AT THE MOOSEY MUD-FLAT

first published 'Euronymous' 1994


Ever since I got a bit better from my illness, I’ve wondered who the hell all the people are in my house. Once upon a time, seems like yesterday, I could look at the faces that occupied the place and recognise them for what they were. Matched them up with the photos in the family album. They’re now overgrown versions of my children - toddlers made adult. And more ancient people still, ensconced in the parlour, who give me the creeps, true, but they were once relations of mine, at least one representative for each generation. As I say, every damn room is crawling with strangers. Except one who is the spitting image of my wife who pretends to care for me - fetches me my medicine, scoops off the incontinence and even curls up beside me when the window floods the room with darkness. She smiles as if she knows no wickedness. Calls herself by the name my dear wife once bore. Yet this woman is older, wrinklier and far more evil.

Soon, I’ll be well enough again - perhaps to leave the house for a basinful of fresh air, as my mother once put it. Long since gone, my mother. Along with the other people I knew and trusted. No doubt under the ground here at the Moosey Mud-Flat, embraced each with each, slithery, slippery, brown-smeary limbs entwined. That’s where they’ll put me if I don’t look out. Just a few minutes ago a surrogate of my daughter, high as the doortop, came in masquerading her ability to play a game of charades without it being Christmas. They can’t fool me any longer. I’m getting much better. I can see people for what they are. And what are they? Chancers. Accidents of mind and matter. Creatures with which my delirium once peopled the place. Sloughed from dreams. No more, no less.

A sweet knock at my bedroom door. Can this be my daughter proper? In school uniform and a virgin still. It sounds to be her knock, other than the fact it continues to rat-tat, relentlessly, like a mouse in the wall. Why does she not come in? Surely, she must realise that I’ve not found my voice from where I lost it at the onset of my illness. I thump up and down on the mattress, in the hope that the springs will speak out. It’d do me a power of good to see my daughter again, instead of her grown-up version, instead of that thing who wifes it about as if she owns my body and slops me out wherever she damn well chooses with those awful awful tepid suds. Not listening to me. Not heeding my requests for an outing or, at least, a foray into the downstairs parlour. Says I’m not well enough. But who are those strangers down there, my dear? I can pretend with the best of them. I humour her. Make her believe that I believe her pantomime. Yet none of this explains the gentle rat-tat-tat. Like a fairy’s machine-gun. Or Elfin farts.

Finally, the door swings wide on throaty hinges. I can’t see well enough beyond the end of my chin, but I gauge its shape smaller than the normal visitor. As if one of my family has not grown up at all. Stunted. Dwarfed. A midget-sized thing that scutters under the bed. Sweep, sweep, I hear the dusting. A skittering beast hired simply to swab the floors? Surely not. Must be something, though. Can’t be the delirium again, now I’m so much better. Or maybe an echo of delirium. Yes, that’s it. A slight relapse. Nothing more. Got to expect it at my age.

How old am I? Not so old as some of my visitors, for sure. I can still recall first coming to the Moosey Mud-flat, with all the excitement of youth in my eyes and a sweetheart on my arm. The neighbours, bless their hearts, were so kind. Took in the washing when we didn’t see the rain. Or hear its rat-tat-tat-tat on the kitchen roof. Dug up the spuds for us, when we forgot. Sponged off the mirrors when they got smeared with hot breath. Even sluiced us down when we stank. You see, love was our all. We had eyes for nothing else. Domestic details were, after all, simply not for us. My wife then was so beautiful. When it was her bathtime, most of the old codgers came to watch. Cooed and whistled with delight. But only the women were hands-on. With me, too. Tut-tut-tutting at my bodily predicament as they coaxed me into the suds. The men jeered and pointed. So, perhaps, thinking about it, they were not so good as neighbours. Just chancers, themselves. Fingers and thumbs of fate.

The thing under the bed has gone. Whither, I don’t know. Indeed, the low mumbling hubbub downstairs where the others gathered has abated. For all I know, I’m alone in the whole house. I’ll have to get up, soon, since nobody’s going to bring me a hard-boiled egg and bread soldiers. The gutter leaks, splitter-splatter into the water butt. Tit-for-tat. I gave them all life. Now they pay me back with death. A fair exchange?

The sounds of Moosey Mud-Flat are distinctive. Slosh-slop. Caw-caw, as brown-smeared birds squawk and missoar. Crack, crack ... croak. God be thanked. I’ve found my voice. Dollop, twang, I delve into the mattress - to spread the tepid fetid spawn. Symbiosis. Parthenogenesis. Words with no meaning, words I cannot even spell. Like delirium. Brekekex coax coax.