ANOTHER NOVEL: Chapter One, work in progress

A cacophony of white noise rips the slumber from my head and replaces it with a fluctuating whine drenched in static. From beneath the oppressive weight of the duvet I grasp for the sleep button on the radio alarm that long ago lost the ability to tune into any station at all. I can’t find it, never can. I placed it in the far corner of the room to make sure of that. Sitting up I stretch my sleep-creased body. On a night long forgotten the bed broke leaving me a mattress on the floor. The twisted paint flecked floorboards feel warm and alive beneath my feet. The red light line numbers say 6.26 because I won’t get out of bed unless the first and last digits read the same. Don’t ask why. It’s just one of those things. I walk across and kill the alarm with my big toe. My head settles slightly in the ensuing silence. The room smells kind of disturbed.
The writing is on the wall. I’m not quite awake, but my eyes are open. It starts on the ceiling and sprawls down the two walls bridging the sharpness of the corner with the blue ink of a cheap ballpoint.
‘Life exists in a series of experiences. The trick is to seek out and guide oneself through such experience that alters oneself that little bit closer to being the most complete human being one feels one has the potential to become and beyond. The trick is to be whole before you die.
Life is now. It’s not tomorrow night, next weekend, future planning, pension schemes or birth control. Life is now in all its horrific immediacy, in all its surround sound gut filled grime with in built stains. It’s blood and sighs and the tear-wrenching stench in the discharge of bodily fluids. It’s the hangover that disables, the upset stomach that destroys your day. It’s the tooth that aches, the fuzz on the carpet, the fly in your tea, the matted spunk streaked hair in the drain, the flesh dissolving rain and the lash in your eye. It’s everything that is now and no more. Remember this and know as you read these words that you are alive and I can do little to help you.’
The letters that form the words are not overly large or striking, they’re everyday hand written words that look slightly rushed. There’s nothing much to them. Nothing to shake and shatter the world. Nothing to steal the bad-breath bacteria from my early morning mouth. Nothing. But the prominence of their position is all wrong, that and the fact that I have no idea where they came from.

© Spencer Dylan, June 2004

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