TAP
By
Dave Olner
Dave Olner
I moved among them but they did not see me. I was right under their noses and a million miles away from them. I was a salmon and they were the current. They surged against me and around me, cruel and unrelenting. They passed through me like I was a ghost.
They held screens up to their faces. Like welding masks, to shield them from the kinetic sparks as they dashed against the other people on the streets. I glanced off them, but they did not glance at me. Instead, they looked at their screens, looked at images of anywhere other than where they were. And, when the pictures pleased them, they tap-tap-tapped their little hearts out.
When they spoke it was not to each other, and certainly not to me. They talked to the people who lived in their ears and their screens. They made arrangements to never meet them. A girl with a phone seemingly tattooed to her face moved in front of me, moved around me without even looking at me. She butted her way around my peripheries like a Roomba machine tap-tap-tapping against a chair leg. She was a salmon and I was a rock.
It was hot on the street and I was unused to being outside with them. Among them and apart from them. It was the first time I had left the flat for several days, the first time since the day they had reclaimed it. After the sanctions, after the money stopped, they took my home away, but left it where it was. I sat on a wall across the road and watched them bag up my life and steal it from me like booty. I almost thought they would approach me when they were done, take the wall from underneath me too. A magic trick table cloth, leaving me sat on nothing.
When they had taken me all away, I let myself back in with the spare set of keys. I sat on the bare floorboards, stared at one blank wall with my back against the other. None of the other residents noticed I had returned. I have gone unnoticed all my life. I am a small, damp spot on a dark carpet, a spent match in an inferno.
I do not know how long I stayed there for. I did not eat. But it was hot, so when I got thirsty I would break bits away from the melting frost in the freezer compartment, or bang against the tap in the bathroom until it spat out a few drops of water like oaths. Tap-tap-tap.
It was hot on the street, too. Sweat was dripping from me and I slipped through the crowds of people like a greased pig. I was getting that fuzzy feeling in my head again, like when I forget to take my tablets. The road seemed to go on forever, as it does when you have no destination. The people tap-tap-tapped against me and I knew I couldn’t go on. I was but a float, afloat, bobbing helplessly in the water as the salmon rushed past me. They were strong in their numbers and I was but one.
I stopped at a bin and steadied myself against it, patted its heated surface like a pet. It was overflowing with all the things they had discarded, all the things they had left behind. It stank in the heat. We were one and the same, blots on the landscape, clots in the artery of the street. Now we were two. I hoisted myself upon it and stood awkwardly upon its convex top.
“Allahu Akbar!” I shouted. But it was not my cause. It was said only for effect. I loosened my belt and, because I had grown so skinny, my jeans felt down around my ankles. I pulled down the hem of my knickers and bent over. I prised my cheeks apart and showed them all my dirty arsehole.
“Aloo saag!” I continued shouting. “Alouette! Gentille Alouette! Chicken a la King on a bed of wild, fragrant rice!”
Food was very much foremost in my mind at that time. I would have eaten anything except salmon. But, other than the hunger, I felt a new clarity in my head. I do not know if the people stopped, or if they saw or heard me. My eyes were closed and I was concentrating. But I do know I felt a beatific stillness I had not known for some time, a welcome momentary abatement.
*
The policeman behind the desk did not look at me, just tap-tap-tapped my details into a device.
“Name?” he asked me, and I told him.
“Address?”
I did not know what to say. When I left the flat that day I dropped my keys on the kitchenette counter and deadlocked the door behind me. I had nowhere to go or be. I looked around the room for inspiration but found nothing. Just another blank canvas, with me surreptitiously impressed upon it like an incriminating thumbprint. But then I saw a small window. It was still daytime, still hot, but there in the blue sky was a thin sliver of silver. Like the single parenthesis that people sometimes use in text messages when they want to smile.
I stretched out my arm and tap-tap-tapped my finger against it.
“Moon,” I said.
I heard mellifluous laughter and turned around in surprise. The policeman was looking up at me and smiling. I smiled right back.
They held screens up to their faces. Like welding masks, to shield them from the kinetic sparks as they dashed against the other people on the streets. I glanced off them, but they did not glance at me. Instead, they looked at their screens, looked at images of anywhere other than where they were. And, when the pictures pleased them, they tap-tap-tapped their little hearts out.
When they spoke it was not to each other, and certainly not to me. They talked to the people who lived in their ears and their screens. They made arrangements to never meet them. A girl with a phone seemingly tattooed to her face moved in front of me, moved around me without even looking at me. She butted her way around my peripheries like a Roomba machine tap-tap-tapping against a chair leg. She was a salmon and I was a rock.
It was hot on the street and I was unused to being outside with them. Among them and apart from them. It was the first time I had left the flat for several days, the first time since the day they had reclaimed it. After the sanctions, after the money stopped, they took my home away, but left it where it was. I sat on a wall across the road and watched them bag up my life and steal it from me like booty. I almost thought they would approach me when they were done, take the wall from underneath me too. A magic trick table cloth, leaving me sat on nothing.
When they had taken me all away, I let myself back in with the spare set of keys. I sat on the bare floorboards, stared at one blank wall with my back against the other. None of the other residents noticed I had returned. I have gone unnoticed all my life. I am a small, damp spot on a dark carpet, a spent match in an inferno.
I do not know how long I stayed there for. I did not eat. But it was hot, so when I got thirsty I would break bits away from the melting frost in the freezer compartment, or bang against the tap in the bathroom until it spat out a few drops of water like oaths. Tap-tap-tap.
It was hot on the street, too. Sweat was dripping from me and I slipped through the crowds of people like a greased pig. I was getting that fuzzy feeling in my head again, like when I forget to take my tablets. The road seemed to go on forever, as it does when you have no destination. The people tap-tap-tapped against me and I knew I couldn’t go on. I was but a float, afloat, bobbing helplessly in the water as the salmon rushed past me. They were strong in their numbers and I was but one.
I stopped at a bin and steadied myself against it, patted its heated surface like a pet. It was overflowing with all the things they had discarded, all the things they had left behind. It stank in the heat. We were one and the same, blots on the landscape, clots in the artery of the street. Now we were two. I hoisted myself upon it and stood awkwardly upon its convex top.
“Allahu Akbar!” I shouted. But it was not my cause. It was said only for effect. I loosened my belt and, because I had grown so skinny, my jeans felt down around my ankles. I pulled down the hem of my knickers and bent over. I prised my cheeks apart and showed them all my dirty arsehole.
“Aloo saag!” I continued shouting. “Alouette! Gentille Alouette! Chicken a la King on a bed of wild, fragrant rice!”
Food was very much foremost in my mind at that time. I would have eaten anything except salmon. But, other than the hunger, I felt a new clarity in my head. I do not know if the people stopped, or if they saw or heard me. My eyes were closed and I was concentrating. But I do know I felt a beatific stillness I had not known for some time, a welcome momentary abatement.
*
The policeman behind the desk did not look at me, just tap-tap-tapped my details into a device.
“Name?” he asked me, and I told him.
“Address?”
I did not know what to say. When I left the flat that day I dropped my keys on the kitchenette counter and deadlocked the door behind me. I had nowhere to go or be. I looked around the room for inspiration but found nothing. Just another blank canvas, with me surreptitiously impressed upon it like an incriminating thumbprint. But then I saw a small window. It was still daytime, still hot, but there in the blue sky was a thin sliver of silver. Like the single parenthesis that people sometimes use in text messages when they want to smile.
I stretched out my arm and tap-tap-tapped my finger against it.
“Moon,” I said.
I heard mellifluous laughter and turned around in surprise. The policeman was looking up at me and smiling. I smiled right back.