Under Construction

Who knows how those business men did it. Every morning they appeared in the lobby entrance as if my own worrying had spawned them there. They would always be in the same formation – eight of them clustered together like a black cloud, their black shades hiding the only thing that could give them human qualities. They’d proceed by gliding in unison across the red carpet of the lobby. It was as if they didn’t really need to move their legs at all, they could have just floated like a lethal toxin. I would watch them rise up the staircase and into the meeting room next to my study (well, it wasn’t actually my study) through the hole I edged with a bradawl in the door.

 

I’d grab a pen and notepad that I brought from home, and I would sit on the mahogany chest of drawers that camped up against the parallel wall to the meeting room. My ear firmly pressed against the wall for most of the day as I tried to pick up a hint as to what was being discussed, or if anything even was being discussed. I questioned if the business men were really lost brain cells trying to find their way back to a broken brain. I scribbled that idea down.

 

The only solid noises I heard each day were the snapping of a briefcase and chair legs scraping the panelled floor, then finally the creaking door knob of the meeting room. And there they’d go, floating back into the hallway in the same formation they entered, and down the staircase towards the glass front doors. They glided into the black Cadillac parked on the drive - the inside as dark as their black suits.

 

That was the problem with the colour black; it wasn’t a colour, but a blanket hiding the chains and the metal bars that imprisoned something terminal that wanted to rise to the surface. Tell you what, that idea seemed like a good jumping off point for my novel, but like any idea I had, it never grow into a story on the page, it would just be a masterpiece in my head.

 

“Look, it will do you good going to the mansion, Phil,” said my friend, Kelly about three week ago. “You know, Tara and Bisping had the same issue you’re having. They couldn’t get ideas, couldn’t think of what to write, didn’t have the time, but when they went to that writing resort they came back with so many new ideas they actually wrote the damn thing. And you know what, Tara’s just got picked up by Fabian House. Isn’t that your dream, Phil?” I couldn’t exactly shake my head, I was surrounded by pages full of scribbles all over my coffee table, floor, even the TV unit held masses of unfulfilled promise, but that didn’t matter, and I had to sell the TV anyway.

 

She then took me through the writing magazine she’d brought round after her shift at Florenzies. She pointed at the pictures of the large, vacant rooms of the mansion, and read from the blurb stating you would have free rein of the mansion while the owner was away. “It’s a good opportunity to get away from it all, Phil.” That is what I needed.

 

Debts, long hours at the bus depot, leaks in the roof, buckets collecting water, no money for any furniture apart from the sunken chocolate bar of a sofa were making life a heavy hammock. Yeah, the mansion wouldn’t be cheap, but it may be what I needed to achieve my dream. I had even planned how I was going to accept my awards, what I was going to say, what I would wear, where I would take my book on tour, what homeless charity I’d donate to - see my old friends perhaps. But I just had to get ideas for a story first.

 

I told her I would go, she hugged me, and eyed me with a focus and a sharpness I’d never seen in her before, maybe a sprinkling of worry too, “There’s one thing Phillip. You must not speak or interact with the business men who carry out meetings at the mansion. I’m

sure the owner will tell you, but I feel as a friend, I’d better warn you.”

 

In fact, I saw the owner, Mr. Moray, as I walked up the drive of the mansion in the glow of sunlight. The sun was bigger that day, like our author was watching his creation, his first draft. The owner bumbled through the glass doors with two suitcases in either hand, his arms being pulled to the ground. I tried to give the same affect with my arms and not let my suitcase blow in the breeze. He had grey frantic hair and a pale aging face. Strange, I thought, that figure doesn’t suit the husky and grave voice I heard on the phone. He stopped in front of me, but was bobbling up and down like a jack-in-a-box. I asked where he was going.

 

“Ah, a business venture, Mr. Phillip.”

 

“Oh, is it far?”

 

“In an old town hall. Under the sea.”

 

“Oh, huh . . . At least no one will get thirsty.” I said.

 

Mr. Moray didn’t even attempt a smile. He just turned and lumbered out of the front doors with suitcase in hand, sporting his grey raincoat and blue fishing hat.

 

*

 

What I was hoping for was for all these strange instances to build up like a fireball and fire my passion and creativity so it would splurge out pages upon pages of story, but the only result I got were dreams. They consisted of me writing fully formed sentences. They were poetic, moving and grand. When I woke I couldn’t remember what I wrote. How could I dream such poetic prose, but when I sat at the desk, it was like squeezing an empty toothpaste tube.

 

No, what I needed was concrete answers. I’d had enough of pondering and listening for three weeks. So I decided to head into the business men’s meeting room on the day before I was due to leave. I waited until it had grown dark outside to saunter in, which meant none of the neighbours would look up from their self improvement magazines and books. They would be too invested in their music, planning a way out of the rotten bungalows of Slipton, out of the factory smog and the long hours. They’d be dreaming of living in the city being built outside the town, ‘New jobs, new me, maybe a new spouse, but don’t tell!’

 

On the table was a black suit jacket left by one of the business men. From what I could see there was a white scratch starting from the breast pocket that led all the way to the bottom button. I opened up the jacket as if it were a valued antique, unsure if a siren would go off if I handled it. But the jacket flipped open with no trouble, I felt around the inside pockets for ID, or any kind of document that would hint at something. In the bottom pocket I felt a card. No. Cards. I plucked them out carefully. They were photos. Photos of one of the rooms I saw in the advert, but it didn’t look anything like that in the magazine.

I slipped out of the meeting room and shuffled to the bar room downstairs - containing the snooker table and leather sofas - careful to not let my footsteps echo, unsure whether there was no one here after all. There at the back, I could see the wooden double sliding doors. I edged up to the doors and wobbled the doorknob, but it wouldn’t twist. I leant my ear to the doors and heard distant waves crashing together as if the room was constantly changing form and shape. I also caught the sound of something rustling in the water, flapping perhaps.

 

I did debate on just selling my story to the papers and getting the money I needed to pay rent, but I headed back to the study to my notepad.

 

I gazed at the photos trying to figure out what those black tentacles were floating in the swimming pool. They looked like they were wrapped in something. I found a magnifying glass in a draw and noticed the tentacles were wrapped in black cloths. The same shade of black as the blazers the business men wore.

 

Maybe it could be a story about the business men growing new life forms, I thought. It’s like how we descended from apes, but this new life form has descended from us. Or maybe this is how the business men are born. I could make my novel about a boy who hits his football into an old dilapidated house, he stumbles in and finds these fish inside, he tries to warn the police that there is something dangerous growing, but they aren’t buying it, so he has to drag his father along to prove it, but when they get there they are gone. No one believes him. However, the boy knows this is a threat to humanity.

 

I didn’t write any of that down. It made my heart flutter and my cheeks heavy and hot at how generic the idea was. I was tired, yeah, that was it. I sunk and rocked back in the seat, leant my head back and closed my eyes, hoping that when I was fresher I could think of something better or maybe my dreams would have something original to offer me.

 

*

 

My hands were shaking. My thoughts bouncing around like I had been deep asleep and a noise had waked me. I could hear the hum of traffic. I hadn’t heard traffic from inside the mansion before, but I figured it was because the new city they were building just outside Slipton was now open and a freeway was kicking with traffic.

 

But as I opened my study door I realised so too was the meeting room door. And the hum of traffic had twisted and contorted into a squealing wind.

 

I stepped into the doorway of the meeting and no longer stood a long oak table. Instead, a grey freeway that rifled into the dark horizon. It’s winding and cracked surface hinting it was still under construction. The freeway looked like an enlarged version of the scratch on the jacket. But there was no traffic, only the sound of it carrying in the wind like the smell of a perfume that had been caught in the walls of a derelict home, only hinting at was once alive here.

 

I stepped out. Yeah, that’s writers block for you! I walked on and saw Slipton - usually sat so quietly outside the mansion - below me on the freeway. The houses were dark. Couples slept in their beds, tucked up together under the glow of street lamps.

I looked back, and the doorway had disappeared.

 

Behind me, the bridge went all the way as far as I could see. It stretched out of the night like a gargoyles tongue. Ahead of me and Slipton, the bridge snaked into the heart of a cluster of black towers under an orange sun set. The sun was larger like it needed to see something suddenly. And each tower had four sides. Each side was being pushed and lifted by hundreds of men and women, each man and woman I recognised from my neighbourhood, they were the same people that slept below me on the freeway, now hard at work. The towers were being built with reflected glass, reflecting the world back at us because there was nothing to see inside.

 

In the streets of the city, men and women carried walls and tools on their backs like ants carrying rubble to their nest. There were no cranes, nor scaffolding.

 

And there they were, the business men. They huddled together on the outskirts of the city, holding a large white sheet full of diagrams, pointing to different parts of it: coalescing on a new idea perhaps.

 

And there was I, striding over and waving my arms, shouting something. But I couldn’t see my face.

 

In the orange sky an oily black creature burst through the pink clouds. Its body was smooth and greasy, like that of a black jellyfish. It had the betrayed eyes of a poached whale, the dangling tentacles of an octopus and teeth like stalagmites.

 

The business men hurled the paper to the floor and stomped on it like it had suddenly turned into a giant spider. All the men and women carrying parts dropped them, and fell to their knees like a gladiator who was waiting for the turn of the thumb.

 

I looked back to Slipton. The residents were still sleeping, but for the first time in forty two days I was aware. Aware that our author had decided to rise out from the dark dwellings of the ocean to kill his darlings. He knew he wired us wrong. He knew we are forever building better worlds in our sleep.