The grey moon hangs low in the night sky,
casting a pall across the valley where a sleepy suburban town lies. Down
here, in OneTown, terraced houses press shoulder to shoulder along narrow streets,
while birch trees shed their gilded leaves on the cold autumn wind.
Every house comes with a tessellated driveway
and a privet hedge. Every house comes with a conservatory and a flowerbed.
Every house comes with a back garden and a swing.
Husband, Wife, and Daughter live in one such
house. In the gloom of the hall, where the grandfather clock ticks away,
snapshots of their life hang on their wall of joy. This picture is at the
public pool: Husband is belly-flopping to Wife and Daughter’s great delight.
Here, they’re making faces at the monkeys in the zoo enclosure. Their favourite
is that one over there: they’re huddled together by the newly built snowman in
front of the chalet (a freezing day, but worth it, because then they had warm
cocoa by the fire).
Upstairs, the family nestles in the arms of
Morpheus. The parents’ bedroom lies in a veil of silence. A mosquito’s buzz
blares out of the dark and tears the veil asunder. The noise hangs briefly over
Husband’s head, unwavering, before trailing away to nothing – only to make
another fly-past, sounding like the scraping of a fork across a metal sheet.
Husband stirs under the covers. The buzzing tails off once again. Husband
switches on his bedside lamp. The light encloses the bed in a warm shell, where
it feels safe and comfortable, keeping the rest of the room in semi-darkness.
Weedy, with heavy bags under his eyes and greying
hair, Husband belies the fresh-faced man in the family pictures. Only five
years have passed, yet now he looks fifteen years older. He studies the green
digits on his alarm clock and begins to fidget. Four a.m. already. He must be
up for work in exactly two hours, a routine he adheres to, as does everyone
else in OneTown, like the followers of a religious order.
His ears pick up a vibration in the air. Right
away, Husband spots the fuzzy outline of a mosquito launch off the lampshade
and then cling to the wall on his bedside. He can’t allow that nuisance to ruin
his seven-hour sleep. Anything to hand to squash it? Let’s see…Yes, the black
book.
Husband slips out of bed and pads up to Wife’s
dressing table on the other side of the bed.
The black book, a vade mecum of standard
civil behaviour, is issued by the Department of Civility of OneTown. Every
family owns one, without exception. On the front cover, the following words are
embossed in glittering gold:
DUTIES
OF THE FAMILY: THE HUSBAND, THE WIFE, AND THEIR CHILD
Husband has second thoughts about using the black
book as a swat. What would Wife think if she saw him? What about the others in
town if they learned of it? As long as no one catches him, there’s no harm
done.
And so, he lifts the book from its spot next to the
scented candle and the lighter, then tiptoes back over to his side of the bed
and slinks towards the mosquito. At the wall’s edge, he peeks at Wife – still
sleeping – and slams the book down on the mosquito, which drops dead to the
floor. Husband scoops it up and clasps it in his fist. Then he places the book
back just so, right next to the scented candle.
Talk about stress.
Catching his reflection in the mirror, Husband’s
face blanches: Lucius, naked, grins back at him. Two sides of the same coin.
Unlike Husband, however, Lucius hasn’t lost an ounce of his silver lustre.
“How many more years did you believe you could
ignore me?” Lucius demands. “This time, there’s no getting r—”
“No, no, no. Not again,” Husband says. Eyes closed,
he grips the edge of the table. “Get away.”
He chances another look at the mirror: his own
reflection. What a relief.
Quick, back to bed. This done, he hides the dead
mosquito under his pillow. Good, everything is back to normal. He turns the
light off and soon falls asleep.
* * *
The
dripping of water, as in a cave, echoes in Husband’s ears. He pulls himself up
and out of sleep, arriving not in his bedroom, but in infinite black space.
Husband feels his way in the dark, his eyes
adjusting slowly. In the distance, he picks out the weak light of a lamppost.
Under it, something angular juts out from the ground. As he approaches, alert
for the slightest sound, the object resolves.
A headstone.
Husband peers at the inscription.
LUCIUS
COWARD
A naked figure detaches itself from the darkness.
Husband’s face twists in horror as Lucius steps into the yellow light.
“Go away,” Husband says and keeps well out of
Lucius’s reach. “Let me be.”
Lucius withers Husband with a stare. He creeps
towards Husband, forcing him into retreat.
They circle each other.
“Let you be?” Lucius says. “Look at you. You are
dying. We are dying. And you are letting it happen without a fight.” His
hand shoots out, finger trained at the headstone. “I refuse to let that come to
pass. It is time for you to wake up.”
Husband bumps against the lamppost behind him and
comes to a standstill. “What’s there to change?” he says. “Things are what they
are. That’s the way it is for everyone. Anyway, it could be worse.”
“What could be worse?” Lucius bursts into laughter.
“What could possibly be worse than your so-called life?”
The lamppost light flickers off. And back on, now
glowing red.
No sign of Lucius.
The loud clump of feet alerts Husband to the
presence of danger. And sure enough, five white automata appear out of the
shadows. They surround him. A bell tolls somewhere in the darkness.
BONG. BONG. BONG.
The automata press in on Husband through the gauze
of red light: fixed smiles on their masks, arms and legs chopping the air like
mechanical axes. Over the loud tolling, they parrot stock phrases at Husband,
who remains trapped inside the Tenth Circle of Hell.
“The bank has granted us a loan. Are we getting the
chalet?”
“Your key performance indicators are down. Give me
better results.”
BONG. BONG. BONG.
“You have one more month to complete your tax
return.”
“Pleeeeease say yes to Mummy. You’d be the best
daddy in the world.”
“Buy our products with 0% interest-free credit.”
BONG. BONG. BONG.
Reeling from the all-out assault, Husband covers
his ears to shut out the cacophony, but he makes no effort to fight back and
drops to his knees. When the automata finally cluster around him, the bell
falls silent, and they melt away.
“What could be worse than being always accountable
to someone?” Lucius says from the lamppost. He stands Husband on his feet. “Our
future is now. It’s time to burn our bridges.”
“That sounds too hard.”
“My friend, it’s easier than you think.” A smile
brightens Lucius’s face. “Then the most wonderful thing will happen. We’ll be
accountable only to our self. Come
on, what do you say?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t.” Husband looks down, avoiding
Lucius’s eyes.
Lucius pushes him away. He rejoins the shadows.
Then his voice permeates Husband’s thoughts. ‘“I can’t”? We’ll
see about that.”
The red light blinks off.
* * *
x
A
mosquito’s buzz breaks the silence.
Husband wakes up in the pitch-black bedroom. The
grating noise thrums overhead, taunting Husband, and fades away.
“Oh, what am I going to do?” Husband berates
himself. “Is there more than one mosquito? Please, no.”
He hits the light switch and lifts his pillow. The
dead mosquito isn’t there. He rakes over his corner of the mattress to no
avail. From the corner of his eye, he glimpses the framed picture on Wife’s
bedside table: two newlyweds locked in a tight embrace. Lucius’s words haunt
him.
Our
future is now. It’s time to burn our bridges.
The mosquito sweeps across Husband’s field of
vision, then zigzags into the shadows.
Why not sleep in the sofa? Yes. No. Otherwise, how
would he explain that in the morning? He should switch on the ceiling light,
then. He can’t risk waking Wife and getting caught red-handed. Argh, there’s no
way around it: somehow that damn mozzie must be found.
Husband bolts out of bed and fetches the black book
from the dressing table. Then he combs his bedside wall for the mosquito,
though the further he sweeps along it, the fainter the light from the bedside
lamp.
To his right, Wife wakes up. She clears her throat.
“Honey?”
No answer.
“Darling? Are you alright?”
Jesus Christ. Can’t he be left alone for one
fucking minute, without having to explain himself? In semi-darkness, reaching
the bedroom corner, Husband moves leftwards on to the sidewall. His eyes
straining, they roam the wall. Up and down, up and down, up—
“I’m talking to you,” Wife says from the bed behind
Husband. “What on earth are you doing?”
“I’m so sorry, darling.” Husband tears himself away
from the wall. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” He crouches down at his bedside.
“Could you please try to go back to sleep? I promise you, I’ll follow suit
shortly.”
“Tell me first what you’re doing. Surely, it can
wait until tomorrow, can’t it?”
Husband hangs his head. He’s
never going to find that bloody insect.
The bedroom door eases open. Now what?
Rubbing her eyes, Daughter steps into the room.
Wife jumps to her feet, moving to the door, and flicks the ceiling light on.
“It’s okay,” Wife says to Daughter, and hugs her
close. “Your daddy can’t sleep either. He is not feeling himself.”
The mosquito whines past Husband’s head. This time
Husband has a clear view: it whizzes across the empty bed to attach itself to
his bedside lamp.
“Daddy,” Daughter whispers, “maybe if I give you a
magic hug, you will feel better?”
Husband ignores her as the mosquito buzzes off the
wall. He stomps across the bed, tossing the black book aside, his eyes locked
on the flying beast. It’s now or never—
“Are you out of your mind?” Wife says.
This intrusion knocks Husband off balance; he
stumbles off the bed.
The mosquito zigs over his head and zooms out of
sight.
Fuck. Calm down, you are going to find it. Then
things will be as they should be, and he won’t
have the last laugh.
“Daddy?” Daughter takes a step forwards. “Why
aren’t you answering Mummy?”
Wife joins her. “Darling, can we act like normal
people and go back to sleep now?”
With nowhere to go, Husband backs into the corner
of the bedroom. Images flash across his mind: the lamppost in infinite black
space; the five masked figures move in on him; he drops to his knees…
The tame lion snaps back to reality.
“No.”
This simple two-letter word roars around the
bedroom.
Husband draws level with Wife and Daughter at the
open bedroom door, a river of tranquillity flowing through his veins. Finally,
he speaks again.
“Leave. Me. Alone.”
Wife and Daughter float away like two ghosts
through the doorway, disappearing into the shadows beyond.
To his surprise, Husband cracks up, his sides
splitting so violently that he strains to breathe. Indeed, it is easier than he
thought. He slips off his glistening gold band like a snake shedding its skin.
A renewed Lucius picks up the candle lighter from
the dressing table. He snatches the black book from the untidy bed sheets.
Without a second thought, he sets the book on fire and hurls it. The burning
book lands on the floor with a heavy thud. Lucius watches the flames shrivel
the pages until only ashes remain.
He slams out of the bedroom.
* * *
High in the hills, under
the night sky, Lucius looks down at OneTown,
a speck of light in the shadowy valley. His face cracks into a smile.
It
is done.
He turns his back on OneTown for good, and, naked,
begins to scramble up a slope through a wood of oak trees. Above the canopy,
the night sky darkens to indigo. Lucius reaches the hilltop.
Far ahead of him, the sun rises over a road running
through the open countryside. As Lucius climbs down the grassy slope on the
other side, birdsong rings out in the summer sky. Soon, the sun reaches its
zenith.
At the bottom of the slope, Lucius strikes out
along the road towards his new life, shading his eyes against the brightness.
The Beginning
Bio:
Zara Thustra is an English teacher who lives in Cornwall, England. He is happily married and has two beautiful daughters, Amber and Natalia. He hopes to fulfill his childhood dream of having one day a collection of his short stories published. His favourite book is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
