Party
He slips into the house, puts his pack of beer on the kitchen table, takes a can and
walks from room to room, staying a while in the back room. The IKEA
furniture’s pushed against the walls exposing a floor of wooden panels.
He returns to the kitchen.
There are bowls of crisps on the work surfaces. He takes a handful with him into the
back room where the music is loudest. He sits on the settee for a while, then on the
floor in the corner. He looks around. There is an illuminated fishtank, a piece of wood
cellotaped over the top. He notices that each electric socket has an
energy-meter.
He goes to the kitchen. He notices that each electric socket has an energy-meter
there too. He gets one of his cans, takes two big swigs and then carefully tops it up with wine, carries it to the front room. He stands, sipping occasionally, then sits on
the floor in the corner for a while. He stands in the hall,
goes up two steps, looks back at the front door. He concentrates on his bladder.
He goes up three more steps. A window’s beside him. He sees a delivery van down
the road, a man carrying box after box of groceries into a house. He sees the
little shops opposite. Many have objects hung over their doors – the shoe-shop
has a big boot; another has a something like a gramophone horn. Two more steps. He’s on
the landing now. The bedroom doors are all closed. One has a Mondrian hung upside down.
One is padlocked. He waits outside the toilet door, studies the cracking paint,
the slight warping. He goes in, locks the door, only just undoes his flies in time.
Such relief. He lets everything go. His head spins. He’s so drunk. There are thick rugs,
shelves of exotically favoured products, toothbrushes. Noticing a full-length
mirror he’s reminded of a science program from the night before, where it
said that you can’t see your eyes move in a mirror because your sight blanks
out. He wondered how many hours a day his eyes were in motion.
He suddenly turns, looks at the door, rushes back to the kitchen where lights are on, away from the music he so hates.
The crisps are mixed up. He doesn’t like Salt and Vinegar. Above the big table two pieces
of paper have been blutacked to the wall. One has column headings Name and Time, the other
says that the world record for eating 100 sultanas one at a time is 44.65 seconds. On the
table is a pencil, a basin of sultanas, some cocktail sticks, and a kitchen timer.
He looks to the doorway. He laughs. He tries the front room again,
sits on a chair, sits on the floor in the corner for a long time. He hears a
glass break. It was perched on a chair arm beside him. His eyes drift to the bookcase.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” is in amongst the Bs. He wants to move it. He know he
shouldn’t. He goes into the kitchen, gets a can of his favourite beer, the beer
he’d brought. He takes it to the utility room. It’s dark. When his eyes adjust he sees
a candle in the middle of the floor. He sits cross-legged, concentrates on
the flame. The rest of the room goes blacker. He feels dizzy. He returns to kitchen,
thinks about going home, opens one of his cans, goes to the back room to listen to
music that he doesn’t like, that he’s never liked. There’s a smell that wasn’t there
before. He waits in the hall, looks up the staircase then darts out of the front door.
Tim Love’s publications are a poetry pamphlet Moving Parts (HappenStance, 2010) and a story collection By all means (Nine Arches Press, 2012). He lives in Cambridge, UK. He blogs at http://litrefs.blogspot.com/