It was when I drank from the candle on my dining room table that I realised I was probably going to be the knot tied at the end of my bloodline.
Thousands of years of human endeavor encircling the very moment in which I poured hot wax onto my tongue and burnt off a reasonable portion of my left eyebrow. What would my way-back-whens say? The ones who shovelled mud for the honour of a carrot a week, the ones who worked until their arms fell down to their sides–and they too then fell onto these arm straddled sides. Odysseus, I’m sure he’s back in the family tree somewhere, battled titan and beast alike, and yet here I sit having just quaffed at a still burning candle believing it to be the cup of coffee I was still yet to boil the kettle for. I wasn’t drunk, I mean I’m not technically drunk, but states of mind and the lingering taste of lilac will not preclude the admission of total fact.
Blinking vision back into my rather warm left eye I looked over to my bookcase in an attempt to shoo away the brown dot that lingered over the encyclopedias: a small marble rolling it’s merry way around my eyeline wherever it pleases, free of both blink and wink. After a moment of spluttered swearing and discovering my mouth’s new ability to mispronounce words containing the letter ‘T’, I lumbered towards the sink and spat a pearl of wax into a soaking casserole dish.
A gentle plink was sounded by the wax as it dropped to the bottom of the dish and then struggled against the indecision of whether to float back up or not. Turning and bumping off a drifting patch of soggy breadcrumbs, the globule eased itself to the depths of the oily water, coming to rest alongside a forgotten carrot. Staring at this little ball of grey left me in a rather profound state that the still burning portion of my tongue could not remove me from. Why had I just grabbed the candle? Why was I so engrossed in a book that I failed to notice my assumed coffee was quite brightly illuminated? Thinking on these things, and attempting to pronounce the non-word plegh a dozen times, I stalked away from my kitchen and loped onto the balcony to glower against the morning set before me.
Spring, how I abhorred the pleasant weather of spring! Jacirandahs fully in bloom, Cyclists waving merrily as they bundled past: shouting frivolites like “Good morning” and other such twaddle. Two seasons of winter, that’s what the world needs; a solid kick up the collective backside that not only draws a curtin of frost over the morning for half a year, but further engrains the general melencolia that lets people feel as dour as they rightly should.
Gewn! Cursed Gwen with her thriving garden bed of geraniums so resoundingly swaddled by her equally vapid peonies–or whatever they’re called. My sprightly octogenarian neighbour was seen to be performing her morning fuss by busily sprtizing her collected flora-obscura and humming a typical springly tune in her own discordant way; I’m sure she’ll say hello dear soon, oh yes there she goes-
–Hello Gwen… yes, I see you, yes it does look like rain later, thank you.
Abhorrently pleasant for an ex-banker, Gewn seemed to be filled with the “vim”–If I can be bemoaned to use that word– that a person of her age really should consider retiring. Where’s the decorum for god’s sake? Where’s the tact of a life-beaten existence contained within ceased joints and fading eyesight!?
She, despite these flaws, remains a burden that I choose to maintain for the moment, as she often brings my bins in on a tuesday and mostly keeps to herself.
As it were, things had been rather absent recently…
Staring down the street and bringing a small flowerpot to my lips I managed to stop myself just before I drank the brackish rainwater that had welled itself within the abandoned terracotta pot and paused for a moment. Twice this morning I’ve been so lost in thought that I’ve attempted to drink the nearest thing to hand, curious I admit but also bringing illumination the question why I decided to light a candle at nine O’clock in the morning.
What curiosity of misaligned routine had caused the egregious striking of a match? I now began to wonder if I had developed a kind of mental tunnel vision in recent weeks, a singularity of thought that was keeping the periphery, or the acknowledgment of oncoming calamities, adjunct and forever escaping my notice. It was a recursive, drifting kind of feeling that was probably why I kept forgetting to take the bins out.
Thinking on this I took a sip from my pot plant and bemoaned not yet having boiled the kettle.
J.McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 