Light Pollution (short story)

This one's all about perspective. Enjoy.

Daniel

My tube ride home today looked like most trips on the underground for me: headphones in, trying not to make eye contact with the other commuters, Alan Watt’s The Way of Zen open on my lap, though I didn’t read a word; a man in high vis vest beside me forcing his hairy thighs against my suit pants, in turn forcing me to force my own thigh on the businessman seated on the other side of me.

Yet this afternoon bore marked differences.  

Firstly: I was enjoying the shine of a post-work pint in my bloodstream and was looking forward to the canned gin mixer I’d be picking up from the off license on my walk home. I’d already decided on Watermelon soda- its pink can was singing to me.

Secondly: Easter had created a short week, so this Thursday evening was in essence my Friday evening and for once I didn’t have plans to travel out of the city.

Then: I found myself falling through space.

You know that awful pull in the stomach when gravity reminds you that it has been there all along? The businessman had abruptly risen from his seat, robbing my thigh of one of its wedges, forcing my hand against the sticky seat cover to stop my face from meeting years worth of commuter sweat.   

I glared after him, wanting to make him pay for the scene he’d almost made me make—to pay for my red cheeks. I closed The Way of Zen and prepared to let him hear it. But he was already at the other end of the carriage making a scene of his own.

He hovered over to a girl who had tears streaming down her face. He extended a tissue towards her.

I’m tempted to be cynical, but I suppose the gesture was nice. Alan Watts would approve.  

Despite my chapel-pew upbringing, my first physical reaction was disbelief when I laid eyes on the girl’s tears mind you.

Not that she looked like a liar or anything, it’s just that moments ago I was sat there humming to myself content as a squirrel—warm thighs keeping me steady, a chorus pumping, a wide-open weekend ahead of me. Yet this girl had been stewing over there this whole time? Seemingly being lanced from the inside if you were to take her at face value, publicly miserable about some personal tragedy—that of course no one else was in on.

I elected to roll down the volume on my “WILL.I.AM” song rather than press pause— pausing outright would have felt too vulgar for the moment. It would have signaled my guilt too strongly.

And I wasn’t guilty.

I just hadn’t noticed her.

Again I’m not saying she’s a liar or anything. It’s just hard to imagine she was going through all that, so close to me, without me noticing.

I’ve been called an empath more than once in my life you know?—and of course those are the types of comments I brush off quick smart.

But they’re also not nothing.

You’re judging me. I can tell.

Fine. But answer me this.

If that girl’s inner life was in such a turmoil as she was making out, less than a few feet from me, don’t you think there would have been some sort of leakage? What does that say for the idea that “we’re all one” if there wasn’t?

If I’m expected to believe that a pair of headphones and plans for a relaxed long weekend were enough to block out deep psychic anguish of that intensity, I can only conclude that either: She was putting on a performance or perhaps the collective consciousness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Sorry Mr Watts, sorry Bob Marley, John Lennon, Bono, you all made solid points, but a crying girl has you beat!

I probably would have turned back to my phone like all the others, had this man with a handkerchief not started looking nervously up at the Kings Cross logo flying past the window on every fourth section of wall. He leaned in and said something to the woman that wasn’t audible, but I “heard” him all the same.

He got off at that same stop.

She waved him away as if it was no problem. But it was.

She exploded in a fit of tears the second the doors hissed shut.  

Now, I’m usually a bit of a fence sitter in these situations. The other side of the fence to be specific. My mind goes inward and I think, “Wouldn’t I prefer to be left alone if I were in her shoes?” Those “good” Samaritans who poke their nose in always wreak of self-serving virtue rather than genuine empathy to me.

But the evidence of all that snot and blubbering put me on notice. This freckled, ginger in her smock from the fifties didn’t scream Oscar winning actress to me. And even if she was hamming it up a bit, who ever said you can’t indulge a bit of drama from time to time?

I slapped my thighs (a little louder than I intended) picked up the Daunt Books tote bag and wandered over to her.

“Hi Miss…I’m sorry if this is out of hand…but is…is there anything I can help you with?”

I drove through her polite dismissals like a snowplow and found her looking at me with a weight my cruisy evening ahead had held no threat of thrusting upon me.

“Actually…Sir, if you don’t have anywhere pressing to be—”

Of course pressing is a subjective term…my week had been building up to that pink can of gin. No I wasn’t technically deadline bound, but I hadn’t had a chance to check Netflix’s “leaving soon” tab yet. My M & S ready meal and series marathon might be ruined if my binge list took a loss like that!

Yet somehow, I found the strength to close my eyes and put this aside.

My sister is me, as I am my sister. Her plight is my plight. My delight means nothing if her day ends in fight,

—who’s podcast did I steal that one from? The Yin of Oneness? Stacey Tizz meditation and Biz? Maybe it was a song lyric? To be honest they’d all dissolved into one big mash of parachute pants and incense for me by this stage.

“If you don’t have anywhere to be…”

I had to blink a few times to register the girl was still talking to me. I smiled and nodded, then corrected it to a shake. “No. The only place I need to be is here with you.”

The relief on her face killed me. It gave me the same feeling of signing on to a two year gym contract.

“If it’s not too much to ask. I’m about to catch another train north and could really do with some company—” she said.

***

Mikkel

Summer evenings! My gosh. Is there anything quite like them?

Mikkel Brandt strutted down the centre of Clissold Park with more bounce in his shoulders than the juvenile deer in the enclosure beside him. The breeze was fresh on his skin, dogs were darting playfully in the fading light. Even the crunch of stray stones underfoot rang pleasant in his ears.

It’s naughty to record a phone call without the other party knowing, but this evening’s exception was warranted.

“They gave me the job!” Not Wendell Trowelman, Not Bertie Dart Jr. “Me! Mikkel the crazy foreigner. Micky Corduroy as they labelled me on my first day.”

Her voice in that moment? Praise the heaven it was priceless. Never has someone struggling to catch their breath sounded so angelic. Mikkel would play back that recording till the rewind button ground down to dust.

Naughty, but warranted.

It was everything he’d been working for. All those weaving threads of hard-fought progress over the years. At times getting close to a breakthrough, but always diverting at the final moment and headed off on the wrong trajectory. If her doubts were even a fraction of Mikkel’s own, she was a saint for staying with him. To think he, the poor import with nothing to his name could beat out the legacy mainstays at Warwick and co.?

All her sacrifice, from a good family, yet latching herself to him? What faith, what a testament to true love!

On that first day at work, who would have picked him? In the breakout room, when his colleagues were tossing around the prospect of advancing to the main branch. “Only one of us will make it!” They elbowed each other in jest, mocking the very thought of it, as if it was something none of them “really” wanted. But if any of them was going to be picked, it certainly wouldn’t be the misfit foreigner with only one pair of pants!

After crossing the canal Mikkel made his way behind the old church. Graveyard on one side, town hall on the other. Under the canopy of steeple shadow and trees it became difficult to see more than a few steps ahead, but horror stories never occur on a warm summer night. No, these nights exist in the territory of romance, nostalgia and celebration!

It was far too warm for the gloves he saw on a man up ahead, and a beanie? Hah. Must have recently moved here from a warmer region. Oh Mikkel, was no stranger to that adjustment. He would never forget that shock to the system. “What? This is your summer? But it…it rains every second day? I have to wear socks indoors!”

“Oh, he really must be fresh, this fellow!” It wasn’t a beanie after all, but a balaclava. The stranger rolled it down over his nose and mouth as the breeze picked up.
Mikkel shook his head and grinned. “You’ll simply have to get used to it chap—”

***

Daniel

Despite the herculean task she’d lumped on me, this crying lass certainly held the details close to her chest.
All she shared was this:
She’d got a text from her husband’s phone saying, “Mikey Corduroy’s definitely gonna need a hand finding his way home,” followed by a set of coordinates.

We’d travelled three hours north of London by the time I got her to spit it out, at which point I found out we were bound for a vague scattering of factories deep in some sub-industrial hellscape.  

We hopped on the last train out before the line got cancelled due to nasty weather. Naturally neither of us snagged a seat on our sardine packed carriage. Our travel companions were all off for the long weekend—both complacent and complicit in the damp squeeze, their suitcases stuffed. To think I’d floated the delirious notion of staying home!

The coordinates weren’t exact, so we committed what I assume was trespassing on the grounds of four different factories before we reached the wooden one. Condemned of course, rotting wood crumbling beneath my dress shoes as we tip-toed inside.

The wind seemed to sense we were close to our goal—picking a panel of corrugated iron clean off the roof at the same instant I laid eyes on my crying friend’s husband.

Naked. Tied up. Green bruises tarred up and down his white, white skin. But thankfully, all limbs intact— the line “Definitely gonna need a hand—” in that text message had had me pushing out images of severed bones the whole train ride up! So as harsh as it sounds, the sight of him—somewhat intact—was a relief.

By George, it was cold in there!
He was past the point of goosebumps though. When we walked in, he couldn’t keep his eyes off me. Suspicious as a pre-broken horse. Can’t blame him. Think—I’m here with his woman, and given the night he’s had, the poor guy’s got more than a little cause for trust issues!

The argument took me off guard though.

He told the girl, “As soon as my feet are untied. We leave this country.”

She eyed his feet as though weighing up how long she could plausibly leave him bound. I stepped forward to spare her.

“You’re not going anywhere my friend.” I told him. “You’ve just been kidnapped!” He didn’t seem to share the humour in my tone. “As soon as we get your feet untied, we’re headed straight to the police station and giving them a statement!”

Don’t you just hate it when you speak to someone, and watch them make up their mind about you? Watch them in real time discount your opinion as invalid based on whatever it was you just said.

That’s what he did.  After a brief squint—as if to check whether I was joking or not—he didn’t meet my eye again once.  From that point on his mind was made up. He addressed all of his further comments to his girl—as if I wasn’t worth the breath…

By George, my face is heating up just at the memory of it. I put my weekend on hold just to help you my friend! And you’re the one who doesn’t think a kidnapping is a worthy crime to report!

I’ll paraphrase, but our entire back and forth, proceeded in this strange manner.

-Me talking at him. Trying my best to get his attention, while simultaneously trying not to make too much eye contact with his naked body for fear of setting off another discrediting sore point.  

-Him directing his answer over his shoulder to the girl, whose attention was 80% occupied with her attempts to to untie triple knots.

All the walls of that old warehouse reflected the “Zen” texture of my mind perfectly, banging the wood against its own beams, shaking off the only flecks of paint that were left on them—the whole building threatening to take off with each moaning gale. If every nail and screw on the thing wasn’t on the verge of popping free from the rest, it just might have!

Dunno what the rundown thing would have been its former life. Storage most likely. It was one big open plan space without an office or shelf in sight.

Amid the arguing, it came out that this man was on personal terms with his kidnappers. He seemed absolutely certain they were guys from his work. Apparently, he’d recently been promoted and they did this out of jealousy.

As part of a one-way negotiation with the spook in the balaclava, he’d offered to send an email to the boss, turning down the job, so long as they also let him send the coordinates to his girlfriend. To me.

When all he got was crickets, he floated the idea of fleeing the country immediately after. That’s when they handed him the phone.

I tried my hardest to understand the shape of his argument, I honestly did.

He was dealing with prejudice of the worst kind. You don’t need to tell me about that. To this day I’m convinced my twenty-three and me reading of 9% Maltese has held me back my entire life. You can’t see it on me. I didn’t even find out until I was thirty six. But what do they call it? Unconscious bias? That’s the one.

In any case, our naked friend had taken his position as an outsider to the brink of what his local counterparts were willing to swallow and was now paying the tithe for messing with the natural order of things.

I heard him out. Shit I might have been on the verge of agreeing with him. After the morning I’d had, I could hardly argue that we are all one, that we are all a collective unified being. Forget our origins. If we are on the side of fairness, we can overcome any individual greed. As humans, we can fight any system!

But then he went and told me, that I could never understand him. As though he hadn’t heard a single damned word I’d just said!

He told me, “Life is different for you. The rules are different,” I was from this country, and because of that, my privilege would never let me understand.

Not one being. Not a glimmer of that unification.

Fuck him then.

Now I’ll admit, I lost my temper. I’m not proud to confess, I wrapped my fingers around the neck of a man who had no hands to defend himself. A man who I wouldn’t have dared try this with if we were on equal footing.

I may have told him, that if he was intent on viewing the world that way, he could go ahead and leave. He could run home to whatever third world he was from with his tail between his legs and live out the rest of his life believing that something was done to him. Sentence his poor girlfriend to this same fate, out of pride.

Out of an unwillingness to consider, there might be people on his side.

God it still infuriates me to think how blind he was to what I was doing for him. And the bastard was hardly ambiguous about it.

“For you tonight is a little adventure.” He said. “For me, this is life.”

If only the bullheaded bugger had heard one Jack Johnson song in his whole damned life. If only he’d seen how hard I’d been trying to live the one love. He might have realised he wasn’t in this fight alone. His closed mind might have seen something outside of his little world.

How can you have one love, if the loved won’t let love in? Gosh I could write a song myself couldn’t I?

To be honest, by the time we eventually got him untied and he began making his way out the opposite door to me, I was ready for him to go. If could spend three hours with his wife and see the whole picture of his world, yet he couldn’t after a whole lifetime of it. He could have his love.

***

The crack of ancient wood made everything moot. She was worse off position wise, but his bound arms maimed any chance of stepping back before it fell. As the moss flew down, they raced forward in an attempt to reach the door before it, chest first like angry ducks chasing a child.

In short, that beam made the call for both of us.

One love.

You can’t love the dead.

Well, you can. But it’s different. You don’t need them to accept the love, which I suppose was our problem from the start.

The beam was too heavy to even consider. Something, you’d have to know a guy in the construction world to lift. I’m talking too heavy-duty to rent type machinery.

Mikkel and his crying girl passed under, then passed on. I didn’t end up calling the police. Because what was the point? They didn’t want it. I didn’t owe them.

And how was I going to explain my connection without a weekend ruining investigation?
I let myself pass out of their life as unchanged as if they’d lived.

Namaste Mikkel.

***

Mikkel

Seldom did Mikkel divert to the metaphysical. Religion had never served him half the fruits of his own hand.
But after that falling beam. After he skidded along the gravel, riding his own grazed face to safety. He’d left his eyes closed. Certain that she was gone. His sweet, sweet darling, buried at the final hour. In this foreign land he’d dragged her away to. As they’d all prophesized. How could he go home with her linen wrapped coffin?

The heaven of her voice turned him into a convert.

“Mikkel, I can’t leave the country with you.”

Before he allowed his eyes to open, he made the decision to swallow his pride.

The decision was made then. If she was to stay. If that was her choice—not the choice of that feminine stranger she’d turned up with. He would remain with her. He would have his showdown with the Warwick and co. It was as simple as that.

Then a second voice. One he didn’t recognize.

“Get out of here bruv. You just had your second lucky break.”

Not the stranger who she’d turned up with, not his co-workers.

Mikkel planted his hands in the gravel and turned.

Balaclava rolled up just above his eyebrows. A gut punch.

One of her arms draped around this stranger’s neck, shoulder. A liver kick.

Tears streaming down cheeks that were pressed against the stranger’s jawline. The fatal blow.

“I don’t…” words couldn’t find a foothold. “I don’t understand.”

Her voice now. Oddly hardened, like she’d been practicing, but also wobbling under the moment. “You never looked long enough to notice. You never even tried.”

He was trying now though. “I built a whole life for you here.”

One word. Just one would have been enough. But she refused.

His mind went back to the recording he’d made following his call about the promotion. Her breathlessness, her inability to talk. Just like this, yet nothing like he’d interpreted it the first time.

”Just go my man! There’s nothing left here for you. Can’t you see that now? Are you ever gonna see it?”

He didn’t see it.

But that part was new. Seeing that he couldn’t see it.

As he stared beyond his balaclava wearing friend up at the night sky, knowing there were stars up there, but unable to see a single one in the light polluted haze, something clicked.