PORTRAIT OF HER

It is all happening now. It is faded like a memory, but for me, it is all in the present. For me there is no past or future, only the now. My condition is hard to grasp, but I am attempting to understand.

I am drawing short breaths. They are my last. I am drawing long breaths. They are my first.

My life and hers are simultaneous. I am adding two white specks to her eyes and she comes alive. She draws long breaths. Her eyes are sparkling. I am grasping for her name, but I cannot remember. She helps me find the past, but I lose the present. Her breaths are short and so are mine. It all happens at once.

I am grasping for what I cannot hold. She is standing over me, the only sparkle in her eyes is the glisten of tears. She is kneeling beside me. She is asking again, but I cannot answer. I am grasping for her name, but I cannot remember, I do not know who she is.

Her name is Katie. She is my daughter. She is a baby, she is a child, she is a woman. She is dying in front of me. Short breaths, grasping for air she cannot hold. Her eyes are sparkling as she stretches up to give me the picture of us that she drew. I am framing the picture and hanging it up in my office. I am doing this so that when I see it, I will think of her.

I am a child and old Norton is showing me statues. Their eyes are dull, glossed over with white. He explains that they used to be painted bright colours and when the eyes were painted, they were alive, but now the paint has washed away and the eyes are dull. My painting is not finished yet. Her eyes are dull. Norton is explaining that life is in the eyes. I am adding two white specks to her eyes and my painting comes alive. Her eyes are sparkling.

Reams of timetables and budgets are sitting on my lap, Katie is drawing beside me, our dog Wassily between us. Katie is showing me the finished drawing. She is explaining that Wassily can wear the helmet she has designed and be able to talk. I am at my first exhibition, no one has come. I am telling Katie that she should make her helmet, she shouldn’t give up.

The room is warm. A woman who says she is my daughter is showing me pictures I am not in. She is holding up a picture of our dog Wassily. I am remembering Wassily. I am remembering Katie. I am in a cool white room. The doctor is explaining that my disease is getting worse. The doctor is talking more to Katie than she is to me. She explains that Alzheimer’s can lead to dementia, which could lead to my death. There is no cure. I don’t tell Katie that I am afraid.

Old Norton’s face is staring at me. I am trying to capture what I remember of the man. I am a young woman with paint in my hair. I am adding two white dots to his eyes and he comes alive. The portrait is not him, but it implies him. Dozens of faces are staring at me. With each face I paint, I become more adept at encapsulating these people, their lives, their essence. I am interviewing for a part-time job in a gallery. I am staring at those great paintings, their subjects long forgotten. I am daydreaming of when my portraits hang alongside them. I am in my empty exhibition; my poor imitations of faces feel dull and lifeless. I am being offered a promotion that will leave no time for my own work. I am saying yes. My paintings are in a trunk in my attic, their subjects long forgotten.

Clutching a crumpled letter, Katie is asking me if she should take the job that will leave her no time for her own work. I am smiling, I am saying no, I am saying she shouldn’t give up. Katie is releasing her first product, an implant that can map a person’s mind. She is telling me she is calling it ‘portrait’, for me. Her eyes are sparkling.

I am framing Katie’s drawing of us and hanging it in my office in the gallery. Her work hangs alongside those great paintings. I am smiling, when I see it, I will think of her. The drawing is hanging in my house. I am an old woman. I am looking at the drawing Katie drew and I do not know who drew it. I am searching for the memory but it is lost. I am in my home, but I am lost. I am with my friends and family, but I am alone. I am reaching for the thoughts but they are gone and I cannot hold them.

Katie is tired, I have upset her because I am forgetting more and more. I am telling her I am afraid. She is apologising. She is thinking. Her eyes are sparkling. She says she can help. I am being scanned. I am being interviewed. I am being studied. I am being sedated for surgery. I am waking up. I am touching the back of my neck, feeling a small bump where one of Katie’s portraits lies. Katie is smiling, asking how I feel, if I recognise her. I am reaching out for the name and I am finally holding it. My memories are flooding back to me. I am remembering Wassily, old Norton and all the faces in the gallery. I am reaching to remember and Katie’s portrait device is feeding me the feeling. She is helping me find my past.

I am drawing short breaths. The sheets are too clean. My life is returning to me. I am exercising. I am painting. The portrait device is powerful, my memories are clearer than they were before my mind deteriorated. I am painting one person, but I am remembering every face I ever painted, every subject that ever sat for me. I am painting everyone I ever knew at the same time. I am staring at a marble-eyed statue. I am studying the creases in the face of the gallery owner. I am holding Katie in my arms for the first time, I’m telling her I’ll never let go of this moment.

I am holding tight. Too tight. I can hold my memories, but little else. I reach out for the present, but I cannot grasp it. What is happening right now? Am I that child in school who is learning to draw or am I the older mother, teaching my child to draw? Am I the old woman, lying in bed, drawing her final short breaths or am I stood beside the bed watching that old woman? I am agreeing to Katie’s procedure. Katie is helping me find the past. Katie is helping me lose the present.

Katie is staring at me. I am lost in my memories. She is stretching up to show me what she has drawn. Katie is saying that I am lost again, that I don’t know my own daughter, but I do know her. Her name is Katie. She is my daughter. She is a baby, she is a child, she is an old woman. There are complications following a car accident. I am there beside her. The sheets are too clean. She is taking short breaths, grasping for air she cannot hold. Her eyes are sparkling as she pleads for one more story before bed. I am reading her just one more.

I am drawing long breaths, my first breaths. I am being embraced. A distant feeling. I am holding her. The sheets are too clean. I am drawing short breaths, grasping for what I cannot hold. Just a moment longer with my memories. A soft static is rising through my body, behind it there is no feeling. It is rising to my mind. It is cool and lifting, but it is dark. I am seeing her whole life; it all happens at once. She is still here. Her life is encapsulated in my mind, in my memories. The portrait of me is a portrait of her. My eyes are sparkling before the paint is washed away.

ANAX

[Fragment long-longlisted for the Bricklane Bookshop Short Story Prize]

THE EXTRAORDINARY VERILSBERG CLOCK

Verilsberg was an ordinary town with an ordinary town clock. Nestled in the crevice between two alpine mountains, this sleepy little settlement was rarely visited and rarely reported upon. One exceptionally unexceptional aspect of the town was the town clock which stood atop a tower in the market square, visible for all to see. Every clock in the town was set to the one in the market square. The town’s inhabitants never expected anything other than the accurate time from this clock and quite rightly too; why would an ordinary clock ever do something extraordinary?

One day, the town clock began to slow down. It slowed by only three seconds at first but since all the townsfolk set the time by it, now every clock in Verilsberg was three seconds slow. The clock continued to slow by a few seconds at a time so that now, although no one noticed it, the butcher opened late, mass was delayed and even the man who maintained the clock fell behind schedule. Very soon, the entire town was several seconds behind the rest of the world.

Since the increments were minuscule, none of the townsfolk seemed to notice as the divergence grew steadily more and more profound. The cockerel, who also kept time by the clock, began to crow later each day and soon the morning sun, which kept time by the cockerel, did not reach the town until late evening.

One afternoon, a traveller passed through the town. Although he had just been walking in the bright sunshine, the moment he stepped within the limits of Verilsberg, he found himself plunged in nocturnal darkness. The traveller tried to dispel his bewilderment by convincing himself that it was just dramatic cloud cover. The possibility of a meteorological marvel, however, was dispelled when he discovered all the town’s inhabitants were asleep. After waking a local merchant, the traveller attempted to explain the peculiarity he had witnessed, but the merchant struggled to believe that the traveller’s rusted pocket watch could possibly be more accurate than the formidable Verilsberg town clock. For the merchant and for everyone else in the town, time appeared to march on at the same rate as it had always done.

The discrepancy grew but the passing decades were merely years to the townsfolk. Fashions changed and countries shifted but none of the Verilsbergers noticed the world outside moving faster. War broke out and all were required to enlist but once news reached Verilsberg the war was over. 

A mere twelve years had passed for the settlement when the traveller returned. Though he was in the twilight of his life, the town was unchanged and its people were unaged. The traveller could not believe what he had witnessed and so, in his final moments, he checked the time. It was an action that took him the rest of his life, for the old town clock could slow no more and, at that moment, the extraordinary Verilsberg clock stopped.

ANAX

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ANOTHER CASTLE

But Sir Galin of Eldridge, upon ascending to the summit of the tower, did perspire to such an extent that all the Lakes of Perilly would not have quenched the weary knight’s thirst. Though he had ventured to the top of near a dozen of these infernal spires, he still could not fathom their dark power. Such evil had not dispirited Sir Galin, whose valour had shone in the face of those waking dead who infested the tower’s base. So too did his strength endure the interminable climb up the structure’s spine. But it was Galin’s unwavering faith that permitted his crossing of the perilous bridges and crumbling pathways that plagued his journey. Now, he stood under the latticed sky, within a great garden such as those that adorned the top of all the lofty turrets. The cool night air refreshed Sir Galin, which was fortunate indeed because the final test of his might loomed ahead.

This citadel of soaring black stone was the bastion which confined the fair Princess Auralis and, upon entering that demonic stronghold, Galin was met with labyrinthine passages as dark as the moonless night. He trod with care so as not to disturb the foul creature that was sure to be creeping about these halls. Of that secret enemy, the intrepid knight knew little. Each tale of its nature was so wild that, in truth, the knight could not be certain of its existence. Legends abounded that the beast moved like a shadow, drank of flame for sustenance, stared into souls with its great ominous eye and bore limbed teeth. The knight had neither seen the beast, nor the princess, but although Sir Galin knew not the monster’s true form, he believed that it did inhabit each tower’s pinnacle, for when he had come within a hair’s breadth of liberating She-of-Noble-Blood, that invisible form did snatch her away once more to another realm.

“Should my sword stay true, I will not have it take her again,” Galin thought and he gripped the hilt of his heavy blade more tightly.

Sir Galin, being thus poised to strike, did advance down the winding galleries, charting every chamber should She-of-Royal-Birth lie within until he had ventured deep into the heart of that damnable abode. Presently, a faint echo travelled along those long, dank walls and found its way to Galin’s ear. And presently he did pause to consider the origin of such a strange noise. Such a smooth shuffle could only be the treacherous whisper of Galin’s unseen foe. The knight withdrew behind the pillar of an archway, slowed his breath and prepared for battle.

“Silently, now,” Galin murmured to himself as the fiendish creature drew closer.

Sir Galin’s eyes widened, his breath held in his throat and his heartbeat pounded as if it were a drum of war. The footsteps were closer now. Just a few moments more and… Now! Galin tensed his muscles and sprang from his place of concealment, weapon in hand. As the knight had prayed, his sword was true and through a whirl of linen, he pierced the white flesh of his nemesis. Blood pooled from the wound as Galin gripped the hilt of his sword, pressing its point deeper into the heart of that which he had long sought to destroy.

Then did Sir Galin, Knight of Eldridge, lay eyes upon the fiend he had slain. He gazed in awe upon its gilded locks, he looked with melancholy at the demon’s ruby lips, frozen in a silent cry of astonishment and he wept at the sight of the monster’s pale grey eyes, wide open with all hope of rescue now vanished.

ANAX.