I woke up early, but wanted to sleep more. My body was tired from the walk. I felt like I wanted to go again, to hike up the hill and try hard, but another part of me thought it would be better to rest.
Then the mind started to tick remembering last night and that smile. It was okay, the beers and the laughter, although slowing me down was worth it, just to see her bounce around.
I rolled over to the cold side of the pillow, a little laughter emerged from my heart. I was stuck again, what would come out of this new turn?
‘Well you think you are original, but you’re not.’
Jay laughed, a smile growing on the left side of his face and his chest bouncing up and down.
‘Why thank you’ he mocked in a classic British accent. ‘It’s so reassuring to know that your best friends believe in you.’
‘Listen’ James replied ‘it’s not that your ideas are bad, in fact a few years ago I did think what you were talking about was a little niche, you know on the edge of fashionable, but it’s true that now people are asking for all that interactive content.’
Jay butted in ‘so I am original then.’
‘Wait let me finish, even though you thought about monetising it before anyone else, doesn’t mean it was original’
‘Before anyone else’ he teased ‘sounds like o…rig…in…al…’ he sounded out like a school child learning to read.
‘But it’s advertising that makes you think of an idea first. We own your mind without you even knowing it.’
‘What are you talking about, you don’t own my mind. 100% original my brain.’
‘That’s what I mean, you are not, we seed your ideas into you mind without you even knowing and then let you think you made them all up yourself.’
‘Shut up James’
‘No I’m serious, we are everywhere, on your phone, first thing you look at in the morning, on the radio, tv, breakfast cereal, newspaper…’
Jay interrupted, ‘no one buys a newspaper’
‘Whatever… we are everywhere, you can’t deny it.’
‘But it doesn’t effect me, I just ignore it’
‘No you rebel against it, which makes you think another way we want you to think. You know classic love it, hate it, still talk about it.’
Jay was quiet and the two gazed across the park from the bench.
‘So how do you have an original thought?’
James waited, then started to answer and stopped himself paused a little longer and answered. ‘Hmmm… dunno’
Around and around we went, the circle spinning, the feet, the steps all in time, methodical.
The music repetitive as the world vibrated with each pluck of the strings. All in a trance.
Earlier that day the steps had been practiced in the village at the top of the hill, quiet and shaded from the midday sun, there had been laughter as the novices had stumbled over their feet desperately trying to understand the steps.
But in this moment in the late morning hours of the night, the rhythm and the steps were natural. The body had learnt. The mind was not really there, there was no counting of the steps, no thoughts of what happened next, just the feeling of hovering in one’s own body. A shimmer, a vibration, a relaxation.
‘Right we got seven minutes.’ Sean said as they walked purposefully through the maze of shelves, using the light from their phones to illuminate their path to the counter. They jumped over and entered the office closing the door behind them. On a wooden desk they saw the safe perched precariously on top, a large dial and lock on the front. Sean handed Biola the scrap of paper and put the key in the lock.
‘read out the numbers’
Biola responded.
‘clockwise – 18’
Sean twisted the dial so the number 18 was in line with the red marker at the top of the dial where 12 would be on a clock.
‘Anti-clockwise – 33’ Again Sean twisted the dial, but this time in the opposite direction. ‘clockwise – 46’
The dial make a click as if something had released behind the door, they looked at each other and then Sean turned the key with the red tag in the lock. It ran smoothly, and there was a louder click as the heavy door swung open with its own weight and the angle of the desk the safe was sitting upon.
‘Boooom’ Biola cried as he peered into the safe, there were wads and wads of cash, it seemed like more than they had anticipated, it looked like something out of Ocean’s Eleven, it felt like Ocean’s Eleven, maybe they had more than they were expecting? Maybe they could all go home with 5K Biola thought.
‘Shhhhh’ Sean interrupted. ‘Pass me the bag’ Biola paused ‘The bag’ Sean demanded raising his voice a little.
Biola looked around as if he had dropped the bag, but he knew straight away that he had forgotten it, it wasn’t even in the car, he knew exactly where it was, he knew it was back at the flat on the sofa in Sean’s living room.
‘Sh*t man, sorry..’ Sean looked up at him, ‘you kidding me? You chump. F**k man’
But this was no time to despair, The clock was ticking and they needed a solution. Sean was thinking quickly.
‘Get some X-change bags’ ‘From where?’ Biola replied ‘F**k knows, behind the counter.’ Sean guessed
Biola quickly responded walking out of the office to the area behind the counter. He started looking through the cupboards, nothing in the first, then he looked into the second, just a load of random stationary and plastic figures from cartoons and computer games that mostly came as freebees when new games came into the shop to help promote the new releases. Biola opened the third door and there was a stack of plastic bags neatly folded.
‘Yees bruv’ he called out to Sean, ‘How many do we want?’ ‘Bring two’ Sean estimated.
They stuffed all the notes into the plastic bags, the wads mainly in tens, a few twenties and some blocks of fives. The denominations low to reflect the value of the sales that the shop made to its customers.
‘Pikeys’ Sean murmured under his breath as if he was justifying the robbery to himself by creating a Robin Hood type of persona.
‘Right, lets go, check Tyrell is cool.’ Sean indicated as he pushed the safe door shut turned the key and picked up his bag.
Good morning – said the voice from somewhere up above, good morning squeaky replied with a little yawn. He rolled over in his little bed, scrunched up his little face and let out a looooong sigh. And who will you be today the voice continued. Squeaky paused for a moment and then let out his reply.
“Today I want to be squeaky” he announced proudly.
Squeaky lived in a little hole on the north side of moss valley, he had lived there for as long as he could remember, and he loved his little house, it had a little bed, a small stove, (that he frequently bumped his tail on) a set of shelves and of course a cupboard for all his clothes.
However despite squeaky being a happy sort of a fellow there was one this missing from his home, his mummy.
We sat next to each other, our shoulders touching, it was intimate but somehow distant at the same time. It was not the ‘first time’ feeling, that electricity, those nerves, but it was exhilarating in its own way. Neither of us moved, nobody pulled away or became uncomfortable, we just sat there enjoying the bodies connected.
Then, after a while, I began to feel the rise and fall of her chest, up and down, relaxed, calm, but excited. I listened with my shoulder and my body followed, my breathing matching hers. I focused on the tempo of her breath and my body relaxed into hers. My heart smiled.
They are everywhere, they have their own thoughts, their own opinions, they tell stories about their lives and try to get you to see the world like they do.
But how many of their opinions are actually theirs, how many times do they actually stop to think and ask the question of themselves, what do I think?
Joe paused and looked up and down the beach, looked at the crowds hiding the sand, he took a deep breath and looked his girlfriend in the eye, swallowed and forced the words out. ‘One of the top five beaches in Greece? Really, do you really think that this is beautiful?’
And that was it, he knew it was over, she had tried hard, tried to make an effort and make the holiday nice, but this was too much for him. They were just different. She walked off and he tried to sit down and look out to the sea, but he was too close to the fat German couple for comfort. He walked off in the opposite direction from his girlfriend.
Fuck it, he thought to himself, at least I can say I was there.
The car passed through the gap in the mountains and then they saw it, in all its vastness, the ocean, drawing the eye away from the rugged, arid landscape all the way to the horizon, to the blue. To the edge of the earth where you where unsure what was sky and what was sea. It was magnificent.
They continued along the coast road for ten minutes hoping for a glimpse, hoping that the stories heard for years over countless numbers of pints would be true. The story of the dragon. How when the winds changed direction and blew up the side of the cliff, out from his cave would come the creature, out from his hibernation to stamp his footprint back on the earth.
Up and down the valley they searched, their eyes desperately following every movement in their view and then… they saw it. The air changed, became cold, the sun brightened piercing the eyes of the travellers making them squint for a moment. The Dragon roared, the sound boomed across the valley and out to the sea, the cliffs shook with the vibration and the Dragon soared into the sky, twisting, spinning and stretching its every limb. Then it was gone, as it crossed from one blue to another, it vanished, gone… as if it were just a cloud.
They ran, they ran and ran, they couldn’t stop, not to think, not to look, not to pause for thought. They were making all the wrong decisions, they went right instead of left, they tried to scramble when they should have stuck to the path. They called to each other when they needed silence. But they tried. They both knew that there was a way, they both wanted to find a way, but every decision they made ended in a clash and because of this, they stopped. They stopped trying to escape and were caught.
And here only when hope was gone, when captivity was inevitable did they see each other, they felt each others touch, the pain and friction between them melted away, they looked into each other’s eyes and their hearts beat together. Despite the desperation in their situation, they smiled and felt the warm glow of each other’s love.
They turned away from each other, away from their captors and looked out across the countryside, the landscape was wild, unkept, the terrain uneven and the fauna sharp and aggressive. But there was a peacefulness to the energy, an acceptance from the couple in their fate. They smiled together and looked up to the clouds. As they stared towards the sky the autumn leaves rose up above them swirling, spinning, drifting, bouncing like a butterfly… sometimes leaves go up.
The boys hid in the reeds watching through the mist. They were pretty certain the hunters had gone, but there was no guarantee that they would not return.
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘We need to get the shotgun cartridges.’
‘How do we know where they are?’
‘We don’t that’s why we have to go and have a look.’
‘So they might not even be in the hut, they could have taken them with them.’
Joseph and Andrew had been set another task, this time however it wasn’t part of the initiation it was part of what they did, causing chaos. Out on the lake there were a series of huts on stilts for the duck hunters. The lake wasn’t fenced so the boys could get to the hut without ‘trespassing’, but out in the open, on the lake, there was a high possibility of being spotted and perhaps shot at, deliberately or by accident.
‘Why do we need the cartridges anyway?’
‘Look it’s not our job to ask questions, you have to wait a few years before you can ask questions. Robin will have a plan.’
‘You think he has a gun?’ Joseph asked, Andrew paused letting the words bounce around in his head.
‘I don’t know’ he answered honestly, thinking about the repercussions of getting shot gun cartridges for a real gun. ‘That’s not for thinking abut now, we got to get what we have been told to get and then… Well then we think about the next…’ He trailed off.
Joseph frowned unsatisfied by the answer, but wasn’t brave enough to challenge any more. ‘Shall we swim?’
The boys took off their shirts, trousers and lowered themselves into the water. It was August, but the lake was still cold, the cold ran through their bodies as they tiptoed into the water, clay oozing up in-between their toes. Taking one last breath Andrew lowered his chest into the water and started swimming. Quietly Joseph followed.
It didn’t take them long to arrive at the hut, they circled the building weaving in and out of the pillars in the water looking for some steps up. The poles were slippery, coated in green slime, but at the back Joseph found some steps, he beckoned to Andrew and they hauled themselves onto the platform.
Shivering the two boys scanned the lake’s perimeter, the mist was thick and their movements seemed to have gone unnoticed. Andrew knelt down by the entrance, pressing his ear to the door checking for signs of activity inside. Joseph flicked his head toward Andrew as if to ask if he could hear anything. Andrew shook his head in response, stood clasped the handle, paused, twisted and burst into the room.
It was empty, well, uninhabited at least. There was a sigh of relief and the boys set to work looking for shotgun cartridges.
‘Anything?’ Joesph asked
‘It’s all fishing stuff, bait, rods, tins of meat, look at this’ Andrew held up a tin of smoked sardines, ‘this box is full, I think whoever comes here has a bit of an addiction. You?’
‘Nope, petrol cans, blankets and cooking stuff.’
‘Any shot guns?’ The boys laughed. ‘Joe hold on, come here.’ Andrew had pulled back an old tarpaulin revealing a crate. Joseph crossed the room.
‘What you got?’
‘Shot gun cartridges’ Andrew replied looking at his mate and then back to a red box with ammunition written on it and a drawing of shot gun cartridges. Joseph reached down picked it up and opened the lid.
Life From the Dirt 