Type

William Proudfoot hadn’t spoken for seven weeks. The vomiting stopped, which was a relief to all. He spent his days sat in the corner of the living room with breathing apparatus on and where he could look out the window down to the street and the world he was so close to, but no longer part of.

William ceased all correspondence with admirers and well-wishers. His arms and fingers were quite useless to him and it took the greatest effort to move at all. So he chose not to.

He enjoyed watching the comings and goings of the neighbourhood. People would walk by, but some waved or stared. William never hid from the world despite his fascinating and cruel condition.

Just now three buses passed, a car horn blasted, there was the distinct screech of tyres, two kids passed by with a boisterous beagle and a woman shouted obscenities at nobody in particular. The city enthralled him as it always had.

Since he could no longer walk, William fantasised about meeting up with old friends to talk the night away in bars and cafés with much intellectual conversation, debate, wine and song. The life he’d lived and taken for granted: the simple pleasures. A modern day flâneur was how he once described himself, with smug satisfaction.

For the past month, William expected the arrival of a lady all the way from Berkeley, California. She’d written him the most beautiful letters, each one typed out on expensive paper and ink ribbons acquired in Venice, Italy. She told him these things. It did make him wonder what her handwriting looked like.

This lady from California held a passion for typewriters. So much so she’d converted her home into a museum dedicated to their history. She’d spent her adult life travelling the world purchasing, cataloguing, mending and exhibiting. Of course they were anachronisms, what with word processors and computers rendering them totally obsolete. They were retired to art objects and collector’s pieces.

The lady from California read about William Proudfoot, and naturally, she was curious. Well, more than curious: she had to have him at any cost.

Her visit aroused extreme emotions in William, but since he could no longer muster the energy to speak or communicate with his nurse or family he took it as fate. His relatives and friends all assumed he’d agreed to the visit and eagerly expected her. William could be a secretive man. Yes, the truth, or what he believed to be said truth of the matter, was much more complex, and he couldn’t bear to think of it for too long.

So all day he sat by the window in his converted chair watching pedestrians and automobiles: all those moving, kinetic, dynamic, magnificent things, while he was confined to one space, in one position.

The nighttimes were the worst. The doctors prescribed an assortment of medication to help him sleep, but the clacking of the keys rang in his mind. Nothing could subdue the clack, clack, clacking.

In the very beginning, William convinced himself a rhythm and secret message could be decoded. Before that he tried to decipher the tone and individual clack to see if some genius work stirred forth from his subconscious.

After a while he gave up and knew it to be little more than a symptom of the condition.

It all started one Sunday morning…
…William woke up after a night out with a metallic sensation on the roof of his mouth. No matter how many times he brushed his teeth, drank coffee or chain-smoked, the taste of metal remained.

After a week, William began to cough and suffer difficulty when drawing breath. Perturbed, he went to his physician. The x-rays revealed the ribcage half-formed into a keyboard with tissue hardened and shaped.

“Look,” said the doctor. “You can see the letters L and C.”
“The initials of my love,” muttered William.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing doctor. It’s nothing.”

Blood tests revealed black ink platelets mutating from red and white blood cells. The keys, the good doctor told him, would soon protrude through the skin. In a week or so, the torso would be like that of an old-fashioned Remington typewriter.

“You’re turning into a typewriter, William.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes. The results are quite clear. I’m not going to mislead you or say ‘everything will get better’. It’s inoperable. I haven’t seen a case quite like this. They’ll write about you in the medical books for years!”
“They won’t remember my writing?”
“Come on, William. I’m not a critic.”
He left the doctor’s office and took a walk into the city. The world felt different now with a new ambience. Almost ghost-like or akin to a sub-sonic motion picked up on a scientific device. There, but not there.

The city remained impassive…
… There would be little solace.

William sat on a park bench, lifted his shirt and touched the ‘A’ key with a finger. Revulsion washed over him when he dared press it. Soft warm tissue met hard cold metal. A globule of black ink shot out of the mouth and the tongue began to swell. He wiped his lips with a shirtsleeve and ran into the nearby public toilets, but it was difficult to see through the dull mirror with the reflection smudged and unnatural. William opened his mouth wide and saw upon his black tongue the vague shape of the letter ‘A’.

William hesitated before he pressed down hard in sequence on the letters F, A, K and E. A flood of black ink spewed forth into the sink basin. The taste caused him to gag and he feared he would choke to death. The pain on the surface of the tongue grew immense. It swelled to such an extent it protruded from the mouth and rested on ink-stained lips. He ran his tongue under the tap and watched as water and ink mixed and stained as traces on the side of the bowl.

And that was how it all began. Within the month, just as the doctor predicted, William’s body seized up and the transformation became so pronounced he admitted to his friend’s the terrible truth. All were saddened and offered their deepest sympathies. Some helped him financially and others took it in turns to keep him company reading newspapers, essays and novels. Nobody really spoke about the condition, not to his face.

For the first weeks, William decided to beat the illness at its own game, so he composed a few poems using the new method available to him, for he believed it to have some conceptual artistic merit, but the vomit eroded his teeth and a fair few fell out. The remaining ones soon resembled a row of bombed houses. The poems received several good notices in literary journals but he was not satisfied with them personally.

Despite endless pleads from friends and family William soon refused to communicate for long stretches of time. One morning, he’d grown so angry at the situation he punched the torso in fury and almost broke his own body. The violence caused the tongue to blow up to such an extent, absolute gobbledegook peppered it.

Two months passed when an enterprising young man dropped by to see William with a business opportunity. He proposed they sell his brand of ink in stationery shops – he was convinced it would make them millionaires and provide fame and money to take care of all mounting medical needs.

William agreed with some reluctance and Proudfoot Ink was all the rage for a year or so, but it was soon noticed the ink needed to be replaced, just as the ribbon on a typewriter required changing. William began to search for the finest brands of ink known to man. He needed the transfusions to keep alive. Proudfoot Ink collapsed.

The lady from California arrived bright and early on a beautiful May morning. She first saw William sat in his chair at the window. An oxygen machine pumped away and the dirty plastic mask covered a good portion of his face. She could tell at once he’d been a handsome man.

“Well, William, you’re just perfect. My home is lovely and you’ll have others of your kind for company – and me. We’ll get along great!”

She noticed his refusal to communicate yet saw through his icy demeanour. Those eyes were full of anguish and sorrow.

“My dear William, you must realise things for you are hopeless in this place. I’ve built a special room for you at the museum and you’ll have everything you could possibly want. You won’t be an exhibit if that’s your concern? I’m not a monster, William. We can collaborate on your story. We’ll write a bestseller!”

The lady from California turned away from William and spoke to Daisy, his carer.

“You said he was like a Remington, but that’s all wrong. He’s got the look of a Bar-Let model 2 to me. They were around in the 1930s and very rare. Made in Nottinghamshire. Has he any connection to Nottinghamshire? Look here, you see how red his skin is becoming? It’s the same colour – almost – of the red post boxes you have in this country or one of those delightful telephone boxes. I’d like a word with the doctor. What’s his name? The doctor. I’d like a word with him.”

William listened to the drawling Californian accent and began to consider the benefits of living abroad. The endless sunshine appealed the most.

“I’d keep you well oiled and in tiptop shape, William. I promise you.”

She touched a shoulder, caressed his sports jacket and imagined the beautiful body underneath. She shivered at the thought. William sensed a sexual pleasure exist between them: the fetishist and the object.

He could do little about it. Plus, she was pretty. He liked that. She’d promised to take care of him. William looked at the lady from California straight in the eye. Would she want to see him in his full naked glory? Of course. She’d be his nurse, surgeon and perhaps even lover. He felt her compassion and generosity were sincere enough. She would look after him. He was full of words, but speech and writing were no longer possible. He couldn’t even hold a pen and scrawl if he wanted to – and oh, how he wanted to.

In her own way, she fell in love with him the moment she set eyes on his svelte, art-deco shape and colouring. There was nothing so different: so unique. They would be happy together.

William, robot-like, moved his left arm with visible strain. Daisy went over to assist but his glare warned her off. He slowly undid the buttons on his navy blue shirt and exposed a little of the keyboard. The lady from California dared to look. She could tell immediately he was a Bar-Let model 2.

William pressed into his stomach twice. The clacking sound startled her and she could see the movement caused the greatest discomfort. A thin torrent of black ink dripped out and down the chin.

He opened the black mouth, but not to speak. The tongue slowly emerged and rested on the bottom lip. The lady from California stepped close to inspect read the word ‘ok’.

She smiled and looked at those cold blue eyes with flecks of red pigment. They were glazed over and looked like playing marbles: glassy and translucent.

“Everything will be alright, William. I promise you.”

He turned away and looked out at the street and the five red cars that went by in quick succession. A young girl on a bicycle whizzed past. She’s not wearing a helmet! A cat ran across a window ledge on the other side of the street and leaped into a garden. Two young boys kicked a football to one another. A young man and woman carried groceries and laughed.

He would leave his mark on this world somehow. William ignored Daisy and the lady from California for a moment. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the incessant rhythm of the keys. It was music: querulous and strange, but music nonetheless. He opened his eyes again and looked as the lady from California stood by him, eager to place a hand on his body. William couldn’t quite tell if he was delighted or doomed. And then he became a typewriter.