The thing
By Simon Barget
- 1744 reads
No one knew where it came from, despite competing theories. Some said China just because lots of things come from China, or at least used to go through it, it was easy to jump on the bandwagon, to jump to conclusions. But soon the origin became immaterial, how could you even say how it started, when it was something so ineffable, so unfathomable, all that mattered is what it did and how it hurt you, and it was questionable if it even managed that. It became so normal to live amongst it, this scourge, call it what you will, that it became impossible to imagine ever living without it. Call it the ‘thing’. It was the absolute rule to be ruled by it, to let it govern you, your actions, your choices, what you said to your friends and your family, down to how you perceived things in front of your eyes, natural objects, trees and nature, how you felt about literally anything, you had no control anymore, the thing declared itself at every possible juncture.
How we were so powerless. If it wasn’t for the fact that it had taken hold so long ago, had been part of our existence for such a long time, then we might have seen it more clearly, we might have been able to spot it -- and I’m talking hundreds of thousands of years here, back when we were living in bogs, upon snowy wastelands -- it had been amongst us for so long that it practically became us, merged into us, and this is hard to believe, that a physical thing could become part of something else, because it wasn’t a parasite, it was more, if anything, of an independent life form with its own will, its own force, its own god. It was so prevalent and innate, so much part of the fabric, that it went practically unnoticed. It had ultimate authority since a thing unrecognised as enforcer is the best enforcer you’ve got. Whatever it told us, we bought and lapped up. It was the way an older man becomes so used to his stoop, he almost never remembers walking normally without it. And he certainly never conceives of walking normally again. He accepts his gait like he accepts his leg is his leg.
And the thing about the thing was, you couldn’t see it. No outward symptoms, no cough, shortness of breath, no warts, boils, blisters, fever, fatigue, nausea, sickness, no delusions, delirium tremens, rheumatic pain, no pain at all. Nothing showed up on X-Rays, CAT scans, MRI’s, Ultrasounds, the patient was normal. There was no conceivable way you could link it to death, and ultimately anything that doesn’t threaten your life can’t be considered a threat.
You could only feel that you had it. In the same way you could say you were happy, there would be no way to prove it one way or the other. Something you had to take someone’s word for.
It became impossible to do anything without interference, without feeling the pull. As soon as you woke up, it was there and you felt it, in your blood and your bones. But then you didn’t know what it was like to live without it, no one remembered, nothing had been recorded, and if it had been, it was scarcely believed. The best you could hope for was this very subtle sense that something wasn’t quite right, like the back-of-the-throat tickle preceding a cold.
But then every single person felt the same way, so how could you say everyone was smitten, cursed, how could you say there was even a disease in the first place? We couldn’t all be afflicted. In every little thing there was this intruder. In every crack and interstice. When you moved, walked, when you brushed your teeth, when you sat, when you got into bed to go to sleep, when you cooked and shopped, when you eyed up the goods on the shelves and when you dropped them into the basket, when you reached up to grab something from high up, when you bent down, when you tied a shoe lace, just before you were about to say something, but also when you actually said it, the thing could be felt, this poison, reminding you of its impact, its grasp, its shadowy presence, when you rubbed your body down with your towel, when you dried up, when you stood for the bus, when you drove, when you adjusted your car seat a teensy bit forward, when you waited but then also when you were already there.
It was a big muddy wasteland with nowhere to walk, no place to sidestep, no way of preserving your shoes, no way back, no way forward. You were going to get slushed.
It wasn’t before I was much older that I noticed something was wrong. I was about nineteen. I’d spent my life up to then in some sort of state of ignorance. I can’t remember an exact incident but I started to sense something was wrong. It happened incrementally, it built up. I saw that the people around me weren’t happy, my parents of course, but also my teachers, my priests, I noticed that they were always complaining, saying something was wrong. I tried to work out what the thing was that took you from happy to unhappy. What was the turning point? But there wasn’t one. I kept on looking for it. I thought there must be a cause of this ennui, and when I get older, I thought, I’d find it. I never did. There was nothing. I was too young to understand what it was then, I just had an inkling. When you’re young it takes much longer to affect you, perhaps I wasn’t even infected, but now I’m infected, I know I have it big time. Now I can’t deny it.
Initially, when I became ill, they took me to specialists; Misters, Doctors, Professors. Preece, Love, Sharratt, Robes, I remember Doctor Robes the best. Santilal Parbhoo, the list goes on. My mother adored the process, found solace in going through the motions. She loved their self-importance, their certainty, the way they spoke in determined whispers. She wanted someone to tell her yes or no, because everyone beyond all the snarkiness and cynicism thinks there’s an answer, even if they’ll never say it to your face. She didn’t care about the thing. Or if she did, she didn’t relate it to me. What I mean is that she didn’t want to actually get at the thing, because she had not gone anywhere near realising she had the thing herself in spades. She was deflecting the thing; I was her scape-goat. I had test after test, every procedure under the sun, I flew to Portland, Oregon and spent a month in a Sanatorium in Bern. But they didn’t find anything. They told me I was fine. Despite all the reassurances I knew I wasn’t, I knew something was wrong and I didn’t understand why no one could see it. I could hardly walk without the thing appearing, taking me over. I couldn’t study, do my work and exams and eventually I had to leave school. How could they have said I was fine? I certainly felt much worse for it.
Then when I was a little older, I got talking to someone. By then I was working in a crumby restaurant in my local neighbourhood. He was a frequent customer, used to hang around after dark, get coffee and loiter. He was a talker, a bit of a disturbing presence. Slightly unnerving. I didn’t like to talk all that much by then, as the thing made it difficult. It made it difficult to know what to say, even to know my own thoughts, I had hardly any control and would often stutter. But the fact it was quiet and late made it easier, put me at ease. I was talking to this man, he must have been slightly older than me, perhaps five years older, and it was then when I must have alluded to what I didn’t know was the thing then, I must have started talking about the way I felt inside my body, perhaps I even told him about my non-diagnoses, all the wasted time and money, and this bit I remember, after I said it, he simply turned to me and said that he had it too, he laughed in my face, he told me everyone has it, didn’t I know, and he said there is almost no single person on this earth not infected by the thing. I was crestfallen. At least before, I’d had the consolation of thinking myself unique.
I brushed it off, didn’t pay much attention, the man was a drunk, an addict, I had all sorts of prejudices against those types of people and I gave him no credit. What have him the right to maintain it was normal?
He was the first person to reveal the secret and I didn’t even believe him.
I started to see everything differently. I could make sense of all the disaffection around me, and this man was right, everyone was disaffected, not exactly unhappy, but the reason was now apparent. They were taken over just like I was. They were labouring, struggling, they had to have every minute moment of their existence filtered through the thing, even if they didn’t know.
I started to have compassion for people, I started to feel for them like they were me, I literally saw emanations of me, entities that wanted the same as me, just to be free of the thing, to go back to how life was before the thing struck. Everything else was a mask.
But there were still so many who couldn’t differentiate. They thought the thing was them. If they weren’t exactly happy to live by its precepts they didn’t know any other way. They just couldn’t see it. He was in the minority of course, this man, he’d been the only one I’d found, but there were more behind closed doors, must have been, there were those who so needed that man, someone like him, or at least someone more credible, to confirm the existence of the thing, to give it a name, a badge, to officialise it, to make it real. Because how could you combat something if it had hardly been acknowledged?
Meanwhile there was no treatment, so I invented my own. I had no idea how the handful of others dealt with it, it wasn’t something we really spoke about. Perhaps we were still afraid of being ridiculed, shamed. We were afraid of being exposed. So we kept it a closely guarded secret. I tried all sorts of ointments and crystals, I tried yoga and meditation, I tried conventional medicine for other complaints, I tried Ayahuasca and chanting, but nothing worked, nothing gave me more than momentary relief.
Until one day. I found myself in bed just breathing. It wasn’t any special morning. I didn’t have to work that day, I didn’t have to get up. The thing would usually be there, as soon as I woke up. But for some reason, I was just breathing, slowly in, slowly out, not even particularly slowly, just normal breathing, it wasn’t some conscious breathing exercise, but I could feel myself breathing, and then I noticed, I just understood, that the thing didn’t like breath somehow, it lost its power amongst it. It didn’t flourish in the air flow. It was really that simple. I was cured, there was no great fanfare. The burden was lifted. I didn’t tell anyone.
And now just as things are starting to turn the tide, just as a few fringe organizations are springing up, communities, support groups, just as people are showing a true acknowledgment and a willingness to fight, I became ill. This illness I’m talking about was going to kill me in five months, the doctor just told me. It wasn’t just the thing, it was all over my body. I was only forty-five.
And as I looked down from the window of the first-floor consulting room, I saw a steady stream of people coming past on the thoroughfare, some arm in arm, some smiling, some carousing, and as I watched this steady stream of people, I wondered if the thing really was such a thing at all, because they seemed unconcerned and rather content. They were not the least bit pre-occupied by the thing, and not even in a subliminal way, you’d have been able to tell from their demeanour. At the very least they were oblivious. And there was I who had spent an admittedly large proportion of my time trying to combat the thing receiving my death sentence, and though I still had my compassion as I saw them, I knew they couldn’t see me and weren’t going to look up anyway. But if they had looked up, for whatever reason, I’m sure they wouldn’t have thought twice.
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Comments
Excellent,
layered and subtle, all the more satisfying for that.
you have a typo at "What have him the right to maintain it was normal?"
Really tight, immersive writing. Well done.
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This works so well - as Ewan
This works so well - as Ewan said, very tight, controlled, and totally immersive writing.
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Pick of the Day
This fascinating piece is our Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Day! Please do share/retweet if you enjoy it too.
Picture: Pixabay Creative Commons
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I can see this in a
I can see this in a collection of weird tales somewhere. Really good.
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the thng is a real thing, you
the thng is a real thing, you've brougth it to life- if it wasn't alaredy there?
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Great read. Reminded me of
Great read. Reminded me of Lovecraft and that is a very good thing indeed.
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Totally immersed in this
Totally immersed in this writing - very well deserved golden cherries. Merry Christmas Simon
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Meant to comment on this
Meant to comment on this yesterday. It has an "Incredible Shrinking Man" feel to it. My kinda story. Well deserved POTD.
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