Identity Crisis

When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

Ben was looking in the mirror right now and wishing that he wasn’t. Thom’s words were, he knew, being taken out of context. He knew this because he was the one wilfully taking them out of that context. He could be quite contrary like that and if accused of such an attribute would deploy his contrariness on the denial of this mildly disagreeable nature of his.

He was having a moment. This particular moment stalked Ben and would not let him go. He’d made a mistake and he’d been haunted by it ever since. Some were lucky that it was their shadow that made them feel weirdly paranoid. Being followed had that effect on a person. Especially if they held superstitious, or rather religious, beliefs regarding the dark figure that accompanied them throughout their life monitoring their deeds and chalking up a running judgement that would eventually lead to them either living a life of wonder free of the judgemental dark spirit that had put a damp squib on the entirety of their life, especially in the bedroom. Really, how was there even a subsequent generation of these people when they brought two demonic spectators with them when they got it on? Never mind the beast with two backs, there were four of them and the shadow monkeys always seemed to be having a better time of it. Failing a happy life without their dark chaperone, their next outing would be as one of the dark demons. And let’s face it, this was the more likely outcome. Worse still, you’d come back to judge one of your sorry descendants. Oozing with silent disappointment and bringing down your bloodline even further into a pit of neurotic gloom and despondency.

Looking into the mirror, Ben thought those religious lunatics had it easy. At least they weren’t lumbered with a reflection that smiled its lifetime of judgement at them. For Ben, the permanent smile was the worst of it. A cruel joke inflicted upon him and his kind by a civil servant who’d been itching to wreak a bitter and twisted revenge upon a fun-loving demographic of the populous. Then there were the committees that waved the wretched idea through. Not to mention the politicians that enshrined it in law. Madness gripped the lot of them and it had manifested itself in the image residing beyond the glass. The unreal made real. And for what? That was the question on the face forever smiling at him.

Ben stared at the clown in the mirror and tried to remember who he was. Who he’d been before the accident of fate that he’d caused whilst drunk in charge of his life. How he’d been. The problem was that he had a short and abrupt answer to that; he was a right royal cock up. With the emphasis on cock. The mistake he’d made had been the same mistake played over and over again. A wagon wheel of steamy casual encounters. He kidded himself that he was looking for love in all the wrong places, but he hadn’t been looking for love at all. He’d been swerving the curveball of love and instead he’d tuned in and dropped out and allowed his todger to rule the roost. Ben’s todger was insatiable. Ravenous and eager, it built a legend in its own bedtime. Not that there had to be a bed. Or a bedroom. The Little Man was on duty twenty four and seven. And there was no shortage of suitors for it to lewdly point at.

It had all been wrong, but it had felt so right. As did the drinking. Ben’s thirst was prodigious and pubs and bars were his natural habitat. His life became a blur of drinking and sex. Wilder and wilder was the order of the day. More so as the night hours rounded each day off.

As with all addictions, it all got a bit out of hand. Ben threw caution to the wind and at times, he wasn’t really sure what was going on. He was playing a perpetual game of Twister. Never quite sure which limb belonged to him and how many people there were in the writhing tangle of humanity that shimmered with a sheen of tasty sweat.

His tastes became more exotic and eclectic. Sometimes electric. Which was another way of describing the lowering of both his standards and his boundaries. If he’d paused for thought, he might’ve horrified himself into ceasing his endlessly sordid antics. But his addiction would not allow this. This was all there was. Without erotic sex and exotic cocktails, Ben was nothing. He saw no life beyond the blur he resided within.

Then there was the fateful fancy dress party. And a complete lack of judgement on Ben’s part. He met a clowness and really appreciated the way she rocked her outfit. That was only for starters though, as there was something entirely raw and animalistic about this woman. She didn’t need any warning signs or red flags. She oozed danger and this did for Ben. At this stage of his fun and games, danger equated sex appeal and here was a mutual attraction that would not be denied. Ben had met his match and the chemistry was explosive. The destruction they wrought in the bedroom was testament to that. For the first time in his life, Ben broke a bed with a pneumatic prowess that he had not realised he possessed.

And she was possessed. Her hunger for him was elemental and frightening. He wanted a toilet break, but didn’t dare ask, and so gave himself over to her instead. Vigorously sweating out any need for the loo into the bargain. She clawed at him and called him Her Jimmy, pulling him closer than he’d ever been with another. Her gravity was incredible. Delirious with lust, Ben didn’t care as she cycled through numerous names, some sounding suspiciously like they related to pets. Surely there weren’t men out there called Fluffy or Rover? He made a mental note to look it up. There could well be an entire scene he’d left untapped and unshagged.

Then she bit him. Now Ben quite liked a bit of scratching and nibbling, but this was a bit much. He was definitely going to say something, but before he could muster the appropriate words, he fell unconscious with blissful exhaustion.

When he returned to consciousness she was gone. He never saw her again. She had drifted away through the walls of Ben’s life. It were as though she had never been there. Except, Ben wasn’t really into self-love. And there was that bite to remember her by.

The site of the wound was strange in a way that strangeness should not be applied to the human frame. Ben could feel it a-bubbling and a-popping. Those bubbles pulsed this way and that. Worrying still, was that the bubbles were inside him. Communicating with him via their effervescence. The words and phrases they used were simple, yet effective.

Oh dear, mate!

You’ve done it now!

Bridge too far!

What were you thinking!

These absurd recriminations burst inside him leaving a growing feeling of dread. Something had gone wrong. Something was going very wrong. And as Ben burst through the surface of sensible consciousness a large and heavy penny dropped upon his big toe, making him yelp with new found anguish. Not daring to believe his foolhardiness, he looked down at his hand and there he saw it. Writ large. The pallid, grey skin of a zombie.

Not a fancy dress outfit after all, but the mandatory clown garb of all zombies. An outlandish outfit meant to warn all and sundry that this here was an infected and dangerous individual, and certainly not one that you should get close and intimate with, not without a muzzle at the very least.

Taking to his feet, Ben hurled himself towards the bathroom. His intent was to close the stable door long after said horse had ceased to be a horse. Nursing a vain hope as he bathed the offending area. Wanting with all of his will to be cleansed of this particular sin. Unfortunately, no gods were listening. Well, the god of cock ups and the god of mischief and the god of absurd regret were listening and they were having a right old laugh at Ben’s plight.

Bit late for that!

The bubbles of infection really were not helping matters.

“Shut up!” hissed Ben.

And they did. Which only made it worse. Now Ben was alone in his hour of need. Deserted even by the source of his undoing. Suffering in silence, he did the only thing left to him. He went to see his bestest friend in all of the world; Thom. Like all good friends, Thom welcomed him with open arms, even as Ben explained that that was probably no longer the best of ideas. Thom didn’t care. Ben was still Ben. As far as Thom was concerned he was even more Ben than he had previously been. In fact he was taken with a fit of the giggles.

For once Ben had a sense of humour failure, “why are you laughing at me?!” he protested.

“I’m not laughing at you,” supplied Thom, “I’m laughing with you!” He slapped his thigh with pantomime jollity.

“Oh no you don’t!” retorted Ben, and for a moment he thought his mate would chime; oh yes I do!

But he didn’t, because that would be a little bit too much. Even for Thom. Not necessarily for Ben, but that was a different matter.

“Eh?” said Thom instead, “don’t what? What do you mean?”

“You’ve nicked one of my lines!” wailed Ben, “you can’t use my material against me! Especially not in the bleakest moment in my life!”

Thom smiled the smile only a very good friend can bestow upon his bestest mate, “oh come now! Don’t be down.”

“I’ll be down if I want to,” Ben pouted for additional effect.

Thom shook his head, refusing to take this churlishness seriously, “this isn’t you, mate.”

“Of course it isn’t me!” bleated Ben, “I’ve been bitten by a zombie! I’m bloody undead!”

“There’s not that much blood,” observed Thom, “hardly any at all, in fact.”

“You know what I mean!” growled Ben.

This growl of Ben’s sobered Thom, for Thom was in the throes of pre-hangoverness. Still drunk from the night before, but believing himself both sober and free from the ravages of a hangover in payment for his night of excess.

“OK,” acknowledged Thom, “this is a bum deal, but look on the bright side.”

“What bright side!? I’m dead!”

Thom smiled that smile of friendship again, “I’d be devastated if you were dead, mate. Does this look like the face of a grieving friend?”

Ben shook his head in exasperation, which Thom wilfully misconstrued as affirmation.

“Look,” continued Thom, “if anyone can pull this off, you can.”

“Said the bishop to the actress!” enthused Ben.

And that was that. Ben blundered right back into the trap of humour that had bonded the lads from day one. He couldn’t argue with that. Neither of them could argue for very long at all without it descending into innuendo and humour. Farts would never cease to be hilarious and toilet humour was the lifeblood of their friendship.

Ben farted.

“Oh Lordy!” cried Thom as he pinched his nose shut, trapping the obnoxious zombie fart inside his nasal cavity and regretting the opening of his mouth. He retreated a yard or so from the epicentre of the chemical weapon Ben had unleashed upon an unsuspecting world, “I hope they don’t get any worse than that. As you… you know…” he said waving his free hand at the green gasses before him.”

“As I…?” asked Ben.

Thom looked serious all of a sudden, even freeing his nose so he could shrug earnestly, “sorry, mate.”

Ben looked at him in askance.

“Ripen?” ventured Thom.

But thankfully Ben had never ripened and Thom had been right, Ben had made his new state his own. He’d gone with it and with some flair and pizzaz. It turned out that being a zombie had certain upsides and the side-effects did not curtail his antics. All was in order downstairs and his enjoyment of the booze was enhanced. So much so that Ben never felt the need to snack on any of his companions.

Life had been on the up ever since. More so than Ben could have ever dreamt of and Thom had been by his side all the way. So why was he so glum right now? Thom’s comment wasn’t even to Ben – it was directed at Clair, who’d been a chair and was now a planet, albeit taking on a humanoid form when the mood took her. That mood usually leading her and Thom to the bedroom. Ben had noted that Clair cast no shadow when she was in this form. He’d been meaning to ask her about that and whether she was at all superstitious or religious when it came to shadows…

Which gave him a thought, or rather a series of thoughts. Clair had skills and abilities that were off the scale. She could pretty much do anything. She could do things in other dimensions that would boil Ben’s brain in his skull if he even tried to work out what they were and how they worked. So surely she could change the image in the mirror? She could restore him to his former glories.

“Why did I not think about this sooner?” he said to himself, but as he spoke, he saw his reflection say the same words and he felt wounded. You have no right! He thought in indignation. And that was when it hit him. This was him he was talking about. He was that clown and he always had been. If he took off the mask? There’d be the exact same image underneath it. He was a stick of rock that said clown all the way through.

No, not clown.

Ben, this was he.

Besides, if he walked out of this room as the man he had once been, he knew how that would play out. It wasn’t the shock that would hit him hardest. It was the disappointment. As though summoned as a witness for the prosecution, that disappointment was palpably there in the room right now. He’d be cheating. Letting his friends down. Running away from who he really was.

He smiled in his resignation of this clown-state of his, “better late than never, mate.” And in that smile was everything. This was no painted on fabrication, it was as genuine as it came. Ben lit up as he smiled. His whole being illuminating the room.

Suddenly, he felt more comfortable in his skin than he had ever been. He thought of Thom, his very bestest buddy, who’d been there through thick and thin. Clair, the most awesome individual he had ever encountered. And Jennifer, the Warmongerian warrior lizard who had tamed his wayward heart and brought peace to his life. Jennifer, with her sharp pointy teeth and extensive collections of battle blades. Jennifer with a cover that could mislead potential readers to such an extent that they’d rather burn her pages with copius lazer fire than exchange initial pleasantries. She was the conspicuous clue to his very own nature.

Now he laughed at the absurdity of life and guffawed as he observed the funny and bizarre zombie-clown mimicking him. No longer would he be an impostor in his own body. He would live up to the image that he’d been awe of for far too long. He’d grow into this clown and he’d be more Ben. More than he ever had.

Yes, Ben resolved to grow up at last. He had responsibilities and he was going to own this life of his. He glowed even more brightly as he grinned at himself and accepted the undoubtedly interesting and perilous destiny that awaited him.

Entering the next room, which was the living room of their humble abode, he was pleased to see his good friend, Thom.

“Whatho, Thom!” exclaimed Ben in greeting.

Thom frowned, “you’re shining again.” He peered into the room Ben had exited, but finding it empty of Jennifer, his frown deepened, “have you been practicing self-love?” he asked in hushed tones.

“No!” gasped Ben, “whatever gave you that idea?”

“Your shine,” replied Thom, “you only ever shine after…” he frowned again, “you haven’t been dabbling in mixology again have you? You promised you’d only experiment with your cocktails in deep space, far from civilisation and hyperspace byways. You know what happened last time you burped up one of your new creations.”

“No Thom,” said Ben, “I learned my lesson there. Some things are never to be repeated.”

Thom continued to eye Ben suspiciously.

“I am sorry though,” grinned Ben.

“Sorry…?” said a perplexed Thom.

Ben’s grin widened.

“Oh Lordy!” cried Thom as his nose was viciously and viscously assaulted. He was retching at the unholy stench that Ben had sent out in a green tinged cloud from his bum-hole as he crawled from the room in pursuit of clean, unsullied air.

Ben nodded in something like self-satisfaction. Life was good. He was good. No more doom and gloom for this lad.

Little did he know that Professor Doom and Colonel Gloom were even then hatching dastardly plans for universal domination and the downfall of Ben and Thom. But that was a story for another day. A longer story with much derring-do and a hoard of weaponised and deranged sex-pixies the likes of which had never marauded the galaxy before. To say they were a handful would open the door to a barrage of innuendo. But you’ll have to wait for that one I’m afraid, because it’s all about the timing. Said the actress to the bishop…