So, walking through the town centre in a bit of a mood, on my way to assist on a rigging job (stage light rigging that is), I saw the signs. Great big red signs, hung one after another on the side of the old town quarters. Funny life those buildings have had, they’re at least 16th century and for most of my adult life they’ve been used as squats, then a few years back they cleared them all out with tear gas and riot police and sealed them up for development. “HAVE YOU EVER GIVEN REAL THOUGHT TO WHAT AWAITS YOU AFTER DEATH” Read the signs hanging off the steel. Yes I have, I thought. Not that catchy either, bit of a mouthful if you ask me. All the same, I was having a cigarette outside on break when one of them comes up to me, right into my face.
“Are you a good person?”
Fairly rude, a provocation to be sure, but I bit regardless.
“Sometimes I suppose.”
“Do you go around with a heavy heart?”
I was hooked. And what a strange line. “Yes, sometimes. This morning even.”
“Do you fear death?”
I clocked her red shirt. Right. Same colour as the sign, bright red with a red name tag to boot. Was too busy eyeing her elongated sneer, so the get up went unnoticed initially. She had a hollow look to her. Greasy bob hung on the sides of her face like limp arms off a fresh corpse. “Yes, I suppose I do. Hasn’t stopped me yet though.” I pointedly took another drag on my cigarette - I thought that was kind of funny, and it had been quick, but she didn’t even give me a wrinkle.
She leaned in close, and thickened the atmosphere with her perfume. Conspiratorial lean. I’ve-got-a-secret type of lean. “There is no need to fear death.” She bared her teeth, an attempt at a smile, and placed her hand on my shoulder. She was even more unpleasant up close. She took my cigarette with her other hand, took it down to the butt with one tight pull, and blew all the smoke in my face. “Would you like to wake up?” She asked, face looming out of the fog she’d created, and answered herself before I had chance. “Come with me.” She ran a finger down my arm and it jumped into my hand, pulling me into the alley.
A kinda hypnotised feeling came over all strong, and that’s when I should have gone back, really, my break was over, but I had been curious, you see. All her morbid talk was so strange, so intriguing.
She tugged me through a red swing door, kind of back of the restaurant door, but not a one there in sight, no connecting corridor, nothing; just a pit stairwell headed straight down. Concrete and cracked gloss coat on the rails.
Slinking down the steps, bob trailing in the air, she flashed me a glance and spoke again, “Those who fear death are weak.” We kept up our descent. “You are not weak. You are just confused.” The stairwell went on, and she hurried us down. “People who are asleep think fearfully of death. Those who are awake know that death is a dream, and that dreams are just feelings like love, or passion, or fear.” I didn’t know what to make of it, something about her was exciting, but what she was saying was unhinged, vaguely menacing.
She took me down and through a red arch with double swing red doors, into some ugly public hall, fake-wood beige veneer tables and utilitarian hollow tube legs, bad coffee in polystyrene cups, you know the kind. The sound was all muffled down here. She twisted around me as we walked in, leaving one leg in front of mine as if to push and trip me.She didn’t though, instead, she spoke in a whisper by my neck. “You are dreaming”. The hot moisture and air from her breath broke on my neck with every syllable. I felt a shiver. “Wake up.” She’d pulled the tripping leg away. “I’ll come for you when you’re ready.” And then she did push me, gently into the room and disappeared.
She had sieved me. For sure. I had been sieved off the street like a mug and now I was, where exactly?
Such a funny little place to have down underground, like it was. Pinboards on the walls, old posters swinging off of half-bent push pins. There was booths and machinery, doors and frosted windows obfuscating views into other rooms, and under fluorescent lights, people worked away on their wood veneer desks. Didn’t know so much what to think of it, still a little dazed and confused; somehow she’d tranced me and got me under here. Again I felt I could’ve left, and maybe ought to, but a curious dope had its hooks in me.
“Ah, good morning, Mr Worrall. Kindly take a seat, your reading will begin shortly”.
The sound of my name flipped my guts, and coming from a weedy little sucker like that, in his slim fit suit. Looked like a real asshole, his lips puckered like one too. His ugly balding head protruded, so round and serious. No good reason for him to know my name either, sure as shit, I’d never seen him before, on my life. Obedient though, in my shock, I sat and began waiting on a bench as he peered me up and down. Then he gestured at me, in that way, to say stand up and follow me.
So I did, I followed him through the milieu and he took me to a private booth, screens of plastic and grey twill fabric, to muffle sound I supposed. Stood in a quiet corner under fluoro-, he sat me down, explaining to me, all placid, that he was just going to begin by asking me a few questions, told me where exactly he would place the cathodes, and the conventions with which I should answer his questions, how he’d process the data and how the score might effect me etcetera, etcetera. I’d like to tell you I remember the specifics, the minutiae of what he said, but I was still under some kind of spell, very compliant like, and truth be told I couldn’t stop looking at his stupid little asshole mouth, it reminded me of how I’d been an asshole, so easily sieved off of the street.
“Mr Worrall. I’m going to ask you a series of questions. Now, I want you to answer them as quickly as you can, if you find yourself getting stuck I want you to say whatever is in your head, even if it doesn’t make sense.”
I nodded vaguely, a confirmation as indifferent as I could figure.
“When was the last time you had a dream?”
“Last night I suppose.” It was an easy enough question.
“Do you remember the dream?”
“I’m not sure, maybe. I don’t know.” Well, maybe not that easy.
“Do you know if you had a dream last night?”
“No, I’m not sure.” He was a pernickety bastard and I realised I’d have to answer a little more accurately.
“When was the last time you had a dream?”
“I don’t know.”
“Good. Now, do you ever dream?”
“Yes.”
“What do you dream?”
“It depends.”
“On what does it depend?”
“What I’ve been doing, what I’m thinking about I guess.”
“What was the last dream you remember?”
“I was climbing I think, it was like a climbing wall but up high on a dam, and I didn’t have any ropes or harness, and there was…” I tapered off. It’s hard to hold a dream still enough to describe, isn’t it?
“Were you climbing recently? Were you thinking about climbing a dam? Or was there some kind of symbolic significance?”
“No, I don’t think so, never wanted to climb anyhow. What’s that beeping?” The little device between us was showing numbers, and the little man was copying them down onto his ruled paper with a black biro.
“Don’t mind the beeping, just focus on the questions. Now, what do you dream about?”
“Just stuff I guess, I don’t know.”
“Yes, that’s good. And what are you thinking about now.”
I thought “your asshole mouth”, and said “I’m not sure” and there was more beeping, different this time.
“No, no, no. What is on your mind right now?”
I was being badgered. “Fucking badgers”.
“Okay, let’s start somewhere else. When was the last time you were awake?”
This weasel wasn’t just a puckered anus. “I’m awake now”.
“Do you remember being awake?”
I tried to get a good hang on it. Do I remember being awake? Memory’s a thing already happened, but remembering being awake seemed different. Take this morning, I recalled the time I was awake, I could recall the general debris, dirt and dead skin in my bedsheets, I could remember the square and ugly sound of my alarm clock, but did I actually recall being awake? “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said all slow and deliberate like.
“Do you know if you’re awake now?”
And thinking about it (tricky with my all brain foggy as it was then), every moment since the moment she had appeared to me in the street, perfume and hands and death, every second had been stranger than the last. That ensuing hypnagogic state I’d felt myself in was certainly powerful. However, I was 100% wholly awake.
“Yes I am.”
“Mr Worrall. I must tell you, you are very wrong indeed. Although, and it may not be to your concern, you have scored rather well, yes, quite an excellent score.” His sphincter lips pursed into a tight unbleached smile, surrounding little hairs curled and bristled. “It seems we have more work to do to get you fully aligned.” And then he rapped his manicured nails on the desk, sharpened to points like blades, perfectly cleaned. “You see, the test here says very different things to what you have told me today.”
“Look, I’ve just about had enough of this shit, you sieved me off the street like a, like a mug. And for what? To ask me some stupid riddles? To play childish tricks on me? What is the point of all this?”
“Well Mr Worrall, I have a proposal for you. You see, we would like to wake you up. It won’t be easy, it may have to be painful, but we can ensure that you leave our establishment… enlightened.”
It was all a crock of shit. I tried to change the subject and asked him if I could smoke.
“Please go right ahead.” He pulled out an ashtray and a chrome electric lighter and in its reflections, the table, and the felted fabric booth walls, my puzzled face and his ugly look. I saw myself take a cigarette and put it between my lips. Then he cupped one hand around it, near stroking my face with his tapered nails, and raised the lighter to the cigarette with the other. “Oh yes.” He said and lit it for me.
I smoked.
“What you have is a bad case of Sleepwalking, that is to say, while you are here with me, but you are not here with me.” Low eyes now, looking up at me gravely. “Most of you aren’t. Most of you live and die, and live and die, and never giving a second thought to the total image.” As he said those last two words, he made a small open gesture outward with his hand, then pointed back into the ashtray. A third of the cigarette had turned to ashes so I tapped it in, collapsing the shadow-structure into dust. He spoke again, “I am a kind of priest if you will. While this room is just a simple office, it is our church. You see, we do not trouble ourselves with ornate decorations, grand instruments or dramatic outfits. We do not concern ourselves too much with trifling things like matéria.” And then he plucked the smoking cigarette right out of my lips! Tapped some more ashes into the tray and took a long drag for himself, placed it right back in my mouth straight after too, damp with his saliva.
“Now, you are no simple case. For starters, when she saw you on the street you actually bothered to listen. It matters very little why you listened or why you are here, the simple fact is that you are. Maybe you exhibit some resistance, some pig-headed ignorance, but here you are.” As I sat there listening, he leaned over, inhaled deep, right next to my face and the smoking cigarette, breathing me and all the fumes into his lungs. It went on for near enough 10 seconds. “Oh, yes. I think you are exactly who we’re looking for, sir. We only need to flay away that wilful ignorance, get you good, open and willing.” He smiled again, pulled his muscles taught, creating those awful puckering wrinkles. “So Mr Worrall, let me ask you the next question. What do you suppose will happen to you when you die?”
“Be eaten by maggots I suppose, or actually I thought maybe being cooked to a crisp and poured over a tree, that might be nice.”
“Sure, your body. But what about you?”
“I imagine my mind will probably rot and everything I understand will be shredded into jagged confusion until my brain simply stops.”
“Ah, I see. You are under the illusion that you are a part of your body?”
“Where else could I be?”
“Oh, dear. You have become a simpleton, you are so confused. You poor thing, it must be so hard to see through all that dirty glass. Although, I suppose you’d hardly notice”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Humour me, it will be no fun for either of us if you continue with this pig-headed attitude.” Another puckering smile, this time revealing small pointed teeth.
“Sure”, lighting another cigarette.
“How many times do you suppose you’ve died before?”
“How d’you mean?”
“Have you ever read any of the Vedic Scriptures or the Pāli Canon? No? Well, they describe the ellipsis of life, the suffering, the continual rebirth, and how one might break the cycle by achieving moksha or nirvana. Oh? You are familiar with the general idea, good.” He droned on, low-eyed and serious again. “Well, you see, the fundamental idea is quite correct. What happens if you die, you suffer again, perhaps even more terribly, depending on the choices you’ve stumbled into making throughout your little lifetime.”
I thought, I must’ve lived a poor life before because the way he went on and on was really making me suffer. That type of talk bores me so much. I’ve heard enough acid freaks ramble on about this sort of shit. “Oh do stop it,” I said.
“Mr Worrall our tests indicate you are very lost, that you have lived many different lives, many, many multiples of times. You are stuck. Going back and forth, back and forth, periodically between different lifetimes of misery.”
“Sure, why not.” I began to really tire of it here and was beginning to feel more myself.
“Our mission is to wake people up to the reality of their suffering, to save them, Mr Worrall, to save you.” He clasped my hands, his pointed fingernails digging a little into my soft flesh.
That surely got my attention, he was pushing quite hard, piercing even. “Let go of me, you fuck! You’re gonna cut me with those awful nails of yours.” He had already, drawn blood too.
“Mr Worrall, it is very important that you try to listen. Your body is simply a vessel. Its condition is of no real consequence.” There was an urgency in his voice now.
He dug deeper. Invading my flesh. Burning. Blinding. Pushing further. I had to cry out.
“Mr Worrall,” he spoke in short, enthusiastic puffs. “Mr Worrall. You must try. You must try to wake up.”
“Let go of me right now you puckered shit weasel!”
“Mr Worrall I believe you have forgotten yourself, and you must remember now before it is too late!”
The pain was enough and more now. It cut straight through my residual confusion, breaking the strange trance for good. I threw my hands up, scattering cathodes, cables and machinery, but still, his sharpened nails clung on, dragging down, drawing out long gashes from my hands to my underarm. Then, more blood.
Slippery now, I managed to slide free of his clawing fingernails, and towered over him in his little office booth
“Mr Worrall, you mustn’t walk away now.”
In that moment the desire to leave was greatest, but I should rightfully’ve punched him in his asshole mouth.
“Sir, please do not be so stubborn. Your suffering will only continue if you choose to close these doors. If you only knew the pain you have experienced. That you may experience again. We can help you.”
His chittering had become noise to me. Bunk. He raved away and continued to as I marched to those red double doors, and as they swung closed behind me I heard him continue to speak, only now to another person. “It was him. I’m certain of it.” His panicked voice ducked in and out from behind the oscillating doors as they swung open and closed, back and forth. I did turn once more, just to get one more sight of him, and saw him talking to her. As I stood there looking, they both gazed back at me. “You mustn’t let him leave.” Then the door swung closed once more. I didn’t wait any longer and headed straight up the stairs, they weren’t going to stop me. As I rand up the stairwell, I held my arms tight-close to my body to stop some of the bleeding.
On reaching the top of the pit and getting out into the alley, I saw the rain. It was good to be out in rain, it was very real, very there. I remember feeling like I’d just undergone some sort of psychosis and was grateful for every mundane drop. I touched the rough stone wall, it was wet limestone, I could almost scrape it apart under my fingernails. I threw up and it was like an acid in my throat. I was bleeding quite heavy, and it ran into the water and mixed with my bile; I must have looked quite the picture.
Work was only out the alley and around the corner, funny coming to like that, it almost seemed like a dream. I ended up just telling them that “I got attacked by a cat”, just like that, and they believed it. Actually, they thought it was quite funny. I suppose it was quite funny to think of me fighting and losing to a little cat, easier to explain anyhow.
Well that’s all of it. It was hard, to recount it like that. It’s one of those strange things, you know. You try to keep it, and the more you try to keep it and hold it, the more you push it out, it’s why I had to write it all down like this, so as I wouldn’t forget. Anyway, I’ve got a bit of advice to give you, keep it in mind. If you see any street preachers in your home town, just keep on walking, yeah?