The lions Den II

II

In here, I am a well oiled machine. I am plugged in. I dont exist, except to achieve results.My K.P.I.s are rising with every instruction sent from my brain to the nerve endings in my fingers. They are being filled like little icon tanks of digital fuel in the corner of the screen. With every level reached, every goal attained, my life force is growing stronger. What does renunciation have to do with inner peace anyway? My departments K.M.T.G. ( Key monthly Target Graphs) Are growing fat. Fat with the commodity that will lead me to Nirvana. Results.

I begin to smile as I imagine the satisfied look of Neb when he sees the reports. I see my picture in the monthly digital office newsletter, smiling humbly back at every end user in every cubicle, on every floor. underneath my picture is a sharply spiking graph. I can see Belinda from the twenty eighth floor hunting me down. Only this time she has her pen tucked suggestively in the corner of her mouth, and her ususally sharp blue eyes are soft. Inviting. The fruits of righteousness. The fruits of action. Results.

The hypnotic spell of my impending success is broken by a sharp knock on my office door. Neb pokes his bulbous red head in and peers at me over his glasses. His eyes are pale. Enquiring.
"Daniels?"

"Yes Neb?"

"My office please."

Nebs head disappears like a popped red balloon and I am left with the humming air conditioning. Its a mantra. Driving us on and keeping the rythym of the corporate hours.

When I knock and enter Nebs office, he is sitting like a dormant volcano at his expansive desk with his hands folded neatly in front of him. He looks up at me with an expression on his face somewhere between passive bewilderment and vindictivness. He removes his glasses, folds them patiently allowing the silence and the air conditioning to stretch on, then places them neatly in the middle of the desk like an artifact.

"Daniels?"

"Yes, Sir?"

"Have you given the breakfast seminars some thought?"

"Ah..."

My reflex is to begin frantically hunting myself for a pen.

" I received an email from the twenty eighth floor..."

He skips the part about the gaping holes in the hull of my departments productivity, and throws me a life jacket.

"Is the pressure to much for you son?"

I can see small beads of sweat forming on Neb's slab of pasty forehead.

"Well sir, I... I.."

"Frankly son, my options are becoming significantly narrowed. At the end of the day, if its not your head, it will be mine. And the big cats upstairs are alot quicker with the axe than I will be.
Do you have a mortgage, Daniels? Car repayments? I mean, do you understand whats at stake here, son? Its life and death. "

I feel suddenly exhausted. Neb looks up at me pleadingly. The desperation in his eyes mists over and passes through him like a fog.

"Just make sure those reports are on my desk by five. Understand?"

The Lions Den

I

In here, its still dark. I am flaoting in the nebulous spaces between sleep and concsiousness. Daylight is creeping over the room, but I am not aware of it yet. In here, I am dreaming. It is real. Vivid. I see a small, frail man wrapped in a sheet. he is standing on a sandy shore lit by the breaking dawn. The air is humid. Very warm for this time of day. The man bends down and takes a pinch of salt left by the waves between his fingers. He lifts it up before him like victory and turns to smile at me with a toothless grin. His eyes are shining.

The alarm sounds and I am snapped awake. The vivid image of the little man slips away from consciousness like the tide. The light in my room is grey. Growing slowly into beige. Soon it will be unbarebly white. Soon I will be fighting morning commuters for a seat.

On the train, there is a hint of freshly scrubbed corporate warfare in my nostrils. Its a brutally clean and efficient smell. Mingling with the powerful scent of colongne and perfume. The mixture sends me reeling. I look around. Eyes are bloodshot and unnaturally wide from lack of sleep. I blink out the window at the passing houses, then lok down and attempt to focus on what I am reading. A phrase comes into focus.

"Renunciation gives one the inner peace, the spiritual poise, to achieve results."

Hmmm... Inner peace. Spiritual poise.

So heres my first problem.

When I get to work, Nebuchadnezzar, ( my boss) has this look on his face. I dont know what it means. He is smiling at me and saying, " good morning, how was your weekend." I am wondering if his friendly demeanour is masking a nasty desire to use my K.P.I.s ( Key Performance Indicators) as an excuse to shunt me off to the mail room like an enemy of the state to some siberian gulag.

I smile back. "fine thanks, " I say. I make up some mumbo about a pleasant weekend with the kids. Of course, I never have a pleasant weekend with the kids, because I am constantly making excuses about why I dont have time to play back yard cricket with them. Why dont I have time to play back yard cricket with the kids? Because I spend my weekends in a cold sweat trying to keep my K.P.I.s above the water line. Trying to keep pace with perpetual computer programs that are designed to measure my worth as a functioning machine. Its not a fair match up. They dont need to sleep, or eat, or attend to their progeny's emotional needs. I smile. I can feel mashed cornflakes in between my teeth. I am trying to conjure up some of that spiritual poise. but I can only think of that other word.

Results.

"the Mackenzie reports? On your desk by five."

O.K. So heres my second problem. Its 10.38am and Belinda from the twenty eighth floor has hunted me down and ambushed me outside my office. She is armed with a black biro, bulging manilla folder and a pair of sharp blue eyes. She scribbles something down that I cant see, while she interrogates me about our departments failure to meet monthly targets. She suggests to me that our department attend a weekly breakfast seminar on "rebranding oourselves." This months topics include, " being the product" and how to give yourself a three hundred and sixty degree performance review." This may help to lift our performance, she says. One eyebrow goes up as she scribbles away.

I am feeling a desire to weep for some unknown reason. I avert my eyes to the flourescent tubes buried in their perspex coffins marching back in rows along the ceiling for as far as the eye can see. "Hmmm.. Might be something for our team to consider, " I say finally. Feeling in my pocket for a pen to give the impression of urgency. When I look up from my faux pen finding, Belinda is marching off down the hallway, barking something at me over her shoulder.

So, I am now flicking casually through the newspaper while my mind races through the days tasks. A coworker is munching noisily on a sandwhich. Someone else is flicking the pages of a gossip magazine contemptuously. I say it casually, to the airconditioning. Trying to mask my panic. "ever been to one of them breakfast seminars?" I turn the page. Sandwhich muncher almost snorts tuna onto his silk tie with digust. "washte ob thime." He manages. Before I can pursue the topic, we are all frozen to the spot by the entrance of the king. The Boss. We will call him Neb. Close behind Neb, is his chihahua, Nigel.

I focus intently on the paper. Neb, is looking directly at me. I notice this out of the tiniest corner of my eye but I am pretending not to notice. I look up and feign surprise.

"dont forget those reports son." He says to me over the top of his glasses.

How can you have spiritual poise before you get results?

The Well V

Kate looked in the bathroom sink, trying to avoid her own reflection. She ran her finger under the water until it grew warm. Finally, she was forced to face herself. Her eyes looked hard and worn int eh hard morning light. The wrinkles were getting deeper. The dark circles were getting darker. IT was six months since they had wheeled Terry's body down the path to the waiting ambulance at the front of the house. Six months since she found him lying there, cold, with dried vommit caked down his neck and pooled on the sheets by his head. Six months. Six months. She had aged six years.

The glare of the white tiles made her wince. But there hadnt been a bruise under her eye, or on the side of her face since that day. Just a hard knot of emptiness, tightening a little more with each passing day. Dave had left stubble around the edge of the sink again. The bathroom had a permanently damp odour about it. The knot got tighter. It was suffocating her, cutting off oxygen, or water. Was it hate? Or dissatisfaction? Thirst? Or love? Her days were and endless list of reasons why Dave was becoming another reason to find another well to drink from. Or was it something else? Some unidentified, shadowy bulk, all shoulders and smoke in a door way far back in her mind. Far back in the past.

She noticed there was pubic hair and splashes of urine on the rim of the toilet seat. It was asign to her that he no longer cared what she thought of him. Or, was it a sign that she didnt care? She didnt care to think about it. She didnt care.

She sighed loudly and it accentuated the silence, the emptiness. He passed the open doorway and their eyes met in the mirror. She was leaning in close, applying eyeliner. They were ignoring each other now. The ground was once again becoming parched and cracked. Kate turned back to her sagging reflection in the mirror and wondered if she was done with making vows. If she was done with drinking from empty wells.

The Well IV

IV

The street looked like it had so many other times. People gathered in little bands at their front gates watching the scene unfold. Children stood hanging onto their mothers night gowns under the orange glow of the street lights. They stood in their crumpled pyjamas, their hair matted by the unconscious impressions made by the hills and valleys of sleeps landscape. The night air was still very warm. The night seemed to ache with the weight of it. The street lights burned the atmosphere with their glowing eyes, pressing everything down into the black bitumen. Balls of frantic insects hovered in little erratic juries beneath each unblinking bulb, presiding over the scene.

A light went on in a front room. A dog barked. It was not unusual. And many of the neighbours were not surprised when they emerged from their darkened doorways onto their warm lawns, to see the red and blue lights careening across the blank faces of the otherwize silent homes. What was surprising, was that among the enquiries they made of each other, not one of the neighbours reported to any of the others having heard any shouting or banging. The street had been strangely silent.

A policeman was standing at the edge of his patrol car, saying something into a radio on his shoulder. Sitting on the curb, behind the patrol car, hidden from the curious eyes of the neighbours, sat two women. One consoling the other, whose loud sobbing and crying could be heard up and down the street. It rose up into the still warm night air. Being swallowed by the compassion of nights silence, somewhere up amongst the invisible flying insects and the stars. They knew of this woman, though not many of them knew her name. They had seen her many times, in circumstances not unlike these, being led away from the house with blood soaked hair or trembling hands, by a policeman, while a bare chested man in grease stained jeans screamed obscenitiies at her from the back of a patrol car. Yes, they had seen these things before, but only from behind the blinds in the darkened windows of their loungerooms. They were more curious than shocked. An this led most of them to emerge from the saftey of their houses. "Muss be bad this time?" Muttered one of the nieghbours.

the front of the house stood like a sarcophagus, washed in a sickly yellow by the street lights. All the front blinds were drawn, and no light could be seen anywhere inside the house. There were Ambulance officers and police standing in serious posture, regarding the front of the house. An ambulance stood at the curb aswell, its barn doors flung wide. The onlookers scattered at various points up and down the street, craned their necks and whispered comforting words in the ears of small children. When they saw the porch light finally go on, and the front door open wide, they muttered in each others ears. Two ambulance officers wheeled a gurney through the open door and down the curve of concrete path to the gate. The hairy gorilla arm of a man fell over the side of the stretcher, and one of the officers had to poke it back in under the blue plastic sheet that covered the anonnymous form of a head, its nose and mouth in profile under the lights of the police cars and ambulance. The wailing of the woman sitting on the curb became louder and more shrill against the grating sound of the police radios and walkie talkies. The sound of the Ambulance doors slamming shut, once the body had been hoisted inside, seemed to slice through the confusion and uncertainty with a thick and thudding finality.

The Well III

III

The toilet hissed as Kate passed by and drew near to the bedroom at the dark end of the hall. Terry's belt was hanging over the door, which sent a zephyr of some vague memory through her. Shadows. Shadows of grief cast way down deep where she couldnt reach. Of course, it was her Father she saw in the belt hanging over the door. She just wasnt aware of it. In fact, there were a number of similarities between him and Terry. Not that she was thinking about it. They were merely unconscious associations.The faint smell of turps and solvol soap. The thick, leathery hands. The grease perpetually ingrained under the nails. The sound of smokers cough far away from her bedroom, where adult laughter and unknown things took place, in the lounge room. Things that sounded to her like love. It was dawning on her now, only dimly, that in reality, her father and Terry were the same desert bore she'd been trying to drink from for years. The deep well of love, far away in the loungeroom, where the warmth of the T.V. and her parents laughter was. A place she was not permitted.

She'd been scouring her life for that water. Time and time again. But it seemed that what she found in the rubble and ruins of this world made her thirstier. Some innocent part of her knew this, if only dimly. But still, for reasons that sometimes infuriated even her, she found herself wondering, hoping, praying, that one day, the water she drank would become pure. That love would be real.

Terry's brown belt sagged over the door. She came close, pushed it too and entered the musty darkness of their bedroom to grab some clothes and a bag. Things would be different with Dave. She saw it in his eyes. the tenderness. The gentle hands. The attention.

Kate kicked an oily pair of jeans and instinctively bent down to pick them up. The blood rushing to her head made her face throb. She caught herself and was surprised to find that she recoiled, as if she had touched death itself. The cheesy smell of vomit slapped her hard. She began rehearsing under her breath what she had rehearsed a thousand times before in front of the bathroom mirror. it sounded like something from somebody elses dream. Intangible. Surreal. Not part of her experience. Impossible. She was leaving. She stood up and felt for the light switch, not noticing the lumpy form on the bed.

The Well II

II

Linda sat in the car watching the light fading in the corner of the windscreen. She switched the ignition off and listened to the engine ticking and cooling as she watched her friend disappear into the house. There was a cold feeling in her gut. Even as everything in the street buzzed and cracked under the oppressive heat of the vanishing afternoon. Night begining to descend like a warm blanket over the houses and trees and telephone wires.

She hoped Kate wouldnt be in there too long. Of course, she had been trying to get her to leave Terry for almost as long as they had been together. Even when things were really bad, like the time she had to go into hiding for a few weeks, it had been a task that Linda knew was going to be impossible. She always returned to him. For some reason, he was like the air she needed to breathe. To feel alive.

It was on this occasion, however, as she sat with her in the lunch room at work on Tuesday morning, while groups of tatooed men in white coats and steel capped boots filed in and out, and amidst the sound of conveyor belts and the smell of carcass, that Linda sensed a change in her friend. There was a small thumb shaped bruise on her wrist that kept drawing Lindas attention, like a birth mark. Kate seemed really shaken this time. Desperate.

There had been many more times before, when, Linda had been so abhored by it all, that she just wanted to stop caring. Kate seemed to have this wifllful determination to be hurt. Maybe even to die. She had wondered so many times if it were possible for light to be forced into Kates eyes. If tough love would really work. But each time she had sat with her at work, or in the car, or at some out of the way bar, or cafe, where he wouldnt think to look for her, Linda already knew that tough love was not what Kate needed. The bruises under her eye were evidence of that.

The Well I

"Anyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again."

I


Kate stood on the footpath looking a little puzzled. In front of her was the same house. The same spidery crack in the front window that had been there for six months. The same weeds in the garden bed under the window. The same rusty dripping garden tap. The same junk mail shoved in the mouth of the letter box. But she had a sensation that it was all suddenly foreign. She had passed by her neighbours so often on that street. Feeling their eyes on her back as she went. Catching the sudden removal of fingers from parted blinds in the corner of her eye as she emerged from taxis in the early hours of the morning. Just as the sun was peeking over the curve of the unseen horizon and morning joggers and dog walkers were setting out. She had always looked at the ground when she walked down her street. Unless it was night time when she felt more at home. Avoiding eye contact with the mothers of the children that wove their bikes up and down the footpath on saturday mornings and weekday afternoons. But now, now as she stood there in the fading light, she felt a sudden freedom from the opinions of her neighbours.

She turned to Linda, who was sitting in the car parked at the curb for one last shot of encouragement. The side of her face was throbbing as she smiled limply. She'd lost count of how many vows made in front of the bathroom mirror had been broken. She'd lost count of how many times she'd found herself standing on the front porch the very afternoon of her final vow, with an armload of shopping and her purse clenched between her teeth while she fumbled and dug in her pocket for her keys.

But Kate had already made another vow. She had vowed to stop making vows. She had this feeling ( a feeling she knew well) that Dave was different. She could tell right off. And all she had needed was a reason, an excuse to leave Terry. Not that she had been lacking good reasons to leave him. But reasons are not people, and, for as long as Kate could remember, she had always needed a someone.

She slammed the door a little too heavily behind her. "Terry?" She called out. The place stank of vomit. Not a window, or even a blind had probably been opened since she had been picked up by Linda two mornings ago. ( And she saw the blinds of her nieghbours being parted on that morning too. They would have heard everything) The skirting boards were begining to gather a fine coat of dust and stray socks and underwear littered the edges of the hallway like road kill.

She edged up the hallway, and the muffled sound of the T.V. grew more audible. She craned her head as she walked, listening for the unmistakable note of him snorting up a gob of phlegm into the sink. ( God she hated that) Or, the distant whine of his angle grinder in the backyard. When she reached the end of the hallway, she poked her head in the door of the loungeroom, expecting to see a fog of cigarette smoke and a hairy gorilla arm hanging over the side of the sofa. But, he wasnt there. Instead, she saw the familar crack in the corner of the cieling, near the window, a little wider from the heat of the afternoon, and an overturned ashtray lying on the carpet surrounded by mangled buts and ash.

Lazy Bastard!

Kate moved from the lounge, to the doorway of the kitchen where she stood scanning for more evidence. The fridge door was open. Even Terry could not be that careless. Warm beer bottles tinkled slightly as she closed it. She lifted her head in expectation of some other sound, but none came. The house was as silent as a grave. She wasnt really scared of him. He was always very docile after a bust up. She usually returned to the house to find him moping around in a fog of depression, as if he were a victim of his own violence. And in a way, he was. But it didnt matter any more. Dave had seen the bruise on the inside of her wrist, and looked at her intently when she winced with pain. He worked in demolition and had promised to knock Terry down like an old wall if he gave her any more trouble. Dave was sweet.

She picked up the frying pan that was lying where it had fallen a couple of nights ago, and placed it back on the stove top. As she stood there, the memory of it flashed in her mind like a gunshot. It hit hard and suddenly. The shock cancelling out any senation of pain. It always came suddenly, with only the slimmest of warnings. His angry bulk behind her. A smoking, shadowy hulk. All shoulders and arms. After nights, days, even weeks sof tiptoeing around him like a sleeping tiger. Most of it was a blur. The moment before he gave her the first one. That was all that was clear in her mind. The feeling of ice water in her veins. The flash of fear in her belly. It was all too familiar. A well of pain that she had gulping from for years. Sunk deep into her long ago like a bore in the desert.

Near Miss

I was driving down the three lane arterial just here. Out of nowhere, the figure of a slight girl with orange hair loomed up in my headlights real quick! Her eyes were real wide. She had this pale ghostly look, her limbs were thin and freckled. She almost tripped over her own feet and went under. It was just so quick! Like a photograph, you know? POW! But I remember her eyes. Dark brown. She looked terrified. Oh, and she had neon pink socks.

I slammed on the brakes. There was a sharp chirping sound of rubber that seemed to fill the night with shock. The car lurched heavily onto its front wheels. Instinctively, I pounded on the horn a couple of times, just out of reflex. Just as i would have if it were some kind of dumb animal on the road. And then, she was gone. A shadowy figure flitting away into the darkness, she zigzagged across the lanes of traffic, and onto the tree lined strip of grass running down the middle of the road. the passing cars on the other side illuminated fragments of her with their headlights. the soft white skin on the inside of her wrists flashed brightly among the trees. the heel of her hand was visible, with the contorted fingers splayed out behind her, unconsciously in flight.

Then, this scruffy lookin kid darts out onto the road, about, oh, twenty metres further down the road, across the nature strip, and he disappears into the trees aswell. For a second, well, I didnt realise what was happening. I half expected a whole troop of drunken teenagers to come stumbling across the road. But then it just clicked inmy mind, you know? He was chasing her!

i couldnt see real well, but it looked like he was gonna catch up to her pretty quick. By the look of him, he was paralytic. Staumbling and falling over as he went.

i hardly had time to think about anything. I am just grateful antother car didnt run into the back of me while I was sitting there. Time just like, stood still. Before I knew what was happening, ( I was about to pull over and call the police) I see red and blue lights flashing everywhere, like we are in a swimming pool. Then three or four cops go charging across the road in front of me at full tilt. their trying to hold their guns in place to stop them from jiggling up and down while they are caning it after this kid!

So, I am thinking, SHIT! What the fuck is going on here. you just dont expect something like that to happen on the way home from the footy club, do ya? So I pull over, and the cops catch up to this kid in no time. They bring him down hard in a gang tackle. And before you know it, one of them has the heel of his boot on the back of his neck, with his arms twisted behind him, while he kicks and flails and the copper nearly cops one in the goolies!

Meanwhile, the other two are trying to catch the girl, who is zigzagging through the trees, and making her way onto the other side of the road, where she almost gets hit again. One other cop is standing in the middle of the nature strip, gesturing like a maniac, and screaming something into his walky talky. All the red and blue flashing on the tree trunks is making me dizzy.

I stay still. Then I see the two cops handcuff the young kid, and hoist him up to his feet by the wrists. Of course, he is still kicking and screaming like nobodies business. Hes yelling something at the cops, but I cant make out what it is. They bring him back across the road to the divy van parked afew cars down from where i am, and they fairly through him across the bonnet and hold him down while they frisk him.

And, well....Yeah.. I guess that is all I saw of it officer.

Can you tell me anything? Is that girl OK?

Look, thank you for your assistance. As far as we can ascertain at this stage, the young man was not trying to harm the girl. She is refusing to answer questions or give her details. But from our enquiries so far, it looks as if she may have been trying to throw herself in front of cars, and the young lad was trying to stop her. We've done some checks with her family, from information given by the boy, and it appears she does have some history of mental illness. So it looks like the boy was just trying to help her.

Is he her boyfriend?

Yes, I believe he is..

Poor kid. your boys were roughing him up pretty good over there?

Yes, well .. Ahem.. It appears the matter is resolved now. its a minor matter and your assistance will most likely not be required any further. But this is the number, if we need to varify some details of your story?

Yes. Yes it is.

Thank you for your time.

Oh.. OK thank you officer.