When Time Ceased to Exist..

When Time Ceased to Exist

Time ceased to exist this weekend when 16 young writers set up camp in two tatched cottages just outside Doolin in County Clare. The scenery was magical, the sea pounded against the cliffs edge threatening to swallow us, it foamed, it spat, it came over us as a giant wave and left us standing, soaked to the bone staring out at the fairytale scene.

There is no real way to describe it all, there was something in the air, a shared euphoria, the mindset of the maddened crowd, the cult, the football fanatic, dancing and dancing to the beat of bongos and shakey things.

We played drinking games with a creative twist, engaged in a long cold battle, painting our faces for war and shoving ice cubes down each others tops. There were mini plays and stories and poems, there were dance offs and clapping and reading howl drunkingly so the words trip over each other and fall flat on peoples ears.

There was being chased by cows with menacing moos that we were convinced were bulls, there was being covered in mud and climbing over gates trespassing in local farmers fields, there was walking up hidden paths that lead to no where but anticipated each step, there was standing on the cliffs edge watching waves pound and leap as high as cliffs, there was linking arms and standing close to sea, there was attempting to get wet and being wet far more than we wished, there was kidnapping girls from rival cottages and holding them hostage over night, there were bedrooms of fun where young girls and a very effeminate guy jumped up and down on the beds yelling "fun fun fun", there was entering bedrooms with screams and comments meant to be misconstrued by all sleeping in the surrounding rooms. There was singing moonriver in a sea of blankets and faces drunk on tiredness, euphoria, alcohol and clare, there was the creation of memories, of moments shared in that place where time froze and ceased to exist.

As Sean put it, we fell in love with each other individually and collectively- there is no way to go back there but there is a bond in sharing a moment like that, an unspoken pact.

Bubblegum

The one eyed cat with the scrunched up face licks his left paw. In the background music plays loudly as a boy with exceptionally high cheekbones folds a tablecloth stained with blood and urine into small rectangular shapes. In five minutes the phone will ring, he knows this like it’s been prearranged; only it is a spontaneous move on her part. Still he folds the cloth, glancing from time to time at the clock, wondering when the cat will move on to its back feet.

Then it rings against a chorus of cat purrs as the cat tilts his head and gazes at the boy contemplating his movements. It rings as the boy slowly places the urine and blood encrusted sheet onto the table and reaches to pick up the receiver. And he knows what she will say about his bad leg and the nerves that make it freeze and jerk without warning. And he knows she will ask about doctor’s visits and medication, though she knows he could never think when he took that stuff.

It’s been like this since his father went away on business, or just away, he doesn’t know which version of the truth he should assign himself to these days. Anyway it made her nervous and lonely and in need of a refrigerator large enough to freeze time and keep her child an eternal toddler, to stay with her forever. But he found forever too long and lacked the endurance to see it through.

The cat rolls on it’s back showing its deep orange belly as she begins to retell the story of her nerves and the rude lady in the supermarket, and the nice telesales girl who called earlier -“Oh I do wish you’d meet a nice girl”. And the smell from the blood and excrement engrained in the white tablecloth grows stronger ‘til his nostrils expand to twice their size. He is contemplating the significance of the bow in his shoelace has in relation to the cosmos when she brings it up. When he finally decides that there is none and ties them into double knots for security she says
-“Oh and remember that girl that used to call round, you know she had that chewing problem, used to chew gum real loud then blow it into bubbles that would burst with a pop, she wore those short skirts in different shades of pink. Well she went and got herself pregnant. You know I’ve never liked the colour pink, it’s far too loud.”

And his heart ties in knots and he remembers how he loved those short skirts in their various pink elements and how the taste of gum would catch in his teeth when she leaned in close.
The cat starts cleaning its back leg, expanding his nails and pushing its front claws into the sofa as he remembers how he loved her. How he loves her.
-“Well she died in childbirth, the baby is alive but they don’t know for how long. Her poor parents are devastated”.

And the boy stands next to the white cotton triangle and tried to avoid the piss and blood, thinking about his girlfriend, ex girlfriend, dead ex-girlfriend who once upon a time chewed pink bubble gum loudly and wore bubblegum skirts.

The shock numbs his senses; the smell becomes less of an issue, though a lump of vomit begins to solidify in his throat. He no longer feels his breath pulling in and out of his mouth his lungs are frozen in time. His heart beats faster, tightening as if a clamp had been wrapped around it, and there was his mother at the lever- “well she did wear those short skirts…”

The one eyes cat with the scrunched up face yawns and slowly pulls the shutters down over its lone green headlight.

It seemed like the right thing to do, he was too young to have a dead ex girlfriend and a baby who could or could not be his sitting in an incubator struggling for its life. But he was too old to cry about girls who chew gum loudly and laugh dismissively at compliments.

The baby had her mouth and her eyes. He couldn’t see himself in her, maybe his cheekbones, but that could be her boyfriend’s influence. She had a particular type of boy she liked to date, which in the circumstances didn’t help matters. The baby’s face scrunches up and she winks. Gazing at him though one eye he thinks she most resembles the one eyed monstrosity curled up at home on the couch. The baby looks disinterested, dismissive, too frail for a funeral, too unresponsive to be anyone’s child but the dead girls with the over chewed bubblegum skirts.

He starts to make his way to the church when the child starts to stir. He cannot deal with the prolonged wails, that continue to the point where all air expires and leave a desperate unoxegenated rasp; white on white walls close in on him like a strait jacket. As he leaves the hospital he is engulfed by the smell of sick people and dying people, with accusing eyes that say
- you put her in the grave - you should have called - you should have known.
Only she’s not in the grave yet, just decomposing future eulogies for that baby who could or could not be his.

The funeral was short and to the point… ‘it was a tragedy, everyone is sad, some feel guilty, but it doesn’t matter anymore because you can’t change the past. No one wore short skirts, or popped pink gum loudly; there was not even one inappropriate display of bellybutton or one poorly placed tattoo gazing at the priest. She would have hated it, she would have placed her eyes into slits, made her mouth into a low hanging crescent moon and asked, no demanded, that they play sympathy for the devil and ditch the black morbid clothes for something a little bit more colourful. “Show a little leg” she’d have said, laughing and would have attempted to convert the whole affair into something a little more indecent, unsuitable for sobbing grandmothers with antique jewellery and antique lives. But at least it was abrupt, she would have approved of that at least.

When they closed the casket he saw her whiter than white hospital wall skin, only the purple dragonfly on her ankle seemed to retain its colour- the rest was drained and forced. The rest was a baby in an incubator pulling air into surreal cries, the smell of the dead, solid vomit obstructing a windpipe. That is why he could not throw the gravel onto her grave, but instead placed it on a white handkerchief to fold into triangles and take away with him. He couldn’t say ‘goodbye’, say ‘I love you’ when the blood and the urine was still in his thoughts, and the baby that could or could not be his struggled to make its heart beat. So he took her a piece of her mothers grave and whispered that the woman that brought her into this world had hair that smelled of marshmallows, and how when she’d laugh her eyes would flash wickedly and he would know that this is how love must feel. But he ended by reminding her “I probably shouldn’t tell you this as I may or may not be your father” and his heart would pull and twist, reliving that awful moment on the telephone.

No one visited the doll like object for over eight days. She lay there alone lodged in her incubator listening to a strange mans voice. Then on the ninth day since its mother had been buried a man walked quickly and nervously into the hospital.

It was a Monday when “the boyfriend” decided to make an appearance, thinking he’s the father, putting his hands through the sides of the incubator to touch a tiny little hand and stare into her mothers eyes, telling himself “well she has my cheekbones”.

And the machines beep uniformly and the hospital smells like disinfectant and the smell in his living room grows more pungent as the cat with the one-eye soils the tablecloth with the accumulating indiscretions.

When “the boyfriend”/father leaves he returns to the transparent cage and it’s captive. He makes baby faces through glass and the dead girls eyes watch with a disinterested look.

And he wonders if there is a special suite in heaven for girls with hair that smells of marshmallows, if when you die you walk though that room and are filled with the odour and the mischief eyes that tell you your in love. Once upon a time a girl in a bubblegum skirt told him that all the religions got it wrong, that spirituality is trapped in pure joy, the kind that makes everyone smile despite their better sense. She said that it is not just trapped in nature but in x-rated movies that make young movie goers giggle, in the bubble gum tight skirts that make impressionable boys smile and think of marshmallows- thought they’re too young to be in love, and too old to smile at such trivial things. But that girl is gone and her eyes smile though a glass wall with a look that says, “I don’t think we’re going to make it”.

All he can think about is the silence in each beep of the heart monitor and how “the boyfriend” would break into small indistinguishable fragments if he knew he shared his cheekbones, or that he has her cat at home squinting through one eye at a culmination of various foul things wrapped in what once was a very overpriced tablecloth.

So he goes home and sits in the silence, knowing that at any moment the phone will ring, though the hysterical woman on the other side of the line does not yet know that she will make the call.
As the phone starts to ring he walks away from the sound and listens to it play against a chorus of cat purrs. Reaching down to the table he slowly begins to unfold the cloth, expanding the triangle of urine and blood only to find it has all been erased.

All that is left is a large rectangle of expensive cloth, whiter than white, a hospital wall, a dead girls skin. The one eyed cat yawns and begins once more pulling a moist paw over his left ear.