Goatie 2

I ponder my sleep-walking predicament. Apparently, I’m superhuman able to drink a glass of water without waking. I remember a case in which a man had driven hundreds of miles, killed his wife, and returned to bed, without waking. If I’d have been on the jury, I’d have laughed aloud. Knowing his wee wife might have cheated on him like mine, I’d have set him free. My neighbours through the wall, getting up and knocking about, getting ready for work hinted at the kind of normality I’d been missing. I tried to get back to sleep. But I couldn’t force myself.

The weekday nights followed the same pattern, with an empty glass on the unit beside my bed. I concocted the Santa trap to spice things up. I put a plate with two Digestive biscuits beside the glass of water. The biscuits untouched in the morning, but the glass empty.

I’m more a glass half-full kinda man. Instead of Digestive biscuits I add two Crunchies. No devil could refuse a Crunchie. But they were there on the plate and the water drunk.

By Thurday, I’d refined the Santa trap. Adding two carrots, for Santa’s reindeer or passing goats. I was going completely crackers. I added wine to the water, mimicking the water to wine of the transubstantiation of the Eucharist offering. But I sprinkle the edge of my carpet with talcum and put a plastic lid on the glass. The offering was taken and something like two hoof prints were beside my bed. The carrots lay on the windowsill, the window open. I’m being mocked or mocking myself.

On Friday, I finished the wine and got inventive. I fill the wine bottle with water and put the cork back in. Before banging down the top with gold foil, I get the silicon gun from the cupboard. The silicon plug would separate the sheep from the goats.

The empty bottle stood on the windowsill in the morning. I ripped the gold foil off and took the bottle into the toilet and tried filling it with tap water, with predictable results, it sprayed all over the bath. Not a drop inside the bottle.

I needed to get outside and went for a walk along the canal path. I felt immediately better. Trains rattle on the tracks. Overhead small-engine planes  practice runs in ever increasing circles, before heading towards Glasgow Airport. My phone buzzes in my pocket. Reminders we were in the twenty-first century, not in the Middle Ages with ghosts and spooks under every bush.

Charlie meets me outside Dunelm. He’s got that schoolboy ned look as if he never grew up without a fag in his mouth. He passed the street Valium underhand and our fingers touch. I try to remember the last time someone touched me. He doesn’t notice my fingers shaking as I pass the money back the same way. I hit him up for some dope to help me sleep. But I’m thinking about heroin and going out without a whimper. It’s on the tip of my tongue.

Charlie sees a girl he knows and he’s looking through me and he’s off. I don’t blame him. She’s pretty as my wife used to be. I go shopping for other ingredients for Santa’s trap.

Smoking lots of dope almost makes it funny filling a glass with water and drain cleaner and stirring it with a spoon. I sniff it and there’s no way of masking the smell. Incorporeal bodies aren’t like dogs, noted for their keen sense of smell. I don’t want to be there to find out how it ends. I take a lot of drugs, smoke most of the hash. My head circles like it’s trying to land at Glasgow Airport with no wings.

I don’t so much waken as emerge from unconsciousness. The glass on the bedside cabinet remains undrunk. And I groan. I get on the phone and try for over two hours to book an appointment at our local mental health service. It’s called a resource. But they seem to be all out of receptionists. I pull on a heavy jacket and walk over the bride and onto the main road.

The receptionist explains things to me as she lets the phone ring. I want to tell her to answer it. They have a walk-in service, but only if it’s an emergency. ‘Am I an emergency?’ she smiles.

I look at the others slouching on grey polymer chairs, watching and waiting. I want to fling things. Smash things up. Maybe that would make me an emergency. But I smile politely and shake my head. I’m just the normal crazy, being stalked by devilish goats with human faces.    

Searching for alternative on my phone, I come up with hypnotherapy. I make a stab of making sense of it. But it’s all bullshit really. The best thing to do is act confident, but not too confident or I wouldn’t be a nutter. Aim for the middle ground between oral and anal fixation.

The hypnotherapist practitioner I phone surname is Parent, which seems like an omen. She answers right away. A sweet womanly voice. I like her. We arrange to meet the next day at her house in Bearsden.

The Santa trap isn’t so much a trap that night as an invitation to fuck off. I leave a glass of whisky and two carrots. I bite the head off one to demonstrate it’s not poisoned.

The whisky glass is empty in the morning. The carrot I’d bitten is missing. I check under the bed and in the drawers of the unit. I even tilt it back to check behind it. No carrot. I don’t know what that means, good or bad?

I googled the hypnotist’s address. If it had been near Bearsden train station I’d probably have walked. Punch-drunk with a lack of sleep I drove because it was easier, and if I ended up in burning wreckage then so much the better.  

The hypnotist met me at the door with matching lips and nails. A less than full-blown smile. ‘Bit early,’ she remarks.

I apologise. Tell her I can go away and come back again if that makes it any easier. Her blue-greenish eyes flicker over me. It’s been a while since I washed. I imagine I looked like the kind of person that would get done in Bearsden for loitering with intent in public spaces, because there aren’t any. Even the air seems metered. She ushers me inside before I stink the place up, and make the neighbours talk.

She mentions money before I  think of getting settled. I scramble to get the notes out of my pocket quickly enough to satisfy her. ‘Cash is still king.’

Notes shuffle in her hand and her emerald ring winks as she makes sure it’s not a pretend king.  She guides me to an old-fashioned armchair with wings to rest my elbows. Sitting on stool facing me she runs through the rules and what to expect. But I’m tired and my eyes are almost closing even before she attempted to hypnotise me. I’m not really listening.

She arranges her soft hand on her lap and crosses her legs. Stares at me fixedly. I feel the familiar choking sensation. And I want to cry out. But I’m powerless.

Light plays on her silver-spotted dress. ‘Right,’ I say. ‘When yeh gonnae hypnotise me? Yeh need a watch and chain or some pendulum thingy?’

‘The goats on the beach are bleating.’ She smiles as she tells me, I heard and seen them. I’d looked into the Madonna’s eyes.’

‘Am I completely crazy?’  

She offers a practiced smile. ‘No more than the rest of us. See you next week.’