the man who nothinged himself
There were many things he could do - couldn't do - to pass the time. He thought of levitating. It seemed so strange. Why not just walk like anyone else? He wanted to reach the topmost branches of the horse chestnut tree didn't he? Where the big conkers were. (It was all part of his upbringing).
Well, he would just have to climb, of course.
He drifted up into the air. He was doing it. It was simple. (Easy as falling off a log. Watch ... well, that nearly ended in disaster.) Big green fruits appeared before his eyes, that had seemed so small from the ground. Spiky, like mace heads. They were good to eat.
No. Definitely not. They were not at all good to eat. They were positively poisonous. They were ... seemingly real. That was the end of that. As usual he was going to have to be satisfied with obtaining the mangy conkers that he could knock down with sticks, and be satisfied with winning one game out of every hundred. Showers of leaves and twigs ... that is the weather forecast.
He wondered how the other boys had managed to get their conkers so hard. Vinegar and a hot oven, he had heard. It never worked for him. Maybe he lost in the games because he lacked determination to win...his conkers always split and their's didn't. Some sort of telekinetic force holding them together?
It was late. After half past twelve. Many hours spent trying to write. The words wouldn't come. Wouldn't do if he had a deadline to meet. He got up from his desk and walked over to the tape recorder and switched it on. Jefferson Airplane. He changed tracks. Pink Floyd. Turned the machine off. Went over to the deck. Took out a sleeve and selected a Jimi Hendrix LP, AXIS BOLD AS LOVE. Little Wing. That was better. Although he felt slightly less bored, he couldn't help reflecting that tonight was just one in a chain of non-eventful, unproductive, boring, mentally retarding nights.
* * * *
Now here was a thought. She was sat quite still on the living room sofa. It was safe to play games with her. He could tell by looking in her eyes.
He had invited her to his flat, and now he couldn't make up his mind.
Typical.
But not wasted. There was still the usual patter to go through first. Hoped she didn't see how nervous he was ... wouldn't do to get her feeling as if she had to do anything. Salvage a slipped situation...
Breaking the ice, though, was more difficult than he thought. There was a distinct distance between her and him which he found impossible to navigate. It seemed that she was sitting at one end of a valley, and he at the other. The carpet was inbetween them. And so was the coffee table. He flicked ash off his cigarette into the cut-glass ash tray that flung a few flashes of the spectrum at him - how funny, he hadn't noticed its beauty before! - then tried to speak through the clear mountain air.
His words, crashed glass.
"I can hear you," she shouted. "There's no need to shout. Goodness!"
She had stood up and put her hands over her ears. He flushed.
"It ... it's the deck. I can turn it down." He got up. There was a narrow gravely path leading down from his side of the valley to the record deck, which rested on a glass-ware cabinet. He sought the volume control knob with his huge hand, realised his arm was far too long. It stretched several yards in front of him, across the browning heather. It was the end of summer. He brought the volume down appreciably, allowed the offending arm to dangle by his side. Then he returned awkwardly to his chair. Long strides were necessary to take his body back there. Was this trivial task never going to end? Why was he so conscious of his movement all of a sudden? What was the valley doing here? Why was his room part valley and part living room (or was it his bed sitter?)? Questions were circling the grey rock on the plain inside his head, like carrion crows. Shoot them down! He smiled at the girl. She had been sat down some while, and had got some photographs out of her red hand bag. Presumably she would be showing him a picture of herself, taken on holiday. He tried to appear interested. But from that point on - in his memory he could see exactly the point at which the evening was lost - he ceased to try to get much below her fine skin, or her powdery face, or her sexy clothes.
Oh, well. That was a thought. The thought faded. It was just as well. Couldn't have the girl and his life.
He turned up the volume control.
He sat in his home, bored. There was nothing to do. The cleaning was done. The shopping was in. Things that had to be made and altered and moved had been attended to. The only work remaining to be done had to be looked for, and he felt too lazy to search it out. It was 6 o'clock. All wasn't well.
The conker floated in full view of his eyes. It lay about one inch above the brick wall. When he moved along the wall, the conker moved with him, keeping that exact distance.
Keep your distance, it seemed to say.
Never mind me, he telepathed. Look at the boy with the stick over there. He pointed to an indeterminate object somewhere in the haze over the wall. When the conker turned to look, he would made a grab for it. Of course the conker wasn't so stupid, and levitated upwards a couple of hundred feet.
Don't try that again, sonny boy.
He kicked at a tin can and sent it clattering along the gutter. He was so bored. There was nothing to do. Then he thought of something.
Nothing!
Well, it was just a thought... perhaps there was some entertainment to be got from contemplating the concept! There was nothing tc do. Meaning, of course, that 'nothing' is to be done. Do nothing, he told himself. Write nothing. Made nothing. Made nothing out of things. Nothing things! Think of all the things - nouns, proper nouns - he could 'nothing'! It was quite exciting.
* * * *
See events happening as on a world scale. Yes, he must broaden his mind, expand his outlook. Increase the size of the windows slightly, allow his head to stick out instead of peeping through chinks all the time. It was high time he got himself off his fat arse and lived a little. Stopped looking inward. There was nothing but the black bubbling cauldron that way. Outside his skull parliaments were acting, presidents were declaring, Concordes were flying, empires were rising and falling, children were playing, milk was being delivered. There was certainly no getting away from the fact that fear was at the root of his great inertia. Boredom, call it what he would. Fear to mingle with outside events. Didn't want to get his fingers trapped. Played safe in his play-pen. Always the same excuse: "What's the point?" Well? He must get out. Up, and out. See a bit of the world. There was no point choking in his school scarf!
His chair hadn't even creaked. He was obviously not going to move. He would just let that fantastic Hendrix music wash over him a short while longer. Why spoil the effect of the great dead gentleman's music? It was building up to a climax inside his head.
The conker stuck to the outside of the window. He couldn't be bothered to get up and fetch it, smiled instead. "You silly bleeder," he spoke to it. "You silly fucking bleeder. You won't get me!" It seemed so harmless, stuck outside the window. Couldn't get in. He stretched his legs and crossed his feet, slid further into the armchair. After a while the conker lost its sucker grip, began to slide down the pane. It reminded him of a tear. "And good riddance to you, trickster," he thought, as it fell from view below the ledge. He noticed there was some regret inside him, some sense of failure. He got up to turn up the volume of the music.
Nothing. There was better entertainment to be got from doing
nothing - from "nothing" things, rendering them nought - than chasing a conker. What on earth made him want to pursue it? He sat down again.
* * * *
He could nothing the LP. (Abruptly Jimi Hendrix bled out of the window.) He could nothing the mirror ... ah! ah! not the mirror. Not just yet. It wouldn't do to nothing his reflection! (Abruptly his reflection vanished. One moment he was looking at himself in the mirror, the next he was looking at nothing. He might now as well nothing the mirror. He did so. Abruptly, the mirror vanished from his hand. It had been a present from his mother. Ah well, not to worry. There were many sentiments that were going to get broken tonight.) He stopped, sudden doubt assailing his mind.
It was all a game. It had to be. Don't play games, he told himself sternly. Instantly, that furrow in his brow appeared. He felt like his father. He wasn't going to have that! If he had to be a rebel, then on with the game!
He nothinged the bed. (It clicked-out, like a light.) He nothinged the light switch. (He had no way of turning off the light.) He nothinged a picture of Brigit Bardot who was sat astride a motor cycle revealing her provocative crutch. (Suddenly, there was only the wall paper.) He nothinged the wall paper. Then he nothinged the walls. (Below him he could see his sister's bedroom. She was getting undressed for bed. Better not look. It wasn't fair.) He nothinged the autumn moon. (There were only the stars left.)
After he had nothinged for about one hour, he realised that he was getting precious close to nothing himself. There was now only one object of furniture in the space where his bedroom had been: an easy chair. He drifted through the air towards it and sat down. He must think. Obviously he could carry on nothing things until there was nothing left to nothing but himself, and most probably he could nothing himself too. Then there really would be nothing! Nothing to nothing with! He laughed. (Thank God he could laugh).
Nothing himself ... the thought excited him. It was an evil thought that dropped onto the privet hedge below in the garden. (The neighbours would be furious.) How would he go about nothing himself? First of all a thumb nail. Then a little toe. How about a capillary next? Two inches of the posterior vena cava bunch. A left ventricle. A clavicle. One corpuscle. A virus. Next, a brain cell. A hair follicle. Perhaps a whole thigh. Maybe a brain cell, but he would have to go careful with brain cells. If he nothinged those, he might damage his centres of selection, and he would find himself with next to nothing to nothing.
He rested in his chair. As far as he knew he had not yet touched any part of his body, nor the chair he sat in. But supposing the process of nothing things worked unconsciously, at a lower level? He remembered he had not actually been fully in control when his reflection had got nothinged. In fact he had thought about nothing his reflection. He had never said, well, I direct you to nothing. In fact, I nothing you. He had thought about nothing it, that was all. The disturbing thought flashed through his mind that many, many parts of his body that had only been singled out, (randomly) for possible nothing, were in fact nothinged, and he didn't know about it. After all, he could still well be alive. He hadn't, for instance, yet thought about nothing his heart ... but he had! He had thought about nothing a ventricle! The thought froze his mind. What if he were already slowly dying? He hoped and prayed to God that these parts of his body were not nothinged. He could kick himself.
Now there was only one thing to do.
He would have to abandon his plans to nothing things in the universe one at a time (until eventually only he would exist) and nothing the thought that might cause his ventricle to go. (Instantly, the thought was nothinged. As quickly, another thought took its place. His right ventricle. He nothinged that too. Too late. A chain reaction was starting, involving his brain, his liver, and his kidneys, and he nothinged most of his mind in a short while.)
He had one thought left.
(This would be a way of getting back at the girl who half an hour ago had left him never to come back, a way of getting back at his parents who urged him to alter his outlook or else, getting back at the policeman who held him for questioning when no crime had been committed, at the aunt who promised money on condition he straighten his life, at the rich men in their cars who never stopped for him, at the other thousand prodding lifeforms of the godforsaken rivalry-ridden planet of his birth. It would be a way of getting back at the conker, which try as he might he could not nothing. It remained there, persisted till the end. He felt almost sorry for it. But he knew that it must be made to feel sorry for him! It hovered by the side of his last thought which floated free as a strip of aluminium stencil in the airless vacuum.)
He had one thought left. Nothing.
It nothinged itself.
Page(s) 106-112
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