January

Loneliness, worry and depression watch the sun set in paradise. She left them there, fleeing back to normality; leaving them stranded in this place of dreams. They walk the shore, stepping gingerly among the fish carcasses. Fishermen with dynamite.

How are you, my friend? Would you like to buy something? They shake both their hands and their heads. Good, they say, while they keep on walking. The meaning of the word friend so far diluted that they are no longer even an acquaintances.

They almost wanted him, but not quite. That’s how it always went. He hadn’t even got his hopes up. He’d long since accepted his fate as runner-up. It filled him with a kind of peace, knowing that the best had to struggle to beat him, even if they always did. It wasn’t so bad being a second.

Sanity had run off together. It had left them somewhere on the second day. That’s why he too had tried to run away. It was cheaper that way. If they ran off together, they thought, then everybody will know. It would be a story to tell the children, even as they gibbered on about the shadows and the shapes that chased them through the night.

Giggling paranoia consumed their world.

Death in the family. It was difficult at dinner parties. He didn’t say very much. He just sat there, chewing his food, a bucket at his feet to catch the things that fell through. There the dog could eat it. That way it wouldn’t steal a part of him. He’d lost more than enough already. Somebody had given him a party hat.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t go back. Normality frightened him. The ordinary drove him insane. ‘Mundanity’ he called it, that affliction of man that made them accept ignorance and mediocrity. It was an insidious disease, closely linked to fear of failure and it was spreading, growing stronger by the year; slowly snuffing out dreams and feeding on ambition.

Just be normal, that’s already strange enough.

The hooks of commitment and responsibility were firmly lodged in his soul, pulling him this way and that. A network of cords and bands that kept him firmly lodged in the fabric of society. It made him feel safe, these chains of expectation and obligation.

I wonder if all marionettes think they are free.