

The second girl, had her face almost concealed completely from James, not in distraction but seemingly in a complete and absolute effort to avoid the company and hopeless antics made by James, who drooled and dazed in complacency while dreaming of stealing a single kiss from her soft smooth delicious lips, to taste a single taste of love and confidence. Instead she looked towards her friends who were engaged in a discussion to the far right of the table, and so James sat in his fantasy and looked in a game of stupid pretence at the giant plasma screen before him, watching almost like a blind man trying to catch a glimpse of light in the fleeting glimpse of sunset.

“Oh Shawn, that’s hilarious”, cried out one of the girls as the others roared in appraisal to one another.

“Got any jokes? At all, anything for a laugh”, said James speaking out to the crowd, who now began to view him as a nuisance nearly, they gave an almost callous look of venom to his pious face of innocence and hopelessness.

“Oh no, we just told one about fifteen jokes at least, over the past fifteen minutes”, said Shawn trying to appease the meagre conversations made by James.

James had sunk down in his chair, his hands were clammy and his heart pounded faster and faster like a train on course for collusion. James walked slowly away from the painful sight of their remarks, their laughter and their cold austere refusals to even acknowledge his presence amongst their vain discourses.

“Hey you come here! Hey you come here!”

The two old men had turned themselves around to mock and jeer James, by calling him over and waving their hands towards him, as if to lure him into some cruel, malicious joke.

James went up to the young acne ridden lounge boy to pay for a drink in haste so to avoid the drunken mockery of his spectators, who now gathered with two other men so to point and tease at his nervous disposition in the bar which now was drenched in a despair that penetrated every gland and every organ of his body. The sense of melancholia, claustrophobia and torment were beginning to take their toll on James, who now began to try with all his strength to conceal the start of the human supernova which results in breakdown, madness and the deepest of sorrows.

James stood fully erect, and propped his lean shoulders up to try and frame his handsome and athlete structure and portray the strength and goodness which he had shown to many others whom he had stable relations with.

“I thought I’d treat you all to a drink, on me. Would anyone like a drink?”

James squabbled, and faked a smile hoping to break the silence at the table.

“No, we’ve only just ordered”, said Kevin rather bluntly.

“No thank you anyway”, said Shawn looking at his watch and then to the expressionless, and seemingly faded looks on the girls who looked as though they were doubled up in pain or in emotional discomfort.

“What about you girls? Do you want a drink?”

“No, thank you, I’m going to leave after this drink, I’ve consumed too much tonight.”

“James we are leaving now to head into the city centre, we’re going by ourselves we don’t need you anymore, thanks for coming tonight.”

As they stood up, the girls linked arms with the two boys and embraced each other with a kiss and then a chorus of laughter arose as they turned their back to James and strolled happily out the front door, to leave James in mental paralysis.

The deathly stench of human behaviour filled the bar with horrid odours of anxiety for James; he looked around to witness the sight of everyone laughing, in an ecstasy of forced laughter, were they laughing at him, they Couldn’t be, so he thought to himself. Stop laughing! Stop laughing, shouted his mind as it roared while the pub span around and around like a carousel in a frightful hallucination or a dizzy vision, with a blur and a fading chant and sound of clapping hands ringing out almost to a high pitch which nearly deafened him. James began to stagger and sway while he struggled across the wooden floors of the bar to try and escape.

FASTER, FASTER, FASTER, FASTER, screamed the voice inside his head.

The train in his mind chugged quicker and quicker while he began to lose consciousness completely.

“Finally”, shouted James as he found himself fully conscious, in the comfort of the summer air and the friendly solitude of the dark penetrating night, which was quiet and natural to James penetrating sense of anxiety.

James summoned up his reserves and ran like the wind, right up the road away to an empty and dishevelled mucky field, which lay obsolete at the side of the path.

He looked out across a huge drop at the slope of the field; he wept and threw himself into the rocky belly of the abyss. Every light in every habitation all around diminished and the sound of a single human sigh was lifted up onto the pale silver pockets of the sky. The stars shone on, in their glory.