Dust: (Part I: Sandstorms)

by Lochlan Bloom

  Georgi, Ivan and Catarina always arrived home at about the same time and prepared a meal in the same communal way, laughing and joking amongst themselves. In their own language they spoke too fast for μ to understand and he would normally just wait until someone addressed him directly or else nod along, pretending he got the gist of what they were saying. When they spoke directly to μ it was in broken, stuttering sentences and μ sensed that he was the one holding them up, even though as foreigners they should really master the language. He tried to imagine what it would be like to be from their country and speak that earthy, dirty language. To be able to walk down the street there and understand what everyone was saying.

  It was only the three of them this evening and μ felt relief that there wouldn’t be a huge crowd for dinner. If truth be told μ had something of a crush on Catarina. She was light and elfin with eyes that seemed to permanently flicker with laughter. When, sometimes, μ tried to laugh along to a joke, Georgi and Ivan always gave a look that somehow suggested he was faking it but something about Catarina made him believe she was sharing a true part of her spirit with him.

  They cleared the table and μ slipped the script up to his room, unseen behind a magazine. When he returned the food was ready and he helped set out the dishes of fried meat they had prepared. It was good heavy food, fatty and simple, the sort of fare that would fill you up. μ ate in silence preoccupied by the script and who could have sent it to him.

  Throughout the course of the dinner Catarina, Georgi and Ivan talked loudly about a rising political figure in their homeland, occasionally stopping to enlighten μ on a particular point or ask his opinion on topics he knew nothing about. As they drank, Georgi became more and more high-spirited, edging closer and closer to Catarina and putting his hands around her as he spoke. μ wasn’t sure he could finish everything on his plate.

  After dinner they carried on talking and drinking and μ waited unready to brave the solitude of his room. They talked louder now amongst themselves and more wine flowed. μ was thinking of bidding them good night and finally going up to his room when out of nowhere he blurted:

  “Do you know anyone in Brazil?”

  They looked at him surprised. Catarina’s eyes twinkled.

  “Brazil?”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, suddenly embarrassed to have raised it. “Forget about it, I should get up to bed.”

  Awkwardly he lifted himself from the table and shuffled to the door. They smiled back at him and he nodded his head as he ducked out the door. Going up the stairs he heard Georgi pronounce something loudly and they laughed. Catarina loudest of all.

  Perhaps things were really getting better.

  ”How quickly my opinions change,” μ pondered. “Only recently I was convinced that everything was set up to make me miserable and now how stupid that thought seems. It’s clear I was just feeling a bit down in that old place, nothing more than that. I was so certain but now it seems like nothing more than a passing cloud…that is life, I suppose”

  It was strange indeed how quickly convictions could be replaced, trodden on, negated. μ thought of Jesus’ disciple Peter. How he must have felt sitting at the Last Supper when Christ told him:

  “Verily I say unto thee, that this night before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.”

  When Peter had heard those words, the wine whipping his thoughts to grander heights, he had refused to believe it could happen. What solid, unshakeable ground he must have felt he was on. His master earnest and innocent in front of him, he had replied:

  “Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee.”

  At that point, there in the presence of his lord, conviction had driven him to tears. The idea that he, Peter, would deny his friend, the holy ghost made flesh, the true manifestation of pure love, that he should deny all that was sacred, not once but three times, was preposterous.

  And yet, a few short hours later, and his conviction was gone. He would curse and rail against those that claimed he was with Christ and publicly denounce his lord. If that - the conviction of the deepest, metaphysical love -could prove to be nothing more than a passing sensation then what after all could be true? If life was no more than a series of sensations linked together by chance then what weight could any of it carry?

  Safely in his room, he closed the door, although he might equally have left it open for all the privacy it afforded. Through the floor he could make out the laughs of his flatmates and outside, screaming devils shouted in the school playground across from his window. A constant rabble of children, baying at one another, bashing dissonantly on musical instruments. What were they still doing on the school grounds at this time of night? He found it hard to concentrate.

  He decided to make a list.

  He wrote:

  Find out who sent script

  Leaving drinks

  Strings

  Look for job

  He made these little lists frequently but seldom referred back to them. It might have made sense to tick items off once they were finished or even compare his progress against some timeline but he never did. He only wrote the lists to reassure himself that while some tasks might seem impossible everything could in fact be broken down into smaller components. The whole was just a series of simple steps that could easily be achieved. People talked about the big picture but μ had the feeling that the ‘big picture’, if it were ever to be revealed, would be a terrifying vision.

  He started to read the script again but the wine he had drunk with dinner made him woozy and he couldn’t concentrate. It was difficult to keep his attention on the page and something buzzed at the back of his mind. He needed to find out more about where this had come from. Could there actually be a real-life Ddunsel out there?

  Unearthing his battered laptop from a pile of papers he powered it up and waited while it chugged to open the browser. He couldn’t find anything about any Ddunsel that appeared to be related – the few places the name cropped up were clearly not relevant and there was no obvious connection with Brazil. Instead, he tried searching for some of the phrases in the script but that produced far too many results to make sense of.

  Having yawned twice, he decided to continue reading in bed and as he undressed he noticed three small red lumps, close to each other on his upper left arm. He must have been scratching them idly throughout dinner as they looked slightly inflamed.

  ‘A mosquito’, he thought, ‘or perhaps three mosquitos.’

  An image came to his mind of three identical mosquitos, wearing bowler hats, travelling everywhere together like some old-fashioned theatre troupe, leaving these three red marks as a form of symbol. It was a strange kind of symbol, if that was the case. His arm itched like hell. No, perhaps it was a symptom of something.

  Opening another tab he searched for any information about his affliction but the results were ambiguous. Most of the pages he found seemed to suggest that it was just a mosquito bite but then, as he read more, he discovered that it could also be a sign of early stage Pemphigus vulgaris. Some of the images of blistered skin were particularly disturbing. He searched various reference sites and forums feeling slightly nauseous and telling himself it wasn’t productive to look at these sites.

  At the side of one of the pages an advert read: ‘Meet hot girls in your area’. It was accompanied by a picture of a young Latino teen in a bikini bending for the camera. It was quite bizarre, he thought, that they should have this advert on a page about skin diseases but he opened a private tab and searched for pornshute anyway.

  The site was one of his favourites because the streaming was generally very fast and consistent and most of the clips were good quality resolution, at least compared to places like fucktube. It contained a seemingly endless stream of content all filmed with a certain realist style. He flicked from one clip to the next rapidly opening new tabs – a lesbian couple who discovered each other’s pleasure ‘for the first time’, a horny wife who wanted to swallow hot cum fast, a lusty blon
de who wanted her tight little pussy pounded – he chose the clips impulsively, scanning the thumbnails for a shot that looked enticing or some glance that suggested a ‘human connection’.

  Although the clips were short he watched each one for only a moment, some addiction making him flick on, wanting more. The greater the humiliation or discomfort on the face of the actress the more he felt aroused, the more he wanted. It was like falling into a hole. A Filipina girl cried beneath the weight of a potbellied white man with greying pubic hair. Her little chicken-yellow body looked so fragile it might rip under this old letch. A tingle of excitement mixed with guilt. She looked very young but it was only a performance wasn’t it? He couldn’t be blamed just for looking at it? Even if it was realistic. She whimpered loudly as the weight of the man’s torso forced her face into the pillow.

  Apart from the paper thin walls, the other problem with his room was the bed, which made a terrible squeaking noise every time he lay on it. As a result he had to stay as still as possible, the volume turned down low, as his forearm moved quickly back and forth. He was not able to hear as much as he would have liked but the headphones were downstairs.

  He was enjoying one artfully shot clip titled ‘Young ebony slut enjoys double anal’ when the battery on his laptop died. It was a real piece of shit and he generally had to keep it plugged in otherwise the battery barely lasted twenty minutes. To make matters worse the charger was downstairs as well so obviously he would have to carry on without it.

  He closed his eyes trying to conjure up the image of the young ebony slut again but he couldn’t concentrate. Instead he tried to picture Catarina, her eyes twinkling mischievously as she went down on him, struggling to fit him entirely into her perky mouth. He let out a groan as he felt himself getting close. She played with his balls, sucking him deeper and deeper into her mouth, the corners of a teasing smile tempting him cruelly. He was very close. He focused on her eyes; Catarina’s beautiful eyes, taunting him, making him harder. One moment they gleamed with a primeval wickedness, the next they were vulnerable, innocent, she made him froth inside. He ignored the squeak of the bed. She goaded him on; complicit in this filthy transgression. He was very close. He tried to avoid breathing. Out of nowhere an image of Alberta came into his mind.

  He wiped it up with a pair of old underpants that were lying near the bed. He was empty. Empty and irritated. Why had he pictured Alberta all of a sudden? He pulled the duvet over and switched off the bedside lamp waiting to drift off. Normally he would fall asleep straight away but that night he lay awake, disturbed.

  He had not thought about her in ages. It meant nothing, surely, but still, it was strange that he should think of her just at that moment. His rash burned. The bites red and angry. What was she doing popping into his head? He didn’t care he told himself. Anyway he was in the city now.

  He was far too awake. His brain raced and the emptiness that had promised to lull him into sleep now expanded, engulfing his thoughts. His whole position seemed ludicrous when he was in this state of mind and he felt a tight knot developing in his stomach. He wondered if he was not going to be awake all night now.

  After about forty minutes he got up and turned on the light. It was hopeless, there was no way he was going to be able to sleep with his thoughts going round and round in loops. He paced around the room finally spotting the script on the edge of his table. He picked it up and started reading.

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2014. Lochlan Bloom has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.