Mulled

Wonderful. It should be wonderful. That’s how it’s supposed to be. And I guess, by inference, that’s how I’m supposed to be. I am supposed to be wonderful. No pressure there then. No pressure at all. Dance monkey! Dance! Perform. Put on a show. Delight your audience. Only, there is no audience. Not this year. And that feels wrong somehow. Wrong in a way that makes no sense to me as I awaken to a Christmas morning on my own.

Christmas is steeped in all manner of emotional herbs, spices and vices. Year upon year, it ferments and becomes a stronger and headier brew. Ancient traditions are not only added to, they are warped and corrupted. And our ancestors don’t like that. They don’t like it at all.

This is a season of repetition, and yet there are firsts. This collision of the old and new is not pretty. Never pretty. There is no beauty in the midst of the dark and chilling Winter. This festival was supposed to be uplifting. A feast. Dancing and drinking. Lighting the fires to dispel the encroaching demons and warm our bones even as Death stalked us and took the weakest from the herd.

All those things are still at play. We are so out of touch. So wrong. No wonder I feel wrong. This is a time of wrong. Somehow Halloween upped sticks and made its way into the depths of darkness. Found a better home for its brand of chaos and magic. I feel the presence of Krampus, but I am too old to be snatched up, thrown in the sack and carried away to a place of torture and punishment. I am too old and too far gone for the warning that the goat-like Santa bestows upon the wayward youths. Not that they listen. Horror holds no fear for them. Life contains far worse ,and they eschew that life for myriad fantasies. Have we always lived in false narratives? Maybe that’s why I feel so wrong as I lay in my cold bed and consider the even colder lack of welcome that this house offers me with a lacklustre afterthought.

I am caught in the Christmas dichotomy. Attempting to cling on to the familiar whilst downplaying the firsts that threaten to undo me. I am attempting denial in the face of the incontrovertible. I am alone for Christmas and any amount of normalising this will not hold drinking water. There is a sad poison to this, and the poison is blighting my rear view, I’m not quite sure how I got here, and I can’t see the path I’ve taken. The knowledge of my splendid festive isolation is all. It overshadows all else.

I opt for inactive action. Disengaging intent and allowing myself to go with the current of routine. I sleepwalk from my place of discomfiting slumber. I skip the shower. Splash my face with cold water and fail to respond to that wake-up call. I then scrub at my teeth expecting some rejuvenation via the sharp taste of mint. As I spit that minty froth from my mouth I am greeted with the familiar sight of blood. Even this is wrong. Usually, there is a fetching seam of red that mimics the stripe that came out of the toothpaste tube. The mimicry allows me to dismiss the blood as the same marketing trick in the tube. There is too much blood this time. And this blood is the real deal. It hasn’t bothered dressing itself up in a falsehood of red. This blood is serious.

I look down into the pile of liquid and my dismay blossoms. I extricate the object almost hidden in the midst of the bloody mess and find it to be what I already knew it to be. My tooth. I drop the tooth in the small bathroom bin and probe my mouth absently for the locale of absence. Wiping the bloody gore from my fingers onto my boxer shorts. Only as I dress do I wonder whether I have left the worrying spittle laying forebodingly in the sink. I think I have. I know I have. I should feel shame as I walk away from the scene of that crime, but somehow it doesn’t bother me, and this adds to my unease. This is wrong. Or I am wrong. But I am no philosopher and so I do not probe the source or perspective of the discord and neither do I probe my mouth any longer. Questions and curiosity have no place here. Besides, they will find me in due course. There is no escaping the answers that will be inflicted upon us. Only ever a temporary delay from that painful outcome.

I descend the stairs to the living spaces of the house and the silence that greets me is both appalling and anonymous. I grab at the TV remote as though it is a straw. I want sound to disrupt whatever it is that is going on here. I was not at all careful about what I wished for. I am provided with white noise and a screen that approximates snow the same way that a great white shark approximates cuddly. The sight of it hurts my brain. An ice cream reality headache of epic proportions. Yet still, I leave the TV hissing at me like a disembodied snake and make my way to the radio in the kitchen. As I depress the on button, the screen does not display the radio station and thankfully, the small box does not add its voice to the TV’s terrible cries. Its silence is somehow worse.

I could find music on my stereo. But the TV sits sentry in that place and I have no stomach for a return match. That moment has passed. Automatically I turn the kettle on and my thoughts turn to the safety of food. I am not hungry, but I am often not hungry at breakfast time. I know it is important to eat and so I fill up on toast or cereal and wash it down with strong coffee. Fuel for the day. Another form of defence against an uncaring world.

As the noisy kettle pretends to be a jet engine, jarring my loose teeth. I pause and sniff the air. The out of kilter feeling I woke with now has an aroma. I am reminded of the onslaught of fragrance adverts that kick in before Christmas. Film star in the desert. Wolves. An overtly physical display of masculinity that can only be achieved if you mask your scent with a lie. The corresponding adverts of femininity. Two strands leading to one message; buy this bottle of smell and the planet will want to fuck you. Why then are these bottles gifts? An invitation to cheat. The overwhelming tractor beam of desire, drawing the recipient away to a world of mindless sexual gratification. The gift itself is mindless. Easy. A surefire winner.

There is no mistaking the smell in the kitchen; corruption.

I look around this room for the source of the uncomfortable stench. Spoiled food that I have been neglectful of. Another source of shame, when I pride myself on using the food I buy and not being wasteful. Something I can control in my life, make happen and make work. Something that has few variables. A simple task that I have mastered.

There is nothing on the kitchen worktops. I eliminate the visible and conspicuous sources of rottenness, but there is no comfort here. The fruit bowl is empty and the space where I leave sweet treats is devoid of foodstuffs. And so, I open the roller door of the breadbin with some degree of trepidation. Not because I fear the prospect of a green lump that was once a loaf of bread, but instead I worry about further absence. I am prophetic in these worries of mine. There is no bread. There are no crumbs. Turning my back on that gaping maw of absence does not help matters, I feel its breath against my back and the threat of it chewing into me and filling itself with my offal.

Worse still, I feel the gaze of the fridge now. It intimidates me. Daring me to step closer and open its door. The stench has intensified, but it can’t be coming from behind that sealed door. That can’t be possible. All the same, I do not want to eliminate it from my enquiries. There are so many reasons why I do not want to open that door. But I know I will. I have to.

The distance from the breadbin to the fridge is a matter of a few steps, but it takes me an age to traverse that distance. Something inside me unhinges as I do so. I would cry, but I am beyond that. I stand with my hand on the handle to the fridge door and find that I am pushing against it. Willing it to remain closed. It can keep its secrets. I don’t want them.

My hand betrays me, and I swing the door open. The door is silent. The squeaking comes from me. The truth of the inner sanctum of the fridge is not that there is no foul aroma greeting me, but that there is nothing at all. Each and every shelf is empty. Not even a jar, or a plastic tomato ketchup bottle. No bottle of tonic to accompany gin. Nothing. And that nothing has no smell to it. This should be a vacuum of meaning, but I am not afforded that small mercy. It is Christmas Day, and the cupboards are all bare. I close the fridge door and find that my eyes are upon one of the many cupboard doors now. I draw the line there. I will not open any of those doors.

I lean back against the fridge. What next? My answer is the invisible mist that continues to assail my nostrils. I follow the trail and as I move, the stench becomes even more powerful. As though I am wafting it into my sensory organ. A basset hound whose ears flap and move to draw the smell closer to his nose.

There is an answer of sorts here and it’s been there from the start. I knew it but refused to listen. This is the stench of death. Too persistent and prevalent to be mouldy cheese or even a rat that has crawled into a tight space and expired. This is big. And oh, so wrong.

I look up at the ceiling, half expecting to see the outline of a solution. A brown Rorschach with only one dire interpretation. With feet of lead, I stumble back up the stairs, intuiting the locale of the rotting body. Sleep and death are two sides to the same coin. My mind pushes on to another of death’s bedfellows; sex. The escape of a lewd fantasy would otherwise be welcome, but right now I have a growing fear, and that fear is that I am what is wrong. And I think I may have gone wrong in the very worst of ways.

Thing is, I don’t remember, and that lack of recall makes me as dangerous as they come. I’ve heard the stories. Read some of them. Was suspicious of those who begged and pleaded, telling anyone who’d listen that they could not remember doing it.

I didn’t kill them!

Yes, and the prisons are filled with the innocent. None of them did it. Those without a conscience don’t remember because it isn’t at all important to them. Only they count. Those around them are consumable objects. Who remembers last Thursday’s meal? Even those special and memorable meals are a passing fancy. All they are, are a marker for further pleasant acts of consumption.

Did I do it?

Why can’t I remember?

I find that I don’t want to remember, but still, I keep going. Slowly, I open the first bedroom door. The bedroom is empty. Should it be empty? I don’t think it should be. There is so much that is wrong here, but my mind won’t keep up. Can’t keep up. All that matters is the main show. The rest is just bubble-gum detail.

I have to find her.

I don’t know why it’s a her. Maybe I’m hedging my bets. If there’s sex involved, I want it to be a her. A crime of passion. A passing excuse. My get out of jail free card. I also don’t want to think about prison and what they’ll do to me there. The very thought is painful and chaotic. I need to focus. The confusion of this Christmas Morning hurts.

I throw open the second bedroom door. This is shit or bust. There is nothing else. No other rooms, other than my bedroom. This is it and I muster some defiance in the act of opening this final door. I stumble backwards as another empty room yawns with indifferent boredom at me. I stumble backwards and find myself staggering into the bathroom. As I come to rest on the far wall, I look to my left and down at the sink. The brown sludge remains there.

I growl with a denial. This can’t be! Then I’m leaning down and sniffing at the crud I have so recently expelled. There is a terrible familiarity here. I swallow back the vomit that rises up within me. I have always hated being sick, but this would be something far worse.

Above my bowed head is the only answer I need now. The mirror awaits my visitation. It’s always been waiting. It will show me and once we are acquainted, things will never be the same again. Only, they haven’t been the same for a while now.

I glance down at my trembling hands and instantly regret this action. My skin is no longer something that qualifies as skin. In a vain attempt to distract myself, my tongue probes my teeth and dislodges one and then another tooth. I spit them into my hand and close my fingers over them. The movement is obscene. I’m all wrong.

I’m thinking this as I bring my head up and look into the face of a dead man. I don’t know how long I’ve been dead, but this isn’t a recent development. I’ve ripened. The sight of my transformation brings forth a sound that should have been words.

“Urrrgh!”

The shock of the sound I make inspires me to cry out No!

“Nnnrrrgh!”

My vocal cords don’t work. I can’t help but think of them rotting inside of me. All of me decaying. I can no longer stay in front of that accusatory mirror. I shamble out of the bathroom and into the relative safety of my bedroom. A sanctuary from the reality that has come crashing into my dead world. But even here, I am under attack. The rucked-up bedclothes reveal a human sized stain on the bedsheet. What should have been my final resting place is presented to me after I have arisen. A modern-day Lazarus. A sick party trick to help the living believe in something worthwhile. What do I have though? What can I believe in now?

Then I hear it. A muffled and crazy siren call. I shuffle to the curtains and pull them to one side. The second curtain I half pull from the rail, but I no longer care. My gaze is out there. Out in the world. That’s when I see more people like me. Moving around the streets. Looking about them in confusion and bewilderment. And my heart goes out to them. I need to go to them. These are my tribe now. The lost and the damned.

Maybe it is the season of good will to all after all.