We are GOD.
We bury your Shadows.
Dirk stared at the soil-streaked words embroidered across the back of his dark blue jacket. It was hung on the front of the only other chair in his shoebox apartment, a chair he couldn’t recall ever having sat in. Knowing that, like him, the previous occupant had lived alone, Dirk wondered if anyone had ever sat in it. For all he knew it could be broken, missing a vital screw and waiting to collapse under the arse of an unsuspecting sitter.
Milk splashed over the table as cereal fell off his spoon and back into the bowl, snapping him out of his musings. He shovelled what was left into his mouth. Looking past the empty chair he studied the shapes and colours on the canvas that rested on the easel crammed into the corner. Itself covered with splashes and streaks of paint, it could’ve been an extension of the work-in-progress. The as yet untitled piece came alive in Dirk’s imagination and he watched the brush strokes moving and growing, transforming into his latest masterpiece. This infantile stage of a painting was his favourite. There was enough there to rouse interest, but the detail was lacking. Onlookers might guess at what it could become, but only he knew how it would end up. Only he could decide its fate.
To the canvas he was God, and this was when he was most creative; at the birth of creation.
Briefly, the colours on the canvas faded, flickered even. The whole apartment was affected. To Dirk’s left was the window, covered by a thick blind that ran wide of the frame and all the way down to the bottom, and then some. But above it, poking out of the wall just below the ceiling, a single bulb glowed a fluctuating orange. It never shone brightly, but its purpose was more important than to illuminate its surroundings. On the opposite wall the clock ticked close to five o’clock in the evening. Dirk spooned in the last mouthful of cereal and chewed it slowly as the bulb above the window gradually lost power. The filament, not too bright now and easy to make it out, glowed dimmer and dimmer until it was no more than an ember close to death. And then, amidst complete silence, it went out.
Dirk was left only with the overhead light which shone as brightly as it always did, its power coming from the grid. The bulb above the window was different. Its power came from a small solar panel affixed to a rod on the roof that forever pointed west, a solar-aerial. It was next to the antenna that received the single fuzzy picture for the television and the two audio signals for the radio.
Tucking the dark hair on the right side of his face behind his ear, Dirk got up, walked to the window and flicked the blind down. With a sudden racket it defied gravity and rolled itself up. Outside, the sky was an eerie orange and was brightest to the left of the framed scene. There, behind the furthest tiled roof, the sun had just set and Dirk sighed in longing. What he’d give to one day be able to paint a sunset in progress instead of after the fact. Even now, barely a minute after the horizon had consumed the large fiery globe, the beauty had somewhat faded. Now there was just a dirty glow with a sea of dark roofs beneath.
Vertical lines covered the townscape with its repeating stencilled print, antennas and solar-aerials sticking up from every roof. Here and there a broader line rose, a thick pole that stretched high into the sky. The closest one was but a couple of blocks away, but though its base was hidden by old and crumbling apartment blocks like his, Dirk knew it to be several feet wide where it met the concrete floor. He followed with his eyes up the impossibly high pole and to the three large glass domes that hung from giant hooks. So high in the sly, storeys above even the tallest building, they looked like something out of one of those old, grainy science-fiction films. And suddenly they blinded him with bright light. Across the sky the lamps burst into life, replacing the smouldering sky with their own brand of tainted light.
Beyond them the first signs of cloud could be faintly seen and Dirk stood watching, observing, staring into the same space he stared every evening. The only sound he could hear was that of the mechanical clock behind him, breaking the silence once every second. Then a tick-like sound came in between those of the clock. And another. His eyes refocused on the pane of glass itself and he watched as tiny pellets of water warped the image. It was a quarter-past five, Dirk needn’t look at the time to know. Every day the sky was void of clouds, but every night a blanket of rain fell.
As the sky darkened and the skylamps seemed to shine more brightly, roofs started to glisten. As usual he simply stood and admired—if that was the word—the transition of day into night. And as usual, when he realised the sky was finally pitch black and the few spots of rain had evolved into their nightly downpour, he felt shocked and cheated that it had happened without him really knowing.
It had reached the time when most of the town would awaken. Dirk was an early riser. The job he’d taken over a year ago—to pay the bills and the tuition fees for an art degree he’d never use—required an earlier start than most. Resting his head against the cold glass of the window, his view obscured by the rivers of water chaotically cascading down before his eyes, he ran through the motions of his routine in his mind as if it would help the execution.
Twenty minutes later he was showered, shaven, with his teeth brushed and pulling on his heavy workman’s boots. Tying the laces he saw the broken iron still sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter. It was the justification he needed for a wrinkled shirt, while the bowl with a thin film of milk in the bottom would have to wait until he got home. By then it would need a good soaking to loosen the set glaze of calcium, but it was a routine he was used to.
He stood, pulled the garish jacket from the back of the redundant chair and swung it round, threading his arms through the sleeves. With the keys in his hand he took one last look at the painting which was already finished in his mind’s eye, before walking out of his apartment into the corridor.
Such a shame that art didn’t pay the bills, he thought to himself as he closed the door. Luckily someone, somewhere, always needed a GOD.
Dead End Train Page 4
