The Cobweb Blew Away

Perhaps the mind is really a map, he thought. A new world, surely a new world, lay stretched out before him? But sometimes the mornings -all mornings- seemed the same. A new route yet to take, a change of life. But sometimes there was just the morning. Just the same morning, coming back again and again. A different place, a different time, a new world - yet the same feeling. Just like the morning. It would always come back.

  ‘I’ve seen it all before,’ he’d say, ‘I’ve seen it all before!’

  Am I the same person, he thought, the man who came before? Who was he and who am I? I think they all melt into one. People say it’s the same for them, you know, those same old, same old mornings. But the morning passes on and the cobweb blows away. Yet this feeling and I…

 

  Another day and we are history. His purpose had come to an end. There’s nowhere to go to, nothing new. Just a new version of the old life. Keep going. Turn the corner, open a door, tread a new old creaky floorboard, open the dusty curtains of some other faraway house. In his mind’s eye he turns and a stream of light strafes the floor. To the room his presence brings renewal. That very moment turns the page on a new chapter in its life. With him it is reborn, it awakens, and the cobweb blows away. But someone has been here - they’ve seen it all before. He could see himself there, dreaming, like the one who dreamt before. And this one had felt the feeling, the cobweb blow away, as he made the journey -corner to house- to fling back the robes on the brand new day and let the sun blast in on the old, old room. But for a moment he sees himself already there. And someone has been here before.

  Every day the same waking nightmare. The mind is a map, he thought, an old, old map. This isn’t new, it’s the same old day, the cobweb waiting to be dusted! I’ve done it all before! Dear God, help me! I’ve done it all before! The same start with the same ending, the same attempt with the same result! Dear God, help me make something happen! I can see it all now, I can feel it. You make me think it’s all new but now I know that’s a lie! For this one passing moment I see it! But then you deceive me and make me go on and I forget what I know! …Like the day I saw the sun splintered through the glass and onto my bed, on the morning I dreamt of a faraway place and we went for a day by the sea… Like the day I first met my only true love and we woke to the lazy blue sky… And the days that shone like the first of forever, a new birth, a new day, a new sun… But you lied. It’s the same sun, the same day. Someone’s been there before. But you lie and you make me forget…

 

 

* * * *

 

  He threw back the curtains and the Spring morning blazed him. What a beautiful, beautiful day. His body surged like an elixir. A brand new day, he thought, the first day of the rest of my life! For some reason he did not turn from the window but stayed, gazing like a young God upon the panoramic dazzle of light before him. The heavens were as blue as a warming ocean. The air was pure tranquillity. People seemed to leap out into the world around them, it was abound with discovery. He stood transfixed, and breathed in the sight that lay before him. He did not pause as he turned from the window, and he did not look, and he did not think as he left the room, he opened the door and leapt.

  The door closed by itself behind him, and he smiled unconsciously as the old floorboard groaned beneath his feet. The good old floorboard.

  What a beautiful, beautiful day. Our lives are a precious thing, he thought, our only true possession. He kept on going and he turned the corner. For a moment he almost froze. The glorious skyline that stretched before him was overwhelming. The sea, the buildings, the people! A tall panorama seemed almost to seethe all around. Acres of fantasy shimmering with light. A warmth of welcome to a brand new day - a brand new world. Oh, the beautiful old, old town! Then for a moment a strange feeling seemed to pass through him. An unknown glitter sparkling through his soul. And a sense of something happening. Like a wave passing over and a shock of fresh air. Just for a moment. And then it was gone.

 

 

  It was midday. The café was thriving. Waitresses darting back and forth in a flash of frilly aprons. Laughter. A welter of caffeine. Silly pleasant music and silly buoyant voices. Customers, too late for places, jammed in the doorway. Laughter. But it’s a beautiful day and there are tables outside - Oh, yes, why not, of course. Laughter. Laughter and sunshine.

  Through the huge sheet glass he felt the world blaze in. A moving painting of rich texture and colour. Yet the colours shone, they glinted. His eyes like halos, he gazed. He felt like an observer, an admirer, sitting back, absorbing. What a beautiful day. It fluttered and dazzled like a butterfly, gleaming in a golden haze. Anything can happen, he thought, everything. This must have been how God had seen it, that first day.

  ‘Phew! What a day, eh? Blows away the cobwebs!’ said a man, taking a seat opposite a waiting friend.

  Cobwebs? He thought. There are never any cobwebs! Doesn’t he see the world all around him? The world is all alive! Every day is beautiful! But the man was smiling. Laughter. A spider was crawling up the leg of his chair and he crushed it.

  ‘Would you mind if I sat here?’ asked a plaintive voice.

  He looked up. She was beautiful. A streak of sunlight winked at the corner of her hair as she caught its beam.

  ‘No. No, no, that’s alright,’ he said, as the butterfly world fluttered inside him.

  ‘Thank you. It’s nice here in the window, isn’t it?’ she ventured, taking a seat at his small table. The last.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ She was beautiful. He found himself studying her. Her hair was long, thick and tousled. Her eyes were bright and glinting, even without the sun. She looked up quickly and she caught his gaze. He averted his eyes instantly. It must have appeared shy because he was sure he saw her smile. And with humility she looked down into her cup and stirred the spoon.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What for?’ she replied, looking up innocently.

  ‘It’s just…Well, for staring so stupidly,’ he admitted.

  ‘You didn’t look that stupid,’ she smiled into her cup again.

  He gave a small, quiet laugh, relaxed, and turned back to her. ‘Thanks.’

  She chuckled sweetly.

  ‘I mean, I didn’t want you to think…’ he began.

  ‘That’s alright.’

  ‘No, it’s just that…’

  ‘What?’ She looked up at him again with a natural face.

  She is very beautiful. ‘Well, I know it sounds stupid but…’

  She continued to look at him. You are so beautiful.

  ‘You know, just for a moment there I…You seemed so familiar.’

  She made the look again, in her eyes, a glint of recognition. ‘I get that sometimes, too,’ she said, and smiled. ‘They call it déjà vu.’

  ‘It’s odd.’ He couldn’t help smiling back. Her eyes were so alive. Oh God, she is so very beautiful. It is a day to fall in love. The first day of forever. ‘Do you think that’s what it is?’ he asked, her flashing eyes reflecting in his.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, dropping her eyes coyly upon the shimmering pool in her cup. ‘But it’s something I tend to think about a lot…’ she smiled again bashfully. ‘It’s silly.’

  ‘No, it isn’t, really. What were you going to say?’ he asked, but he just wanted to hear her, watch her, keep feeling.

  ‘Well, it’s just that I think…sometimes…My mind…,’ she faltered, and steeled herself to look up again quickly. ‘I think it might be a kind of map…Do you understand what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do.’ He heard her, he saw her, he was basking in her, shining brightly on him.

  ‘We see it, and it looks like a mess of lines and grids, doesn’t it? Well…I think they are roads…’

  ‘And we follow them,’ he said, not questioning, not stating, just feeling.

  ‘But we don’t know where they’re going, and I don’t think we know they are there, but we follow them still - because they are roads. Maybe that’s why we don’t know what’s going to happen to us - because we’re on a road…but we can’t read the map…’ she finished, as if uncertain, but not of what she’d said. Then she smiled again, lighting up the room, and then she turned to the window as if to shield her face from a glare. ‘I don’t know. Maybe there is no map…’

  Something had happened. She was here. It was strange. He felt he could tell her anything. ‘I don’t know. But it’s odd, I…’ he began, caught again by a sensation as she turned back to him, and he saw her hair tumble from her shoulders.

  ‘What?’ she breathed, smiling nervously.

  ‘Please don’t think me mad,’ he continued, slowly, as her gleaming eyes seemed to search his. ‘…I just feel as if…well, as if I’ve always known you, that’s all. Just as if I’ve always known you…It’s strange. Sorry.’

  She smiled again, the same way. ‘No, it’s alright. I don’t think I’d mind what you said to me,’ she said, and a half-puzzled look passed across her face for a moment. Then it was gone and she laughed in a kind of embarrassment.

  He smiled, a warmth moving through him, and the sun blazed in to them from the window. The first day of forever. Something had happened, someone was here.

 

 

* * * *

 

 

  A man was coming slowly up the road. It was very hot today. Like all the other hot days he had seen in the middle of countless other Springs. Why was it so hot today? He had been misled before. A beautiful day and Spring has sprung! But the next day it rains and the wind blows. It doesn’t make any difference. Why should it now?

  As the man kept going he caught a glare of the sun bouncing back from a window across the square. Squinting, he shielded his eyes to see the old café where people often met, and where they sat outside watching the world go by. It was something he used to do. And now someone else did. As they always have. The glare dropped for a moment as the door opened, deflecting the rays, and he saw two people leaving - one man, one girl. She was very pretty, almost sparkling, and the man was somehow… For a moment he seemed to recognise them. But then he suddenly turned away as the blinding glare returned. He did not look back. He did not want to see it. He did not want to remember. It doesn’t mean anything. Why should it? It happens every day. It’s happened before, it can happen again. It doesn’t make any difference.

  The man seemed to be fighting a sickness. By the look on his face he was gulping down a pain. But this was his way of beating the memory. Swallowing it whole like a bitter pill. Quickly, before it takes hold, before the taste can grow. Kill it at birth. Don’t let it deceive you. It’s nothing. It always is, it always was.

  It’s a beautiful day, yet everything is ugly. It comes from somewhere else, this day. The sky, the deep blue - used. The sunshine, the golden haze - borrowed. Over and over. And the man tread the old, old road, everything before him, everything after him. The whole world passing by him, his whole life overtaking. As it always did, as it always had. But around him people kept on going. A brand new day. The first day of forever. They kept on going, as he went back. Once he had been one of them. The man tried to remember. Did I see him then, the man who came before? It was jst a haze, a memory. From somewhere else, someone else’s. A cobweb. He could not recall. It doesn’t make any difference. They just keep going, they do not see me now. It does not matter to them, nor to the world. It’s a beautiful day. The first day of never.

  The man kept on going, it was a long, old journey. Like a thousand years. Like the thousands who came before him. Other men, other Springs, the same day. Following the old road, the old way back, the old way out. Taking the old, old route through the old, old town. Like a thousand years. They kept on going. Like the man who came before.

  And then the man turned the corner towards the old house. It seemed so far away. But then he was already there. And he opened his door; the old creaky floorboard echoing through time. The last day of forever. He throws back the curtains and the sun blazes in. It doesn’t make any difference. The old dust settles with the new. Layer upon layer, the same feeling. It’s a beautiful day. The only day ever. Like a thousand years. I will be forgotten, like the man who comes after. And he will blow away the cobweb. Like the man who came before.

 

 

* * * *

 

 

  She was very, very beautiful. Like the day, like the world. It seemed like they’d been talking forever. Yet still it was fresh like the air. She was a brand new day. Even in the late sun her eyes caught its glow, her hair bloomed like a bouquet of flowers. As she turned to him again the orange beam trailed on the water behind her. Over her shoulder the shimmering light receded across the sea horizon as the distant glowing eye fell asleep beyond. He seemed to know her. Something had happened.

  ‘People think me strange,’ she said, ‘I think the world is beautiful.’

  ‘You are beautiful,’ he said. You are beautiful.

  She smiled that certain way once more, his eyes reflected hers. Then she turned again towards the dying sun. ‘But I wish every day could be as beautiful as this,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You are the day,’ he said, now closer to her. The last glow was on her face and warming his. ‘It would be nothing without you.’

  For a moment she seemed sad, then turned slowly, looking deep into his face, and smiled. After a few moments she said ‘It wasn’t déjà vu…’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He smoothed her hair and, though the sun was now gone, it still seemed to shine.

  ‘I felt it too. Before, in the café. It wasn’t déjà vu,’ she repeated, watching his mouth.

  He stopped. ‘You felt it…?’ A deeper warmth spread through him, more sudden than the sun.

  ‘It wasn’t déjà vu,’ she said again, before he could say more. ‘But it wasn’t fate, it wasn’t that.’ Still she watched his mouth. ‘…We were following the map, I think. The road led us there.’

  He was about to speak but she sensed it and put her finger softly across his lips. He took her hand and held it.

  ‘I know it sounds silly,’ she smiled, that same particular smile of hers. ‘…But I think we were already there. For one little moment we see ourselves. We can read the map. And then it goes away…And then we think we’ve been there before…We think it has already happened…But it hasn’t,’ then she looked sad again for a moment and looked up into his eyes. She smiled. ‘…Has it?’

  He squeezed her hand, like the warmth of a thousand years. ‘No,’ he said, like a thousand soft voices. ‘No-one has ever felt like this…Something has happened. We’re a brand new day. The first day of forever.’

 

 

* * * *

 

 

  Morning, she thought. Hard, hard mornings. What a beautiful day. She was set to meet him again. In the old café of yesterday. ‘You are beautiful,’ he’d said, ‘You are the day.’ It was a beautiful day. The day of a thousand years. But it isn’t me, she thought, it isn’t me. The world is beautiful. It’s silly, people think me strange. And he was beautiful, I know him so well. He was beautiful, as the sun went down.

  But he wasn’t there. She waited. In the old, old square she waited. By the old, old café, he wasn’t there. She had thrown back the curtains, the sun blazed in. Opened the door, closing behind her. The old floorboard creaked as she raced off to meet him. Followed the road, kept on going, turned the corner. Another day. Now she waited. But he wasn’t there. ‘The first day of forever,’ he’d said. ‘The first day of forever.’

  Now she raced on back the way he came. Like thousands had before her. People passed her, not really seeing, and they kept on going, past the man who came before. It seemed to take too long, this journey, as she turned the corner and saw the old, old house. It seemed so familiar and very close, yet very faraway. But then she was already stepping on the old, old floorboard, and in a groan of life it sighed. And then as she opened the door it all slowed down to nothing. Something had happened. A brand new day. But it felt like a thousand years. It was still. So still, she almost wept. For a moment she could not move. A suddenness like time passing through her. And then it was gone. The air felt like thick dust. Like a thousand years. She had a sense of it being the same day. Over and over. I’ve seen it all before, she thought, I’ve seen it all before! The same feeling. Like the morning, it always comes back. ‘The first day of forever,’ he’d said. ‘The first day of forever!’ And then she turned. Something filled-up inside her, she knew this was his bed. Slowly she approached it, and could just make out his shape. But the closer she came, the less she saw, and the finer the shape became. She stood above him. And felt something die. Before her lay a cobweb, in the shape of a man. Like the shape of a thousand years. And the thousands here before. And she cried out to the beautiful world like a baby to its mother. She ran to the window to throw back the curtains, to let the sun blaze in. Like a thousand suns on a thousand days. It didn’t make any difference. Like the first day of forever, and the last day ever, like the man who came before. But for a moment she saw herself already there. And the sun blazed in on the old, old room, and the cobweb blew away.

　

　

 

 

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Reviews

[A.Lee]

No one's reviewed this yet? I really liked the way this was written. It had the same even feel and tone all the way through. And very well written. I like the fact that you were able to narrate for long periods of time without feeling the need to put dialogue or internal dialogue in the story every two paragraphs. I really liked the last section (and the last paragraph of the section before it). Nice write. I could see this even being developed into something more than just a short.