Mr Memory - Chapter I 'Memories'

Where we meet some of the main characters... but just who are they and who is messing with earths history?

Chapter 1

Memories

 

What is it about memories?  Some can be so muddy that your mind gets stuck in years of thick glutinous sludge, trying to prise a small  but hard to see fragment from the murky depths while others dance so brightly, so damned clear and fresh and chirpy they could have been minted only days before.

 

The mental paint is always clean; each moment etched in a bubble of pure time so it can be held up to the light and examined under the finest sharpest spotlight; fingerprints of reality that map the ebbs and flows of a time long gone can be followed in finite but intricate detail.

 

But for all that, some memories need dredging for and others crash suddenly into the very front of the skull with crazy paving splinters scything through brain tissue, hitting both pain and pleasure receptors in equal measure.

 

The biggest part of being alive is feeling the swirling winds of change brush past your tired soul on a soggy Sunday evening, as you drag a four legged friend �" please note the emphasis - reluctantly up the winding path of a misbegotten path strewn with crushed tarnished lager cans, slug infested torn crisp packets and left over curry and chips.

 

Locked in time, no more dallying with the bigger picture come the Monday morning, no more pleasantries gaping at mad Mary (though she was attractive in a seven shades of red and orange kind of way, or to be more precise in a had ten pints and a bottle of Bratislavan woodcutters fuel way) and the stories of post-room goings on or hanging on the words of Phil with his ever so intriguing multi-coloured rubber band collection (from every corner of the known world would you believe), while dreaming of eleven o’clock, a warm sultana scone with fresh cream and sticky sweet strawberry jam and a ‘lukewarm' cup of cheap, mildly coffee flavoured drink, (with those worrying little grittier bits that always end up sticking to the mug after the last half-hearted swig).

 

The winds were strong tonight and had been blasting during Jonah’s pallid trek through this ‘little thing called life’ as ‘Joking Johnny’ eloquently (or not) surmised often and unsolicited in his corner of the staff canteen, his bevy of brittle beauties hanging on his words like seagulls after a child’s cornet in high summer at Blackpool. 

 

How he achingly despised that man-boy with his whiter than white teeth with the fluorescent glow, lightly greased black hair and oh so perfect clear marbled blue eyes, oozing charm and sleaze in equal measure, piercing, stomach churning to the extreme.  How could they not see through his celluloid persona, prick his soap-sud bubble of shallow skin �" pop, gone, finito!  It made his blood bubble and boil; there was no justice, not in this world anyway.

 

Raw ambition burned like freshly raked coals deep inside Jonah but fate had burdened him with b******s for bosses.  B******s who couldn’t see the puss filled pimples on the end of their fat rich noses, let alone somebody with the guts and guile to do, quite frankly in his considered opinion, a bloody good job.  Ambition?  Bah and blarney, ambition was being desperate to show all those pricks how things should be done;   but making tea and filing bits of paper was just a load of pain in the arse crap.  And dead beats like Johnny?  They just levitated up the ladder with pure ease, no effort needed, just very big, very slimy wet brown tongues.

 

Although the sunshine did sometimes manage to sneak a peek into his life, casting rays of hope skipping through his soul, the big ugly black clouds with no hint of a silver edge were not that far behind, smothering and killing dead any latent promise. 

 

His crawl through existence had washed him ashore amid the semi-menial landscape of the typical office packed so full of stereotypical that every day felt like the same page of the same book, the book itself a carbon copy of a million carbon copies.  ‘Joking Johnny’ had a phrase for that too, wouldn’t you just know it �" ‘miserable git’, as in ‘Jonah you are such a miserable git!’ he wasn’t wrong of course but there was reason, justified malcontent squeezed into his personal space.

 

But that would all change; this week was of course the week, the big one, the week to end all weeks and no pissing around.  Life and all its hedonistic pleasures was there for the taking with both hands, both feet and the sun better bloody shine and keep on shining.  His jaws ached with the tension of anticipation, his gums pulsed as determination and a mind full of plans and schemes blinded him to all else. 

 

Puddles splashed his ten-pound mail order specials and soaked his off-white sports socks with little register, self-absorption wrapped around his mind.  Not even the shrill quickening yap of his little dog, a short-legged brown and black petulant tempered terrier of some kind, foisted on him by an ex-girlfriend, failed to penetrate his mental orgy of hope.  

 

Something hard and unyielding came swerving wildly from one side of the narrow, unevenly cobbled street to the next, scattering old sheets of the daily blues and hard-edged rocks slamming through the air; to bore down like an angry unstoppable beast, screeching and fighting. 

 

The windows of the ageing car (perhaps the remnants of an old Ford, perhaps a Cortina that had once been some flash mavericks joy), were black and reflective, hiding whoever or whatever (half) controlled the steering wheel.

 

But the classic car stood little chance, its metallic blue and silver sheen marred in a moment by red splashes, a mad modern art parody as it met the unyielding form, the body flew limply and gracelessly through the damp air until it landed in an untidy, but lifeless, heap. 

 

Jonah, for his part in the event, knew very little, quickly propelled into a dark black void where the sun was locked out with steel bars secured with the strongest padlocks and heavy chains and soldered for that little bit of extra security. 

 

The little dog stopped for a moment, the lead laying limp in a black puddle in the growing silence as the car slalomed and lurched on down the road, music still cutting the night into many pieces with drums propelled at light speed and chased by the synthetic drenching of keyboards, the 80’s danced and ricocheted from dank wall to dank wall. 

 

A low slight hesitant whimper escaped the small frightened dog’s grizzled mouth as it edged closer to its master.  There was nothing, no movement, but there again, apart from dragging him down the street maybe a couple of times a week, the master was not known for his pleasant interactive way with the hound. 

 

Still it was nothing if not a loyal beast, it lowered its muzzle to the inert form and sniffed; still nothing.  Its short stubby tail motored into life with vigour, its mouth lolled open and the red glistening tongue flapped and licked; wisps of hot breath swirled and eddied into the wet night.  It cocked its small shaggy head a little to the left then did a three-sixty degree turn; its back leg was swiftly raised an inch or two very precisely but with certainty, followed quickly by a fast hot stream of thick yellow steaming urine which sprinkled the cloth of Jonah’s long dark coat before soaking into the material.