The Last Songs
I have thirty six terrapins in total and come hell or high water I intend to post all of them through the letterbox of the Bramley-in-Arden Conservative Club. Yes. I know what you are thinking. That this will probably kill them all. I am not a monster. I have taken the precaution of pumping quite a considerable amount of water through the door already. More than enough for the over-night requirements of three dozen relatively small amphibians.
I am ninety-seven years old. There is every chance that my failing joints will betray me. That having bent down to perform this act of protest I will not be able to get up again. That my legs will seize, will freeze, will bind me to the scene of the crime. It is a cold, dank night and I have been folded double, down on my knees, for some time.
Listen. I’m almost singing now aren’t I? The pills sometimes spin my thoughts into circles. Listen. What else can we hear? The terrapins make a light tumb or a delicate cla-cack as they hit the tiled floor of the Conservative Club depending on whether they land on their front or on their armoured backs. Listen. What else? My knees creak. A gentle breeze flirts with the rhododendrons. The wings of moths flicker and switch as they play in what is left of the moonlight.
I am of the opinion that if you curse someone, if you promise a series of plagues, it is common courtesy to at least try to ensure those plagues actually occur. I am well aware that frogs are more traditional than terrapins but as I mentioned earlier, I am ninety-seven. My days of being able to run around duck ponds gathering up frogs and toads are long behind me. Terrapins are what the pet shop had and so terrapins are what I deliver.
The newly fallen rain sparkles in the moonlight like broken glass in a multi-storey car park. There is the threat of newly passed danger in its beauty. To get so old that you fear the rain is a sorry thing. To get so old that you are propped up by heparin and amphetamine, rushing about on hollowed limbs and borrowed time, buying tropical pets to stuff through the doorway of a Conservative Club to take a revenge the origins of which you cannot remember and the validity of which you have no hope of verifying? Oh, that is the sorriest thing of all.
The man in the pet shop told me they were called red-backs. I remember at the time that I thought this amusingly fitting though I have no idea why now. All I can think of is that red is the colour of Labour and that I am knelt before a Conservative Club. Is this about politics? I don’t remember ever being particularly political. I can’t remember ever even voting. Remember, remember, the size of his… That is all I have left now, schoolyard chants and the flow of songs.
Listen. Have I said that? Listen. Is that footsteps? How long before someone finds me? I am happy to take my punishment; looking forward to it if my punisher will first pause briefly to help me into an upright position. My judge must first be my liberator, must free me from the chains of my own bone and muscle. My only fear is that when they see me, my limbs locked and frozen, the door with the hosepipe through it, and the scuttling creatures on the other side they will ask me a question I have no hope of answering. They will ask me, why?
I sing the last songs now. The songs of the pills and the end. I don’t mind. I do things and then lose the reasons. Listen. Can you hear the songs too? They sound like the petty squabbling of starlings. They sound like the mewing of lost lambs. Like the collapse of dead leaves smitten with the false promises of the earth. Like knives through plaster. Like the desperate panting of dogs. Like the deathly silence of the church. Like bruises blooming. Like a kind forgetting. They live in me for brief, wonderful moments and then drift to eternity. They are scared of being touched. They fear me but they will sing to me, these songs, these ideas, these brittle, fleeting memories.
I am colder now than I was. Colder perhaps than I have ever been. I can remember this as being funny when it started. I think this started off as a joke. I don’t think I intended to be the punch line. The shop keeper said something. Listen. I don’t remember. I can’t remember. They were called red-backs. I can feel the side of me that is pressed to the concrete but not that which the air toys with. Have I fallen over? Is…
b…
I am colder now than I was.
Listen. Can you hear the flat croak of the gulls as the sirens stir them from their perches? They are coming for me now. I don’t think they will be quick enough. If I close my eyes I can hear the last songs. Listen.
Listen.
Listen.
Benjamin Judge lives in Manchester. He writes short and very short stories. He plans to write a novel about people. He will be extremely grateful if you don’t steal this idea. His blog is Who the Fudge is Benjamin Judge? You can find him on twitter @benjaminjudge.
