Photo: Samuel Pollard
“Every morning I get up and make instant coffee and I drink it so I have the energy to make real coffee.”
Steven Wright
Seawater gurgles around my head, pulls the heat out of my body, the hollow pain scooping out my toes and fingertips one centimetre at a time, my existence shrinking into a smaller and smaller ball of warmth in my torso.
Breathing is tight and hot against my cooling body. I rise out of the frigid cuddle of the sea into the pinching winter air. The daily cold plunge: accepting the abyss to ward off the abyss. Wading to the shore and feeling something close to alive. This is the high point of my day.
He is there on the beach – staring at me. Without looking I can feel his dead eyes, his bland disappointed stare. He’s ruining my cold-plunge, misaligning chakras I just stacked so carefully, and I was on my way to being so zen before he appeared with his peripheral vibe.
At home time slides away, never to be recovered. Home is a beautiful Cornish villa, all open and bright and natural and gorgeous and hidden, with big gardens, hedges and a long private drive, and so fortunate I am to have it that the burden of making the most of it is unbearable.
And twenty minutes ago I was so centred.
The villa is in great condition generally but I am updating a couple of rooms for the sale. I used to listen to grunge and work on agricultural communes. Now I’m a property flipper. For some reason I sleep in the living room. One of the bedrooms contains a laptop with over a grand’s worth of music production software and a guitar both gathering dust. Some DIY materials are scattered around the open plan kitchen. Some things are still missing and instead of making a list I just stare at them, slowly munching on dry chocolate wheat cereal pieces as sea water crusts on my skin. Then I am watching TV; taking a long dump; making coffee; scrolling social media; and the morning runs away from me. Instagram THOTs are a gateway to porn, bios full of Linktrees, NSFW Reddits, Onlyfans, only two clicks away from the abyss. What am I supposed to do with this constant stimulation? Carrot and stick combined into one whip – a whip in my own hand, beating myself with what I could have and for not getting it.
Could have gone to the gym; could have read a book.; could have worked on the house; could’ve made some music; could have just called a friend. It’s debilitating, giving up, going goblin mode, is the only reasonable choice.
Then it’s 11am, a wine bottle half-full of piss is still on the coffee table, I’m still browsing on my phone, getting pulled from one app to the other. Enough is enough, I order a ‘masseuse’ to come to the house later in the afternoon. It’s a weekday, I don’t know which, so there is plenty of availability. It’s like a dating app but imagine they’re attractive and keep the conversation going. I set an appointment with a woman who has skin the colour of cork. Now I have a reason to try.
I put the DIY materials into ordered piles by type and sort all the tools and miscellaneous parts. It looks intentional now, a planned refurbishment not a childish half-started project. I can see what’s missing more easily.
Then shower, shave my skull, trim the beard, groom a body that has become werewolf-esque but without the muscles, some deodorant, some cologne, throw on a clean plaid shirt, start to resemble a functioning person. Not quite a landlord of a micro-portfolio but some caste of person above rough-sleeper.
The Rav4’s front bumper is hanging off. It drags on the road up every incline. The bodywork sports a skirt of dust, there are energy drink cans and protein bar wrappers in the passenger footwell even though I haven’t done any exercise for weeks. But the tyre pressure and tread depth are well within the legal limit.
Forty-five minutes later I’m at the DIY megastore in a lifeless retail park. I can feel his eyes on me as I’m walking across the carpark, just staring as he always does, disconsolate. His white dress shirt over his undershirt, high waisted pleated trousers and suspenders. He’s barely there really, a wisp, but I avoid his eyes.
Should have made a list, I get some of the things I need but I know something is still missing. At the checkout the disinterested nineteen year old who is only half as attractive as the masseuse observes, “Back again.”
“Yes.”
“Should make a list,” we both say at the same time.
“Jinx,” I say.
She forces out a laugh and says, “Alright, mate.”
‘Mate’ – to make it clear that there is no possibility of any intimacy between us, despite this serendipitous offering offering of jinx from the gods. Pre-friend-zoned.
I stop at the off-licence on the way home, don’t even attempt any human interaction with the middle aged shopkeep. A ‘mate’ from her would castrate the last stub of my self-esteem.
Back at the villa I unload the goods into the ordered piles and immediately identify the items I have forgotten. Just make a list for Christ’s sake. Then I browse some reels of unattainable beauty, inevitably fall into pornography, jerk-off, cancel the ‘massage’, realise I forgot to turn on my VPN, and watch repeats of The Next Generation on my phone until the comfy turn-of-the-nineties nostalgic hopefulness salves my shame-scabbed soul.
My phone soon runs out of battery. While it charges I open the wine and make a keto compliant dinner – another futile scream into the abyss.
He is standing in the garden, looking through the window at me as I cook a palaeolithic meal with a Teflon pan. He just hangs in the corner of my eye like the intangible twilight and when I open the door to confront him he isn’t there, but I scream into the coming night anyway, “I’m just doing the best I can.”
End.
Corporate Clarke's Fiction 