|
The Extra Day
He sat, slouched in the tattered and fraying old green chair, drinking
strong black coffee and smoking some noxiously cheap cigarettes.
He didn`t really know why he`d taken up smoking... perhaps just
to get an air of grittiness to his work. All it really achieved
though, was to give his paintings a slight brownish tinge.
He looked at her, still fast asleep in bed, at this hour too. It
was just sheer idleness. With a quick glance out through the still
closed curtains, just long enough to note that it was still raining
out there, he paced over to the bed, grabbed her by the wrist, and
roughly pulled her out from under the quilt.
"What the fuck do you think you`re doing?!!" she complained,
still half asleep.
"Get up. We`re going out."
"What? Where to? What time is it?"
"Questions, questions. I just have to get out of this place
for a while, and I`m sick of feeling like I`m alone, even when you`re
right next to me."
She looked at him, somewhat perplexed. "What`s that supposed
to mean?" she asked.
"Wake up for Christ`s sake! One of these days you`re going
to get up and there won`t be anything here."
"What do you mean? You`re not going to leave me, are you?"
"Don`t be ridiculous. But one day, you`ll wake up, the world
will have ended, and you`ll have missed the party."
"Oh. Is that all?"
"Good Grief!"
They walked through the shopping
center, just watching the people wasting their time, wasting their
worthless little lives.
`Oh look at that new iron they`ve got there. Do you suppose we could
get one? After all, we`ve had ours for nearly a year now, and it`s
showing its age, just a little.`
`Oh, but I so wanted to get one of those new power drills, and you
know how much I wanted to put up some new shelving in our room.
I really need one you know.`
A pair of enormously grotesque
fat people slowly lumbered past... outriggers straining to to support
the monsterous weight of huge rolls of excess fat, preventing it
from dragging along the ground and damaging the paved surface. They
left a wet trail of sweat, such was the effort needed to move their
gargantuan frames... like some kind of crossed elephant/slug mutant.
He stared at them for a while. Actually, it was impossible not to,
since they took up his entire field of vision. Then, outraged that
such abhorrently loathsome creatures could actually be permitted
to exist, he screamed at the top of his voice, "GET A LIFE,
YOU STINKING, UGLY, FAT BASTARDS!!!"
Turning away in disgust, he suddenly fell to the ground, as if struck
over the head with a heavy object.
Shaking his head for a moment, he tried to clear his vision, and
then got to his feet.
"What happened dear?" he asked, "Did someone hit
me?"
But she wasn`t there.
Had she rushed off, embarrassed by his sudden outburst? He had been
rather poor company, so he couldn`t really blame her. Figuring she`d
gone to the nearby bar, he decided to go and look for her there,
since that`s where they`d been heading anyway.
The place had a light airy atmosphere,
with an acceptably unsmokey view across the whole room. Many was
the time they`d sat in here, drinking beer and watching the punters
throw away their money into the numerous slot machines. The air
conditioning was quite excellent. You could actually breath while
you drank yourself into a stupor. On this occasion however, she
was not here.
He strolled up to the bar and called across to the familiar old
landlord. "Hey, barman. Have you seen my wife in here?"
"Don`t know. What`s she look like?" came the reply.
"What? Don`t be daft. We`re in here nearly every day."
"Look mister, I`ve never seen you in my life. Now if you`ve
had too much to drink, I think maybe you`d better leave."
"Too much? I haven`t had a drop, I`ve only just walked in.
What`s going on here? You act like you don`t know me. Has the whole
world gone crazy?"
"I don`t know who you are mister, but we don`t want any trouble.
I really think you oughta leave."
He stalked out of the place fuming. What the hell was going on here?
He spent the rest of the afternoon scouring the shopping center,
but couldn`t find her anywhere.
He decided to phone her parents`
place, on the offchance that she`d gone there to get away from him
for a while. The reply he got startled him even more than the episode
in the bar.
"What? Who? I`m sorry, we don`t know anyone by that name. No.
We`ve lived here for years."
He became most upset and decided to go home. Most likely she was
there already anyway.
On arriving at the flat, he stood there for a couple of minutes,
fumbling with his key. For some reason, it didn`t seem to fit properly.
Suddently, a complete stranger swiped the door open, brandishing
a baseball bat. "What exactly do you think you`re doing?"
said the man, in a rather menacing tone.
"What? I live here. Who the fuck are you?"
"I`ve got news for you mate. I live here, and have done for
years. Now I suggest you piss off, before I perform a little D.I.Y.
brain surgery on you."
Needless to say, he left.
He tried phoning his parents` house, as it was getting quite late,
and he needed a place to spend the night. The result was all too
predictable.
"I`m sorry, no-one of that name lives here. Are you sure you`ve
got the right number?"
He spent the night huddled up and shivering under a bridge.
Next day, he went back to the
shopping center, hoping to find maybe just one person who knew who
he was. This was really strange. Amnesiacs are supposed to forget
who they are, while everyone else knows them. He seemed to have
it the other way around.
He was just starting to dispair, when he was knocked to the ground,
as if struck on the head with a heavy object. He shook his head
for a few seconds, trying to clear his eyesight, he moaned... "Oh
God! Not again. I can`t take any more of this."
"What on earth is the matter dear? Are you alright?" she
said, helping pull him to his feet.
Someone shouted at them... "Hey! Who the fuck are you, calling
us fat?!!"
"Come on dear." she said. "I think we`d better get
out of here."
After a short while, they stopped and sat down on a bench.
"Okay," she said, looking him straight in the eye. "Just
what happened back there?"
He burst into tears, pulled her to him and sobbed. "I don`t
know. Just promise me you`ll never leave me again?"
"Again? What are you talking about? What happened?"
"I really don`t know. I think I gained a whole day somewhere
along the line."
"Well that`s new." she replied, looking rather confused.
"You usually accuse me of losing days."
"I`ll never complain again. Honestly.. lose as many days as
you like. It`s vastly preferable."
|
