Dub Steps Read Online Free Page B
Author: Miller, Andrew
Avenue, then jerked right and ran uphill for another fifty metres.
No people.
No movement.
Just the alarms. Just the brown. And the occasional bark of what must have been a dog.
C HAPTER 8
Just one
My name is Roy Fotheringham.
I am a little over forty years old. I walk with a shuffle developed in my twenties to indicate some kind of street/club cool and that I am now unable to shake, even though I know how it looks at this age.
I am wiry and lean. Lifestyle lean, not gym lean. I smoke when they’re around, and I don’t when they’re not.
I drink. Of course.
I am currently in shock.
I have destroyed my life, in small increments, each thoughtless step adding unbearable weight. The framework, the superstructure of Roy, has been knocked and beaten and rendered fundamentally fragile. All it took was one punch. A single fist.
Everything is over.
There is nothing left for me in this city. And therefore this country.
I will never work again.
Yes, there is that curious liberation. I am free in the world, and once the administrative details of my departure are finalised I will be able to go anywhere, do anything.
Problem.
There is nothing I want to do. There is nowhere I want to go. There is, in fact, only an echo at the centre of me. It has been filled for all these years by work, so called, management activities and the rest. Now that these are gone there is nothing but the reverb.
Shock.
Look, from this distance it all comes off as infantile and deluded in a childish, indulgent way. But at the time it was real. The shock. The horror of what I’d done. At Clarissa’s, and at the coalface of my pitiful life.
Jozi was empty. The people were gone. There was nothing.
Let me put it this way. Advertising and media and Mlungu’s was my life. It wasn’t much of a life, and it may not have meant much to anyone else, but it was the only life I had, and in that sense it defined the length and breadth of my personal universe.
The shock radiating through my core was personal. I had pulled the pin at Clarissa’s and everything exploded.
It seems deluded and indulgent now, but at the time everything was truly my fault. I had, somehow, caused this.
It was me.
I did it.
Now I would have to deal with it.
I stopped drinking. At first the adrenalin spur was so strong I didn’t need a drink, didn’t even think of it, and by the time I fully realised that I hadn’t had one in hours, I knew well enough. This was the time. My time. There would be no other.
I was as practical as I could possibly be, but I was also driven by a cacophony of competing, self-referential voices. There was the observer taking notes, lining up and prioritising the never-ending series of things that were not right. There was the reactor, the violent screamer who wouldn’t shut up at the shock of it, the emptiness. And there was the pacifier, the steady, assuring voice claiming calm and balance, resisting the reality with the understanding that this was all, well, a misunderstanding. Then there was the homosapien – who just wanted to see, to touch, to speak to another human being. Who was constantly clocking the horizon for one. Just one.
C HAPTER 9
Shotguns falling from my arms
I brushed my teeth. It felt like the right thing to do.
Just a glance. Casual, thoughtless. A quick check-in with my abluting self. But suddenly I was trapped, locked into the return view. My hair was grey. Completely, comprehensively, shockingly grey.
I was a different person.
Older, but softer. New, but decaying.
I examined the hairs, the impact of the colour on the lines and pits of my face. Zoom in. Zoom out.
Stunned, I could hardly look. I peered at the mirror out of the corner of my eye. But still, it was there. Grey.
Eventually I jumped (literally, there was a strange spring in my step) into the shower. The water was warm, but cooling noticeably.
I got dressed, grabbed the keys and let myself out of the flat.
Up
No people.
No movement.
Just the alarms. Just the brown. And the occasional bark of what must have been a dog.
C HAPTER 8
Just one
My name is Roy Fotheringham.
I am a little over forty years old. I walk with a shuffle developed in my twenties to indicate some kind of street/club cool and that I am now unable to shake, even though I know how it looks at this age.
I am wiry and lean. Lifestyle lean, not gym lean. I smoke when they’re around, and I don’t when they’re not.
I drink. Of course.
I am currently in shock.
I have destroyed my life, in small increments, each thoughtless step adding unbearable weight. The framework, the superstructure of Roy, has been knocked and beaten and rendered fundamentally fragile. All it took was one punch. A single fist.
Everything is over.
There is nothing left for me in this city. And therefore this country.
I will never work again.
Yes, there is that curious liberation. I am free in the world, and once the administrative details of my departure are finalised I will be able to go anywhere, do anything.
Problem.
There is nothing I want to do. There is nowhere I want to go. There is, in fact, only an echo at the centre of me. It has been filled for all these years by work, so called, management activities and the rest. Now that these are gone there is nothing but the reverb.
Shock.
Look, from this distance it all comes off as infantile and deluded in a childish, indulgent way. But at the time it was real. The shock. The horror of what I’d done. At Clarissa’s, and at the coalface of my pitiful life.
Jozi was empty. The people were gone. There was nothing.
Let me put it this way. Advertising and media and Mlungu’s was my life. It wasn’t much of a life, and it may not have meant much to anyone else, but it was the only life I had, and in that sense it defined the length and breadth of my personal universe.
The shock radiating through my core was personal. I had pulled the pin at Clarissa’s and everything exploded.
It seems deluded and indulgent now, but at the time everything was truly my fault. I had, somehow, caused this.
It was me.
I did it.
Now I would have to deal with it.
I stopped drinking. At first the adrenalin spur was so strong I didn’t need a drink, didn’t even think of it, and by the time I fully realised that I hadn’t had one in hours, I knew well enough. This was the time. My time. There would be no other.
I was as practical as I could possibly be, but I was also driven by a cacophony of competing, self-referential voices. There was the observer taking notes, lining up and prioritising the never-ending series of things that were not right. There was the reactor, the violent screamer who wouldn’t shut up at the shock of it, the emptiness. And there was the pacifier, the steady, assuring voice claiming calm and balance, resisting the reality with the understanding that this was all, well, a misunderstanding. Then there was the homosapien – who just wanted to see, to touch, to speak to another human being. Who was constantly clocking the horizon for one. Just one.
C HAPTER 9
Shotguns falling from my arms
I brushed my teeth. It felt like the right thing to do.
Just a glance. Casual, thoughtless. A quick check-in with my abluting self. But suddenly I was trapped, locked into the return view. My hair was grey. Completely, comprehensively, shockingly grey.
I was a different person.
Older, but softer. New, but decaying.
I examined the hairs, the impact of the colour on the lines and pits of my face. Zoom in. Zoom out.
Stunned, I could hardly look. I peered at the mirror out of the corner of my eye. But still, it was there. Grey.
Eventually I jumped (literally, there was a strange spring in my step) into the shower. The water was warm, but cooling noticeably.
I got dressed, grabbed the keys and let myself out of the flat.
Up
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