New Map 9

Not so long ago really, there was a lonely boy who lived in a flat. The flat was cheap and comfortable but, more often than not, it was cold. His name was Thomas Arthur Bloyd. He watched documentaries on Arctic wolves and—every Friday—paid his rent to a moneyed bully.

Okay, I’m going to be a bit more specific about the date.

It was the mid-nineties in an autumnal month. You’re a whole different person when you’re stoned; and he would come down and mope morbidly for days on end.

Although no longer living with her, he often thought of his mother and the many nights she could not sleep in her bed with the worry of the family finances filling her head (“a world full of troubles, anxious sleep”).

Standing in University Green one afternoon, watching the people milling about, he recalled an old photo of the same scene from a hundred years before; in the shot an equally buzzing crowd had been present—all dead now, naturally—and he knew that in a further century the current lot would be long gone, too. Contemplating his place in all of this? Well, he wasn’t really up to such contemplation.

In the evening paper, towards the back pages, he would dwell on the faces of the dead staring out at him from the In Memoriam column. This was a routine of Tommy’s on almost every other evening—forget the telly page or the funnies—just look at those black and white shots, the sad traces of finished lives.

He was especially struck by buildings that were older than he. Of course, in Tommy’s case, as with anybody else, this threw up many degrees of age: on the one hand he could wince at the ugliness of a nineteen sixties office block, or else gaze in awe at a majestic edifice from circa 1750.

One in particular, near the observatory, gave him a blinding cause to pause: 1877 it read—as in “erected in the year”. He stood, as Joe Citizen, at the top of a T-junction; his eyes fixed, in wonder, on the builders’ date-marked stone. How fleeting he felt—it well nigh winded him.

Occasionally, when he had a cent to spare, he wrote shockingly unctuous mail to a man from his past. We shall call this gentleman Monsieur Mace. Let me give you an example of these cloying epistles:

             Mace,

                      Here is a reply. Hope you are okay and that your period of self-examination is passing in a productive way. You are so like Socrates. “Well, it’s Saturday night…”, wasn’t that the beginning of a song, way back in the mists of time, when the collective memory of mankind was less instantly connected? A time when the internet had never been heard of and the scrolls of information had yet to be set down in electronic form. Oh Christ, I’m stopping right there. I’m starting to waffle and I haven’t even been blazing. My mind is racing nevertheless. On that note:   

                       What if I were a corpse writing from the grave,

                                                                                                                 

                                                Tommy Arthur Bloyd

(See what I mean, reader, about the thickness of the prose?)

Bloyd the boy watched further documentaries: a Chancellor of the Exchequer, a neurotic pop star, drug-trafficking and lived in the Lie District of Bludgeon City. He worked a menial clerk’s job, inputting data the livelong day in the Stasi-style offices of a firm of debt collectors. Sundays he had off, for leisure and the like.

The mornings were crisp and cold and, when the day had passed, darkness fell at six p.m. He would return to his flat, cook something small, and fall into the television for hours on end. He was an insomniac, he was a mixed up man—it’s a trite, but in this case, an apt phrase. His mind was focused on a terabyte of things; a multitude of souls sought him out, not all of them with good intentions.

He was in another building now and had left his alter ego, George Douglas Grant, behind. The building comprised eight flats. He lived on the ground floor. He was by no means a puritan—no irritating twit reborn with a passionate love of grit—but Tommy’s days of excess had, nonetheless, ceased.

Onward he went, a small flame in the air.

There was a girl (ha, famous last words!) who lived above him in the building. She had a two-roomed unit just like his, with a nice mirror for combing her hair. Through a surreptitious eyeing of her post, Tommy had learned that her name was Teresa Fie.

He liked the look of Miss Fie and had made several sightings of her in the communal hallway. He knew precisely nothing about her whatsoever (save that an order of nuns mailed her occasionally) but he imagined all sorts. In his mind’s eye he saw her crotch, freshly shaved, morphing into a pair of Cupid’s bow lips. He saw her breaking into a smile before straddling him.

From time to time—about every other night in fact—the long florid phone calls in which she engaged would seep through the ceiling into his room and brain. Tommy loved the sound of her voice and often went to sleep with it wagging in his head. He gleaned little from listening to these conversations but liked the soft thrum of Terry’s tongue for its sound alone. As for her occupation, he had her down as some kind of student-cum-freelance journalist.

What Tommy did not know was that she, too, was considerably mixed up. A harsh history had left her raw in her being. She was running up her mobile bill, all these nights, in an act of healing; discussing with several girlfriends the brutality and callousness of her most recent ex; whom, for the record, was a man named Pedro Twineman, a former French polisher who now ran a strip-joint. After her experiences with Twineman, Terry vowed to avoid men for life; and, in the main, apart from some random bouts of casual sex, she made a good fist of sticking to this vow.

When it came to exes, Tommy had one or two of his own who had mucked him about somewhat. He was, however, no lothario on the field of relationships and was actually avoiding that whole area at the moment; in pursuit of this wish, he had on his bedside table a book called Chastity: The Belt’s Benefits by a Dr Joy Lessen. He was thoroughly relishing this inspiring tome.

Does fate exist or is the situation much worse; can beastly chaos enter our lives any old time it likes? This is a question many people, reading their Morning and Evening Lies, are asking themselves in the light of what transpired. And, as to the question of God, what divine Creator could’ve possibly designed to let such a thing take place?

Permit me to elaborate.

Tommy, earlier on the fateful night, had visited the local observatory. The Star Factory, as it was known to Bludgeoners, was a place popularly frequented for many years. Night after night the panels rolled back and all eyes rushed to the sky. However, a certain ennui-factor had developed in recent months with folk complaining of nothing but space trash going round up there; and although many still came—the crowds were impressive—most only went to fritter away an evening.

Tommy had left the night’s performance in a feverish state, with his brain throbbing. He stopped at a copse, on his way to his street, and carved “I Was Here” on an old trunk; he’d used his well-honed penknife, a trusty tool he habitually carried for as long as he could remember. Stepping back to look at his etched letters, he felt a gentle wave of insouciance as the tree seemed to shrug; its lonely wood having seen a lot more than a jumpy Tommy Bloyd. 

As the Inquisitors reported it later, Teresa—or Terry as she was known—had been to a book launch before heading for home. An invite, of some cachet, to see a celebrated author. She had enjoyed the evening, filled, as it was, with scintillating conversation. The event had been a way to pass some hours that otherwise she would have spent alone.

Although not averse to socializing, Terry reposed in her room most evenings where she’d been sleeping solo for months—bar, as I’ve mentioned, the odd foray into casual carnality. She was no cloistered nun but it was generally enough for her to phone the girls for a good yap before vanishing into her bye-byes. She cried also, on frequent nights; low soft sobs, all part of the healing process.

T A Bloyd’s eyes were shocked and awed as he turned onto the street where his flat was situated. It was eleven p.m. When the sky had darkened—as it had done for an innumerable time in his universe—they had shown a projection piece at the observatory. A riotous affair featuring a man with lots of makeup. He was a cloner—if such a word exists; a mad doctor, producing freakish creatures by a process of altering genetics; the title comes to me now, The Island of Dr…, oh!, something or other, I shall recall it later.

Tommy was wired and did not relish the week of work that he had ahead of him. Reaching his building, he could feel worries gathering in his mind like Catholics in the rain when a pope has died. He knew that these frets were a sign of a sleepless night to come and wondered if Teresa, upstairs, would be on her phone; he was feeling an intense lust for this velvet-voiced neighbour—along with a hatred, raw and uncalled for, bubbling up from deep within.

It being a Sunday, the house of flats looked dark and quiet from the outside. Sabbath gloom having rendered the residents even more reclusive than their normal weekday solitariness. Tommy spotted a figure on the stoop—by the looks of it a woman, rummaging in her handbag. As he judged it, she was looking for her keys. After a moment he realised it was Teresa Fie—the object of so much thought on his part.

(Moreau! that was it, The Island of Dr Moreau, the film they’d shown at the Star Factory. It filled Tommy’s tormented mind, a mind encumbered with a strong urge to destroy.)

Terry had reached the steps and found herself in a flap, unable to locate her set of keys. Retrieving them eventually, from the cluttered chaos of her bag, she spotted her neighbour from downstairs—a man she saw in the hallway now and again—coming towards her.

He frightened her by his aspect, a dark overcoat with his collar up. All day, funnily, she’d felt fear, eddying, like a spring breeze around her life. Seeing this man appear, with his menacing gait, stirred that breeze into a squall. His face was pale and—cupped by his collar—it gave him a vampiric air. In her excitement, though, she managed to find him alluring; there was a certain tenderness and vulnerability in those eyes.  

—“Oh, you startled me!” she yelped, as he drew nearer.

And then, to hide her awkwardness, she broke into a nervous giggle. Clearly, unbeknownst to her, this pretty boy Bloyd wore his mask like a natural. He’s handsome, she thought, but there’s a pronounced hint of the night about him that I could die for.

(The irony of Terry’s yearning to expire, reader, is not lost on your humble narrator—considering…well…I’ll just get on with it, eh?)

Running short of breath now, Tommy could feel the imminence of his breaking point: who will nurse me back to my full health, he wondered? Fear drove him further to ask: who will catch me when I’m falling into the pit?

And he knew that the answer was no one, and so, resolved, he spoke to the startled girl.

—“It’s okay, I live here,” he said.

The words came out gently, his voice thick with reassurance.

—“I’m Tommy Arthur Bloyd. I’m in flat 3.”

Finding himself slap bang beside his idée fixe, he was dizzy from the attraction she provoked in him. A plan had become clear in his mind, after a lengthy germination, and he was about to execute it. A plough was traversing the blood-soaked fields within his cranium; who is this corpse, rotting in his remorse, this wraith that steers me? And Tommy felt his cold penknife, ever faithful, still in his pocket.

—“Well hi, Terry Fie,” she answered. “I’m in flat 7.”

Tommy was like a man who’s just had his stutter fixed by a shaman, such were the silver-tongued exertions into which he launched in order to draw Terry into his flat—ostensibly for coffee and to try his quiche. Of course she’d been very reluctant at first but the brilliance of his eyes, not to mention the lucidity of his speech, won her over to the idea; the thought of a little supper—with this enticing stranger—before her sleep wasn’t such a bad proposition after all.

Once she was inside his pad, perched and pert on his sofa, Tommy took the chance afforded him to glance upon her great legs. The short skirt she wore was of tremendous help in his efforts. She’s divine, he thought, but I won’t be seeing any of it alive for much longer.

He made some small talk before bringing the quiche. He unbuttoned his flies and flicked open his knife.  

Is sociopathy an inside job or are we back to the age-old question of a Creator: does He exist at all? Was Tommy Bloyd primed to be unleashed upon this, most unlucky and unwitting, young lady?

An examination of the body revealed he gouged her eyes out before setting her alight. It was an 81-year-old from flat 2 who’d raised the alarm; her old woman’s intuition telling her that the hubbub coming from across the hall was more than just a lovers’ tiff.

The first Inquisitor to arrive—not exactly heaven-sent from Terry’s point of view (where are they when you need them!)—fell against the wardrobe in shock; the reek of burning flesh causing him to swoon. It wasn’t everyday that the official came upon a man—in this case T A Bloyd—sensationally micturating on the charred husk that remained of Terry.

That was how it ended.

Epilogue:

Some weeks later, to garner accounts of Teresa’s murder for posterity, this lowly chronicler travelled to the house of flats and spoke to some of the people living there.

Strangely, many of them seemed unfazed by the recent brutalization within their building. 

One gentleman, with whom I had a brief conversation, told me that he’d thought it was just a “fella having a canary with his bird” or whose “bird was having a canary”, he wasn’t quite sure which way the quarrel had gone. I abandoned this ear-witness quickly, due to his increasingly gnarled vernacular.

In flat 8, 39-year-old Sam Glaze, who busks for a living, said he hadn’t seen or heard a thing and was glad that his sleeping tablets seemed to be working okay.

Tommy all the while—long predisposed to habituation and dependency—remains confined in super maximum security in the north of the city, amnesic to his dirty deeds.

                                                             

© Brian Ahern 2010