RED

At night I try to clear my head. Keep out the world’s noises. Noises from outside. From the places that don’t want me. That I don’t want to be. But it is never quiet here. The brash chorus of daytime traffic and industry. Their nocturnal agents are active into the evening. I lie perfectly still on my futon. Its shape fits my contours now. Like black lines on a white weather map. Like a trawler’s net around tuna. Hugging the fleshy landscape. No coffin ever fit so well. Underground there would be silence. Temptation to finish it with a charcoal stove. A devil that stalks me silently. It would be so easy. Here in the darkness. The muffled crackle of the coals my eulogy. Smoke filling the room, filling my lung. Spirits rising after their final fall. That is not the coward’s way out. It would take more courage than I possess. I would need to be certain. Know I will never have the knowledge. Cannot reveal the truth. To know that I must first know everything. My work is still so far from conclusion. Every day there are revelations. Tiny puzzle pieces that expand the margins. A little more light falls with each piece. Never enough to illuminate the centre. The part I really want to see.

And so I prepare myself for my work. Always when the sun has fallen. Feeling safer in the knowledge of darkness. Doesn’t only hide those who wish me harm. I know they are close. I can hear them. There in the humming of the kitchen heater. The uneven throbbing of the bathroom exhaust fan. They are relentless, wearing me down. Wind-blown sand on an exposed rock. A slow-motion race to the ever-changing finish line. This is the time for nocturnal sounds. Unnoticed during the daylight hours. Like me now. The ticking of the elderly fridge. The intermittent rattle of a loose window. In my parents room over their cold bed. Carried through when the wind gusts. Incoherent fragments of drunken street conversation drifting up. These are the fluid jigsaw sounds. They jockey for position in my ears. Tidal rises and falls seeking to distract me. I see it as a comfort. The undeniable sign that I am getting closer. They cannot stop. For the resulting void is what they fear. Silence I can speak and be heard in.

Street level is far below me. The city sleeps while I work. The reverse-vampire kicks in. Nothing happens in the dead of night. People are afraid of the shadows that follow. Still night, lamp light, six shadows for all. They surround you, chase you, overwhelm. Hostess bar stragglers pissing in doorways. The sterilising dirge of the street sweeper. It never removes all the dirt, just rearranges. And then silence, almost. The big yellow men have gone. Back to their wives, mistresses, loneliness. The little red men stand guard. Metallic ping pong tattoo; beating time, slowing it. They do their best in black metal prisons. High above, far away, seeing all, the watchmen.

Black metal ravens, calling but never chirping. There were real birds on this street once. Flesh and blood and feathers. Perched on the tree branches, hidden amidst leaves. They sang so sweetly in a honeyed chorus. They made you feel alive, never alone. Faceless residents complained to the local council. The birds were too noisy. They could hardly hear the factories and traffic. Clearly unacceptable. What were they paying rates for? No-one wanted to be reminded of nature. Nature was strictly for weekend day trips. Construction of a concrete world their life’s achievement. On cold mornings you can imagine it cracking. And so the birds had to go. Cherry-pickers carried fluorescent-vested men with chainsaws. They cut off the branches, leaving only stumps. Upright and featureless like tombstones. A mess of shattered eggs offered at their feet. The egg smeared where they dragged the branches. Falling, fallen, felled. I don’t know what happened to the birds. Now the iron ravens hold sway.

Their fate is sealed by a pushed button. Banishment is random, is seconds away. They are forever replaced, vanished, banished, callously forgotten. Not so much people as images of them. Missing a dimension and the ability to breathe. Forever ticking like tiny bombs, but never detonating. They talk to each other in metallic notes. Red function trumps blue emotion every time. Power lies in their faces, until they fade. They control a nation with their faceless orders. Armies are raised on their signal. A nation is unleashed on their command. Always, always, above it all. Power is theirs but never known. They are often cursed but never overthrown. And in the night they guard us. Safe in their towers as we sleep. Their life spans lengthen as I listen. I hear their life stories in night’s death.

Footsteps float up from the cold concrete street. A drunken killer approaches, not a murderer. He staggers unsteadily, his echoes sporadic. The tattoo beats on despite him, no urgency yet. I imagine him stopping to think. Empty street versus a lifetime of training. No cars against unseen eyes of shame. Choose your own course, I urge. Don’t succumb, or conform, or crumble. But he does all of these. I knew he would. He never had a chance on his own. The red men overpower him, make him obey. Impulse tells him to go, to step out. The tattoo hypnotises him, holding him in place. Just for a few seconds. Not for long. See us counting down. His life shortens by twenty-three seconds. Time he could have spent with his kids. Or his wife if he loves her. Or that new hostess who rubs his arms. Short short dress, long long bill. She makes him feel like a man. A man who waits on tiny red men. All alone, no witnesses, unseen crime tempts. He resists for the last few seconds. Permission comes slowly; an elementary school final bell.

And then the release, access granted. The red man’s dying sighs spur him on. Green light, deserted street delight. A usurper takes the throne. Sits astride it with spread legs. Doesn’t even look at the body being removed. He knows his own time will come. All he can do is walk on into the night.

The little red men will never see me. I am too high above their hat-brims. No need of their services or advice. But still they guide those left below. They give their lives to save others. For a few brief seconds they shine. Before the darkness or the green men claim them.