Owen

OWEN

Owen was a grey man. It wasn't a sudden thing, it just crept up and
quietly covered him in a drab blanket. You couldn't tell by looking but
he had left himself behind somewhere. His cover was bright, even slick,
and with his height and looks he could pass as dignified but ill. His
cover was slick but his pages where damp and curled.
The introduction was acceptable, and perhaps even the first couple of
chapters, but after that it just went to shit. Owen knew this but he
knew you had to buy the book to read it, and he looked on the surface
like a good read. This is how he trapped his women, his friends, his
bosses, but as always, after the first couple of chapters it all just
went to shit.
It was a gradual realization. He had always longed for one of those
wet fish in the face slaps of wisdom but I think we all know they are a
myth. He had come to understand that doing the right thing gets you
nowhere but into the shoes of the grey men that offered you the advice
in the first place. Looking in from the outside, the business world
appeared attractive to him. What he saw on the surface was the smooth
haunch of expensive cars, the warm suits, leather bound lunch
appointments and glassy glowing offices. All the ruby brake lights
snaking off through the rain, all going somewhere nice, all content
after a full day of it. These people were in the thick of it, they
owned it, they had a handle on it. He didn't see the ten hours of
pointless drudgery, day in, day out. You don't see that one coming,
they all looked so busy, preoccupied with it. It must be very
important, after all, all the important people are at it.
It was insufferable, where was his prize? Ever since he could remember
owning a watch, since he was six or seven, he remembered willing the
minutes to pass. In those marathons of double statistics, modern
studies and later, those sterile mornings of technical lectures or
group discussions, he would be willing the time to pass, trying to
leave as big a break as possible between glances so as to maximize the
relief when a decent chunk of time had elapsed. Just forcing it
through, letting it go. Twenty five years later he was still doing
exactly the same, willing his life away by the minute and spending his
free time sitting on the edge of the bed looking out the window. These
days he was living alone and hardly noticing.
The only people he ever spoke with were the office staff. They all had
stuff outside of work, or it appeared that way, but then again, that
was a facade he maintained himself. Owen had given everything up for a
career; friends, relationships, money, family. He didn't mind, he
imagined it was all recoverable. People don't hang around waiting for
you to become wonderful, they merely move on, and the money didn't
come, his happiness, his prize. All those years, there was no
justice.
Down at the water he could think, slow methodical thoughts were all he
could push through these days, even they would suffer from the
interference. His grey reflection opened and closed in the dirty water
like he was only half there, like bad reception. It was too late to
start again, there was nothing left, nothing to chase, there never was,
just pieces of dusty film on the cutting room floor. Some nights in his
bedsit he would cry and the ruby brake lights would look like sharp
stars through the tears, but even that turned to nothing in the end.
Where was the justice in that? There was no wadding for his empty
shell. He had put it off for ten years. Where did those feelings go?
He'd catch a sniff of one sometimes and remember what kept him going
through the leaner years. There was no romance in anything anymore, not
even the dream.
The furniture grew tired of him.
Even the fishing had gone bad. It was the sheer number of flies in the
box, so intricately he had tied them from badger tail, peacock and jay,
it was these things that showed he must have cared once. He had to face
it, now all the paper and ribbons were off, there was never anything
worth anything.
It was all stacking up in his in-tray and he wasn't coping. Something
had to give. He was becoming prone to infection. He couldn't get his
chapters to make sense and he was considering a rewrite. Cutting out
the dead wood and changing the plot. The first couple of chapters
seemed to make sense but then it all just went to shit. He was
desperate, but you couldn't tell by looking.