This is a personal writing project, separate from The Other Side of Elsewhere. It is one chapter of a longer piece but can be read on its own. The prose is British English. The narrator is Emil.
The air was a viscous pane through which I looked into the world. I sat frozen under the weight of the heat as a bead of sweat rolled from my freshly shaved lip onto my grey shirt. Overhead, the ceiling fan turned and moved nothing. Even the bees were still.
At two o’clock, the rain started falling, breaking the air into manageable pieces, allowing sound to flow for the first time since eight that morning. I took the opportunity to use the toilet and refresh my water cup with a dram of whisky. I escaped to the balcony to see if the world had started again. The birds proved it had.
I always liked birds but never cared enough to tell the difference between a swallow and a sparrow. I called them birdie-birds in my mind. They look like leaves on bare-boned trees in winter but remain hidden on the branches in summer. There were no pigeons here, which seemed odd to me. The birdie-birds gave me enough distraction—I’d forgotten what I was supposed to think about anyway.
It was a bit late in the day, but I needed to go to Ruby’s and reckoned I’d stop at George Evans Park to do some writing or at least think about doing so. I put on my waterproof shoes that occasionally leaked. I turned up the volume on my music to block the sound of my shoes crunching pebbles—pavement was a luxury. The park was about a mile up Blackjack Road, which was labelled as Black Jack in some places; I was never sure what the proper spelling should have been.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the Poultry Science building’s window. I had always been an American. It was stated plainly in a blue booklet with an eagle on it. But I had never lived in the country until last year. Growing up in other people’s countries, I was the American. I was now in my own, where American had the same spelling with a different meaning. When asked where I was from, I just said ‘different places.’ Truth needed a map and time. And I usually had neither. The rain let up to a mist during the walk. I stepped into Ruby’s and got a few hard lemonades and ciggies. Given my health, I knew I shouldn’t have either. But habits happen.
The park was as empty as expected. Only a few puddles populated the basketball court. I opened a lemonade and sipped and wrote nothing. The words flowed so quickly in my mind that they couldn’t register on the page. It was a story of a boy who found a deep hole, so deep he thought he could fall to China. He got close and fell but didn’t land in China. I took another sip and thought about the boy at the bottom of the hole, trapped and broken and alone. No exit.
The air was thickening again. I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke. Being trapped at the bottom of a hole might not have been that bad. At least he’d know where the boundaries were instead of looking for a way out. There were no assurances that being out would be any different. Anyone could walk by and never see the hole while the birdie-birds flew overhead.
I wrote the date in my notebook, ready to write again. Ideas came in, sat, and left while doodles filled the page—mostly birds and black ovals following no discernible pattern. I tore the page out and binned it. I wrote the date on a fresh page and nothing else. The date was important. It proved I was there.
What happened to the boy, I couldn’t say. He might have lived on the second floor, but he landed much deeper. Where in the world, no map could tell. He was real in my mind, but he wasn’t real, but I am real in my mind.