Short Stories

 

 

Apparently, as hunter gatherers we were camping, temporarily of course, near Zennor – and I had an idea, a purely artistic inspiration you understand, and said to my small group of skin-clad clansmen ‘why don’t we hack out four 20-ton slabs of granite, drag them up here on to this hill, put them upright in the ground, stick another 35-ton capstone on top, cover the whole thing in earth, and bury me underneath – when I’m dead of course’: I was feeling a bit coitish!

 A few years later, as we moved around after the wildlife, gathering herbs and honing our survival skills, I had another inspiration.  ‘I’ve heard a rumour’ I said to my clan ‘or it might have been a dream or a vision: this plateau we’re camping on looks a bit bare, and I think it could do with a cwmbrian update.  In the mountains beyond theSevernSea, I’ve heard tell there is some quite lovely bluestone-granite.  It’s only a little over 200 miles from there to here; let’s travel over and hack out a few lintels and uprights – needn’t be more than 30 or 40 tons each, and drag them back here, set them up on-end in a circle, and hang the rest around the top.  We all know what can be done with a few flints, antler-heads and sledges; it will look incredibly impressive, particularly at the solstice.  I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit bored hanging around just hunting and gathering.  You never know, such a ritualistic expression might catch on throughout these islands; our descendants could be inspired by our venture, and take a bit of time out from hunting and gathering, and meet up here for festivals.

About 1,500 years later, sitting around a camp fire, a man suddenly declared ‘I have a dream’.  His clan listened awe-struck.  ‘You see that great hill over there; just imagine it furrowed with trenches all around it, about 80 feet deep with stockades along the top, and a maze-like entrance.  If our enemies threaten us, we could drive our sheep and cattle up there and barricade ourselves in.  We could be safe.’  ‘But it’s over one kilometre long,’ (to use a later description of length) a young man gasped ‘and we are only a small tribe, and, ah, ah – what about water?  And why would they attack us anyway?  Many are still hunting and gathering, though some of us are growing a few crops and settling down a bit’! ‘Have you no imagination?  We will  not undertake this work just for ourselves, but for our descendants, who will have multiplied in number and maybe attacked by bigger hordes of warriors;  as for water, we will dig out dew-ponds so we and our animals can drink.  Maybe those who come after us will want to dig a deep shaft down to the water table.’

 And so it was done.  Such is the power of imagination.  And it did catch on; hundreds of menhirs/quoits and stone circles were erected by hunter-gatherers, and later at least 900 hill forts were constructed inBritainby primitive agriculturalists.

 And even later, the BBC made various re-enactments to demonstrate how our ancestors lived – – because now with our greater scientific understanding we can actually look back in time with all our accumulated wisdom and demonstrate how these primitive people evolve from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists to modern, sophisticated entertainment addicts.  So, they constructed their idea of a bronze-age village, and invited several ‘battery -henned brains’ to leave their living units for a week or so and try and become hunter-gatherers, living off the land (with not a little help from a survival expert)!  Apart from a minor escape to buy a Mars Bar, they existed on the presumed diet of their ancestors – rabbit, nuts, seeds and berries etc.

 Strangely, no-one thought of hacking out, shaping, moving and erecting 20-40 ton blocks of granite, and digging out hillsides with flint and antler. 

 For today, we know we are far more evolved, rational, sophisticated and non-superstitious as we blissfully look forward to our own significant solstice.

 WHITE ROOM

Only the sound of his own breathing, and the throb of his own pulse in the white room – deliberately magnified to reverberate around the blank walls and echo and re-echo in his eardrums.  Similarly, every tiny movement of his overweight, naked body rumbled around him like threatening thunder.

But it was the light he found most terrifying.  It blazed at him from each of the six uniform polished surfaces with what seemed a mixture of tenderness and unwavering judgement – as innocent as the days of a child.  He had never known light like this, had always experienced it as the sun’s warmth or electrical illumination and heat – something inanimate , never with this utterly personal quality.

He tried to keep his eyes squeezed shut, but it still seemed to penetrate every pore of his body.

How long he had been in this place, or how he had got here, he had no idea.  He  had not even tried to crawl over to touch one of the walls because the sound of his every breath and movement assaulted him so fiercely.  He assumed that the walls, ceiling and the floor on which he lay were all made of the same glowing white substance.  So he just lay there, imprisoned in his own body.

He was cold, hungry and thirsty – but not unduly so, but enough to keep him awake while his brain tried to keep his rising terror at bay, and try to make sense of his white cell.

Occasionally, he was aware of a faint smell.  He had no idea how often, because nothing in his limited environment ever changed.  The first time he became aware of it he dozed off, and when he came to again rising out of his unconscious darkness, he shuddered and screamed – and then his whole body shook with the echoing, re-echoing blast of sound that he had spontaneously inflicted on himself.  Eventually, he bought himself back under some sort of control and determined to try and awake without panicking.  He resolved to try and think objectively.

His sense of cold, hunger and thirst still seemed to remain at the same level; it was constant, never growing, never diminishing and he slowly realised that he only dozed off whenever he became aware of the faint smell.

Anger began to rage inside him – but he knew for his own sake he must contain it – keep the fires of survival alight.  This was what he had always done, as a child and as a man, overcoming by stealth every obstacle in his path, always a winner.

But slowly, and then with ever blinding clarity he realised he could not win; he could not prevail, because he could neither react to his environment without causing himself intense pain, or even more terrifyingly, find release in reacting to anyone else.  There was no-one, no-one at all – no warder or interrogator to break the silence of his complete isolation.

And so it was, that when he next dozed off under the influence of the faint smell, that he began to sense spectral images gathering.  Sporadically, and then more frequently they began to take form – like pictures emerging from a historic photographer’s developing fluid.  The stills became more animated, and then grew into a phantasmagoria of nightmarish films filled with screaming, competing voices.

He shuddered awake, pouring with sweat, his own heart beat thumping like a demented drummer as it echoed around the white room.

He opened his eyes.  In three dimensions off every wall, the same nightmare visions were being replayed.  He threw himself on his front, but even there, between his clenched fists, the holographic horror film continued it’s roar – and the loudest voice of all, the dominant role in the film, was his own – and he was directing it: a constant loop of film that now dominated his consciousness and which he was powerless to stop.

Once again he felt himself, heard himself blessing the shaking altar boy he had ordered into his vestry, even as he fondled him.  Felt the thrill of power as he raped him, ignoring the sobs and muffled screams.  Heard himself warning the child not to tell anyone or he would consign him to hell and eternal damnation.  Saw himself giving the child a bar of chocolate, cuddling him, soothing him, telling him – this orphan bastard – that he would be his father and look after him.

He saw his own face, benign and friendly, distributing the wine and bread at the mass, praying over the sick and giving the last rites to the dying.  Meeting the eyes of a visiting Bishop – recognising a hidden, kindred spirit – opening up to one another – offering the human mange tout of the parish and diocese to one another – exalting in the torment and abuse of innocence.

He saw the wolf dressed as a shepherd in the innocent light of unwavering judgement that shone from those children’s eyes he had abused and raped.  Saw himself crucifying them, trying to obliterate that light – the light of the spirit in them and in himself.

And then he knew, knew for the very first time, what hell was.  Not the medieval vision of a dark, fiery place filled with evil spirits forever prodding the souls of the damned with hot pitchforks.  In that vision at least, something was happening; there was something to react to, even if it had to be painfully endured, and perhaps eventually purified by fire.

No, this was far worse, far beyond any imagining.  It was a place where you were utterly alone – where you were made completely aware of your deliberate, pre-meditated rejection of love-light, by the very purity of the light that brooked no darkness in the white room.  And the light exposed the fact that you could no longer respond to it, because you had deliberately and knowingly chosen to crush it, reject its witnessing innocence in others and inside yourself.

His own life’s film tore like a tornado round and round the light filled white room, seeking escape.  Yet he now knew, with existential certainty, that his soul would never die – that he had chosen his own eternal torture.  In the world, he had murdered love, and his judgement was to exist bathed in this realm of love-light, to which he could no longer respond.