Moving Things

by Stephen OToole

3 Benalder Street

 

My bedroom’s tiny. It’s three bicycles in length and one and a half bicycles in width. I don’t own a bicycle. I don’t have the space for it.

 

The bedroom isn’t big enough for another person to stand in, unless I’m being intimate with that person. But I can’t be intimate with that person, because there’s nowhere to put our clothes once we’ve taken them off. I’m not intimate with anyone here.

 

My bed is on stilts. I climb a ladder to reach it. I’m told this is the ‘best use of the space’. My bed gives me vertigo. One night I’m sick all down the wall. It’s brown in colour. It’s everywhere. In the morning, it’s all over my face. I phone my mum, and cry in bed while she cleans the wall and throws out some books I’ve ruined. Shortly after this she has an affair and I don’t speak to her for two years. I spend two years wondering if the reason for this is brown in colour.

 

My lease expires and I’ve nowhere else to go. I worry this is something to do with being very quiet and unable to grow a beard. The landlord lets me stay on another month ‘while the flat’s gutted’. The flat struggles from around eight ‘til three, and then it’s still and quiet. I hide in my room all day. I’m a shit ghost.

 

 

15 Haldane Street

 

I turn up late on moving day, and find the four of us are sharing three fridge shelves. One of us is sleeping with another, though, so that’s okay; there’s a place for me after all. Sharing goes in all directions; it’s like an owl’s head.

 

There’s one dark corridor, with doors all down the side. Sometimes, when no one else is there, I stand inside the other rooms and move things. I’d like to get caught. I know from experience that an accusation is just the start.

 

My bed is some wooden slats on castors. I roll up my mattress, and hold together with a ribbon. It’s an architectural blueprint of a mattress. I carry it with me to nightclubs and lay it on the floor. I gather girls around and show them the plans. They say I’ll never get it off the ground.

 

My things are stuffed in the salad drawer. I can hear my flatmate crying through a door. I don’t know which door, and I don’t know which flatmate. I leave a note for each of them saying ‘I’m sorry’. On the bus I get three separate texts saying ‘apology accepted’.

 

 

4 Dunearn Street

 

No one mentions mice before I move in. Mice exist outside my perceptual experience. They’re like a stable, meaningful relationship that isn’t on television. They’re like pickled mussels. Then I move in, and they’re like anti depressant medication, or a girl’s breasts; I’ve experienced a few different kinds, but ‘jaded’ isn’t a word I’d use to describe myself in relation to any of them.

 

My bed is my parent’s bed. My dad says he ‘doesn’t need it any more’. He means he ‘doesn’t want it any more.’ My bed is far too big for me. I can never hope to fill it. It spans continents. I can’t roll over, in case I fall into the Atlantic. I try to sleep with someone, but we’re in different parts of the world. I can see her, but only through a special telescope that hasn’t been invented yet. There’s a cold front off the ocean. I don’t need a telescope to see where it went wrong for my parents.

 

My flatmate’s selling things on Ebay. My dad says he has something for her. He takes box after box from his car. My flatmate’s laughing. The boxes are filled with everything I’ve ever owned and left at home. It is all my Christmas’s come at once and in reverse. My flatmate’s taking things from the boxes between two fingers. She can’t ‘sell this shit’. My dad leaves it in the street. I can’t bear to look at it. On Thursday the council will come and take it away.

 

I catch a mouse with a glue trap. He’s committing suicide. I make him a sandwich and crumble it in my hands. The crumbs fall in front of him. He doesn’t even look at them. He’s a rodent and is arguably not rational. I become desperate. I set up more traps. I will catch him some friends. Perhaps they’ll talk sense into him. The next day he’s dead, and the carpet’s crawling with mourning mice.

 

 

47 Wilton Street

 

The mice are making noises again; they haven’t forgotten. They want to know why I let him die. They won’t leave me alone. They can’t understand that he wanted this. They hold vigils through the night. I have to learn to live in a way where my feet don’t touch the floor. This is ‘a mark of respect’. It’s something like a scar.

 

My bed is very supportive. It’s never let me down. It composes itself in certain ways, little notes for me like ‘They had a party in here last night. You were at work, and they didn’t tell you’ or ‘Someone’s taking money from underneath your mattress’. Only I can understand these notes. My parent’s bed’s in bits underneath me, like a troll under a bridge.

 

Suddenly two years have passed and my mum’s at the door. She has a bucket and mop. I want to explain to her that two years have passed, but I instead I just point to the bedroom. She gets to work without a word. She scrubs at the spotless walls, so hard that the wallpaper peels. Hours and afternoons of lifetimes fall away to the floor. The tenants before liked yellow; the tenants before them, blue; the tenants before this stared at sunflowers all day. They’re ugly, but no one’s ever given me flowers before, so I start to cry.

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~ This piece was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 and was filed under Blog, Featured, Short Story, Writing. You can make comments on it below. ~