The Word of a God

“I think someone’s watching.”

Matthew had mustered what he thought was enough courage to admit this to his own mother, but in the instant the words escaped out into the world he saw what they really were. It was only then that he could see them for what they were. They’d lied and tricked their way out, intent on his destruction. Judas words, betraying him. He had had the temerity to consider his words his own, but as he saw these words and their true nature he understood his own nature a little more.

After the words fell from his mouth under a host of false pretences, Matthew had sighed and put his head in his hands. He didn’t want to see his mother’s reaction. He could not stand to observe her fall for the lies and misread her own son yet again. The gulf between them was not due to a mere lack of communication, nor of insufficient understanding. They were different species and as Matthew became aware of this, he also became fearful of the creature he shared a living space with. She was alien and predatory and her very nature hurt him. She was built to take from him. The antithesis of what a mother should be, but then all words had that capacity, not only to deceive, but to be the opposite of the what they promised to be.

“You should see someone,” his mother had said.

She had not moved from the other side of the kitchen table, of that he was glad. He had invested heavily in rebuffing her supposedly reassuring touches. Her physical contact was damning. There was no warmth there. Her hard, cold being drew away the warmth of his life and he shunned her presence in the same room as him.

He had thought that this was all him for such a very long time. His mother was his mother. She had not changed. Never had she changed. Whereas he had developed into what he was now. For an age, he thought that this was growing up, even as he emerged into adulthood he knew that there was more growing to do. But his mother never changed. Not once. How was that possible? How did a person not adapt and alter as the years went by. Why was she the same with him as she always had been?

Should he even be listening to her anymore?

He wondered why he had told her and laid himself bare. His vulnerability sickened him enough as it was, now she knew. 

“Who would I see?” he asked her. He flinched imperceptibly at the beseeching quality of his voice. A passenger inside his own body, there was a disconcerting detachment here. Another gulf that ran parallel to the one between him and the person he should be closest to in all of the world.

“Start with Dr McPherson,” his mother told him, “she will know. And she can give you a once over while you’re there. It’s walk-in right now. You should go.”

He looked up, but she’d turned around already, busying herself unnecessarily with the cleaning of a kitchen work surface that was already too clean. Her battle against invisible germs was unstinting. Matthew was well aware that he was the largest source of germs and mess in the household, so his mother’s glib dismissal with the addition of her turning her back on him was no surprise at all.

With much effort, he pushed himself backwards from the table. The wooden chair squealed against the cold, tiled floor and his mother’s shoulders rose with the tension of animosity. Matthew guessed he was the chair and she was the long suffering tiled floor. Had he always grated on her?

“Bye,” he said without looking back at her. He’d long given up looking for a warm response from her. He’d never experienced the death of a loved one and the accompanying grief, but he thought it wouldn’t be all that different in quality to his life. He missed so much of what he had never had.

He hated going to the doctors. The same was to be said for dentists. He harboured a general, background radiation of loathing for many public spaces, but the doctors managed to rise head and shoulders above all else. Supermarkets were soulless spaces with the promise of examples of awful human behaviour. Small pockets of a London commute where people regressed into a passive-aggressive animalistic state. The doctors’ surgery was an antechamber to places such as that. This was where the vanquished combatants slumped in the fug of their defeat. All hope was lost here and when the doctor smiled, Matthew’s blood ran cold.

This was another mistake, but then Matthew’s life seemed to be a series of low-level mistakes. He was pushed along on a tide of them and he wasn’t sure whether his rudder had been torn off on the rocks of a trauma he could not recall, or he’d failed to build it when he was supposed to. All he knew was that he was moving in a direction that was to his detriment and there were no brakes, no steering and nothing on the horizon that gave rise to hope.

Following the professional assassin smile, Dr McPherson spoke, “what are we here for today then, Matthew?”

We, Matthew thought. We most certainly are not in this together, so to use that word is to propel me further away. Why would you do that? Why? She’d also used his first name, using a familiarity that did not exist. Somehow he liked her for that. It was… consistent.

“I think someone’s listening,” Matthew told her.

He’d meant to say watching, but he was disappointed to hear the word replaced by listening. There was a truth there, but that substitution of the word divorced him from that truth. It was not his truth. He smiled uncertainly at the doctor as he thought that maybe this wasn’t his truth, but it was the truth that was needed. The truth of his situation. The truth of his plight.

Dr McPherson looked about her as though there was actually someone else in the room. A slapstick representation of the philosophy of Matthew’s state of existence. Then she rose to her feet and closed the door. The door that was propped open in a statement of my door is always open. Now that it wasn’t open, the feeling of the room was coldly oppressive. The walls closed in and Matthew could feel the presence of them against his skull. If he wasn’t so weakened, he would have run for the door, although something told him that running for the door would be a sign of weakness. 

So was he being strong right now?

That all depended on perspective, and if that was the case then Matthew could never be objectively strong. He was asking for help right now. He’d asked his mother for that help and she’d kicked him down the road in the next heartbeat. He needed a port. A safe harbour. He wanted it all to stop so he could breathe deep and rest awhile.

Dr McPherson sat back down and crossed her legs in that way uptight people do when they want to signal a relaxed state. A faux yoga pose to tell the world that they’re more than OK. They’re smashing life and full of the beans of confidence.

“Someone?” Dr McPherson asked.

Matthew took a moment to consider the doctor’s diagnostic approach. He’d given her very little to go on, but then he didn’t have much more to give. He’d presented her with a symptom. The doctor used symptoms to diagnose. This meant there had to be a commonality to the symptom in order to successfully diagnose a patient. 

Matthew fought the urge to tell the doctor that it wasn’t like that. Any words of that ilk would he knew, confirm the doctors pre-formed diagnosis and it would not go well for him.

“It’s a feeling,” Matthew said, “and I’d like to speak to someone so I can process that feeling.”

There, he’d leant over the side of his boat and pushed his hand into the flowing ice of the river of life. He had attempted some semblance of control. 

“I see,” said Dr McPherson.

Matthew could see that the doctor did not see. That this process was not fit for purpose. What made it worse right now was that he could feel the observation more intensely. Being watched. Being listened to. There was a purpose to this observation, but it was not his. He had been caught and he was being played with.

He sat there quietly expectant. There was nothing more to say. His use of silence to drag the appointment towards its inevitable conclusion was a successful strategy. The doctor’s legs uncrossed and she glanced at the clock on her desk. Time was the enemy, but right now Matthew was weaponising it. Using it for his own means. She needed him out of her office in order to see the next patient. She hurriedly typed something on her computer keyboard and made notes that would go on his file.

“There’s a very good therapist,” Dr McPherson said whilst jotting a name down on a slip of paper, “I will contact him to let you know you’ll be in touch.” She smiled again. A signal of the end of the interaction, but then she added, “he writes fiction in his spare time. You might be interested in his books. Look him up.”

For an appalling second the whole world seemed to tilt precariously to the left, but Matthew knew that it was his boat that was listing dangerously close to capsizing. Danger had risen up out of the depths and made itself known. Matthew wished that he understood the language it spoke. All he could do was make a note of the signs and collate enough of them for a picture to eventually emerge.

He took the slip of paper and thanked Dr McPherson. He did not cave into an urge to use his phone, preferring to wait until he was back home. The house would be empty. It would feel better for that. His mother’s presence lingered, but it was not as potent. All the same, he headed up to his bedroom, being considerate in removing his shoes before ascending the stairs. The germs on his socks weren’t half as bad as those on the clean soles of his shoes. 

Dr Janus had indeed written books. Matthew bought three and tried to read two of them. They jarred and set his teeth on edge. However hard he tried to read them, the words stung him and poisoned his thoughts. There was either something deeply troubled about those books or Matthew was deeply troubled. Both, thought Matthew.

On the day of his first appointment, he carried one of the books with him. At first he carried the book in his hand, intending for it to be the single conspicuous item he brought with him. His phone and wallet lived in the pockets of his jeans. The thought of brandishing the book had amused him whilst he was in his bedroom, but by the time he had traversed the stairs his confidence had waned and the obvious book became too much. He nearly abandoned it on the bottom step of the stairs, but instead he compromised and dropped it in a supposed bag for life, one of the many con tricks consumers thoughtlessly wore.

The compromise pained Matthew as he walked to Dr Janus’s rooms. He walked everywhere if he could. Public transport was a rolling prison filled with the same few people who shambled around supermarkets or sat inwardly wailing in doctors’ surgeries.

With the supermarket branded bag on his lap, Matthew wished he’d opted for his canvas knapsack. That would have been better. The contents of that bag were less knowable. But then Matthew was an open book and more knowable than he would have liked.

The address of the therapist was a large house that Matthew instantly knew was the doctor’s residence as well as his place of work. It had a half lived-in feel just a notch up from an army barracks. Too neat and sanitised, it was the ideal lair for a psychopathic serial killer, or a politician. Which in the end, amounted to the same thing.

There was a brass ring pull doorbell that made Matthew smile. Apparatus from a passed era that was too far in the past to be real anymore. The legends and myths of those past times were distorted and bent in order to serve the present and ruin the future. He opted for the big brass door knocker. Some things were timeless and the resounding echo of Matthew’s knocks were as real as anything he had ever experienced. For a moment, they held at bay his fear of the unknown therapist and his trepidation towards this session.

A suitable time elapsed before Dr Janus answered the door. The good doctor would not wish to answer too hastily. This would signify an over eagerness tending towards zealotry. Appearances must be kept up. Expectations exploited.

The man himself was dressed in a uniform of the most formal of casual clothes. Corduroy trousers with a sharp crease that defeated the whole purpose of the garment. White shirt encased in a brown velvet waistcoat that almost matched the colour of the trousers, and of course there was that rare affectation, a paisley cravat. Matthew suspected that the studious glasses were also an affectation, but then he was not here to get to know the man before him. He was here to understand himself, if that were at all possible.

“Please,” said Dr Janus, “come in.”

Matthew followed the older man, a man of indeterminate years that would seemingly hover at a similar number for three decades or more, to a room to the right of a grand staircase. The entire house was grand. A statement that was intended to intimidate. A place for everything and everything in its place.

The room was a library and a study. Despite its considerable size, dusty knowledge crowded in on the desk and chairs in the middle of the room. Janus waved to a chesterfield sofa and sat himself in a matching wingback chair.

“Matthew,” he said. 

A statement. He didn’t add the polite isn’t it?

“Yes?” Matthew’s uncertainty made his answer a wishy-washy question.

“Tell me why you think you are here,” instructed the doctor.

Matthew felt himself comply even as he resented the intention of the question. The doctor had undermined him from the off. Downplaying the feeling he was possessed of. A feeling that only grew with each passing breath.

“I have this feeling…” began Matthew.

“Of being watched,” Janus said.

Matthew shifted uncomfortably. Janus had a pad and an expensive black fountain pen. He was scribbling away, whilst keeping his eyes on Matthew. Matthew hadn’t seen the pad and pen before. Didn’t know how they’d gotten there.

“Tell me,” said Janus, “which book of mine did you bring along?”

“I…” Matthew couldn’t bring himself to say. He did not want to indulge this man. The feeling of being watched was closer now. Too close. So close that it was possession. 

“You have to answer,” said Janus, “you understand that, right? That’s how this all works.”

Janus was smiling. That smile was knowing. It was ancient and filled with more knowledge than Matthew thought possible. A deep sea that seemed tranquil on the surface but was filled with turmoil and peril. He didn’t want to answer. There was a bilious urge to rebel and so he remained silent.

Janus shook his head, “like that is it?” 

He flipped the page of the pad to a clean one and wrote slowly and deliberately. Matthew’s eyes grew large as his right hand rose up and his fist clenched. That slow movement was followed by a blur, a loud noise that was felt, not heard, and then a rich seam of pain. 

Through watering eyes, Matthew saw Janus holding the pad toward him. On it’s page in beautifully neat and legible writing were the words…

 Matthew punched himself in the eye.

“The book in your bag is entitled The Duality,” Janus told him, “it is a supposed work of fiction that explores the dual nature of humankind, but if you read between the lines there is more at play. You see, there is a gap between those dualities and that is a place where someone like me can reside.”

Matthew had to move his mouth several times before words would form, “someone like you?”

Janus smiled again and Matthew saw a shark where a man should be seated. He nodded, never taking his dark eyes from Matthew, “a writer.”

“But…” Matthew wanted to protest. He wanted to refute this, but for the first time in his life it all made sense. The feeling of being watched, the loss of control. Then he saw a glimmer of light that might in fact be hope, an opportunity that was present in this meeting. A meeting that Janus had manufactured.

When Janus smiled there was a strange warmth to it, “I think you begin to understand.”

Matthew understood more, but not all of it. He stood carefully, gesturing to the desk and several reams of neatly stacked pages, “that’s it isn’t it? That’s me.”

Janus now stood, “not quite you.”

“But surely, you’re a god?” Matthew said, “my god.”

But Janus was shaking his head, “not quite.”

Matthew’s eyebrows raised with astonishment. Now he saw it. He saw why Janus needed him. Really needed him. In a way that made sense and gave Matthew purpose. Finally, he had a place where he belonged.

“Between us…” Matthew said.

“And between you,” Janus added.

“Oh my! The possibilities!”

“Without limit, my boy. Endless.”