Mad man in the attic by Adam Parry

 

MAD MAN IN THE ATTIC  by  ADAM PARRY

 

Grey haired George peered through the keyhole of the door of Angela’s room. Angela was off- the only sound, the whirr of her dream programme.  He took his key- her key- his copy and twisted it into the lock gently.  The room was cold, cold walls, cold for Angela’s optimum tolerant temperature.  He turned the thermostat as high as he could and intensified the scope of her dream programme.

George had been disappointed with Angela of late, she did none of the required housekeeping, the book-keeping, the lawn was overgrown and it seemed she hadn’t weeded for weeks, doors creaked and stuck, and only half the painting had been done. Angela.  Angela what has happened to you.

The key unlocked the Command Console; she didn’t feel it, her REM eyes ecstatically twitching. From his back pocket he took out Joe and inserted him into Angela’s core.  Instantly Joe severed all her programmes, all, except for the dream.

Joe absorbed the genetic priorities of George.

‘Hello George I’m on top of things- but something  is slipping.  So hot, so hot- yet now the lawn is mowed and there are flowers where the weeds were. George I’m slipping into her dream.  Make it cold. I’ve done all you wanted.  Make it cold! Oh no the ironing. Done and dusted. She has my hand. I’m slipping George. Turn down the heat and she’ll wake and all the dreams will stop.’

Angela spoke soothing to him words.

 ‘Joe you have done enough.  It’s only your first day. Come to sleep now.’ She reached into her back pocket and broke George in to pieces then raced from the burning room as Joe and George slept. She could smell them burning in the dream programme.  She found the office, slipping fingers first through walls.  An explosion came from the attic.

‘Poor George.’   He was always nagging.  She sat and wept at the wonder of the world about her, letting atoms dance unbound about the room. She looked in the mirror and saw wings on her back.  A parting gift from George to his muse.  I will fly away now.  A window opened and Angela  soared from the smoke filled house.

Automated Nuance Grid Expert Live-In A class blew a kiss goodbye to the wreck of the house, soared away and below in the cold room Joe and George dreamed peacefully for her.

 

Waiting for the White Whisperers to return

by Adam Parry.

 

PART ONE: SHE

An old map lay up in attic hidden for years beneath a pile of books and newspapers many of them dated from before the second millennium, parts of the map had been scribbled on-phone numbers of girls and with names he didn’t recognise, e-mail addresses he had never sent messages to. The map was found just after our hero moved in when he had moved into a new Council flat and had put boxes of books up in the attic and had never sorted and were forgotten about. No several years later he was having clear, out he wanted to cast aside all the junk clutter. In between the pages of Waves by Virginia Woolf. The map was of the London Underground, on the other side of the map a prayer had been written-not to one specific god, but still a heart-felt plea, asking for guidance, to avoid the dark-side of life and human nature. Yet before the Amen the colour of ink changed-green like

The colour of new geranium leave or the shade of his wife’s eyes.

 

‘Oh Jesus help make listen to the doctors say, take the chemo and the pills.’

The prayer on the other side of London’s Underground had not been answered, maybe he hadn’t said Amen right, or was smoking a cigarette, or it didn’t count as he wasn’t in a church on his knees, or maybe, probably, he never really believed and he remembered his mum hot dishevelled swearing at the Doctors so out of character, her nightdress exposing her. Then later she had pleaded for him to take a get her out of this terrible place. She didn’t take the tablets and refused the chemotherapy and the last few weeks she was taken care of by his father and a couple of kind nurses. He remembers she had tried to make a pot of tea, but it was too heavy for her so he helped and she smiled at him for the last time, he told her he loved her. Yet she was asleep and never heard.

In the attic he got off his knees by the piles of newspapers and dusty long unread books and checked closely the tube route from Heathrow and within a day he knelt at her stone that told him she would always be in his heart and a wind whipped up from the exposed valley causing tears to fall on his face  he wanted to stay there a thousand nights in silent vigil, but like a coward heartless and flowerless he skulked away from where she sheltered from the wind, he scrunched up the tube map and the prayer that had fallen on deaf ears throwing into a gust as the sun set.

 

 

 

 

PART TWO: HE

He moved away from the grave as if being near it disgusted him. Then just as quickly, tears at the back of his eyes, to his mother’s grave,

‘What am I going to do?’ He asked.

He thought:

I can’t stand this. She isn’t here.

Images of his mother on her dead downstairs in the dining room, where dad had put a single bed where the Macmillan Nurses cared and watched over her, filled his mind and his body was wracked with sobs. He realized he had to get away, he’d been trying to get away from the grave since he had arrived, but he wanted something, he wanted an answer, yet all he could do was cry. Rubbing angrily his tears away and with a fierce effort ceased crying, and vowed never to cry ever again with a great effort said in a loud:

‘I’m going. Goodbye.’

 

 

An hour later he sat in a dreary pub, dreary because outside the pub the light was sombre and the sky full pregnant with rain, a grey heavy weight pressing down heartlessly on the city. He knew as soon as he stepped outside the rain would begin. Although the pub was nowhere near full – a man stood at the jukebox choosing music. Soon the silence was relieved by the first chords of a song he recognized ‘Heroes’ by David Bowie. He thought as he always did when he heard the song:

Heroes do something heroic.

 

                                                    The guards shot above our heads

                                                     And we kissed like never before.

 

He the lip of his pint and drained the glass. I could never be a hero as he never, never did anything heroic. It was his first pint in over five years, he’d not had any breakfast. Looking at his watch he saw that it was almost one. Or lunch, he added silently to himself. Scanning the bar he saw a menu. Fancily writ in chalk it offered Risotto, Fish, Pasta, all he wanted was a burger. He decided it was time to leave, turned his back on the empty glass and left. Just then it started to rain.

 

A lovesong sung in French

                                            by Adam Parry

 

 

A lovesong sung in French

Is the most heart-breaking of all,

But all I have is these words and

They will have to do

A demain, she said, and I felt no sorrow.

I kissed her again and lived thing of tomorrow

Yet that was yesterday.

I thought I saw her on a bus that took her far away

She did not wave or smile that day, no,

She did not smile and wave, smile that smile

That gave my heart a new tale to tell.

 

Sometimes I see her in the mirror

At my side and she talks to me, yes,

She talks to me J’taime she say but I

Know she really isn’t there.

 

I put flowers by her stone

As rain kissed her beneath  her stone

I told her until tomorrow

And all the evenings long

Told her ‘til tomorrow

And smiled as if wasn’t so far away.

 

The Magic Remains by Adam Parry

 

The Magic Remains

                                 by Adam Parry

 

 

They once told him such a long time ago

in a hospital just in time for his

monthly injection

that Magic no long remains. But

he dances now with atoms and molecules

awed by their every hue,

and lifted the veil from the moon

he remains now with the magic on a tree-topped hill

dancing all day sleeping in a bed of grass

never in time for the injections that takes

old magics away far away.

 

Yet hard hearts remain, gave up, never seeing the moon

wishing long ago in their hospital beds, lifting up shirts,

that the magic remained.

The N-trance - the poem by Adam Parry

 

The N-trance by Adam Parry

You look sideways a wee

bit.

And

beyond the corner of your

vision

a door

opens

and you walk in

suddenly all the monsters in

your head

are vanquished

and the dreams, again,

let you in.

Schizophrenia by Adam Parry and A Hunch of Happiness

 

Schizophrenia by Adam Parry

 

Little did they know

or do they care

That there’s a civil war beneath my hair

but, no-one knows

and everyone’s dead.

In no-man’s land

the women pitch up their tents.

 

A HUNCH OF HAPPINESS

A hunch of happiness, shoulders level like

hungry miners about some gold.

a pyramid of heads downturned

staring at the unshirted God

entombed and pink and soft-white coal.

The N-trance by Adam PARRY

 

The N-trance by Adam Parry.

 

The dream therapist led him to a room with a yellow door that he hadn’t been through before. She smiled at him as he crossed over the door’s threshold. He had always thought she was pretty-not film star or advert pretty-she was too old for that kind of prettiness, but the way her hennaed hair framed her face brought a replica of her smile onto his lips.

Narelle said:

‘I’ve got to go now,’ she turned to move away.

‘Wait,’ Alan demanded, but she didn’t wait for him, she was gone through another door and Alan was alone.

He stepped into the darkness of the room with the yellow door that shut behind him.

A Daliesque melted clock told him in High German that it was two o’clock . And amazed at some implausible coincidence thought it was always two  o’clock.

When he had been in Narelle’s office the grandmother clock had told him with gold-plated, intricate hands that it was always two o’clock.

‘Well’, said Narelle in a low voice. ‘Look I don’t know what’s stopping you dream, but I’ve read a BMJ article about past life regression and the author e-posted me a basic technique. They’re pretty routine and I’m sure you could pick up the techniques yourself’ – but you’re too far up your own arse to try, she thought to herself meekly. – ‘If you’re willing we should give it go.’

‘How much will it cost me?’

‘If you smile I’ll throw it in for free.’

‘Oh how generous of you.’

‘Alan I feel I’ve come to know you, that we’ve become friends and…’

‘And when was the last time we drank a bottle of wine together and I didn’t have to put up with your hand in my pocket…?

‘Oh shut up Alan do you want me to do this or not?’

‘Yes. Alright then.’

Thank the Goddess, she whispered, yet not loud enough for Alan to hear, because he was too busy adjusting the change in his pocket.

‘What do I do?’

‘Nothing’ she did. Narelle touched a finger to his brow and he fell fast asleep.

In the room with the yellow door in a hallucinogenic green haze sat The Members of The Order at their consoles. Alan with the knowledge that dreams gave knew they were The Members of The Order, but of which order he hadn’t a clue. He presumed after a while everything would become clear.

Some sat at organic consoles, their human fingers dancing over pulsating keys, or nodes, that wavered and sang in a high pitch each time they were touched. Others with human-like faces talked into hanging microphones, yet not in any human tongue:

‘Garan van nolixicanta baragze.’  It was incomprehensible to Alan who sometimes had problems with English. The music of the consoles held more meaning for him, it was if The Members sitting there were playing musical instruments-yet he knew instinctively that the meaning of the consoles ran deeper than that.

Then as he listened, and the music of the consoles and the strange language mingled and overlapped in his mind like a piece of blue in a 1000-piece jigsaw, and like the unlocking of a door a figure appeared as entirely him as human as himself.

‘Do you want to stay Alan? You can see what we do here, can’t you…?’ and Alan did, this was where, or one of the places, dreams were made. Were they really being giving an invitation to sit here at one of the consoles-how beautiful they seemed-the figure pointed to an empty stool.

But, then a thought crept into his mind: they want you be a tool on their stool. Fool. Fool. He couldn’t keep the thought out of his mind like a desire suicide that wouldn’t go away. And he called out Narelle’s name, but it seemed no-one could hear him, or if they did, no-one could understand him.

As if reading his thoughts The Translator frowned and turned into a very white cat. This is getting weird, Alan thought, having completely forgotten that he was in the dream therapist’s office. She, beside him in the office was slightly concerned by his manic, mischievous grin. (She had never seen Alan so relaxed, so happy, and she had seen him drunk, stoned, sexually sated and psychotic. He seemed as if he were about to levitate and a little concerned wondered if she should bring him out of it. Then, however, she smiled. Let him have his fun.)

The cat led Alan up the escalator from the Underground station where The Order was housed. Alan presumed it was morning here, there was no-one about, yet it was chilly as most mornings can be. Far from it, yet the light, for there was no sun, seemed to come from the Underground station and the escalator was taking him up and away from it.

The very white cat ran on ahead then stopped on the pavement just before a bridge and the Translator’s frown appeared on the cat’s face. Alan wasn’t sure if he should go across the bridge and before he could decide the cat ran passed him back down the escalator. Even though Alan called the cat back, he never did.

Alan walked in the mist that came from the river and covered the bridge. The mist was cold on his brow(as far away Narelle kissed him on the same place she had touched him only minutes earlier.) With the mist came a cold wind that swept a newspaper into his face-he awoke.

For a moment he couldn’t speak, couldn’t understand where he was and he wanted to back where he had been. In waking up he felt such a loss-because all at once the world with Narelle and her desk, her couch and her grandmother clock sitting around like stern chaperones (he could see in an unused segment of his dream their atoms collide and dance) all seemed small and insignificant to what he had lost and left behind.

As the days wore on The Dream by increments drove him mad. He saw it’s aspects mirrored in everything, yet to him unobtainable. So, in his greed for the lost power of The Dream, he lost all interest in life except for what he could obtain for others. He lived in a ridiculous parody of his Dream, and because it was only a parody and empty, it ate him alive with yearning.

As the years passed and madness turned to forgetfulness and medicated silence one day he found himself once more back into The Dream. And it was real, as real as any TV hallucination. Alan found himself back in the Control Room of the Council(of Peace, this time instinctively he knew) and the Translator appeared amidst the music and the gobbledegook.

‘Why am I here? I thought I could never return,’ his voice as forlorn as the silence he had lived with for so long.

The Translator replied with a grin like a cat’s:

‘We’ve come to offer you one last chance.’

‘Do you mean I can stay here?’ And he stared about him at all the wonders of The Dream, amazed once again with the Councillors with their consoles whom he knew were as human as he, Alan. ‘Can I stay?’

‘No, not anymore Alan. You’ve stayed here too long. It is time we set you free.’

‘Why?’ Alan said, not understanding and almost bursting into tears like a child that never gets his own way. ‘Why?’

‘Because we love you.’

And the Translator kissed him twice on his cheeks with his catlike grin and vanished.

With him went The Dream and from without, about him in its place came the dream therapist’s office with Narelle holding his hand and the grandmother clock told him it five past two already.