BELONGINGS

By TR Deeks

Part One: Past Belongings

"I demand nothing," said the wild looking fellow with yellow straw hair standing alone in a raincoat in the middle of nowhere. Afterwards he gets into his car and drives away, to a supermarket car park and other places. At night giant candles alight flickering in the gloom light the motorway. The road and all the other cars and people and sky are some sort of quick setting spongy foam plastic or something, he thinks he doesn't think anyway there are thoughts. He drives to a motorway service station, parks the car and enters through automatic doors the service station restaurant is coloured bright yellow and green he stands in line with a brown plastic tray at the food counter waiting to be served a plate of thin oily dry chips or fries and over heated baked beans. He sits at a yellow plastic table one of many yellow plastic tables where other people sit, their cars parked outside with his. They eat enjoying the polystyrene food shown on the plastic menus and drinking some sort of whitish, red or brown frothy milky effervescence out of plastic cups through long narrow curly shiny stripy coloured plastic tubes straws.

1. Waiting in line for chips he strips to his underwear. Don't touch yerself yer cunt. It's certain he'll be arrested. He spent last night under a heavy water tank surrounded by a geodesic sphere of photo-detectors. Throughout his life he flirted with mathematics, he wanted to find a new mathematical explanation of nature. Now he's in search of a cave refuted to be full of bones, an ancient burial chamber dating back to Neolithic times five thousand years ago. Some of the bones have been in the cave so long they've been covered by a layer of limestone and cemented to the rocks. Why did none of them have heads? He wonders. Why did none of them have heads?

She was standing waiting by the road outside the service station, bathed in ultraviolet light of young blue stars. This is my first visit she said. They know everything before it happens. Her eyes dart from side to side. She doesn't have a TV in her room. I see in X-ray all the time. But we haven't left the ground yet. The nearest star she said. Which one? The nearest sun, the nearest cosmic grain of hot radiating particle a-shining, on the strange, rough misty worlds that rush around barely visible in the hot-cold volumes of space manifest below it.

She was standing outside the service station. It was dusk. Lit the way they are these days. He stopped the car she got in she was holding a plastic carrier bag. They drove off together in the vehicle he asked where she was going. The next star she replied. Which one's that? He asked. The nearest sun she answered. He looked at her, bathed in ultraviolet light of young blue stars, emanating a wonderful overwhelming feeling of peace and love. There's nothing in the bag she said it's empty. The nearest star she said the nearest sun. He gripped the wheel looking out front at the road ahead, the lights of the traffic in the other lanes coming and going speeding by and the light from the grains of stars overhead. But we haven't left the ground yet, he said. She said, Keep your eyes ahead. She said she scored abnormally high neurotic levels. Her eyes dart from side to side. She doesn't have a television in her room. They know everything before it happens. I see in X-ray all the time, like the screen, the TV screen, computer screen, the media screen, the mind screen. That's how they know. It's all transparent to them, totally transparent. They actually use artificial black holes they construct in secret to alter time and reality back and forth, back and forth, switching events changing things, manipulating, it's so fucked up now, no one knows how bad or where or what the fuck they are anymore these days or who or why, evolution's got lost in time, time's got lost in time, we're evolved mechanics, technicians, poets, magicians, musicians, monkeys, space pilots. That's why I'm going to the next star, see, to block out the electro-magnetic waves and X-rays, Y-rays, P-rays and Z-rays and all that other shit they put out.

They drove all night, sometimes she slept, sometimes he did. They drove all day, 'til all the roads were used up and done and they arrived at the end of all roads where all roads end where the traffic spills over off an uneven edge into an abyss no one and nothing can cross and tell. He didn't drive them that far not yet, there was a turn-off about half a nod they took before the last part. She was awake now so was he. He was awake now so was she. They entered the suburbs.

2. Suburbs
They entered the suburbs at night. They drove around a while in the traffic under street lights, under the strange eye of the moon and the low distant moans and hisses of far-away stars. Good luck Major Clanger. They showed it on TV, Earth orbits glitter ball. They stopped at a supermarket to do some shopping, under the bright strip lighting of the store pushing a shopping trolley each around the aisles filling them with things from the packed shelves, tins of foods, cereals, breads, cakes, rolls, milk, fruit, yoghurts, cheeses, sweets, ice cream, soft drinks, bottled water, alcohol, shampoos, shaving foam, bleach, bubble bath, bathroom tissue paper. She was looking for something in particular as well, she asked a shop assistant. What I want, she said, is something to protect against bad feelings it might be a cream. Try the pharmacy, the assistant replied but when she did it was no sorry nothing like that here not in a cream, try over at aisle thirteen charms and potions, ask the in-store warlock, he'll help.
It's a pill the warlock told her, you take just one that's all, it lasts a month okay, magical charms to protect against bad feelings I got to say a few words too to make the pill more successful. The warlock said the magic words. I feel better all ready, she told him. People always do he replied. Tell me your name the warlock asked her. My name is Luria.
Who's your friend? The warlock asked about the man pushing the full trolley along the aisle. Tell him your name, Luria said, stopping the trolley with her hand. My name is made up answered the man his trolley spilling over with supermarket goods. Pick a name, said the warlock. Mr Stone, the man replied. Mr Stone, the warlock said. Mr Stone, Luria said. They left the supermarket with only the magical charm pill to protect against bad something or other. The other stuff in the trolleys they leave behind in one of the aisles. They never really wanted any of it. They rent a room somewhere. Stay the night leaving early next morning. Back on the motorway, stopping at service stations. That's when it happened. All the contents of the universe congregated in a homogenous sphere flies apart whirling outwards. Chaos ensues all police leave is cancelled, mass protest, rioting and disorder on a global scale. At noon all the machines go mad smashing everything up like fucking everything that moves, it's like sex to them, fucking things up, cars, trains, other machines, pulling things down, buildings, radio masts, electricity pylons, aircraft helicopters in the sky, a great feast for the machinery for days and nights a new race of machine guns grenade attacks military units seal off streets seconds later the airport gets it 70% of industry wipes itself out.

As the evening wore on vehicles were hijacked and set on fire the road way was ablaze, they abandoned their cars and set off on foot, the lights of a service station ahead. In the dark sky overhead jagged silver clouds of crumpled aluminium floated somehow drifting lit up underneath flaming orange and red through spiralling plumes of black smoke rising from the fires burning in the wrecks of the cars below. On top of the silver clouds green skinned people-like creatures all naked looking down with eyes silver and red, from the floating crumpled aluminium at the terrible chaos in the smoky world aglow below. Some of the clouds crash and burn, even a war in the clouds, the green skinned people fallen melt bubbling like hot plastic howling in the fires on the scorched pitted tarmac of the world.

3. You Get Me, Amigo?
He woke in the cold morning lying in wet grass far from the road. He remembered last night setting fire to the car under a sky of glowing silver, red, orange and black clouds. The morning sky was overcast. He sat up and looked around at a field he was in. Someone was lying a few feet away close to bird chirruping hedgerow she was holding a plastic carrier bag. Her arm moved, she said something. He said something back. She said something back to him. He said something back to her. She got up. She looked in the plastic carrier bag, "Nothing left," she said, "all gone."
"Nothing left," he repeated, "all gone." Even the heads he thought, why did none of them have heads? He wondered. "Let's get back to the car," he said then remembered, all gone. At least let's get back to the wreck he thought. He went she followed, picking up things she found to put in the bag. He told her to leave it she showed him what she'd found. He told her to leave it.
They got to the motorway where traffic going as usual, vehicles sped by, the road surface flat and even, road markings clear, no signs of fire, all the wrecks must have been cleared away. All except for his they discovered completely burnt out in a lay-by. "Give me the bag," he said to her, she handed it over, "this is mine now," he said, "look at my car, it's fucked."
"That's not fair," she protested, "it's not my fault you set your car alight. Anyway I've had that bag from the start." "I had no choice," he replied desperate sounding, "You saw what happened last night, the chaos, you saw those things on the clouds, what was I supposed to do, what the fuck was I supposed to do, I only did what everyone else was doing, what anyone else would have done."
"So what the fuck do you want the bag for?" "There's nothing in the bag," he said. "That's because you told me to empty it," she spoke accusingly pointing a finger, "it's for those heads isn't it, it's for those bloody heads that aren't even there in that fucking limestone cave, it was you that told me, you told me yourself, none of them have heads you said why do none of them have heads?"
He shook his head he gave her back the carrier bag. She had won. He walked away she followed. They left the motorway. They crossed a field. They came to a quiet road. They stopped a passing car. They told the driver about what happened last night. The driver told them to get in the car and drove them back onto the motorway, dropping them at the nearest service station where they ate in the restaurant at a yellow table with green seats. Halfway through the meal she said "I'm going to the toilets."
He finished his food. He didn't wait long. He left. She never returned to the table. Anyway he was gone. She may have returned but not for him, who was he. He didn't even have a head, she thought, why didn't he have a head? She wondered.

There is a river with no name it runs to an uncharted sea. Once again we crossed the great ocean, with a growing sense of being conscious for the first time. I know, I don't know, all I know is, when the lights change, giddiness and elation, a universe full of disorder and delirium, unbounded space of finite volume, the endless change and infinite duration of space, going out live, on a side-street somewhere, shot semi-documentary and a fun fair ride in every cloud, a fun fair ride in every street, every home every room, a fun fair ride for each person, either way, a black hole for each of us. A doorbell rings a clap of thunder. Listen for voices. You get me, Amigo?

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