IT’S NOT NORMAL TO HEAR SCREAMING

A vignette, by luca zani.

i

Today is the Monday, which is, of course, not a good thing. Today is the day you have been dreading. Today is the day that you are going to reckon with an unbeaten universe, and when you lose they will say that you ‘went bravely’ and ‘died as you lived’, and whatever other empty platitudes they can muster up to pad out their sorrowful hearts. Today is the day you are going to die.

ii

It is hot outside, no hotter than the rest of this summer, but this summer in total hotter than those on record. So, it will be warm when you die. This revelation - the temperature - doesn’t worsen your impending doom, and yet the day feels all the more terrible for this aesthetic understanding. To add context to misery - what could be worse? Not only must you die, but now; it shall be hot, and you must die.

The traffic is stopped as you come up against the first set of lights. You can see that man in his car, the blue one, and he’s looking at you and it seems as though he’s laughing. Suddenly you’re off balance and dreaming, waterfalls and playgrounds pass you by and your mother, she’s standing over you and telling you to get up, but of course this isn’t your mother it’s the traffic light turned green, and before the cars start going you run across the road, at the last minute, as ever.

iii

I’m not quite sure how we’ve gotten ourselves here. This place is unfamiliar - it’s not like the other houses and shops and restaurants we’ve been to. This place doesn’t open and it doesn’t shut, and no one can buy anything. This place has nothing to offer. I have nothing to offer. I think you will make it, if you can just have a little restraint. In my heart I know that’s the reason we’re here in the first place. I am calmed by the realisation that I have been here the whole time; it is you who has just arrived. Already you move through this place with a familiarity that I am still waiting for. I am leaving now. You are sitting down.

I thought I heard you calling my name as I was going, but it was screaming from the nearby tenement. It’s not normal to hear screaming. I duck my head, you sit up now, and the bad clown is laughing: now he’s screaming. I am not excited for what’s to come but you seem giddy, and I wish I could be you with none of your qualities - trade positions and keep the same pieces. I want everything to remain exactly as it always has been. I need desperately to get out of here.

iv

What does it take to get on? Things are different now, I am Questions and you are Answers, and when you turned over an ace I felt things really started to open up. I’m going to leave you now. I promise to tell them that you did not die as you lived, but carved something new for yourself, something brilliant and unlike anything else. Can I come with you? We’ll keep it all for ourselves, I swear no one else will be able to reach any of it. This has been, on the whole, challenging. I don’t trust what the conductor is saying; he’s not even looking in my direction. I really am going to try harder.

The screaming has died down now, perhaps died altogether, and this is the first time I’ve ever really felt anything like Concern. Maybe I will not always be there for you and you will have to stand on your own two feet, occasionally, will that be a problem? I can see the world again and it looks tiny, and I think I want to stay here with you. There’s nothing you can do for me now, already on the way - how will I face my own bed? The music is playing from all angles; I wish it would stop. Could you find space for another?