Suddenly it became a man by Daniel Scott (ebook voice reader txt) 📕

She’d put him out finally, and me too without her knowing it, I didn’t want to see Ben, be caught by Lorna or her brother’s on the way out, so made a swift exit.

Outside the cold air hit me entering my back,  out of nowhere with heat enough to make my forehead sweat a shooting pain gripped my spine.

I got a few streets away walking in crippling agony before falling faint, when Ben found me I was on my knees.

‘What happened?’

‘Its my back I’m in agony’

‘Do you need an ambulance?’

‘It depends do you know C.P.R?’

When the heroic flashing white wagon arrived to rush me to hospital, as they shut me in one door at a time, Ben twisted his face back to Lorna’s house mysteriously, I saw a look wrought on it I’ve never seen since.

He visited me in hospital two or three times, we attempted a game of chess using oddments to replace the missing pieces on one occasion, which were blacks King, both Queens, four of whites pawns; we used small balls of screwed up paper for those and blacks rook; whites spare rook turned upside down. When I told him ‘Check’ he said ‘Really?

‘Yes I think so…’ I said

‘But I thought that was the King…’

‘No the dates the King that’s the Queen’ 

‘Okay let’s go back’ we moved the pieces back a turn.

‘Was it there?’

‘Yep, my move’ 

‘But isn’t that Check?’

‘Yep… I don’t think I can go’

‘Just go there’ Ben said

‘I can’t look the knight’

‘Oh yeah…Checkmate?’

‘Yeah…Good game’ I said and tipped it back into the games drawer.

Our awkward conversation avoided the later events of the party, neither of us wanted to explain why we went back to it.

Katrina Harris asked about my condition and sent her warmest wishes.

We got talking about her in a general way had a few forced laughs but when I asked about Lorna he admitted very little.

I’ll find out more for you next time he promised but that was his last visit.    

Old habits die hard I thought as I ate toast in the kitchen. Ben stayed in touch while he was away but I hadn’t seen him since last Friday though he mentioned he’d drop by in the week.

Lately the news channels were airing more information about Tomas Baker’s disappearance and possible death followed by a plea from his younger brother for any information. I couldn’t help feeling guilty for not giving up what I knew. 

I hadn't expected a call at this time but my phone starts ringing, I picked it up and jogged upstairs and sat on the bed to take the call, the bed felt like the best place for me to be on the phone, it endowed my voice with an air of confidence.

‘Hey Ben’

‘Why are you answering the phone at this time?’

Ben’s familiar voice was good to hear even in the tone of disapproval.

‘Because you’re ringing me at this time?’

‘No why aren’t you out at the set?’

I skipped work, I was supposed to of been in today and yesterday, it felt okay before Ben knew.

‘Well that’s the thing’

‘Are you eating again?’

‘Yes I’m eating’

‘What are you eating?’

‘Listen I eat plenty’

‘Well bloody stop it your character isn’t related to the Michelin man’

‘Thanks for that’

‘Seriously why aren’t you out there? I remind you all the time, did you put it on the calendar?’

I didn’t. I forgot.

‘Ben it’s not that I forgot, after what happened I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ I didn’t mean it until after I said it, I thought I was making excuses but it was true.   

‘We have to carry on’ ‘Carry on, you mean work? Didn’t you hear me? He knows all about it and he said he’ll be back’ Ben sounded sober, annoyed even. ‘I know he’ll be back but you can’t stop living because of it, we have to carry on with the film it’s your break’ Ben paused for my reply. ‘That’s not encouraging Ben. I know why it is you don’t understand maybe because you weren’t the one sat there about to have his head caved in were you?’ He sounded angry and it made me angry. ‘So shall I call Kyle now, tell him the phantom of the opera has warned you not to perform?’ It was an argument now ‘I almost died’ ‘I almost died to get you the part you have, now what shall I say when he asks where you are? And how long before Jean comes back?’ ‘Jean’s left?’ ‘Yes that’s what I heard, get down there’ ‘What for why?’ ‘I’m your agent not his, stop eating and go to work’ ‘I need time, tell him we need time arrange things’ ‘Time for what, arrange what? Kyle is expecting you tomorrow you can’t turn up and not know what’s happening.’ ‘I know that’ ‘Are you going then?’ ‘Not yet, I can’t’ ‘No?’ ‘I just need time to think can you ask him for a little time. Please?’ ‘No you’re going, be there tomorrow and don’t piss me off, I worked hard for you!’ ‘I know that but’ ‘Look make sure you get down to the set, I’ve ordered you a decent bed and a few cabinets for your clothes and things, the owners don’t want you using theirs.’ ‘Like I would.’ I said with indignantly with the living room arm chair staring back at me. ‘The things will arrive in the morning make sure you sort it, I’m sending two of my other clients up that way, you remember Lorna.’ ‘She’s lodging here?’ ‘Lodging? Her family owns those houses didn’t you know? Look I’ve got to go.’ We exchanged a casual goodbye and hung up. The phone dead down on the bed, caused contemplation within about Benjamin acting more employee than friend. After what I had been through I wasn’t sure why he expected me to have inhuman resolve or was distancing me for what he thought was the best, perhaps for himself and I didn’t blame him. A while passed on the bed, tired again, though I’d already slept through to midday. Ben’s lecture had no affect, I was still in no mood to leave the house, get dressed or do anything except go back to sleep thinking about Lorna. I bowed over the foot of the bed holding my toast, wanting to release it, instead the thought of doing so stirred me up and back to the chair at the window where I sat and finished eating it. There I listened with closed eyes to the sound of the rain against the glass becoming more and more interesting, the heavy clouds were weeping with dark exuberance. The distant demonstrations of their awesome power I heard boomed the distant earth. I imagined the colour of that wet soil electrified in light, burning bright black and blue in the boom, hushed to death beneath a roar of invisible thunder. Sleep came with a dream of rushing water. Brilliant white water that washed away everything but the rocks beneath and its embankment. With a giant leap I dived in and was carried away on my back by the rushing current. Impossible buoyancy took me up from the bottom, then the crocodile splashed in and changed it all. Its scales were slick with oil that churned in the current till finally it was all brown murky sludge sucking me down into the cellar of a rotten house. It stopped its flow inside the cellar, I climbed out onto a set of escalators that appeared before me, there was a thick wooden door at the top.  It opened before me and on the other side was the crocodile floating in a beautiful lake of serene blue water it said ‘Stop telling Ben about us.’ ‘I don’t, what’s your name Crocodile?’ ‘You know’ Gently it submerged and I awoke to another cold afternoon.  Seeing a delivery van was already stopped outside the house made myself decent to answer the door. There was more furniture than I expected, as if the floor walls were the only things in the house the owners were okay with me using. The removal men lumbered through the door with complete cabinets and lots of flat packed items along with my clothes from Ben’s tucked away into several boxes till the big hall was filled, I shut the door and got started. Lorna arrived soon after in the week, by that time I’d moved everything from the hall upstairs. She was staying in one of the opposite houses on the same land that encompassed the one I was in. I saw her from a far from time to time through windows milling about the house and outside, I hadn’t yet found the courage or a good enough excuse to go over and make my self known. Ben didn’t call the rest of that week.

The move was exhaustive, all of the furniture old and new was in and finally the double bed too. Taking up the Alan keys that I used earlier, I carefully meandered through my jungle of boxed possessions to give the fastenings of the bed a final inspection; but instead, at the last moment decided that it would be better to just sit down, then shortly after that, to collapse back onto the bed and as soon as I did my heavy eyelids closed. Eased away, I felt reality ebb; vanishing into sleep, I saw the beginnings of a dream.

I swam down a well deep into a dry cavernous labyrinth where I saw a great machine, a hunk of iron tended to by a man clothed in brown oily overalls trailing the same brown oil in the wake of his every movement. He seemed to lose control and the machine began oozing a scarlet puddle of molten matter from beneath and out of the scorching mechanical heat it emerged, a monster with eyes, looking into a mirror suddenly it became a man, it gazed again pleased with itself and I was very afraid.

Stirring with prevailing restlessness I awoke late into the evening. It was around ten o’clock and with nothing to do but sleep the window view had found me again. The light in Lorna’s room was on again late into the evening. It filled her room and streamed out through the window in one long orange beam that stretched across the muddy walkway, confusing winged insects with cold illumination.

I often stirred in bed, changing into different shapes of frustration, eyes shut, awake inside, tonight was no different.

I thought about the times I’d seen Lorna, often with pink boots on washed in mud and a loose leaf notepad in her hand, tending to the house, painting a new coat of varnish onto the wooden outer panels with her friends and raking leaves in the front garden.

There was character in her face that charmed me it belied the glamorous mess of the clothes she wore and the untidy rose pink make up smeared about her cheeks like Indian war paint, the shade possibly by no coincidence matched the boots.

‘Where are you?’ I said staring out of the bedside window.

‘What if she caught me?’ I thought maybe she’d of thought it romantic that I watched her, then again.

Mid thought a strange