Boundary Park

Boundary Park was one of the most picturesque stations in the
region. In the late autumn sun the undulating countryside looked almost
like a scaled down version of the rolling Russian Steppe. It
was?romantic. The train lumbered into view and stopped poetically to
let Jack board in a perfect straight line.

Jack - Big Jack as he was affectionately known (due to a rather
'robust' physique) - slid luxuriously into the upholstery of the train
seat. The buildings of Boundary Park switched and shimmied, and
eventually passed into the distance as the vehicle gathered speed. He
had been in his job three weeks, and it was his twenty first birthday.
He remembered he had been told by a somewhat envious older friend that
the years between eighteen and twenty one were the best of a young
man's life, and he - Howard the taxi driver - had not been wrong. The
first three years of Big Jack's majority had been truly memorable. He
had been - most vitally for a young man - introduced into the various
mysteries of sex by a succession of girls - thin ones, fat ones,
romantics and opportunists alike. And furthermore he had seen the
Northern lights in Norway and been pummelled into submission by Turkish
masseurs - all in the space of one glorious month.

Ten minutes passed, and Jack slouched further. Thoughts drifted back
through his life. He pondered how far he had come, the ungainly,
victimised schoolboy who had retreated so often to the mundane oasis of
Boundary Park to escape the acid words of his playground tormentors.
"Fat shit" was the worst. The sheer venom of this phrase had penetrated
the organism, and was only just being neutralized. With a good office
job he was in clover, and could look forward to a lucrative and
therefore highly erotic decade. He glanced to his right and licked his
lips as the girl across the aisle crossed her bare legs. It was
exciting - to be successful and twenty-one. His dick reminded him
suddenly of its existence, then immediately the daydream was shattered
as the conductor slid into view. Jack absently stated his
destination.

"Where from?" snapped the young conductor.

Ignorant jerk. "B-Boundary Park." Jack's brain applied the brakes half
way through the phrase. His vocal chord finished the job on its behalf.
"B-B-Boundary Park."

Odd. A second superfluous "B". Jack paid for his ticket, thought for a
while about his verbal hesitation, then resolved to forget it.

On the way to the office from the station, Jack bumped into an old
friend from his schooldays. So what was Jack doing nowadays? The words
assembled in their usual orderly fashion. Then, crowding and jostling
at the wall of his teeth, waiting to be born into the cold clean air of
conversation, they suddenly began to stumble over each other, and
revolt, clinging to their life inside the safe warm interior of Jack's
mouth. The vowels were the greatest rebels. "I..I.." he grimaced in
panic at his friend. He tried an alternative approach. "O-Off-Office
work." Jack sighed in miserable embarrassment and intense relief that
the ordeal of answering an old friend had been dispensed with.

What was happening to him?

Over several minutes Jack finally broke free of this wretched fellow.
He was sick, he confessed. One too many last night. He might even go
home. Patting his friend hastily on the back and probably risking the
greatest offence, he continued the short journey to the office.

It was bloody. For Big Jack - sexy, successful, twenty one year old
Jack, the clean-limbed golden birthday boy - the very act of speaking
had become like perching on the very edge of a cliff, but like in a
dream, so he leant improbably far forward. The situation was surreal -
despite all endeavour his feet remained attached to the rock.

In the office opposite Sandra, the phone rang. "H-H-Hell.." Christ -
even the final 'o' conspired with its brother words to humiliate him.
He was going to be ill. Big Jack couldn't talk. He put the phone down,
relieved that Sandra had not noticed his faux pas, and through
necessity, utterly without care for the customer on the line.

He would think of the phone all day - at lunch, in the bathroom. It
became a purely malicious and hateful invention for him. What
misfortune, what violence or cruel twist of fate would he not bring
down on that monster Graham Bell? At lunch he even visited the internet
to discover more fascinating facts about the wondrous labour saving of
that revolutionary invention. How he wished the infernal telephone had
never been invented! Suddenly he yearned; his mind tricked him further
and transported him back to the muggy, womb-like idyll of the mediaeval
peasant. What joy, without all this phoney erudition to aspire
to!

Back in the office he wanted to cry. By now, and all the time, he
thought longingly not merely of the good old fourteenth century but of
Boundary Park, of that little boy snatching a little solace and comfort
from the harsh cruelty of the schoolyard. That innocuous chunk of
greenery was a retreat that actually existed in the here and now.

His reverie was crassly cut in two by the piercing warble of the phone.
His blood flash-froze, and he tentatively pressed the receiver to his
jaw. He found himself suddenly hunching, his spine twisting a little to
hide his guilty face behind his computer screen. He pursed his lips and
grimaced, and for a moment he immortalized himself not even as a
peasant but as some kind of gargoyle, not a man at all in the modern
sense. For after all, what use is a man in the post-industrial age if
he cannot talk? He began to tut - he had begun to improvise little
'triggers' that if activated correctly, would with immense relief
propel him swiftly back into the world of men. But this time no sound
came. There was a croaking, and a hideously ugly rasping.

"Hello?" the arrow darted forth from the earpiece. An authoritative
male voice, with all the confidence and hideous cruelty this
implies.

"Hello?" an audible tut could be heard, and a fidgeting of increasing
exasperation, The man on the phone - now a vast problem to be overcome
- would surely see him sacked for this.

There was nothing else for it. This bitter enemy would not end the
torture, so Jack did it himself. The old puzzling cut-off trick. He
placed the receiver down and turned to explain himself to his
colleagues, who by now where studying him with some curiosity. He would
launch into he usual lament about the phone system, and opened his
mouth as naturally as he could to do so. But this time, again, he found
that the power of vocal inspiration had again deserted him. His eyes
bulged in terror, and the trickles of perspiration could now be clearly
discerned on his temples. He gasped, and could feel the tears welling.
He looked straight into the eyes of Sandra, his closest colleague,
whose face was marked not by her usual empathy, but by the traces of a
malevolent sman.

That fact - Sandra's betrayal - was too much for Big Jack. He rose from
his chair and darted out of the office, and for a moment he was in the
street. In one hustle of decisiveness, he had freed himself from the
tyranny of the vocal chord. He was out in the street, heading slowly
for the station and for Boundary Park. Suddenly there was no job, no
commitment, no friends, no contacts, no yes and no, no opinions, no
phone queries.

He was heading for Boundary Park, and he was a boy again.