George Tedworth

    

2013

Contents

I. George Tedworth, p. 4.

II. Queen’s Gate, p. 5.

III. A painting, p. 13.

IV. Melancholic world – the gate and the knife, p. 14.  

V. Three books, p. 16.

VI. The black swan, p. 17.

VII. Melancholic world – the clever quizzical woman, p. 19.

VIII. Broken-Tail’s insight and the feral wheelchair man, p. 20.

IX. Melancholic world – the Hawthorn spiders, p. 23.

X. Clean the gutters, p. 24.

XI. Prospects, p. 25.

XII. A blonde and a brunette, p. 29.

XIII. Melancholic world – the homunculus, p. 31.

XIV. The frog and the epiphany, p. 34.

XV. Melancholic world – the rose greenhouse, p. 35.

XVI. Questions of conscience, p. 35.

XVII. Clay to make bricks, p. 37.

XVIII. Reconnaissance, plotting, and planning, p. 37.

XIX. A camera, p. 40.

XX. The plant, p. 41.

XXI. The retrieval, p. 44.

XXII. Footage, p. 46.

XXIII. A place to stash, p. 47.

XXIV. Pointy shoes, p. 48.

XXV. Ready, p. 51.

XXVI. Melancholic world – the Devil, p. 51.

XXVII. The attempt, p. 53.

For that subtile Enemy of Mankind (since Providence will not permit him to mischief us without our own concurrence) attempts that by stratagem and artifice, which he could never effect by open ways of acting; and the success of all wiles depending on their secresie and concealment, his influence is never more dangerous than when his agency is least suspected. In order therefore to the carrying on the dark and hidden designs he manageth against our happiness and our Souls, he cannot expect to advantage himself more by insinuating a belief, That there is no such thing as himself, but that fear and fancy make Devils now, as they did Gods of old. Nor can he ever draw the assent of men to so dangerous an assertion, while the standing sensible evidences of his existence in his practices by and upon his instruments are not discredited and removed.

‘Tis doubtless therefore the interest of this Agent of darkness to have the World believe, that the notion they have of him is but a phantome and conceit; and in order thereonto, that the stories of Witches, Apparitions, and indeed everything that brings tidings of another World, are but melancholick Dreams, and pious Romances.

                      Glanvil, Saducismus Triumphatus. The First Part. (1682), pp. 2-3. Glanvil’s italics.

George Tedworth

George Tedworth was not very tall, he was a little short if anything, but only a little, and he had a full, grayish-brown moustache, which he kept trim. There was a problem with George’s face, and people were repelled by it.

When George had been hired by the company that held the contract that was given out by the town of Fremantle for maintaining the cleanliness of Queen’s Gate, he became part of a two-man team responsible for the seven-day per week job. Soon, his fellow worker needed his weekends off, which was understandable considering his work-load – he held a second job, carrying girders on construction sites – and he also had family commitments, and so George had taken over these additional weekend hours himself, and this was how his situation had begun. When the other man eventually left the job, George carried on by himself, and had done so ever since. Doing the entire job himself was first done as an expedient, since the owners of the contract found it difficult to secure another person immediately, even to assist. In the end they never did find another worker, and he just continued on by himself. Instead of being paid for three and a half hours per night, he gained another three and a half hours, for a total of seven hours per night. George had soon become so familiar with the job that it did not take him that amount of time, and he was rarely seen by the day staff, – which was something, he felt, they appreciated: no one was underfoot.

George knew why the company that had hired him had the trouble finding a second person: Queen’s Gate needed attention seven days per week, which was a difficult scenario to find a person for. The hours were not attractive either. They did not even have another person in the company that was familiar with the job, so none could fill in for him should he need a night off – for sickness, for example. He also held strong suspicions that if another person was trained for the job, that would be a lever that could enable them to remove him from the job – although why they’d want to, George did not know, it was just something that he felt. And, he’d seen signs.

George had by this stage, worked every single night over the past four years at Queen’s Gate, with the exception of two days each year, – religious holidays, during which the car park was closed, on which nights he would turn up anyway, unaware, only to find that it had been closed the previous day, he’d raise his hands to the ceiling of the ground floor, delirious with pleasure at finding this to have been so.

George knew that had become more than a little skewed, caused by the continual nightly hours that he served at Queen’s Gate. He had felt frayed a long time since, and of late, had concerns that he might be becoming a little mad. He often found himself numbly staring at things. His mind would empty, his eyes would go out of focus, and his jaw would slowly drop, until he suddenly came to again. Whenever this happened, he found it to be strangely relaxing, but a little disturbing too, since it could happen at the oddest of moments. Once, seated in a busy waiting room of a government building, having carried in some inane bit of paperwork that they’d suddenly insisted on; he came out of one of these phase-outs and uttered a loud, ‘I beg your pardon?’ which was met with much uncomfortable shifting in chairs as no-one had addressed him. After comparing the number on his ticket with that showing on the screen, he found that he had missed out on his turn regarding the paperwork. Two months later he received a fine, which he grudgingly paid, sending a money order for it by mail.

Over the past eight months or so, he’d begun to read signs of the future to come, in the behaviours of animals, – such as insects and birds, which constituted his most common companions, – and from inanimate objects, which signs would govern his actions. It had begun with innocuous beliefs, the earliest of which were simple warnings, instructing him to act on matters in response to events, or ill fortune would come his way. The moon too, featured large in his thoughts.

Despite of these encroaching oddities, he maintained this schedule, largely because he feared that he would be unable to gain another job, should he be replaced; just the thought of this made him fidget with concern. Not once had he missed a day, he never called in sick, since there was no one to replace him. When ill, he still turned up at Queen’s Gate, and took care of his duties. There had been days that he was burning with fever, and he would strip and lie down on the cold concrete floor of the storeroom, to try and break the heat (an effective treatment). He was rarely ill though, and a doctor had once told him that aside from the tobacco affecting his lungs, he was very healthy, ironically on account of the daily work; the job was hard graft, and this was a good thing. Still, there was this numbness in his brain.

Queen’s Gate

Painted predominantly in dark blue, the six-story car park named Queen’s Gate loomed over him.  Queen’s Gate was large, long, and cavernous. She was far longer than she was wide, and George walked towards one of the narrow ends whilst he fiddled with a set of keys that he had removed from his pockets. Both of the narrow ends of the car park gave pedestrians access via a broad, hardy-tiled hallway, which, late at night, was closed to the public via means of a lowered roller door. As he walked along, George was looking for the key to a small metal box that sat mounted on a wall by the roller door, which gave access to the buttons that operated it.

Set into the middle of a long length of Queen’s Gate, was the main entryway, where vehicles would enter. The entry was a well-lit cavernous space. Two long roller-shutters, which sat side by side, denied access at this time of night, to be re-opened early in the morning. A ticket and administration office was worked into the ground floor by the front entry. A police station and the law courts sat directly opposite the entry, on the other side of the street. Queen’s Gate was tacked onto a larger building, which was a fraction taller than the car park. The building’s two primary tenants were a department store with a rich history, – it possessed a stunning doorway of white marble tiles at one end of the building, – and a cinema.

Queen’s Gate was locked for the night. The car park closed each night at midnight, except on weekend nights, when she closed at one in the morning. Large signs informed the public of these times in all relevant places: at the boom gates as they entered with their cars; at all pedestrian entries; in the ticket-office; at each of the payment machines; in the stairwells. If a car was left in the car park at closing time, it could not be gotten out until the next morning. George cleaned the car park between the hours of closing and the hours of opening again. He always arrived after the last day worker had left; he had never met nor spoken to one of them.

A switch found deep within the car park, kept within an alcove behind a metal frame door covered in fence-wire, was engaged, and with an echoing clunk-like sound, rows upon rows of extra lights flickered into life on all the levels of the car park; there was always a minimum of lighting on within the car park for safety purposes, and so that the security cameras could record some usable footage. The switch that George had engaged, turned on all of the additional, operational lighting; but at night, even with these switched on, the levels remained relatively dim-lit from one light source to the next as Queen’s Gate contained immense spaces within the dark of night.

The large deep room to which he next gained access was filled to near capacity, goods piled on the floor reached into the gloom towards a high ceiling. There sat in that room: broken, abandoned, or superseded machinery, most of which had either issued or read parking tickets; boom gates unbolted from their sockets, both broken and whole; and large papier-mâché figures, which were once worn or carried for street parades – there were demons, clowns, sailors, priests, and others, many of which were broken, or disfigured; a priest with missing eyes and most of its forehead caved in loomed a little higher than the others. The day people kept moving material into the room and George often had to clear a path to get to his station. Little red tickets printed in black with patterns of punched holes lay strewn across the plain concrete floor of the room.

A single globe attached to a long electrical cord that dangled low, was switched on. George could set the globe to swinging by reaching up only slightly above his head, which would send shadows of the papier-mâché figures playing about the room. It lit a scene in a back corner of the room that showed a knee-high sink, next to which sat a sturdy, round red-coloured plastic mop bucket on wheels, and a sturdy mop which rested head up against the wall. The sink had a grill that could be lowered so that the mop bucket could sit on it beneath the tap. In this corner of his, he also kept a robust broom with a broad head; a long-handled, metallic blue-painted, chipped, and rusted in spots, metal dustpan and its accompanying wooden shorter-handled broom; and a broad sweeper. A backpack vacuum cleaner with a twenty-five-meter cord hung on a hook embedded in the wall. George also had spray bottles filled with a pleasant smelling blue liquid; large containers with his supplies of undiluted blue, light blue, red, and bleach liquids; and a supply of toilet and hand towel rolls, stored there. The ceiling of the room, even though it sat high, appeared deceptively low because it was covered with pipes, many of which were suspended feet lower on long tines. There were cobwebs too, which connected pipes to pipes, and pipes to ceiling, which had been made by unfortunate spiders, long since starved to death. The room was dusty, and the air was bone-dry. He licked his lips and passed a hand over his face and forehead, adding moisture to sensitive fingers, as he moved towards his equipment.

The ground level of the car park had a number of rooms and compartments built into it, as well as having space for parking. The tiled pedestrian-access hallway through which George had entered ran through the center of the front of a narrow end of Queen’s Gate. On either side of this access-way was embedded a store – both of which sold beads, – which had frontage on the tiled access-way beyond the roller door and also onto the footpath that ran around the building.

Beyond the roller door, sat a foyer a little broader than the hallway, which contained ticket-payment machines; access to a stairwell without a door; and a lift. The lift shaft and the stairwell rose through all the levels and terminated on the rooftop, fifth floor. Through a door-less doorway, the space curled through within, past some staff-use-only water closets, and again around and beyond, into the car park space proper, where cars could be parked on the ground floor. The door to George’s storage room sat just nearby this entry into the car park space of the ground floor, just within the tiled warren.

The opposite end carried a complement of features, which was the mirror image of that at this end. One of the two shop-spaces at that end held a citizens advice bureau. The opposing storeroom had a broad door, which was warm-to-the-touch, to which George had no access, – which contained machinery of a kind that made a persistent low, deep humming sound. The room exuded an impression of bulk, or mass. The water closets at that end, originally meant for the use of the public, had long since been closed down – they did not cater to the public, for which George was thankful, they were messy enough without giving them access to closets.

The car park was painted in a sympathetic blocks of colour. He had been present, years before, when the white-garbed painters covered in splashes and smears of different colours had come through and had painted her. The inner pillars and back wall, and the walls of the stairwell and lift foyer were painted a bright yellow on the first floor. The same features of the other levels had been painted in different colours: sky blue for the ground floor; orange for the second floor; lime green for the third; and dark blue for the fourth; the fifth was open to the elements, and did not carry a colour, although, the stairwell and lift foyer had been painted white. Between orange-painted outer pillars sat midriff-height containing walls, all square and steep angles of concrete and steel; meant to keep people and cars from falling out of the car park. The bollards, found at the back of each parking bay, had been painted yellow.

George would first take care of what he considered were the ‘three:’ each of the hardy-tiled warrens, and the ticket and staff office by the main entry. He moved into his storeroom and removed a shopping trolley, which he used to move his equipment around.

He again raised the metal roller door of the pedestrian access. He moved amongst the debris contained in the entry, and removed items such as food containers and cans and bottles of drink with his long handled dustpan and broom.  He took care with the drink containers as often they still contained liquid. He would then sweep the area with his broad sweeper – avoiding spills, after which he returned it to his trolley. He deposited all of the material gathered in a red-lidded bin, which sat mounted on the wall in the angle created between the lift and the stairwell door. George mopped the area beyond the roller door. He walked backwards, mopping as he went with a to and fro motion. The access hallway was wide, and so he first moved backwards down the right side, then backwards down the left. He engaged the switch contained within the metal box, and a motor hidden out of sight in the ceiling brought the roller door down again.

He took a cloth from his belt, and wiped finger marks and other grease off the ticket-payment machines. He pushed a stainless steel button that brought the lift down with a hum, and its stainless steel doors slid open revealing a rather small space. He pushed the button for the fifth floor, and as he tidied the lift cubicle – sweeping the floor and wiping its stainless steel button-panels within with the rag kept at his waist – it brought him to the top of the building with a smooth motion.

Once he reached the top, he stepped out the lift, which he sent back down to the ground floor, and he cleaned the foyer of the lift and stairwell of the rooftop level, which was contained in its own building. This building was a painted box, the height of two stories, which had a single door and large frosted windows arranged around what would have been its ground floor. At the opposite end sat a twin of the box.

George stepped out of the box and looked about, searching for items. The level was an expanse of the brightest, sun-bleached, and cleanest concrete in the car park, and was sculpted with narrow slits and trenches, all slopes and all grey angles, designed to run rainwater towards drainage cannels and pipes. Five large moths with lapis lazuli, bomber-pattern circles upon their wings, sped haphazardly by on chipped wings that trailed fine yellow and brown dust. George watched the flight of the moths closely, examining it for a sign, but concluded that the moths were merely a pretty sight.

He moved back into the box, and he pushed at the heavy orange-painted door that led into the stairwell. The box’s front door moaned with apparent anger, and sucked, and pulled, and the second, orange door that gave access to the stair well whistled as he opened it with some difficulty – George held his dustpan and broom with one hand, and as he pushed through, he paused momentarily to wipe at finger marks left on the stainless steel, large rectangular handle of the door. Within, he swept the tiny landing clean, and then moved down the steps backwards, sweeping as he went. Little taps and scrapes of his dustpan and broom reverberated through the stairwell.

 He tended to the porcelain of the water closets, after which he brought the trolley to the car park space proper. He mopped the indestructible grey octagonal and square-tiled floors of the closets and the remainder of the hardy tiled floor of the warren, backing his way to the trolley.

The roller door at the opposite, mirror-image end clattered upwards. On the footpath sat six cans of soft drink in an almost circular formation. They sat in a near perfect circle, and even the drinking holes almost lined up, directed inwards. He nudged a can with his foot. The cans too appeared to signify nothing, which he found odd for something so unusual. He moved about with the dustpan and broom, and deposited a few wrappers and the cans that sat on the footpath in the red-lidded bin; there weren’t too many other items, other than the cans. After having disposed of the six cans, the roller door came down with a shudder and louder-than-usual rattle. George briefly looked up into the machinery, into the dark hollow from which the door rattled down. It was catching on something.

The frosted windows of the box heaved inwards, and the heavy door that led to the stairwell, opened a fraction every few moments to emit or draw some air, before snapping shut again. There was no rubbish at all on the grey-painted concrete floor of this foyer; there was dust and dryness instead. The air in the foyer sat metallic on his tongue, and he rubbed his fingers against his palms. With an effort, he pushed his way into the stairwell. He trotted down the steps holding both broom and long handled dustpan in one hand, guiding his other along the black-plastic covered railing; it was not until he reached the steps of the second level that he came across the first bit of rubbish – a plastic chocolate bar wrapper; and at the first level he found a can of soft drink.

He nodded with pride as he glanced at the shiny floor of the warren, and returned the mop and bucket to his trolley. He heard muffled sounds of either discord or love, which echoed down the street from the central square, where most of the Fremantle’s degenerates laid up at night. 

He walked the trolley to the ticket office, which sat close by the cavernous lit entry. George pulled a large black plastic bin liner off a thick roll and tucked it in at the back of his pants, then he took a roll of white, smaller bin liners and placed this in his pocket. Taking a steady breath, he unlocked the door and entered the foyer of the ticket office, moving quickly to a little panel into which he carefully tapped in a code that switched the alarm system of the office off.

The foyer contained a row of chairs along an inner wall; a door that led onto the street, which sat opposite the one through which he’d entered; and on the other side of a counter, sat the staff area of the ticket office. The staff area carried large windows in its three walls, and the largest one faced the lit entry, so that they could watch the cars as they entered. Small white receipts lay strewn and crumpled on the floor next to small bins filled with more of the receipts. He emptied the little bins into his large black bin liner, by pouring the contents of some in, and for others he needed to pull its bag liner entire out, and give it a fresh liner.

On a counter that ran along the window that provided the view of the lit entry, sat a half red and black bound yearbook, into which the day people noted down their complaints and instructions to George. He knew his responsibilities, and he deviated naught from these. If a request-order fell within his responsibilities, George would grudgingly acknowledge that he had been found wanting in those responsibilities and he would address the concern. If the request fell outside his responsibilities, he would not address it. Either way, George carefully signed each entry in acknowledgement of his having read it. He signed it each day even if there were no instructions. Early on in his tenure at the car park, he had checked the book for instructions each day, but had never signed it; and a day person had accused George of not having cleaned the levels of the car park for five days in a row. George had received a pointed letter from his contractors, which instructed him in stern terms to act on the matter. He had figured of the situation he found himself in, that as far as they could tell, he had apparently tidied the office, but had done naught else; she – the complainant, judging from the delicate autograph – obviously rarely left the office and had assumed that the car park maintained itself: she simply saw no change from day to day, even though George had done the work. He had begun to sign the book after that. In response to the complaint he had carefully written, ‘I do clean the car park each day,’ and signed his name. Other than signing his name since, he would only respond in writing to direct queries, of which there were few: they were usually instructions. In the end, he believed that staff members that did move around the levels had corroborated his version of events, since the matter was dropped, and he did not receive another letter from his contractors on the topic.

He entered a corridor covered in a sky-blue threadbare carpet via a door, which sat by the chairs of the waiting room, opposite the counter. The door was fortified and heavy, but strangely enclosed a large glass pane, which could easily give access to a person to the other side beyond, should they want to break their way through it. The glass pane was an optical puzzle of sorts. It carried on its surface two different types of horizontal lines: etched lines and lines of reflective mirror-material. The public could not see through the windows from the foyer side, but the foyer could be viewed from the other side.

Tall ceiling-to-floor windows obscured by heavy curtains ran along the corridor’s length on George’s left, when pulled they revealed the police station and the law courts, which sat across the road. The corridor provided access to four rooms; three were arrayed along the inside of the car park, and the fourth – the mess room – sat at the end, opposite the door, which George had come to think of as the ‘Popeye-mirror’ door, on account of its horizontal lines, which for him, were reminiscent of Popeye’s shirt. The floor-to-ceiling windows carried on through to the back of the mess room, but in that room they had been painted black; heavy curtains still hung there too, but these were never drawn.

George stepped into the first room, and took a look at its floor. He would spot-sweep the floors with his dustpan and broom. Once a week he would give the floors a proper vacuum clean; on such days, in anticipation of the weekly vacuum clean, he would place the backpack vacuum cleaner in his trolley on his way to the office.

The day people were quite neat when it came to these rooms. George figured that in part this was so, because of the person that occupied the first little office past the Popeye-mirror door. The ‘Controller’ seemed to be in charge of the town’s ticket-inspectors, parking administrators, and the town’s car park buildings in general, of which Queen’s Gate was the crown jewel. The Controller was a neat, respectable-looking man with a beard, judging from a family photo on the desk. He had a view of the ticket office, through a Popeye-mirror window of his own – when people sat down on the chairs in the foyer, he’d see the backs of their heads.

The Controller’s little office housed the security camera system. On the desk sat a number of black boxes, and a small monitor. It did not appear to George as if the monitor was much watched – the cameras simply recorded, and the footage recorded could be accessed should the need arise. George had seen the little monitor when it was left switched on (usually it was switched off), and it showed a screen subdivided into little rectangles that showed vision from all of the cameras, sights recorded included: both of the pedestrian entryways; the main entry; along the street that ran between Queen’s Gate and the police station; locations on each of the levels. The cops had often asked for access to these cameras when crimes had been committed in town – George had seen paperwork concerning such requests, and he had connected dots when he had read certain newspaper reports. There was a metal cupboard in the room, which held numbers of large black videocassettes, each with a label made of masking tape, upon which were written dates and other notations, which made no sense to George. From some source now forgotten, George had once learnt that all of the footage, belonging to all of the cameras, was recorded onto a single licorice-coloured cassette tape. The recorder sat in plain view beside the monitor.

The next room carried a sign on its door, which read, ‘keep door closed.’ They wanted to keep this door closed so that people on the other side of the long tall window and the curtain, and fellow employees walking by within, would be restricted in their view of what sat within the room; it was dominated by the largest, and most beautiful safe he had ever seen (which sample of seen safes consisted of those he had seen on the television).

The safe sat against the wall at the back of the room, directly opposite the door. The safe sat a hand-and-a-half higher than he was tall, and it was almost as wide and as deep as his arm span. The safe was painted a pale-bright, gunmetal-green colour. It had slate-grey plastic knobs marked with white painted notches, and a long stainless steel lever on the door, which together held the secret to entry to the safe. When George had seen safes in moving pictures, it always appeared simple to open one. All you had to do was put your ear to it – perhaps with a doctor’s-chest-listening-device; and presumably try and hear to telltale clicks in order to open it. He’d never attempted to open this safe out of curiosity in such a way, simply to see whether he could. Furniture, books, and other office equipment sat on its top, and on shelves arrayed on either side of the safe. The walls to the right and left also held arrays of shelves and metal cupboards, which carried folders, books, files, boxes, and other assorted office items.

George guessed that the base of the safe had been concreted into the ground; or that perhaps it was bolted to the concrete – not that such precautions were needed, as it looked to be incredibly heavy. The safe gave an impression that Queen’s Gate had been built around it, instead of it having been brought into her – it could fit through no door, and it would require a crane or some other piece of heavy machinery to move. It looked like it had been manufactured in the fifties or sixties, which was when George guessed the car park had been built also, so Queen’s Gate could have been built around the safe. Other than its shape, Queen’s Gate had lost much of its original finishing touches to hint at this date of origin, except for the vertical sign with its illuminated letters that hung over the entry, which certainly did have an appearance of having been fabricated in the fifties or sixties. The safe struck George as if it were Queen’s Gate’s heart, or its soul. He understood why the car park did not bother with a better camera system, or at least secure the camera system better; because who was going to be able to move or open the safe?

He emptied a little bin by the safe, it held brown paper wrappers that had been removed from rolls of coins, broken rubber bands, and torn white paper sheaves and envelopes.

The mess room contained a sink, cupboard, and a table and set of chairs. He emptied a bin that sat nearby the sink and replaced its liner. He stepped through its back door, which led back into the bowels of the car park some ten or fifteen meters from the door through which he’d entered, and carried the black bag back to his trolley, where he placed it on the ground. He took from the trolley a number of tea-towels and a spray bottle, which was filled with a diluted mixture of methylated spirits and a dash of a crisp-smelling light blue liquid; it was a very evaporative mixture, which left no streaks when applied to glass surfaces as long as the filth was removed.

After attending to the glass surfaces and bench-tops of the office, he took up his dustpan and broom and swept the foyer clean; he moved all of the faux-leather covered chairs, so that he could get at the dust that daily accumulated behind them, shunted there by the pedestrian traffic. After this he attended to the staff section, which lay beyond the Popeye-mirror door. He swept a few spots of the carpet of the corridor, the gunmetal green safe room, and the Controller’s room; removing some particles of sand and the like from the carpet, and the odd scrap of paper, which he had not retrieved on the bin run. Then, he tended to the mess room, reaching in under the table and moving chairs about.

He drew the mop through the bucket, and mopped the mess room, then, after locking the Popeye-mirrored door, he mopped the staff section of the ticket office, set the alarm, and quickly mopped his way backwards out of the foyer, locking the door behind him. He ran the mop through the bucket and placed the mop against his trolley. George poured the mop water into a drain nearby that resembled an oubliette; it produced a pleasant series of echoes and splashes, after which he returned the bucket and the mop to his trolley.

George placed all of the rest of the equipment in the trolley also, and wheeled it to a spot just short of the door to the mess room; here he abandoned the trolley, and walked on, taking the black bin bag of rubbish into the container bin room, which took up a corner of the ground-floor’s space. There was a peculiar smell in this room; peculiar in that it was of rubbish and decay, yet it was not unpleasant – a smell similar to that of a compost heap kept at the back of a childhood garden remembered. Streaks of filth and tarnish were everywhere in the container bin room: on the walls, floors, roller door, and machinery. A large circular metal disk sat embedded in the ground, which enabled trucks and cars to turn around without having to move on their own accord. George dumped the bag of rubbish into a compactor, and thumped its red mushroom-shaped button, and the machine began to groan.

Now that this final duty of the three had been attended to, he sat down by the door of the mess room. From a source embedded in the wall above the door, shone down into the dimly lit space a small light, which gave an impression as if it gave off heat; the scene would not have looked out of place in a deep-sea segment from a natural history documentary. At this point of the job and at this spot, was where George regularly had a break and a cigarette. On some days, he’d also prepare himself a mug of tea or coffee.

He licked dry lips and took from his pocket his dark blue packet of tobacco, and an orange packet of single-row papers; he took a slim filter from those that he had added in with the tobacco, and rolled a cigarette. He lit it with a little sigh of pleasure. He blew smoke into the dimly lit interior. The smoke lazily trailed away from view, out from beneath the beam of light. The effect of the blessed weed actively sought out what felt were all of the creases in his soul, and smoothed them over. He had until then been hungry, and this feeling soon disappeared.

After the three had been taken care of, his last duty was to wander through the levels with his dustpan and broom and sweep up the mess that had accumulated during the day; this was his morning walk. After he’d returned his material to the store room he tucked a used towel back in at the back of his pants, in case he needed to wipe anything down, and he left the room, closing the door behind him with a resounding click and a clattery thump, taking his broom and long-handled dustpan with him.

He walked out of the tiled warren and set off into the car park space proper towards the entry to the opposite hardy-tiled warren. He moved at an angle towards the row of cars parked along the back wall on the left and moved between the cars to the back wall, where he would look along the line of the wall, along the gutter and the yellow painted, scuffed bollards with the front or backs of cars parked against them, to see if he could spot any rubbish. He then angled across to the other side and looked along that shorter inner wall. He then continued on down the middle of the way, looking to his left and right, retrieving items here and there. Should he need to, he would rid himself of what he had collected, by dumping it in the red-lidded bin at the citizen’s advice bureau end.

As a force of habit, he moved about the bright-lit entry rather rapidly. He found it irritating when he was addressed by someone from the other side of the roller doors, through the horizontal slots that lined it. The chances of this happening on this night were small though, since it was an early day of the week, and few, other than derelicts and eccentrics, would be about. It was quite a surreal experience whenever he was spoken to from beyond the roller doors when he was there, since the acoustics of the entry carried the voice to him perfectly, it felt as if they were standing right by him, and he could not see them other than discern a vague shape in the darkness on the other side.

He moved up and over little raised platforms – positioned so as to guide cars, – looking up and down along their edges, which had a capacity for obscuring items; after collecting a crushed can and a wrapper, he moved up the ramp into level one. George would curl his way up one side of Queen’s Gate, retrieving items as he went, and move back down along the other side, curling first up around the first stairwell, and then down along the other. The levels of Queen’s Gate were figures of eight that curled around the lift and stairwell shafts. Long flat lengths were connected to long shallow v’s in the middle of their lengths, and at their ends.

Scouting along the walls he rooted out cans, bottles, wrappers, and other items. By the time he had zigzagged his way to the first first-floor lift foyer, he carried two bottles as well as the broom in his right hand, and a few more and a full dust pan held in his other, all of which he dumped into the red-lidded bin at that foyer. He wound his way around the foyer, and turned into the first long, broad, low ceilinged gallery that ran the length of Queen’s Gate; these were an impressive and imperial sight. Halfway along, he would curl up into the next level.

The second level could deliver up interesting rubbish. The department store had a section that dealt with perfumes and aftershaves, and George regularly found little strips of thick, fine paper, upon which scents had been sprayed. He found a number all over this level as well as some on level three. The strips carried the same fragrance – they must have released a new one, – it had hints of a kind of citrus flower; and some sort of other flower too – not roses; and vanilla.

When he reached the rooftop level he carried on to the opposite end, and began to curl down that side of Queen’s Gate, down and around its stairwell, back to the ground floor and job’s end.

A painting

Most of the walls of George’s apartment had been painted yellow, which colour had faded. The walls of his bedroom had pasted on them what had once been bright psychedelic-looking wallpaper, but its colours had faded too. The entire apartment was furnished sparsely, and was kept clean. Once back from work, he usually had a nap sometime before noon, and went to bed at around seven or eight in the evening.

After his noon nap, George sat down in a pea-green and brown coloured, striped cloth single seat lounge chair, taped over in spots with gaffer tape; at its threadbare seams whitish fluff sought to escape. The chair had been placed before a television that was able to show three of the four channels that were available, which did not have to be paid for.

To the right of the chair sat a small round wicker table, upon which lay a novel and on which he now placed a bottle of beer. Whenever George had had four or five beers – about his limit on any given day, he would mark his page and place the book on the small table, because his gaze would have begun to struggle and he had grown tired of having to re-read paragraphs.

He looked up at a small painting with a simple frame, which years before he had bought at a swap meet. The predominant colours of the picture were browns and yellows; it showed a small weatherboard house with a corrugated iron roof, smoke issued from a brick chimney. The little house sat behind two small ponds, and behind the house stood a couple of gum trees with leaves of pale green. George stared at the little scene as he opened his next beer, and gave a wistful little shake of his head, before sipping at the beer. He could imagine the cacophony created by the amphibian inhabitants of the little ponds by night; he could imagine the sky wheeling over it at night with her at its center. He yearned for what the little picture portrayed.

Had he this little house, he would grow all he needed, and trade or sell the surplus for that which he could not grow. He’d plant rows upon rows of sprouts and broccoli. Water was a necessity, and for that two, or three rainwater tanks – broad shallow ones – needed to be bought. A cat would have the run of the place, and an open window here and there would facilitate its movements. A dog would keep an eye an all they possessed. The floors would be wooden boards, pleasant to feel underfoot. The weatherboard walls would breathe and bend with the seasons, accommodating them all.

George dreamt of growing large flat beans, slightly bitter to the taste and yet sublimely sweet; which he’d blanch in some butter, and season with a little salt and white pepper, brought to heat in a blackened pot over a gas flame. He had visions of a homemade spirit, distilled from potatoes, or from red beets, flavoured through much experimentation with parcels of different varieties of herbs.

He would collect old rope, on which he would stick seeds of roses and of bougainvilleas; then, he would bury this rope in a shallow ditch dug about his property, in perhaps two or three concentric circles – or other shapes, depending on the boundaries his holding, – and they’d grow and would form beautiful difficult-to-pass-through hedges. He’d burn the hedges once every few years, to promote their growth, and strength. 

Such pleasant ruminations soon threw up thoughts of obstacles, which would set themselves against self-sufficiency, which would need addressing: interferers would expect paperwork of all kinds, and they’d require money too, undoubtedly. He knew that they’d require cash for his merely possessing a house – every year, – funds gained that they would use for entire rafts of nonsense. He looked over at the disconnected phone in his apartment; when it had been connected, it had never been used, and yet they had charged him a sum that could have bought him three weeks worth of potatoes, onions, and garlic – it was for a maintenance fee, they had claimed. He’d not once seen them come and work on his line: not from the phone to the wall, not from the building to the poles, which carried the lines everywhere. Well, as far as such thoughts were concerned, he might as well question the clouds for all that would achieve.

Once again he regarded the little house, which brought a smile to him; that little painting represented all he wanted, a holding, independence.

George had had been a few things. He had been full of dreams, which had slowly leeched from him, and his confidence had slowly waned. He had plotted and planned during those years of dreams, but when it came to execution, fear had frozen him. He’d feel the fear at the bottom of a breath taken; which is where it sat and nested. He would become angry, despondent, but mostly saddened, as opportunities – perceived and otherwise – passed him by.

How did others move through the world with such ease? Take for example those fancifully dressed blokes that wore long pointy shoes? – that they got by in such ridiculous shoes, and most appeared to do so quite successfully, amazed him. He shook his head and reached for his beer.  

Melancholic world – the gate and the knife

George opened his eyes and found himself standing before a large gate made of two metal frames covered with mesh wire, the moon lay half-lit on its side above. By the gate stood a large man with an imposing girth. His hair was cut very short and his eyes were pitch-black. He did not appear to have a neck. He was dressed in a white shirt with black patches on his shoulders, each of which showed a yellow image of an eye. He wore black trousers, black boots, and red braces. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, and George looked for tattoos on the forearms, since the man appeared to be an Islander, and George had been of the belief that all Islanders carried tattoos. The man had none. He smiled at George, and shook his head slightly, as if to indicate to him that not all Island people carried tattoos, nor – if George read his expression right – did he appear to approve of tattoos. The Islander moved languidly to open the gate, taking a large ring of keys from his belt where they hung. He efficiently chose a key from the hundred or so on the ring, and toggled with a lock, which, when opened, allowed him to remove a chain and open one of the two sides of the gate. George passed through within.

He stood on a beaten-earth road, down at the end of which stood a red-coloured brick house by which stood a fine tree. He set off towards the house.

He walked by a fence-enclosed yard where three magpies, by the light emitted from a lamp mounted on a pole, were hunting insects. As they spun through the air and light in pursuit of their prey, their shadows fluctuated in size, which played over the surroundings. The birds settled on a tree branch after some loud calls, when they noticed George. He walked through their now-immobile shadows. The birds watched him with great interest, which he did not think was a good sign. He redirected his gaze to the house and soon reached it.

The tree by the house was a lemon tree; it was covered in tough green leaves, and carried little white flowers, with bright spots of yellow at their centers. He was struck by the strong, delicate, and beautiful scent of citrus. The tree was large, being perhaps four times taller in height than George; its trunk was gnarled and full of character.

George took a key from a bunch of three that was slung on a red lanyard around his neck and he used this to enter the building by the citrus tree. A red broom sat just inside the door; he took it and began to sweep a little entryway when he heard a noise from within the building. Alerted, he soon advanced into the building, switching on lights as he went. He came to a large room, an office, with neutral blue carpet covering its floor, and containing three desks with chairs, and tough plastic mats. Much of the furniture in the room had been over-turned: drawers pulled out of desks, and chairs knocked down. There was a stale, sharp, acidic reek in the room. He found that he had cornered a small, wiry aborigine in a filthy brown shirt and ruined, mismatched sneakers. The whites of his eyes were a fiery red, and his face was bloated and tired of appearance; he was filled with a measure of nervous energy, which threatened to be expended in one violent effort as he regarded George.

George clutched the broom tight. Looking around the room at the devastation, he asked the aborigine, ‘why did you do this?’

The aborigine blinked, as if not having expected the question. He also looked about the room, before turning back to George, and answering, ‘it is all too late for me,’ he paused for a moment before adding, ‘I simply need more. There is some hope to be burnt yet before I pass, but it is getting harder to find. I mean no harm.’

George stood in the opening of the only door to the room. There sat well-secured windows in the walls of the room, one of which had been forced open a fraction, through which the aborigine must have gained entry. They both stood and regarded each other for a moment, then the aborigine glanced towards the forced window before returning his gaze to George, indicating to George what his intention was – he wanted to leave. George had not moved, and the aborigine was not about to break his way out through the window again with him standing there. The aborigine swallowed, and took a large kitchen knife with a black handle from within his shirt, and brandished it before George, nervously turning the edge over itself once.

In the face of the knife and the aborigine that was holding it, George quickly became prudent. He backed away into the darker sections of the house, to unlit rooms he had not yet passed through, down a dark corridor; leaving an escape route for the apparition, back to the door through which George had entered, and lit for his way.

Suddenly there was a great commotion in the room, while George stood in the semi-darkness of the corridor. He kept the point of his broom somewhat extended, in readiness to drive it further forward should the aborigine make for this way. His heart beat fast, and George smiled at the adrenalin, which flooded his body; he felt powerful, jittery, and fast; he licked his lips, the sensation was delicious. The commotion soon halted, and was replaced by muted sounds; after a little while, when George was satisfied that the aborigine had left, he ventured his way back to the room. The aborigine had not taken the escape route offered. He had exited via the broken window, and he had hurt himself. There was blood on a desk below the window, and before it on the ground lay a single sneaker without laces, which also had blood on it.

This will take a while to tidy up, thought George, as he looked over the devastation in the room. He took some deep breaths. Although, shouldn’t he alert someone first?

Three books

George sat at a little table at a nearby early-morning eatery; he was having a cup of coffee and two hard-boiled eggs. His work that night had gone well. As he was salting the second of the eggs, he noticed the illuminated window display of a bookshop, which stood on the other side of the road – Queen’s Gate was visible behind it. The shop had a window display; wondering, George moved towards it, egg in hand, to see what had been put on display. There both stood and lay volumes on a velvet-covered board, and little printed cards with information had been provided for a few them. Three of the volumes drew his attention in turn, as he finished his egg.

The first was bound in brittle dark brown half-calf with an appearance, as if it had been burnt, and it had oil-spot marbled, paper-covered boards. The spine carried a small glossy red label that carried, stamped in gilt, the word ‘Glanvil.’ It was a title that sought to confirm the existence of witchcraft, belief in which was on the wane at the time the title had been written.

The spine was further divided into compartments, and in the center of each was stamped in gilt, a tiny decoration that pulled at George’s eye, each of a size, which would fit neatly onto the nail of one of his small fingers and still have room to spare. The decoration was a scene of a house, which seemed to possess a little tower, or perhaps a window that protruded from the roof; by the house stood a tree, which was bent over the house, as if caught in a mighty gale. George stared at the little decorations for quite some time, trying to figure out whether it was a tower or protruding roof window; each decoration was a little damaged, and he was trying to put a puzzle together, examining each slightly different – on account of its damage – gilt decoration in turn, trying to gain an image of a complete one. They were so very little, and he soon abandoned the attempt; he rubbed a hand over his forehead and eyes.

Near the Glanvil-volume lay open a stunning, large, vellum-bound volume of a work called De Delictis, et Poenis, by Sinistrari, printed in Venice during the year 1700. Its little card told of the title being seminal in a number of fields and that it was incredibly rare. The work dealt with sexual sin – a guide to confessors; the author died shortly after its publication, and it had been banned too. The volume had an ownership inscription in pen that read ‘John Knott, 1908.’ George whistled at the price, four hundred and fifty thousand. ‘The results of the Devil’s influence detailed,’ informed the little card that accompanied it.

Sexual sin, wistfully, George nodded. He looked back at the first book, and then at the second book. Get, he figured, a house, and the second will follow, grinning at the thought. He nodded again, feeling that he’d read these signs right. 

The last volume was a copy of A Christmas Carol, 1843, bound in its original publisher’s binding of horizontally ribbed-grain, salmon-pink coloured cloth, with blind stamped and gilt stamped decorations; green coated end-papers, and all of its edges cut and gilt. It was a beautiful book. The little volume stood up, covers slightly opened, and after angling his head and bending his knees, on page ninety-two George read:

    Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought

a goose the rarest of all birds ; a feathered phenome-

non, to which a black swan was a matter of  course : 

and  in  truth  it  was something  very  like  it in that

house.

The glass of the display window was incredibly thick; and the door was reinforced. A white box with a blue light was mounted on the wall at some distance above the door, and there was a square yellow sticker stuck onto a lower corner of the windowpane, which carried a warning from a security company that had an eye as its logo.

            ‘Did you see anything you liked?’ asked the eatery-owner, indicating the bookshop with a nod of his head, as he came out to retrieve George’s cup and eggshells, and to wipe the table.

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘And?’

            ‘Too dear.’

The black swan

George had awoken with a dry taste in his mouth, and he felt as if someone had hammered a nail into his head; he pressed and prodded at it in places.

At work, he decided to have a cigarette before starting. He sat down before the door of the mess room, leant against it, and cast his eye over the floor that spread out before him as he rolled a cigarette. On the concrete ground next to he set down a cup of tea. A breeze stirred in a distant corner of the car park – George heard it before he felt it. The dark floor before him soon began to shift in places with the breeze. Much black dust, consisting of parts metal, oil, grease, and regular dust, had built up on the lower levels. That which lay on the ground in front of him moved and shifted before his eyes. George again thought that perhaps he ought to have a little less beer each day; he was feeling a little queasy, and having tea on an empty stomach was not really helping this – he should have had a coffee. His dreams had darkened again.

He swept the tiled warren at the bead-shop end, pushing a great many leaves out onto the street. Besides the leaves, there had been only a few confectionary wrappers, and these were deposited in the red-lidded bin by the lift. A juvenile magpie regarded him from on top of a red mailbox, which sat on the other side of the road. The bird looked a little jittery, as if it had been awake for too long, which it probably had. A light breeze moved the carpet of leaves slowly up the road. Once the floor had been swept, it was surprisingly clean. Nothing had been spilt onto the floor, and it did not require a mop, which was a rarity for this end of the car park. This was promising, but judging from experience, he held out no hopes that the rest of the car park would be as clean.

Once he lowered the roller gate, he stepped into the lift, which was clean. The doors to the foyer of the fifth floor murmured and groaned a little as he brushed an apple core into his dustpan. The door leading out onto the level screeched momentarily as he let himself with some difficulty into the stairwell. He traveled steadily downwards, and as he did so he encountered no rubbish until he reached the stairs leading from the first level to the ground floor; on one of the steps there, he found an empty can of soft drink, which he deposited in the bin on the ground floor. The tea and cigarette had taken up some of his time, but now, because of this accommodating section he was back on track, he might even have time for another cigarette when he finished with the ticket and staff office.

The hardy-tiled warren on the other side was almost as tidy. George took the opportunity to carefully clean the buttons and other stainless steel surfaces of the lift. When the stairwell proved to be entirely clean of rubbish other than some dust that he had gathered, he also took some extra care to clean the glossy red and matt black ticket machine. He checked the coin slot, and pushed the coin return button. Such an action had never yet yielded him any coins, so he was very surprised to find a highest-denomination coin rattling into the palm of his hand as it spilt out of the little containing cup. This was some kind of sign. He found it to be a little suspicious: it had never yielded a coin, why now? He looked around with narrowed, suspicious eyes, as the coin lay in the palm of his hand. Beware?

George finished up at the ticket and staff office, wheeled his trolley to the mess room door, and sat down to have a cigarette. The floor had lain still, and as he watched it, it once again began to play; little waves of dust rippled over the darkened concrete surface, he smiled and blew some smoke over the scene. He felt better – his head felt numb now, rather than sore.

He moved about the ground floor level with his dustpan and broom and found a number of drink containers, two foam lunch containers, and in the bright-lit entry he found a few red parking tickets, which he rarely came across in the public areas of the car park. The day people must have emptied the ticket receiving machines, and a few of the tickets must have escaped. On the first level he found some bottles, a can, and a dead black beetle. The dying little black beetles were back.

The beetles were around the size of a index-finger nail, and were solid slow moving buggers; they carried spiky protrusions on their carapaces, which tended to get caught in clothing – George had to take care whenever he moved them, because they were difficult to extricate from clothing. They were miniature gothic wonders. Early on in his tenure at Queen’s Gate, he had made attempts to rescue those of these beetles that he found in the office or in other closed spots – such as his storeroom, or the stairwells. Eventually he had abandoned these efforts when he had learnt that these beetles were dying. He had carried rescued beetles to the concrete containing walls of the levels, and set the beetles on top of them. He would find most of them still lying there the next day, dead. They were usually barely moving when he first found them, as if they were tired, and the next day, they were dead.

When George got to the second level, he found it to be suspiciously tidy, and he gained a sense of foreboding, when he found two more dying beetles, which lay next to one and other. The pattern was an ill omen, it reinforced his initial thoughts when he had found the coin – something bad was going to happen.

Alarmingly, on the third level he found three beetles lying in a little heap. He tried to calm himself – maybe he was being irrational? He reiterated to himself that he would have to pare his drinking back. Somewhat. He thought about what he’d consumed the previous day. He had bought a bottle of whiskey, of which he had drunk a third. Then again however, – he raised an index finger to the ceiling, still holding the broom in that hand, in point of order – he had eaten very well that day, treating himself to a large meal of fried onions, beans (a large can), and an egg. Whilst he had mused on his imbibing and on his meal, he had walked into the fourth level. He searched along one side of the bollards, before crossing diagonally to the other line of bollards. Once around the foyer, he performed the same, looking along the length of the car park on this level. There were no cars, and promisingly, there were no beetles either; he found only a single empty bottle, which he swept up.

It had been an odd day: it was uncannily clean, which almost never happened; and there were the ill omens; although, the job had not finished yet, there was the fifth level to go, and the other side of the car park yet to be covered. Even though he had come across no collections of dying beetles on the fourth level, he was still somewhat suspicious as he walked up the ramp and onto the fifth level into the open air, and was promptly struck in the chest and to the head by something very large that had dropped out of the dark sky. It had felt as if he had been struck by a medicine ball thrown at him from a great distance.

The impact hurtled him backwards, broom and dustpan sent flying; he landed on his back, an impact made worse by the incline he had been moving up. Though thoroughly winded, and struggling for air, George frantically got up, believing himself to be under attack. He found himself confronted by a fearsome apparition, a black swan, which sat at some twelve feet away from him. It shook its head and quickly adjusted some feathers, after which it blinked malevolently at him.

The bird appeared to have managed to land neatly after the impact. It extended its wings a fraction, and shook them slightly – irritably, – and it slowly lowered its head and arched its neck; its beak gleamed deep red. George and it stared briefly at one and other, during which period the bird continued to grow in size – extending its wings, though still largely folded, and puffing its feathers out. George responded without thought: he also tried to make himself look bigger, extending his arms, and broadening his stance. This response did not have the desired effect at all; the bird promptly began to move towards him with vicious intent. George turned and ran.

As he fled, he shortly heard the beating of ponderous wings. From the safety of the fourth level, peering through a gap, along the shallow incline of the fifth, he managed to catch sight of the bird as it passed in the distance over the containing wall by one of the poles that carried the roof level lights.

Unbelievable. He smiled as tears welled up because of the physical shock that he had been given. He sat down on the spot, on a bollard, and took his packet of tobacco from his pocket. He rolled a cigarette with shaking hands; he grimaced and giggled somewhat maniacally as he lit it with a little difficulty, shielding the flame of his lighter from the air currents that were ever present up here. George could not read the situation for the moment: the swan was an immaculate sign – what a beautiful critter, something like this never ever happened. Something of great import was to happen, surely? The ill omens had been good ones; he smiled. He leant forward and looked excitedly up along to the far end, and then around. This was a very good cigarette, he thought, as he sat back and laid a hand on his chest, moving it about and pressing, searching for damage, there was none.

Melancholic world – the clever, quizzical woman

George was seated on a scraped and scuffed yellow painted bollard, and he gazed through wisps of smoke, which curled through beams of light, and across a stained concrete floor at a dark blue wall framed by two yellow pillars. He recognized features of Queen’s Gate, but he had never seen them arranged like this before. He stared unblinking at the wall, and its surface suddenly dissolved. The horizon, which had been the wall, disappeared into the distance, and he found himself looking across a choppy sea; on small dark green coloured, bobbing waves floated white and yellow coloured foam and scum. There was no beach – the sea just began. George nonchalantly put out a cigarette that he was smoking; he felt rather non-plussed by the sudden appearance of the sea. He got up with a groan, walked up to, and stepped into the tableau and onto a flat, shallow, and short boat, which swept him smoothly out into the sea.

There, in front of him, stood a woman with large eyes, the colour of the sea over which he had just passed. She had pale blonde hair in a pixie cut. She looked clever, quizzical, and playful. She slowly tilted her head, slightly, questioningly, as she regarded him. George smiled at her expression. Suddenly there were two of these women, and they held him, each by one of his arms, each still facing him, close. He extricated his arms and placed them around the small of their backs; one began to feed him beer from a large mug, whilst the other nuzzled him in his neck. He felt elated, and all the care in the world drained away from him. Thighs crossed his thighs, and arms encircled his waist, he began to feel drowsy; he fell backwards, his brain had begun to shut down.

Suddenly his pleasure was interrupted – the women had become mad with one and other, they no longer held him and faced each other; it was an odd and warped scene, as if they were two queens who reared angrily up from a playing card; suddenly only one was left, who looked upon him, her beautiful eyes filled with wrath.

‘What is it you want?’ asked George, ‘could we not return to what was?’

Her anger evaporated and she gave him a broad, satisfied, and mischievous smile, and bade him to take in a scene that evolved to her right. His eyes followed to where she gestured, and a fog parted as if curtains, to reveal a weatherboard house with a corrugated iron roof, trees behind, and two ponds before it…

Broken-Tail’s insight and the feral wheelchair man

The first pedestrian access way that he cleaned was very messy that day, and it took George some time before he noticed a cat he’d dubbed Broken-Tail sitting in the distance up high on a broad wall at the back of a pub. His hands were filled with bottles, cans, as well as the broom, and his long-handled dustpan, which was full. The slightest part of the moon was visible above a line of buildings. She was sinking fast. As if taking his lead from her, Broken-Tail slinked out of the scene too, disappearing over the wall out of sight. He initially thought little of these occurrences, although they did tug at him.

George had not smoked many cigarettes the day before, and he figured that he could break his routine and have one now. He had just tidied up the first warren with its stairwell and lift. The trolley with his equipment sat before the entrance of the warren on the grey concrete. He sat down, leaning on his haunches, and with his back against the wall of the interior of the car park, just by the opening. He had rolled himself a thin cigarette, which he was smoking with some pleasure; the smoke curled lazily upwards and slightly to his right, slowly drifting in towards the opening, before suddenly shooting off down the tiled passage, dissipating before it got past his storeroom.

He sat and numbly stared ahead. In the distance he first saw one, then another three, and then a fifth lapis lazuli bomber-moth exit from the lit entrance to the opposite tiled warren. It was quite a distance, but he was certain that this was what he had seen: five bomber-moths exiting from the lit passageway. He frowned in slight wonderment, as he took another drag at his cigarette.

George threw the finished cigarette into the bucket of his dustpan, after which he launched himself and the trolley down the shallow incline towards the opposite passageway. He made a smooth transition, stepping off the trolley when it still had momentum, and using this to walk it towards the opening, up the last of the shallow incline. He stopped the trolley by the entrance and took his dustpan and broom from it, and as he did so, a small cricket – of an ugly small brown variety – one of those with a mass spike growing from its rear – crawled onto the handle of the trolley and leapt clear, away from the doorway. After it landed on the concrete floor it scuttled and leapt its way towards the cars parked along the inner left, disappearing behind a light blue concrete pillar, and beneath one of the cars beyond.

George stared for a while after the insect, and became a little alert, where were they all going? He looked down the passageway. Something of note was going to happen, he needed to be careful. An almost-imperceptible breeze moved down the tiled warren into the car park, and he noted a faint – but powerful, considering the strength of the breeze – awful smell emanating from somewhere beyond.   

He moved past the doors of the humming storeroom clutching his pan and broom, and swept up a single aluminium foil wrapper that drifted slowly along towards the inner car park space as if also seeking sanctum. He rounded a corner and walked by the closed-down toilets; the floor was tidy along here. George became aware of an appalling stench as he neared the entry to the lift and stairwell foyer and the pedestrian access way beyond. He walked into the area, and located the source of the stench. It was a person that sat in an electric wheelchair, which sat just beyond the lowered roller door. Two empty, opened cans of baked beans sat on the floor by the wheelchair. A dirty, heavy-looking, stitched blanket lay over what he guessed to be a man. He did not think that any ladies favoured baked beans, nor had he ever seen a lady hobo that smelt quite this bad. The foyer was clean, but was filled with the stench, which triggered a number of gagging reflexes in George.

Beyond the gate, besides the baked bean cans, there lay a number of large leaves, and also four cola cans, which sat in the opposite corner across from the man, near where the footpath began. George breathed from his mouth, and raised the roller door, but only so far that he could just get under it; and so that the man – should he wake – could not. The man – it was a man – awoke as George walked towards the four cans, which he quickly swept into the pan – they were thankfully empty. As he turned around he noted two red, watery eyes with irises of pale green, which regarded him, staring from a wasted face. He was a large man, with a full head and beard of dirty and matted straw-coloured hair.

‘Mate,’ he said, addressing George, and gesturing with an arm that he extracted from beneath the blanket, ‘you would not be able to do me a favour, would you?’ The smell he emanated as he moved and talked was astonishing; it felt to George as if he was being grabbed and pulled close by a physical entity, he had trouble to keep himself from walking away out of Queen’s Gate and up the footpath.

By the wheelchair, previously obscured, sat some little part for the reason of the man’s extraordinary breath: two empty bottles of white wine. His baked-bean teeth, including a number of entirely brown and black ones, would not of helped his breath either; his gums were yellow, as was most of his tongue – that which was not pink, green, or blue. George forced himself towards the man – duty momentarily taking over, but promptly paused, he decided not to pick up the empty bottles; there was a film of grease on them.

‘No,’ said George in response to the question; midway trough the syllable, he noticed a pool of partly dried yellow and orange coloured liquid beneath and behind the wheelchair on the floor against the wall of the citizen’s advice bureau.

Politely, the man continued on: ‘my daughter has thrown me out, this will only be a momentary situation, but,’ the man gestured to a power point beyond the gate, ‘would you mind me plugging my chair in for a while? - otherwise I’ll not be able to move.’ He spoke in halting speech, pausing for slight burps.

George moved beneath the gate, and lowered it again. The man grabbed at the base of the door as it came down, and as a result of this, the wheelchair turned about as the door lowered. George was assaulted with the worst fumes that he had ever smelt in his life.

The man released the door, which had luckily continued on unabated. ‘Ah, you fucking poor cunt!’ directed the man at George, the tone of his voice had changed entirely; where it had previously been inordinately polite, it suddenly dripped with hatred and discontent, which emotion must have bubbled just beneath the surface.

Once George secured the roller door, he exited the scene, moving back towards his trolley. He walked past it deeper into the car park, towards the pillar the cricket had moved to. He paused and took a number of quick breaths – having first commenced with a number of exhales, so that he would not pull any residues deeper into his lungs. As he tried to expel and extricate the fumes from his lungs, obscenities continued to pour down the tiled warren, before stopping abruptly. He regarded his shirt and pants; and smelt at his arms, the thick fumes had left a residue on him. How on earth had that man ever gotten himself a daughter?

George suddenly smiled, struck with sympathy for the day people: this feral wheelchair man might still be still be there during the day and he’d still want to charge his chair once the roller door went up. George frowned; he’d have to clean up the mess on the next night, though, or whatever was left of it, if the day staff addressed the concern. He did not look forward to that. He’d best place the bleach and the red liquid in a prominent position near his low sink, so that the day staff would be sure to notice it.

When George got to the office, what the moon and Broken-Tail had done earlier, suddenly took on meaning. They had been sheepish, because on the desk of the Controller lay some documents, a cursory glance of which – caught as he emptied the bin – threatened to take away his world. It was a list of businesses that were vying for the contract of a tender: that of Queen’s Gate – it was up for renewal. George promptly sat down in the chair of the Controller, and put a hand to his head. There was every chance that his company might lose the contract. He quickly scanned the list, and found that his company was not even listed. Perhaps it was not listed because they were automatically in the running, because they held the contract? - yes, surely that must be the explanation for their absence. The tender was to settled in six months time. He had not received a letter on this subject from his employers. 

George found a large amount of material on the first level, and the second level was very messy too. A new movie had just been released, at the cinema next door. When he carried the first load of bottles, cans, and wrappers to the bin of the lift foyer, he found a flyer for a new fragrance too. He briefly scanned the ground of the foyer, looking for paper scent strips, but found none – there’d likely be some at the other end. After depositing the rubbish in the bin he returned to retrieve more. It took him three trips before he even got to attend to the foyer by the cinema’s inner door that connected with Queen’s Gate, which was strewn with popcorn. It took him some time to clear away the rubbish. Its floor was sticky beneath his feet, and he used the hose to spray the area relatively clean. The dust of the day would remove another remnant of remaining tackiness. The car park was filthy that night.

Melancholic world – the Hawthorn spiders

George sat up. The air was cold, and so was the ground that he was seated on. He sat on a crossroads, of narrow concrete paths no wider than the span of his arms. Tall, dense, attractive shrubs, with leaves that were silvery green in colour, bordered the pathways; the shrubs towered over him to a uniform height of some three meters. Dew had formed on the tall shrubs. The combination of the visual images briefly held George spellbound: pale light grey concrete, walls of silvery green shrub, and the clear dark blue night sky set as a lid on top – he felt as if he sat inside a gigantic puzzle box; he felt oddly disorientated, and shook his head.

On the ground next to him lay a broad-headed broom that had a long wooden handle. George stood up and clutched the broom close. The moon again sat low in the sky, and he had had to track up one of the laneways in order to spot her in her entirety. She was half illuminated, and lay lazily tilted on her left side. She gave off a great deal of light that night and was encircled by two thin haloes. George could make out a roof of a large building below her, above the line of the shrubs. He set off at a trot along the path that he guessed would lead to this building; from experience he knew that getting moving was the best way to work cold and lethargy out of the body.

Rounding a corner, he ran into a spider’s web, which had loomed suddenly in his vision, the web glittered as moonlight picked out the dew caught on it. He promptly pulled up upon contact, and jerked his body backwards. He had felt a soft thud against his cheek, and of their own volition – having dropped the broom – his hands rubbed away at his face and shoulders as he backed away from the web. When he recovered somewhat from the excitement, he looked closely at the web. A large spider, bulbous of body and coloured soft yellow and light brown, still hung near the center of the web, which had been damaged by George’s brief contact. Walking into or through webs was a promise of good fortune, and George smiled: he was surprised that he had not walked through the web entirely – the threads of her web were mighty strong.

The spider appeared to assess George for a moment, and she quite quickly decided that he was not objectionable; ignoring him, she began to collect the broken pieces of the web together, knitting as she went. There sat three more webs, woven at intervals across the path behind the first. On each of these sat another plump spider. On noting their appearance he assigned the spiders a name: Hawthorn spiders, after a football team that wore the same colours.

The Hawthorn spiders’ webs were large and beautiful, and sat at around George’s shoulders in height at their center. They were anchored to the bushes and to spots on the ground. At the angle created between the path and the shrubs had been spun webs of a different kind; they were a shoe-width wide and knee-high. No spiders sat on these. George nudged at one of the low webs with his foot, and a small, fast moving spider with long front legs came moving with some purpose out from the shrub along some threads, it paused, struck with sudden suspicion, then appeared to notice George, and after the briefest of pauses, it promptly disappeared back into the bushes.

George crawled comfortably under and past the first Hawthorn spider’s web. At the second web, he unhooked a single thread attached to the pale concrete path, forcing part of the web to fold up on itself; the spider promptly began to shore up the remainder as George moved past beneath. He managed to get past the other webs in the same fashion.

The darkness of the large building that turned out to be a shed loomed before him. The path led into a dark anteroom within the shed. George moved slowly through its darkness, taking small steps forward, feeling his way through with his feet and hands until he found a door. He opened it and entered the great large space of the shed; he looked around the space with dismay, this would take him twelve hours at the least to clean. He’d be cleaning forever.

Clean the gutters

There was a note in the instruction-book that day. It read: ‘Please unblock all the gutters. They are clogged with rubbish. When it rains the gutters overflow.’

After George had completed his regular work, he numbly moved about each of the levels and examined them. A network of gutters ran through each of the levels; they were about the height of a can wide, and a little taller, deeper; long metal grates lined with round holes covered many of them. Angles and grooves carried water on all levels to these gutters. Their intricate design was a minor architectural feat. The gutters of the upper levels were largely clear, but the gutters of the lower levels, especially those of the first two floors, were covered in filth. The filth was blackened by regular oil, and motor dust. It consisted of decaying leaves and other plant matter; bottle caps and cigarette butts; and a number of deep-hidden cans and bottles.

George had put on a bright orange vest with reflective strips on it for this investigative journey, because the car park had now opened, and the first cars were moving through her.

George sat down at his blue table and carefully penned a letter. He explained to those that had hired him the situation with the blocked gutters, and that he would take care of them, but he would like to be reimbursed for the work. He had noted in the book kept in the office of the car park that he would contact his employers on the subject, and asked that they wait a few days while he waited for a response from his employers.

He received a letter a few days later, which told him that it was his responsibility that the gutters were kept clean, however, they would consider reimbursement for any additional efforts that he might put in to keep the car park clean. As far as George could tell, those gutters had not been cleaned in twenty or thirty years, – if ever. It had never been any cleaners’ responsibility. Well, he reasoned, he collected virtually all of the cans and bottles that found their way into the gutters, surely it was the removal of these that his employers meant when they wrote that it was his responsibility to keep the gutters clean. The letter was vague – probably deliberately so, thought George with suspicion. The work, which the car park people had requested, surely fell under the category of ‘additional efforts.’

Here was an opportunity to show to them that George and his employers took care of any business that needed doing; attending to the gutters would show them – no, surely reinforce (he provided a fine service already) – that they were worthy of retaining the contract. He would have to work on these gutters in the morning after finishing his regular duties, as the day people came in to park their cars in Queen’s Gate on their way to work at the many offices, shops, and other such-like, in town.

George had organized and even designed a number of tools to help him with this gutter clearing exercise, which included a deep bucket, which he used to go crabbing with; a small gardening shovel; and a metal coat hanger, which he had undone, and one end of which, he had fashioned into a kind of hook with a number of prongs. He’d shovel the gutters empty, piling small piles of muck and debris at intervals onto the floor next to the gutter. The gutters traveled beneath pillars and other concrete structures, and at these points, George would feed his undone coat hanger through. The point that he had fashioned would catch when he pulled the coat hanger back, and so George would unclog it. The coat hanger yielded him ancient cans and bottles, many of unknown origin. George would then sweep up each of the little sodden piles and deposit them in the tall white crabbing-bucket, which contents he would then carry down to the compactor.

It took George ten mornings of some additional three, to three and a half hours each, to clear all of the gutters. When done, on a night before commencing his regular work, he ran fire hoses to the gutters and sprayed them completely clean. They ran beautifully, as they must’ve when the first rains ran through them. He had gained a number of new calluses in different spots on his hands, where he did not think calluses could be gained.

George carefully filled out the extra hours on his invoice that he sent to the employers once fortnightly. However, the extra money was not transferred, not the next payday, nor the next after. George wrote a querying letter with regards the subject, and he received a letter back in turn, which told him that they would inspect the premises for the work done, and asked whether George could provide evidence of the hours he had worked – could the staff verify that he’d been there as long as he claimed? And, if he could, would he mind delineating exactly which work – in his opinion – should be construed as deserving or requiring extra hours? They ought also discuss the idea of training-up two other workers to be used at Queen’s Gate, since George appeared to be having difficulties on his own.

George replaced his cup of tea on his blue painted table, and sighed. This meant that he would have to travel to work and meet with the abrasive employers, and be paraded about the car park; they would find more things to do for him – numbers of unreasonable requests; and the people working at the car park would also have their say. George did not respond to the letter, filled as it was with what he interpreted as hidden threats. He heard nothing of it afterwards.

Fate rewarded him herself for the work he’d done on the night after he had received this letter, providing him with an emolument. The office staff had abandoned a heap of computers just outside the door of the mess room. They were all pieces of I.B.M.-compatible machines. George found that new computers had been placed on each of the desks. It took him three or four trips to carry it all to the container bin. After he had finished his regular duties, as the slits in the roller door began to glow brighter, George removed from the container bin an entire machine, including a spare keyboard and mouse, and placed it in the back of his car. 

Prospects

One means, through which George might avoid the tempest percolating just over the horizon, was to set sail in a different ship: perhaps he ought to try and find new work.

He unfolded a paper, which he had retrieved from one of the bins of the ticket office; a container with remnants of a light brown curry had been discarded on top of it. Bits of rice had been stuck on the front cover, and little spots flecked through with spots of paprika stained the front pages. He leant back against the wall by the mess room, laid the paper on his thighs and rolled himself a cigarette.

George lit his cigarette, and quickly turned the paper over; he was not fond of the front section of the paper, preferring positive news, which could largely only be had from the sport section (unless he’d placed a bet).

As smoke curled lazily towards the ceiling, George turned to the job section of the classifieds. He liked many of the positions that he saw advertised, and believed himself capable of doing a number of them: grave-digger, town-gardener, orderly, bellhop, baggage-handler – he was most fond of airports, hotels, hospitals, and cemeteries; but all of these advertised positions required experience. Almost all of the jobs in the classifieds required experience. He thoughtfully dragged at the cigarette, and wiped some soft bits of ash from the page that had fallen onto it. A dying black beetle thudded into the wall, and landed on the ground next to him; George lifted an edge of the paper and regarded the beetle briefly, making sure his clothing was not in contact with it.

How does anyone get a start? He had heard tell that on the wharves only friends and family of the workers that were already engaged by the docks could gain employment on the docks; perhaps people needed connections to get work. He had once heard on the radio, tell of an amazing statistic that only seventy percent of university graduates got a job in their chosen field within a year. The piece had been written for the purpose of sympathy for the remaining thirty percent, but this was not what had struck George: how was it possible that seventy percent gained employment, since none had experience and virtually all job advertisements – as did these, that he leafed through now – agitated for experience? Did people apply in spite of the call for experience? Would they gloss over this lack of experience in the interview?

‘What experience will you bring to this job?’

‘Well, never mind that, uncle Frank – check out these pointy shoes.’

‘Nice, where did you get them?’

There was certainly something odd going on, since the paper and the statistic did not match. His conclusion was that either the applicants to these jobs lied, or the people placing the advertisements did not really care about, nor expected experience, and had placed the condition in their advertisement simply in the hope of getting an applicant who did have the experience.

George certainly had never applied for a job in which he had experience, and tended to stay in a job until it ended – something that was certainly on the cards in this current situation. He took a sip from his coffee and came across an advertisement that scuttled his ruminations, it read, ‘Church clerk needed – no experience necessary.’ Perfect and lovely, thought George; an image of the small church that sat by the petrol station around the corner of his apartment block came to his mind. It was built of red brick, and finished in spots with white-wash or rendering; it had a quaint, low, and fat bell-tower, with attendant little buildings sprouting from its sides; set in a perfect field of buffalo grass; ringed by eucalyptus trees and a low, knee-high wall of red brick, finished on top with white paint. It was little attended; on Sundays and holidays, usually only by the elderly in fine, sober clothing; or for funerals and weddings – as it was a pretty little church. As George imagined his holding the advertised clerk job, he pictured similar premises, with a tiny office containing a high chair, ledgers, and records piled high in the corners, and him scratching away with a pen low on ink on a scrap of paper. Perhaps he could help with the burials and with tending the garden – he was adept at removing leaves, which was experience. He tore the little piece out of the paper and tucked it into a pocket.

Four cans had been thrown at a green-painted wall on the outside of the stairwell and lift foyer on the fourth level – citizen’s advice bureau end, – and channels of liquid had run down the wall and shallow incline. When he came closer he was relieved to find that the cans had not been sticky-drink cans, spillage of which he could usually smell at quite some distance away, such smelt sickly, the liquid turned sordid rapidly, – they had been beer cans. Beer was much easier to clear away, requiring merely water, at most.

The beer cans were little, and George had never seen such for sale – they must be airplane or train stock, he guessed. They were made of a different metal, and, other than their size, they were shaped differently too. Where had the revelers gotten these little cans and why had they not finished them? It was not as if it would take more than a couple of draughts to finish them. Did they throw them at the wall because they could not finish them? – inconceivable, they were so little – why open them? He began to sweep the cans into his dustpan, and much to his surprise found that one of the cans had not been opened.

He ran the unopened can under the tap set into the recess of the foyer-wall, rubbed at it, and held it up to admire it. He wiped the remaining moisture from it with his shirt, and placed the can in one of his pockets. He dumped the others in the red-lidded foyer bin, after which he hosed the spillage away, using the fire hose conveniently mounted on the wall by the spillage. George thought this find to be a good sign – a little indication of approval at George’s new line of reasoning.

Little wind moved through the levels: all was still.

George dialed the number. ‘I am calling about the job that you have advertised in the paper.’

‘Of course, when would you like me to book you in?’ responded a clipped, neat voice.

Book me in? - odd, thought George. ‘Well, when would you like me to come in?’

‘Well, how about tomorrow at nine?’

‘That will be fine,’ said George.

‘Alright then, and your name again?’… ‘The address is…’

Later, George read an interesting article in that same paper, which he had decided to bring home with him. He was having dinner – sausages, boiled cabbage, and mustard, with a mug of red wine – when he came across the article in the health section, having exhausted all other readable sections. It was headed, ‘The Colour of Power,’ and it detailed another study from a university: it had become apparent to the researchers, that the colour red made men seem more powerful to women if they wore it, it did not – however – make them more ‘likeable.’ Well, perhaps the interviewer for the job was going to be a woman, thought George. If he got himself a red tie, and their claim proved to be nonsense, it would at the very least distract a little from his face.

George walked along the main artery of the city. Buses and cars streamed by on four lanes of traffic, moving only slightly faster than the pace set by George’s jittery walk; he was beset by adrenalin as he walked to the place of interview. It was not cold, but his teeth kept setting themselves to chattering and cold thrills ran in currents down his spine. Skyscrapers rose into the sky on both sides of the street. Men and women in crisp-cut suits strode by, many of the ladies wore colours that stood out powerfully: deep reds, bright yellows, and even lime green. Many of the men wore shoes that displayed an exotic range of leathers. Most of these business people carried something: attaché-briefcases; leather folders tucked beneath elbows; cases on wheels with extendable handles, of the kind that George had until then believed to be the sole domain of airports, were dragged along clattering on the edges of the paving stones, and take-away coffees were supped at on the run. George felt a little self-conscious at the displays of business-wear and wealth; he straightened his moustache with a hand and then smoothed over his hair.

It appeared that the church that he was to visit was not a small little thing like that he’d imagined, unless it sat incongruously amongst the sky scrapers – which was still a possibility, since here and there he passed by a well appointed little residence of no greater than a single story or two. Eventually he stopped before a large building, of some three stories tall. It had taken him a little while to locate, since the street numbers made little sense: they would stop abruptly and commence anew at number one, or jump to some very much greater number than that he had been following; and while still on the same long street, it would suddenly change its name. He sighed with relief when he finally reached the spot, and pocketed the piece of paper with the address written on it and made his way down a long flight of stairs into the bowels of the building.

He told a lady seated at a desk in a waiting room his purpose, and at first she did not appear to know what he was talking about.

‘It is about the advertisement that you had placed in the newspaper,’ explained George, as he removed the torn-out advertisement from his pocket to show her.

‘Of course,’ she nodded, briefly glancing at the advertisement and getting up out of her seat, ‘of course. Please come this way,’ she gestured that George move through a doorway. He was shown into a large spartanly appointed room with a high ceiling and he was seated at a table with steel legs and a hard plastic top.

‘Just one moment please,’ said the woman as she left the room.

A little while later, a man entered the room with a document. He put on a pair of glasses and sat down opposite George, and leafed through the document. ‘Alright then,’ he said, as he placed the document before George. He took a pen from his shirt pocket and also gave this to George. ‘See how you go.’ The man wished him the best of luck and left the room.

George sat there for a little while, still holding the pen as he had first been given it. Unusual, he thought; but he had seen something similar to this situation before. He once had to sit through a series of written tests when he was younger and had applied for a job as a bank teller. It turned out that he had done very well at these tests, in particular those associated with mathematics. He had not gotten the job though, because when questioned further, and asked what his aims were in life vis-à-vis the work he’d see himself doing in the future, he had responded in fatal truth, that the job that they had on offer – should it be won – would have been a steppingstone to another job, such as a position as a librarian, or as a hospital orderly. That answer was where he had made his mistake: it turned out that they had wanted a person committed to the job that they had on offer. So naïve, admonished George to himself, with a little shake of his head and pursing of lips as he remembered. Not an error he’ll make this time: church clerk, and had always wanted to be. He began to leaf through the test.

It did not take George too long – he felt – to get through a veritable mountain of questions. He handed the document in – nodding knowingly at the lady and almost winking, he believed that he had slaughtered it – and he was shown upstairs by her, who seated him on a bench in a corridor by a wooden office door with a cloudy pane of glass in the middle of it. There was a lot of wood on this level, the building dated back quite a number of years, and it had been well kept. There was a pervading smell of wood polish and anti-bacterial cleaning fluid – this was what he’d imagine a hospital of old would smell like.

After some time, George was shown into the office by a man around his age; dressed in a tidy manner, with the smoothest hair George had ever seen outside of the movies – it was as if he were part office dandy, part scientist; George had to suppress an urge to reach out and touch it, which made him smile momentarily. He was bade to sit down in a chair before the man’s desk, and he himself sat down behind the desk, and began to leaf through what George knew was his test. George forced himself to regard him in defiance of his natural urge to look to the floor. The man looked up, and carefully examined George. At first his superior demeanor faltered slightly as he took in George’s problem, but he quickly recovered, as if mightily pleased. He went through George’s test once again; ‘I think we can… help you,’ said the man. He held up a graph, and pointed at a spot on it, ‘here is where you are. Your difficulties, which we can address…’

Alarm bells went off within George – help you? This was no ordinary church. This set-up was some kind of cult; and this bloke was some kind of mountebank – look at him, thought George with sudden revulsion. An overwhelming sense of wanting to leave took hold of him.

The man began a long spiel; he had taken out another document that he wanted to go over and have George sign. He managed to interrupt the man after a little while, and put to him that perhaps it would be best if he took the document home to look over. The man said that this was not a good idea. It would be best if he signed it there and then. Could he give George some time to go over it here then – in private? This was acceptable.

He was left alone in the room; the sound of the man’s footsteps receded as he walked up the corridor, before moving out of hearing-range altogether. George waited for a few minutes and he made his way from the room, leaving the document lying on the man’s desk. Near a flight of stairs he came across two young men who were making their way down it; they were dressed much as the first man, but both wore glasses. Cultists, thought George with both surprise and anger; the two men regarded him, and something in his expression made them turn about and flee back upstairs. Unbelievable, thought George – cultists – he repeated to himself, fleeing cultists. Cultist lady, even. It took him quite some time to make his way out of the building: he interrupted a number of people in different rooms – some of which were large groups holding meetings – cultists meetings, thought George. Eventually he made it out, back up the stairs and onto the footpath. I think we can help you! – thought George, as a broad smile played across his features. Bugger me, eh? – he thought.

Later, George figured out who they had been. ‘Space ships and alien spirits; give me a break!’ said George aloud, gesturing with a beer bottle at a movie star in an action movie featuring alien-operated tripods that he was very much enjoying.

A blonde and a brunette

George had felt very tired this day and was a little despondent at the prospect of his company losing the contract, which was a scenario that had begun to loom monstrous-large in his mind. Looking for work had not gone very well, and he had abandoned his attempts for the moment – he took some kind of comfort from the fact that when in final desperation, he’d always snared new work at the demise of the old.

He finished off a fifth of a bottle of whisky during the day, after he had drunk four beers. He had awoken just before midnight, it had been very dark – the moon was on the other side, – and he was entirely uncertain as to where he was. He lay on the ground behind the green and brown striped chair, in which he had sat most of the day and night reading The Thin Man. He had slumped over onto the ground, and his right cheek was planted against the rough carpet. He got up and moved about believing that he was in his bedroom. It was a scenario of deep confusion, and he felt hints of both panic and irritation; he destroyed the shade of a lamp that sat in the corner of the living room, as he tried to force his way through that corner of the room, which he simply could not fathom that it should be there. Eventually he found the couch, and he established where he was, and figured his way to the light switch by the door.

He promptly cooked himself a meal of beans, onions, garlic, and black pepper, before heading off to bed to gain a last hour of sleep. He would have to get up early and get into the shower, for a further recovery session. The meal had given him a solid base of strength when he got up, but the shower played the devil with him; the cold water was restorative, though.

He had been eating far less than normal over the past week, and he had lost some weight. Of late, he had only been motivated to get up – besides his having to go to work – so that he could get into his car and have his first cigarette. Usually he looked forward to going to his work, of late it was the prospect of the next scheduled cigarette that generally kept him moving; not that he’d allowed his work to suffer, he was too proud for that to happen (or perhaps out of guilt, somewhat ashamed of his increased imbibing and total withdrawal from society, and he seemed to work a little harder, if anything, to make up for this).

He entered Queen’s Gate via the roller door and closed it behind him. He unlocked his storeroom door, and switched on the light within. He… there was someone in the storeroom! Now gone. He rubbed his eyes, and looked about the room carefully, but could not find anyone – he thought he had seen someone dressed in clothes of dark colour seated by the sink, at the very moment at which the filament in the light bulb first glowed bright. It must have been a trick of the bulb. He glowered at the papier-mâché figures – some of which were partially lit, and others, dark silhouettes, – assigning blame to them for the illusion that he thought he had seen; he singled the priest out with a particularly stern glance. He passed a firm hand over the top of his head and face.

He began the three with purpose. Whilst he moved through the tiled warren at the citizen’s advice bureau end, he became ravenously hungry, but pressed on; he knew that the hunger, which would at some point make him nauseated, would pass soon after that. He was sharp, fidgety, self-conscious, and a little paranoid, as he moved about on reserves hidden in his body. Cigarettes would both fuel and lesson this feeling, and he moved with purpose up the lift and down the stairwell, in anticipation of the next one.

He was clinical when it came to the office, and it did not take him long. He felt haggard, and did not want to meet with anyone; whilst he always finished before the first of the day staff came in, on that night, and on many of the previous ones, he felt a great need to finish well before they came. He had gained much time hurrying about, and he poured himself a strong tea and sat down by the mess room door with it. He shook himself out of a brief reverie – he had numbly stared ahead of himself. The floor did not play for him that day, the dust sat motionless. He rolled himself a cigarette. The tea was as delicious as the cigarette.

George was so tired that after work he promptly took a nap when he got back home. After, he prepared a meal of baked beans with some mayonnaise and chopped raw onion mixed through: thousand-island beans, plus. Three six-packs sat in the fridge, and George opened one and sat down his comfortable couch, and turned the television on. News was showing: it turned out that cans with an inner white lining had been banned in three countries, on account of their white lining being toxic. He glowered at his bowl of baked beans.

He felt down today; the beer seemed to help a little, but would not for long, thought George. Another, however, would certainly not do any harm. He got up and grabbed himself another bottle. By the third he was again deep in contemplation about his situation. He worried; he needed to pay for the petrol and upkeep of his little red car and the apartment. He would find work again, he knew; but it certainly had not been a pleasant process for him to secure this present job. His gaze rose to the painting of the little house; the possibility of owning such a little house seemed further away than ever – the painting seemed sad for him. Irritated by his train of thought, he got up and turned the picture frame over, before sitting down again. After staring at the back of the picture for a little while, he frowned – it was not the picture’s fault, and got up again to turn the picture the right way around again.

Later, he felt that he had best prepare another meal, if he was to get through the night with less difficulty than that of the previous. He would do so during the advertisement breaks, switching the sound up as he stood in the kitchenette preparing the meal. A movie called Shakespeare in Love had begun. George had seen it before, and had very much enjoyed it. It had been some time since he had last seen it, and he prepared himself for an excellent evening. That blonde was something else.

There was little left in the pantry. He needed to do some shopping. There was another can of beans; three potatoes and some carrots; and butter, salt, and pepper. In the freezer he also found two ends of a loaf of bread. He could roast the bits of bread, he thought, and make a soup from the other items.

It turned out to be a decidedly excellent meal, with which he was very pleased; he needed it since otherwise he would be in some pain from the beers he continued to drink. After the first movie, another was shown, with the title, A Very Long Engagement, which he found to be a charming movie, a tale and a brunette to die for. He had become thoroughly melancholic by the end of the movies. How did they manage it? – he had thought. These were brutal films; he ought not watch romances any more. The combination of the two movies had made his heart melt, and he felt as if its remnants sat at the bottom of his lungs. Stupid Goddamn movies, thought George. He switched the television off and drank another beer.

Melancholic world – the homunculus

George watched a large lidded-earthenware jar, which was visible through the open door of a fiery furnace; it was tied up with glowing metal wire, as a steady colour of red heat penetrated it. After a while, cracks appeared across the surface of the jar, and suddenly a small elbow appeared through a gap it had made, little shards of pottery fell into the flames of the fire. A dark green arm shaped as that of a plump toddler, which was soon scorched black, freed itself from the jar, and began breaking other pieces off the fractured vessel.

A short stout, bald figure with a paunch stood on the floor of a large darkened warehouse made of brick walls and tarnished steel girders covered in flakey, heavy, green-coloured paint. The figure was made of clay, it was blackened – covered in scorch marks and soot – and was dark green of colour. As George looked upon it, he absentmindedly thought of copper: copper must have been poured into the mixture to create this figure. He looked back at a table covered in volumes and manuscripts from which knowledge they carried his servant had arisen; all written on supposed exploded systems and useless names, but…

George was seated by a wooden table, stupefied with pleasure, an idiotic smile sat on his lips; behind him lay the main space of a work room. He blankly gazed about: broken pieces of failed attempts lay strewn across the floor – disfigured shapes of varying sizes, broken in various degrees; as well as chards of broken jars; and even figures still encased within cracked or partially broken jars. There sat two particularly large piles of this material in one of the corners of the warehouse. The light cast by the fire in the oven, ran across the floor and played over the pieces. Three furnaces of different sizes extended their chimneys through space and into the dimness of the roof cavity high above.

George felt elated, he had finally succeeded, – a feeling that translated into shortness of breath and a lump high in his throat. He took up a large brush, and leant across over to the little stout man – it stood in height to around his midriff – and brushed at the black soot covering him, which fell to the ground with little slapping sounds.

George stood and gestured to an invisible crowd, indicating to them the figure: ‘I,’ he called out loudly, ‘I have made this… I,’ he exclaimed with glee, gesturing in turns at it, and then at himself. He thumped at his chest, ‘I!’

George was digging in a forest, loading up a wheelbarrow with clay. He made bricks and began to construct an oven, at first out there in the open, then within a shed. The oven sat complete. He built the building around it, and it took him decades – but, he had persisted.

Then, on the fateful day, George again worked at getting the homunculus right. He had built them in all sorts of sizes and baked them at all sorts of temperature. He mixed different powders and metals into the clay, and had sourced different varieties of clay, including a rare purple variety used in the Orient for the making of teapots. One eve he had dug about the rose bushes of a church, seeking white clay from consecrated ground. He had been chased off the property by an odd-looking dog and the rector of the church. When this latest homunculus was formed, and placed within its urn, and tied with wire, and placed inside the oven; he threw into the flames, at carefully chosen intervals, little items that he had found for the purpose.

After a short time of reflection, George scribbled something onto a small piece of paper with a silver fountain pen. This was placed into the small round, open mouth of the homunculus and a tiny spark appeared to light briefly in the dark hollows of its eyes. The homunculus – until then standing entirely lifeless as if solely the clay statue it appeared to be – turned its head and looked up at George, who stood and watched with anticipation, holding one hand in the palm of the other. George nodded at it, as if in confirmation. The homunculus turned its head and walked out of the building.

The homunculus stood in a small garden by a small sky-scraper in the city. The building housed firms that kept men and women in suits of pinstriped greys and blacks, with paisley ties, and polka-dotted neck-cloths. The figure had come to rest next to a small fountain, and appeared to be waiting since it did not move at all, it stood with legs close together, and its arms with clenched fists tucked against its sides – it looked as if it were a statue.

Within the building stood a business man, immaculate in a fine dark suit, with a striped pink and purple shirt, with a pale yellow tie, amongst a group of his business associates. They were comparing notes and figures written upon leaves of paper seated at and standing by a long, polished, beautifully veneered table. At the head of the table stood a stand with a graph upon it; once in a while a man flipped the sheet paper with the graph drawn upon it over itself to reveal another graph, when instructed to do so by the businessman in the dark suit. The man had combed his perfect hair backwards, was tall, and wore normal-toed shoes of fine, well cared for leather.

A small group of children gathered about the homunculus, along with a few adults, including two businessmen in hats. The adults discussed the merits of the little statue, which stood unmoving amongst the children of near its own height. They found it odd, in both its appearance and that there had been no consultation, nor any notification about its having been raised here (questions would be asked). After considering it a little longer, they decided that they approved of it: it was primal in its appearance, appeared well made, and the children seemed to like it – they were treating it as one of their own, they had begun to place items around its neck, and one of the adults briefly placed his brown hat on the homunculus, obstructing its gaze; this was met by a chorus of delight. A child soon made as if to grab at the hat, and the adult prudently removed the piece of headwear, and replaced it on his head.

The time passed, and the little crowd dispersed. Within the building the gathering turned into a social occasion, all were silhouetted against the windows of the building; glasses of wine and beer were charged, and they drank merrily amongst the sheets of paper strewn about desks and chairs. The man in the dark business suit toasted the success his colleagues, and begged their pardon as he took his leave, taking up his briefcase, coat, and hat.

The homunculus stood by a fine, handsome house. Other houses – including farms – could be seen across fields that contained pet cows, and which were bordered with hedges of brambles. The house was edged by small, neatly kept rose bushes. There was a tidily trimmed hedge, and a padded-earth path ran alongside the house. The walls were made of grey stone, and on this, in spots, grew vines. The roof was tiled with slate. The figure stood off to the right of the house, at a little distance away, in the gloom of a small copse with a clear view of the house; its dark silhouette was set off against the sky behind it, which had begun to display vivid colours of greens, greys, and orange, as the sun began its final descent.

The homunculus climbed through an open window at the rear of the house, and wandered into the kitchen. A large hound, somewhat alerted, padded into the room, stopped abruptly, and took one long look at the clay figure, before continuing on past it, without removing its gaze from it, and leaving through the back door, which it shoved and barreled open with its shoulder. In the next room the man was thanking his wife – a pretty woman with large eyes and a pixie hair-cut, who was congratulating him on his latest business success; two children chattered excitedly at them nearby, reaching out with little hands to pat in congratulation, or tug at clothes and clamour for attention. They soon began to gather up coats, in preparation to leave somewhere. The homunculus moved forward towards the room; a child passed nearby it, and then the wife, but neither noticed it. The front door was tugged shut, and soon car doors were opened and closed, and the engine of a finely-tuned car was struck, and the family set off towards a small, quaint restaurant in the city noted for a meal of mussels, fries, and salad, and its fine selection of beers on tap.

The dog sat in a field at the back of the house, on a little rise between two trees along a fence line, which ran along behind him. Two small black birds – willie-wagtales – were swooping down on him, and twirling about him. The hound responded to this onslaught of aerobatics by alternately twitching its ears, and an occasional wag of its tail because it enjoyed company. The little birds soon let up, deeming the hound no danger. They alighted on the topmost fence line made of slackened steel wire, on a spot chosen deliberately at some distance away from their nest. The three watched as the homunculus slowly began to break the house down. A rear wall was torn asunder near the window through which it had gained entry. The wall that contained the rear door, buckled inwards, as the homunculus pulled at something from within. The small strong hands shaped like mittens’ next target was an important structural beam; the homunculus took a firm grip and began to assert irresistible pressure.

Cosily seated in a worn but comfortable deep chair by one of the ovens in which a small fire was lit, George was scribbling notes, each of which he assigned to the flames in the oven as soon as written – his ‘morals’ had overruled all that he had written down so far. You don’t know what you want when you have it, either. He reached for a mug of tea that sat awkwardly on metal melts stuck on a broad edge of a large crucible that sat by him. The homunculus approached the scene out of the darkness and came to rest in the exact same pose as at the park, and that of when it had first been created, by the chair.

The frog and the epiphany

George had eaten well over the past few days, and his energy levels had largely been restored. Much of this had to do with him restoring his stocks of food; which in turn restricted the amount of beer he could buy. A little too much beer and late nights had tired him out so very much, and the accompanying poor attitude afterwards had not helped either. He felt strangely calm, and he faced the tempest with his resolve somewhat restored.  

The three had been very messy on that day. When he had had his cigarette, he heard a number of revelers rattling at the gate at the bead-shop end; they called out both plaintively, and with insults. Eventually deciding that either no one was within, or would come out, they abandoned their assault. George sat beneath the mess room door’s light and rolled himself a second cigarette. It was raucous outside that night. The moon was approaching near full.

The levels were filthy too.  

George sat before his television. The room was dark except for the light emitted by the television; colours played over George and his couch as he reached for his bottle of beer. He had eaten a substantial meal, and he had placed a mango in the shower as a surprise for sometime later. The level of the sound of his television was low, as was the amount of beer in his bottle – there was about a third left. He got out of his couch and returned with another bottle of beer. His eyelids were feeling heavy as he took in the scenes shown by the television without really noticing them; soon he was dozing fitfully, passing into and out of conscience.

He watched a cartoon that had just begun, through partly closed eyelids; suddenly he became fully awake, George knew this cartoon, he had last seen it a great many years ago and it stirred pleasant memories. He reached for his beer and took a draught – adding some further pleasure.

In the cartoon, an office block was demolished, and within the rubble of the building, a labourer found a box, which had been interred into the foundations beneath the original dedication stone. When the man opened the box, from it sprang a frog, which began to dance and sing a show tune. The man was amazed at the sight of the remarkable frog, and he knew that others would be too. He poured his funds into organising a show, which would feature the frog. Unfortunately, whenever the man revealed the frog to the public, it refused to sing and dance; instead, it just sat there behaving as a regular frog would. This caused the man great anxiety, anger, and disappointment. Maddened beyond repair, he eventually responded to the situation by entombing the frog and its box into the foundations of the new building that was being raised in place of the previous one.

George slowly reached over for the remote and switched the television off. As he had watched the cartoon, he had had an epiphany – a chimera of boundless grandeur, which he could exchange for his reality of little worth; everything had become clear as day: he ought to rob the gunmetal green safe and buy a house. This explained the momentous sign of the black swan. He looked over at the painting – how much would a deposit be, on an out-of-the-way, quiet, aged little house like that? His smile of wonder broadened by degrees as he began to run through the positives and the negatives of his thoughts. It would not cost a great deal. George had gained a sense of purpose.

Melancholic world - the rose greenhouse

In front of George stood a large green container bin with two large hinged plastic lids on top. The bin was as tall as from the ground to George’s chin, but it stood a little downhill from where George was standing. There stood a greenhouse to his right, which consisted of a large metal frame sealed off with clear plastic panels and glass panes; this greenhouse glowed with a clean, dull white light. He stood on a little square section of concrete ground. The rest of the ground about the slab of concrete consisted of sparsely covered dark earth. A little down the hill, stood another greenhouse, over which had been spread and tied opaque plastic sheeting. Within this greenhouse glowed fluorescent light bulbs, the building shone with a rose-coloured light.

The air was crisp and clear, and George’s breath formed little clouds as he exhaled. His heart beat at an increased pace – at what, he did not know, he had not had any painkillers.

Covered fields and little buildings sat further down a gentle slope, beyond which ran a line of white-limbed trees; and behind that, stood a grove of beautiful pine trees. He looked back at the rose-coloured greenhouse as he had recognized the scene: it had not been lit up before. High above the grove floated the disk of a stunning, near-full moon; upon regarding her, George raised his arms up and was flooded with an intense feeling of elation. She knew what he had been thinking, and approved.

The breeze carried a song to George, and he began to dance on the concrete slab. He leapt, and turned with the music.

Questions of conscience

He felt elated at the prospect of what was to come. He got up out of bed and moved to the kitchen, he was going to have a meal directly before he went to work, which was something he usually only did out of need. There were eggs in the fridge.

George guessed that it was going to be a troublesome night as he looked up at the moon. She was at her brightest on this night, and this had coincided with a day when most did not have work the next. Her bright light drew her children out, and, intoxicated by her splendor, they would celebrate raucously. Nights such as this were a clear sign of her power. Queen’s Gate would come under attack that night. Roller doors would be grabbed and shook; bottles of liquor would be thrown at its walls, and onto the levels; they would climb into the car park, and if they could find George, they would demand from him that he open the car park, – which he was not authorised to do, nor would he want to, even if he could, as he had no way of operating the boom gates; they’d converse with him jocularly and even jeer at him, when he was spotted within from without.

When left alone, those that climbed into the car park generally climbed back out of the car park, or went to sleep in their car as their strong emotions burnt themselves out. George had to make very sure that at all points, he kept doors closed and locks engaged. When he came face to face with any intruders, and they did not argue with him, they would regard each other sheepishly, because George knew they weren’t meant to be there and they knew that they were not meant to be there, but George did not care; so he treated them as if they were another kind of midnight, fellow denizen; he would nod at them in greeting, and continue on with his duties, leaving them to their own devices. He refused to get into a conversation with any of them, whenever he could. 

It was in this carnival-like atmosphere that George conducted his work, and, as he moved about the levels, he weighed up the positives and negatives about getting at the contents of the safe. He should take the funds, shouldn’t he? The council did not need all of these funds that it gains from parking fines; which they appeared just a little too keen to inflict on the public. Sure, it was possible that the fines funded a number of beneficial programs for the inhabitants of the town. But surely, some, or perhaps the even majority of the funds, must have been pure cream, which lined the pockets of the council members who seemed to agitate for increased salaries at every opportunity they got. Surely removing one of their hauls would not be a sin? In fact, would not such a thing be a brave act? – would it not be a sordid, but praised affair instead?

And also, would they not have insurance? Perhaps the council wouldn’t be out of pocket at all. George shook his head irritably as he thought of insurance companies: there were no institutions in the world that he found as reprehensible as insurance companies. They were inherently wrong. For such a business to work, they had to take more money in than they gave out; and the more they did not have to pay out, the more they made, so therefore, it was in their nature not to want to pay out claims – this was how they profited. They were vague and devious. Their CEO’s salaries were absurd. George despised the false television advertisements that they bombarded him with – those with slimy characters, and cloying music.

His taking a little of the cream was certainly not going to do any harm – it ought to be applauded, surely?

He turned a corner, and walked into a stunning woman – she disengaged with a laugh, and momentarily placed a hand on his shoulder. She was tall and had broad, beautiful shoulders, and long straight dark brown hair, which she wore in a ponytail. She wore clothes a professional woman would, and she held her shoes in her hands. She had a supremely confident bearing, which reminded him of a Croatian champion high jumper he had once seen on the television. George guessed that her work would have something to do with numbers. He could feel his heart melt a little at the sight of her. After taking in George for a moment, the woman rather knowingly smiled; it was kind of an encouraging smile. The pupils of her dark eyes were dilated; there was a sensual quality to her gaze.

‘My car is in here,’ she told George by way of explanation at her presence as she showed him a set of keys, ‘would you mind if I slept in my car?’

George shrugged, indicating to her that he did not mind either way – he was grateful that she had not asked him to open the front gates. After a brief period of silence, George tilted his head towards a can lying by a pillar, as an indication that he had best get on with his work, slightly raising his dustpan and broom by way of explanation.

‘Of course, do go ahead,’ she smiled at him. 

George continued on, very much elated. He could not have given him a clearer sign than this fine woman: the contents of the safe was indeed his answer. He could still smell her delicately perfumed scent on the breeze – he knew the perfume, he had recently come across some, on one of the paper strips, she had suited it.  

A partly filled crushed beer can slithered onto the level, thrown from below, accompanied by hoots and howls of delight. George retrieved the can without breaking stride.

Clay to make bricks

George felt calm now that the decision had been made, and he began to plot – how was he to do this?

He sat at his blue table, and instead of taking a beer he took a cup of black tea. He spread out before him a pad of quality light blue coloured paper, and placed next to it a 2B pencil, so that he could jot down notes, make lists, and draw up plans. His mind would begin to drift through the possibilities. He sat in the shower and ate a mango, and his mind turned. He might help himself to a tumbler of whiskey later, once all of his duties had been taken care of – he needed to do the dishes, and run a load of washing – and stew in his thoughts. He sat by the washing machine out at the back of the unit of apartments, – which would malfunction unless watched – and plotted.

The most vital obstacle that he needed to address was the safe code. Contrary to what he had seen at the movies, he imagined that a safe would not be simple to open. He would somehow have to find out what the code was.

Another problem was the code of the office alarm. Could he learn how he might disconnect it, thereby giving an illusion that a thief had done it? Or, should he break a window and trigger the alarm after he had removed the cash? The cops would then think that the robbery was committed between the break-in and the time that they would take to get there. That scenario would appear miraculous, since they’d be pretty quick in arriving from across the road. Maybe he should leave a showy calling card. But then, George may be caught when police cars went about searching for him. And such a thing would not necessarily guarantee that suspicion might not be on him anyway. The cops will have access to their own cameras, and these might capture him somewhere.  

This musing was of no use; George would have to gather information first. He would take a smidgen more time in cleaning the offices as of now, so that he could examine the situation closely. He was to do this imperceptibly, so that no attention could be drawn to him even if they examined camera footage of old.

Reconnaissance, plotting, and planning

George entered the car park. He felt a little giddy, beset as he was with the thoughts of the take, and this – at first – induced in George guilty glances laced with glee, which he had some difficulty in suppressing at first. These glances might be captured and seen, he thought, as he tried to suppress another smile. His breathing was fast and shallow, which was another thing he’d have to get under control.

As he was vacuum cleaning around the edges of the safe, he regarded it very closely.  He carefully stared at the slate-grey plastic knobs marked with white painted notches, but did not touch them. The handle made a clunk sound when pulled, and it only gave a little; George had taken the opportunity to dust the door of the safe, something that he had never done before in order to ascertain these facts – he had to detail a few other areas too so that this surveillance would not look out of the ordinary.

He was not certain, but was there a camera in the safe room? If there was, it was a hidden one, because George could not see one. He believed that he had not seen an image of the room as one of the subdivisions on the little monitor in the Controller’s office on those few occasions that the Controller had left the screen on. So there was probably no camera, – there were plenty of cameras covering every possible access way to the safe, but there was none in the safe room. Not wanting to spend too much time in the room, he backed his way out.

He sat at his blue table again, and as he drank his tea he picked at a spot where the glossy paint was beginning to flake; he found that at some point the table had been painted red, and before that yellow. There might be books on safe cracking, he mused. This would mean that he would have to visit the libraries, but this would leave a record behind; news would break of a broken-into safe, and the librarians would remember him; so getting a book on the subject out of the question, even if such existed. George also knew that if he searched for information on safes using the computers in the library, that that sort of information could be dredged out of them. In the newspapers he had read about any number of fools that had searched for bomb-making instructions, or how-to-use-chloroform, on public computers and had been caught because of it. George himself did not have a computer that was connected to the Internet, where such information could be found – and if he had, he would certainly not use it for this purpose, because computer geniuses were everywhere; they even sold their services to the justice system. Simple searching for such might trigger an unwanted visit.

Then again, George doubted that any information other than the safe’s code itself could truly reveal to him how to get into it – what would be the point of safes, if people could get into them? To be a safecracker, that person would have had to have worked with them for a long time. They’d be a person who would open them for silly clients who had forgotten their codes, or open those that had malfunctioned. They’d know information such as (he imagined) where to drill a hole with a diamond tipped drill-bit of which he would have to wear out three just to get at a vital point within the door that reset all the settings to a universal safe code that was different for each type of safe. The stereotypical safecracker would be a small and wiry individual, with grizzled grey hair and a long goatee and a black fleece jumper with a high collar. Or maybe even, if the code of a safe such as the one at Queen’s Gate were lost, that was it: the safe was cactus. The only solution might be that they’d have to blow the door off, or cut through the metal with oxy-acetylene; and after they’d removed the contents, they’d need to buy a new safe. George concluded that he would not be able to open the safe without having access to the code, and took a sip from his strong black tea. He nodded sagely.

He did not think that he could search the office for the code; for them to have left it lying about and it being clearly marked that it was the code was too unlikely. He would have to watch as someone opened the safe. Since – on seriously considering the situation for a while, he could not hide himself in the room so that he would be able to watch, he would have to secret a camera in the room, in a position with a clear view of the dials. His tea had become cold during these considerations. Small grounds floated and swirled near the bottom of the mug; he drank it anyway, pulling a face as he took it in. He got up to make himself another cup. A fly, of the small kind that did not bother people much, flew lazily by, having entered through his kitchen window, and alighted on the table.

Now, the alarm of the office, he thought as he cradled a newly brewed cup of tea. George was never going to be able to figure out how to switch it off robber-style. He knew that were books, and so on… this would result in the same line of reasoning as that gaining access to knowledge on the safe, so there was no option here either. He had the code to the alarm; he would simply switch it off, and then rob the safe. There might well be thieves who knew how to switch an alarm off without tampering with its mechanics for all George knew; the cops might still think it a thief, if it was simply switched off.

The only time during which he could rob the safe was during the time that spanned between: after the last of the evening-shift day workers had left and before he was to arrive for work. He would arrive early, secure the take, and then raise the alarm. The cameras of the car park would catch him: his early arrival, and the removal of the cash, and so on, so he would have to remove the tape, that was a given. He would also have to make sure that there were no town street cameras that caught him going into work early on the day that he would empty the safe. He parked next to one each morning, so he should start to park elsewhere as of now, and find an avenue to drive and walk into work that was not covered by cameras.

George would fall under suspicion in a scenario where the safe was robbed, the tape was removed, and the alarm switched off; so, if he was going to be under suspicion then he would have to cover his tracks, and he would have to sow doubt and spread the suspicion amongst many. Suspicion would certainly fall on him, perhaps even heavily, particularly since it would have been him who had emptied the safe. Even if the cops lacked evidence, they might read the truth from his face, and then they’d be on him like flies on a cupcake that sat on a table outdoors on a warm summer day. Small fry can scarce defend itself, even when there is no evidence.

He would have to cover his tracks as well as he could, limit any possible damage, and come what may. First of all, he would need to hide the cash away from the apartment; nor could there be anything else there, or in his car that would link him to the situation. And, George would create a scenario whereby there was more than one suspect, which included himself. This would be the rough working plan.

He slowly drank a measure of whiskey whilst he stewed in thought by a stream of hot water in the shower. He had left the light off and the bathroom was lit only by the light of the little corridor, which streamed through the cloudy pane of glass of the bathroom door. The sounds of the shower echoed pleasantly around the room, and George luxuriated as he occupied his mind with how to achieve success. He would pin suspicion on others by leaving physical evidence; scientists could check this evidence and figure out who had left it. Cigarette butts: that would be the thing for this. Then it struck him, he should get some ‘criminal’ types’ cigarette butts too, as well as that of some of the day staff. He could get the cigarette butts from the pubs. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he cackled and laughed with delight. He would open the safe carefully too, so that the only D.N.A. that could be recovered from the safe and its handle would belong to people that could open the safe, such as the Controller.

He had placed the bottle of whiskey and his glass, now with the remnants of some ice blocks, around the corner, on the tiled, just-above-ankle-high wall of the shower, behind a panel of wired frosted glass. He stuck his head and part of his torso out past the shower curtain, reached around and poured another measure; last one, he figured. He took a careful sip, before leaving the glass close to hand, just behind the frosted-glass screen. 

A camera

George knelt beside a bookshelf filled with folders, phone books, and other registers and miscellanea. These monographs had a clear view of the safe door and sat at such an angle, which George thought a promising spot from which to capture the footage he required. There was plenty of dust on the monographs too, indicating that these were rarely used. Perhaps he could hollow one of the old phone books out, and place a camera within, its lens staring through a hole made into its spine? He had examined all else: furniture, light fittings, but his eyes ventured back to the phone books, and he decided that they were perfect for hiding a camera in. He looked closely at the phone directories. He continued to sweep, then lights out; then onto the mess room.

His mind stayed occupied with the take as he mechanically moved about, he felt as if his work was being done with more ease. He would have to examine the room again over the next few days – he did not feel yet that he had enough data to make decisions with. He would have to do some rudimentary calculations, trying to figure out angles and distances, so that when he was going to fit and place the camera, he’d be able to figure it right. Steady, that is the thing, he thought.

George had once heard a story of a bank robber who robbed a bank without a disguise, all he had done was put a dot on the middle of his forehead, and no one who had seen him could identify definitively any of his features except for the dot. With this principle in mind, George had worked on a technique of disguising himself, which he would adopt when he’d go and get himself a camera. The people in the store would then not be able to identify him – if it came to that. He decided on the bright red tie, and he’d simply pinch one eye shut, which he’d keep shut during the entire transaction. He briefly admonished himself for being so careful, as this bordered on the absurd, but best to do all right, and cover all of his tracks.

As another precaution, he selected a store that stocked cameras, which was not located in a large shopping center, so that there would be less chance of cameras recording him when he made the transaction. The store he chose was far away from Fremantle and its Queen’s Gate. He would buy the camera with cash.

‘Hello. What is wrong with your eye?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ George had not counted on this question.

‘Your eye, did you catch something in it?’

‘No, it is buggered.’

A long pause.

‘The smallest camera that you have please; one that can record at some distance, and which I can plug into my computer to get the footage.’

‘[Difficult question.]’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘[Repeated, slightly less difficult.]’

‘Well, how does it work exactly – what are the options?’

            ‘[Explanations and options.]’

‘What is it for?’

‘Security at my home,’ said George promptly, this line had been rehearsed.

‘Outside use or inside?’

‘Inside.’

George came away with a tiny device.

At home, through sheer fortune, George had kept a collection of seven old phone directories in a closet. He’d never gotten around to throwing any out, the collection had been begun by a previous tenant, they’d left four, and to this, George had added another three over the next three years. George selected the oldest directory that matched one of the ones on held on the shelf in the room of the gun-metal green safe, and a second directory, the most current that he had.

He laid them on the blue table – which he had covered with newspaper – and operated on the current one carefully: cutting a chamber into the book near the spine, fitting the camera, and angling the lens just so. He made a few errors with this first volume, so he took a third volume from the closet, and repeated the operation; and this time, he was satisfied with the result. Feeling that he’d practiced enough, he placed the oldest directory that matched one of the ones in the gunmetal green safe room in front of him, and began operating on it.

He set up a test-scene at his home in the corner of the living room between his comfortable chair and the front door, which matched in the most important particulars the safe room. He had placed a heavy jarrah-wood book shelf – painted fluorescent green – against one wall; and placed a framed old poster, – which advertised an aperitif, showing an image of a green devil with a bottle; which he had thought might be worth something, but had proved to be a facsimile – against the other wall, which represented the safe. He had placed the rigged book at the exact spot where the directories sat in the safe room, and where this directory would be placed. On the poster he had drawn the exact spots of the dials, not obviously in case detectives might visit the scene, just black dots; the shelves were lined with items other than phone books too. He experimented with the set-up until he got the angle of the camera within the volume correct.

The plant

The day of the attempt at getting the code of the safe finally arrived. George had spent days on trial runs at work: counting seconds, going in his mind through all of the movements that would achieve the planting of the camera.

He had thought carefully about what he would do if the mission failed, should the rigged book be found. He would simply claim that he knew nothing about it; all traces of its provenance resided solely in the volume, there was nothing at his home to link him to it – and he would make sure that there would be no footage of him planting it. When he was to retrieve the book the next day, if he so much as smelt or saw anything odd, he’d be spooked and not retrieve the volume. On the morning of the plant he would station himself for an hour or so in the mall and watch down along the road that separated Queen’s Gate from the police station for signs of any unusual activity, such as cops crossing the road and the like – any such sign would scupper his attempt at a retrieval too. There was a food court nearby, up the mall, by a pub called the Sail and Anchor, which always had some kind of crowd around it that he could blend into, and watch.

The moon sat low over the sea; she was almost entirely in the dark – George smiled at this, it felt as if she was in cahoots with him. It was an occurrence, which he knew was to happen: she had been growing darker for some time. He had even checked the paper to see if the days would coincide: was she going to be entirely dark on the day of the attempt? No, not quite. She had provided a cloak of darkness, but that she was not entirely dark, signified to George that she was keenly interested. A little light would be welcome from her. He looked her way again, and for a moment he got the impression that she was not interested in George that night, a whisp of a thought which he irritably dismissed: no, she was in cahoots.

The phone directory was wrapped and tied in underneath his clothes. He walked up the pedestrian passage way to the roller door, and reached up and undid the lock to the metal box, and triggered the roller door, which rattled its way upwards. Once into the storeroom, he was briefly struck with panic: was there a camera in the storeroom? he thought, as he was about to reach under his shirt for the volume. Calm. He removed the volume from beneath his clothes and unwrapped the first layer he had packed it in; all that it was wrapped in now was a black plastic bin-liner. He picked up the backpack vacuum cleaner and placed it at his feet. He took the round, plastic bubble lid-top off the vacuum cleaner and placed the volume inside the prepared, clean interior – he had beaten the filter and bag with great gusto the last time he had used it. He closed the vacuum cleaner and placed it inside his trolley.

As he walked down the steps of the first stairwell, he could hear his heart beating as loud as he had ever heard it. The stairwell was inordinately clean, and he was forced to walk slowly as he tried to adjust for a time which he imagined would not appear unusual, then he chastised himself, – no, this had happened before, continue on as normal, perhaps in the other stairwell there would be an extraordinary amount of rubbish: exactly, this was not unusual, he increased his speed again, back to normal pace. Again, he exhorted himself to be calm.

He rolled down the shallow incline standing on the back of his trolley towards the other tiled warren. He passed by a single moth that took a little tumble as the draught from the fast-moving trolley hit him. Did the moth signify anything? – no, carry on.

He found a number of wrappers and a single bottle of Swan Lager; it was a brown-coloured glass bottle with a red label, showing a swan printed in black. This was a nice beer, he thought as he picked it up; he should buy himself a carton. Perhaps tonight? no: grog after, should there be success. He smiled as he poured the tepid remnants of the bottle into a drain that ran along the street, before returning and placing it in the red-lidded bin. He lowered the roller door; it made a sharp twang-like noise, as it caught on what he guessed was a sliver of metal sheeting. The stairwell was very neat. The doors of level five whistled a little, and his heart beat loud. This walk down the stairs was the point at which he would either abort or commit to the plant. He had sensed nothing that might turn him away, so he gave himself over to fate, and firmly set himself for the plant. His breathing calmed, and he felt a deep sense of purpose, at one with the world.

He lifted the vacuum cleaner out of the trolley, and carefully placed it on the ground in front of the door to the ticket office; he then lifted and swung the mop and bucket out of the trolley. He opened the door and entered the room. There were no instructions in the book, and George took a deep breath before calmly signing it; he had carefully wiped his hand on his blue trouser leg, to remove an excess of moisture. He emptied the bins into the black bin liner.

He opened the Popeye-mirror door; and placed a foyer-room chair before it, to keep it from shutting. He walked into the Controller’s room and took the little white bin liner entire from its bin and he placed it in the larger bag, as the liner had become filthy with curry sauce. He opened the door to the safe room, and emptied the bin of the few receipts and coin-wrappers that lay in it; as he exited the room, he left the door ajar. He emptied the large bin in the mess room, removing its bag, and then placed the lot out through the mess room door.

As he cleaned the glass surfaces, he tried to regulate his breathing; his hands had begun to shake a little. The panes of the door by the trolley took him some time. He ran a fingernail over a couple of streaks to try and ascertain whether they were on the glass on the side that he stood on. Shortly he was satisfied, and returned the tea towels to the trolley.

He took up the vacuum cleaner, and plugged it into a socket in the foyer and commenced vacuum cleaning. He tended to the first part of the corridor, and the Controller’s office. After, he moved with the vacuum cleaner into the safe’s room, and delicately pushed the door behind him so that it remained only a fraction ajar, leaving enough for the movement of the cord.

The vacuum cleaner was switched off and placed on the ground as soon as he entered the room. George moved and did things before he could even think of doing so, suddenly he felt as if he were a spectator. The top of the vacuum cleaner was taken off, and the wrapped rigged volume was taken out and also placed on the ground. From his pocket and a small plastic bag he took and put on two latex gloves. He replaced the lid, and switched the vacuum cleaner back on. He unwrapped the rigged volume and placed it on the ground in front of the shelf that carried the volume that it was to replace. He took the chosen volume from the shelf and wrapped it up. He stopped the vacuum cleaner, opened it up, and placed the newly wrapped volume inside, replaced the lid, and switched it on again. He placed the rigged volume on the shelf in the other’s stead and spent a little time carefully adjusting its position. The vacuum cleaner was swung back onto his back, and within moments he was vacuuming his way backwards out of the room. He attended to the mess room, after which he returned the vacuum cleaner to the trolley.

He mopped the floor of the ticket office, leaving the foyer and mess room floors to be done. When he got to the mess room he placed the mop by the sink, and prepared himself a cup of coffee, which he took out of the room. He sat down by the mess room door and rolled himself a cigarette. He felt utterly calm, which feeling had a deep undercurrent of elation. His mind was free from any thoughts other than on the cigarette that he was rolling. He lit it, and sighed.

A small shiny black-and-white, miniature-gem, jumping spider broached the lit area from the dark. It paused for a few moments looking about inquisitively, before it turned on the spot and seemed to suddenly disappear. George smiled in recognition of the sign – that’s right, he thought.

Before he left work, he tied Queen’s Gate’s phone book in under his shirt. When home, he unwrapped the book and carefully went through it. There were no identifying features in the volume: no markings, such as doodles or inscriptions, made by the people of the car park in the book. Indeed, it looked like the volume had barely been used in its day, there was minor creasing on the spine; the pages had been little thumbed; was a bit dusty; and it had discoloured a little. Satisfied, George carefully cleaned its stiff wrappers with a rag daubed with methylated spirits, and for good measure he cleaned another two of his own phonebooks too, so that Queen’s Gate’s one would not look out of the ordinary, before adding the volume to the collection and closing the closet door upon them. The volume would not make its way back to Queen’s Gate. He would simply remove the rigged one when the time came, and leave none in its place, moving the volumes a little to disguise its absence. He felt that he could not be caught with the original in an attempt at returning it, as it would be a clear sign of his guilt: – until he took the rigged volume off the shelf, they had nothing on him. They might notice a missing volume once he did remove the rigged one, but who was going to bat an eyelid about that? Even should staff be questioned, and they did not admit taking it, what of it? At worst, someone may have taken an outdated phone book, which was no great concern. George smiled as he looked on the removed phone book, it was a charmed item; if all failed, this phone book would be all he’d have to show for the experience. He smiled and again opened the door, and he tenderly patted the cover of the volume, as if in praise – indeed, this was a special book.

The retrieval

He made himself a weak cup of coffee and he seated himself in his comfortable chair. The wicker table made a pleasant noise, each time he placed the cup on it. It was quite a lovely feeling, being ready for work this long before time. In the still of the night he rolled himself a cigarette. Had the rigged volume captured the code? – had the staff discovered the volume? – would he manage to retrieve it? He looked forward to any of these eventualities. Exiting times. He sat and smoked. The little painting glowed bright.

He had begun to park his car away from his usual spot when he got to work, in a spot that he believed to be out of the range of any cameras. He had steeled himself – and had even practiced – in an attempt to keep darting or sly ‘Hyde-like’ eyes from him; which was almost impossible, the only way he would not have these eyes – he felt, was when he was not thinking about matters concerning the take, which is what he’d practiced to try and do. Until he took the rigged volume from the shelf, this was just going to be a normal night. He had not been able to spot the moon that night, the sky was heavily overcast and a pall of darkness had been laid over Fremantle.

All lit scenes within the town stood out, as if they were islands separated by an inky-black sea. Unfortunately, he noticed as he pulled up, that the feral wheelchair man sat in the first pedestrian entryway. He quickly switched the engine and his lights off and carefully got out of the car, trying not to attract the man’s attention. The man did not notice George, who passed by him, circling the scene, hidden in the darkness and at a distance; George turned the corner into the street that ran along the length of Queen’s Gate.

He walked briskly along the road that ran between Queen’s Gate and the police station. This scenario was not unusual, it should not draw attention – he had taken this path around to the other entry before, because of unwanted presences in the pedestrian entry at the first end. This was actually a quite fortunate turn of events, as it gave George a chance to scout for signs of discovery. There was no movement in the windows of the police station, nor was there anything noticeable along the front façade of Queen’s Gate herself. As he walked by it, he could see into the entry through the slits of its roller doors – the scene beyond was clear, bright, and still. At the entry at the other side he was forced to cover his nose: the feral wheel chairman had been there too, and had left his usual filth. This was a promising sign though, thought George, – the man had not been sent on his way, which you’d think he would have been, were they setting a trap to capture George. The feral wheelchair man was an ally on this night. The roller door rattled up, and he entered Queen’s Gate.

The feral wheelchair man heard him as he pulled the trolley from the storeroom. ‘Ah, excuse me, mate, is there anyone in there? Could you open this roller door?’

George did not respond, and left with the trolley for the other end; as he turned to go, he heard the feral wheelchair man call out, ‘this is a public space. Open up.’

He attended to the opposite end, which required him to exchange the water in his bucket three times and he had to thoroughly clean his mop with bleach and red fluid, after he had attended to what the wheelchair man had left. George found empty bottles of beer and soft drink cans in the stairwell, and a number of cigarette butts, and two plastic wrappers.

He stuck his head out through the moaning outer door of the rooftop box – with his shoulder to it, and looked down the length of the car park, and noted nothing unusual. There sat a large number of bottles, cans, and junk food containers at the bottom of the incline, near the concrete ramp that led into level four. The light on the roof level flooded crisp, clean, and unmoving. As he came down the stairs he glanced down along some of the other levels too, on the second level he needed to empty his dustpan into the bin of its foyer. He had sensed nothing out of the ordinary.

As he drew the trolley up near the opening to the first tiled warren near his storeroom, he listened for a moment for signs of the feral wheelchair man. He discerned a number of little movements, suggestive of his presence. He would not attend to that end yet, and would tend to the office first. He pulled the trolley up in front of the ticket office, entered and switched the alarm off. He emptied the bin liners of the office after signing his name in the book. The lighting of the police station as seen from Queen’s Gate did not appear in any way unusual.

He opened the Popeye-mirror door, stepped through into the corridor and the door swung shut behind him. In the bin of the Controller’s office lay a plastic container with remnants of chicken tikka masala, which he regularly ate on that day of the week. So far, thought George, if they had found out about the rigged book and were watching him, then they had staged the perfect scenario to make him feel at ease; he did not think that this was staged: they had not noticed, and he would retrieve the rigged volume.

He walked into the room of the gunmetal green safe and pulled the door to, innocuously behind him. He looked about the room briefly – it looked as it always did. He took the rigged volume from the shelf and strapped it in beneath his shirt; his heart had never beaten faster than at that point; his body was flooded with chemicals, which made him feel fast and alert. He had dealt with these chemical reactions of his body before, when he had planted the rigged volume; and this time around he managed them better, he simply felt powerful and fast. He carefully adjusted the other volumes, to cover for the gap that the removal of the rigged volume had left.

The last few bins were emptied and he went straight to the container bin room and got rid of the rubbish. In the gloom and smell of organic decay of that room, he placed the rigged volume in a black bin liner, and with it, he returned to the trolley, in which he set down the bag amongst his equipment. The mop and bucket were taken from the trolley and placed on the ground. He then attended to the glass surfaces; the glossy red painted machines of the entry probably needed a wipe too. There was a large handprint on the Popeye-mirror window. It struck George as an indictment – similar to those warnings of plague painted in black or red on the doors of afflicted homes in olden times, although why this was, and what it signified, George did not guess.

He took his customary seat beneath the light of the mess room door after he had finished with the office. He had half expected that someone should have come out by now to apprehend him, but no one had turned up, it looked as if he’d pulled it off.  Oddly, he felt a little disappointed at not having been found out. He rolled a cigarette and lit it. He looked to his right, towards the lit entry. He took some time to listen carefully for sounds: occasional, particularly loud moans and clunks issued from the from the stairwell of the entry of the first tiled warren; he heard nothing that might be a sound made by the feral wheelchair man, which was an excellent sign: the wheelchair man was no shrinking violet, he’d let anyone have it that tried to enter Queen’s Gate via that way. George smiled and pulled at his cigarette. A car that belonged to a youngster drove by Queen’s Gate, – its heavy engine roared as it went around the far corner as if in defiance of the police station.

The feral wheelchair man was still there as George pulled the trolley up by the storeroom. He sat by the roller door, which was only a short distance away from George’s storeroom, through a dogleg. He was not going to leave. George decided that he would attend to the foyer and the lift and stairwell, in spite of the man being there; he would leave the area beyond the gate, which he would check it again when he’d finished the levels, should the man be gone. He steeled himself to deal with the stench.

‘Mate, open the gate would you?’ asked the feral wheelchair man, pleadingly, pleasantly.

‘I cannot open the gate,’ said George as he swept the floor.

The man responded to this with a barrage of obscenities, well modulated, so that he would not tire himself out or hurt his long suffering vocal chords and throat. 

The water closets did not take George long. He finished by carefully mopping the area, as he backed out of the foyer, the wheelchair man spat through the roller door onto the mopped floor. ‘Mate,’ said George, ‘there’s a camera right there,’ pointing at it.

The man smiled in satisfied triumph, ‘fuck your camera,’ and spat in its direction. George shook his head and smiled at this reaction, what a monstrosity the man was, but there was comedy left in him.

Footage

He drew the curtains in the living room and he re-installed the software of the camera on the computer. He took the camera from the volume and plugged the necessary things in and fidgeted with this and that. Eventually he was ready to view the footage; he leant back in his chair, and his breathing came in shallow draughts. He motioned to the computer screen as if he bade it to be patient, after which he retrieved his wallet and walked to the bottle-o. He bought himself a bottle of whiskey. Returning home he poured himself a measure, and sat back down before the screen with the bottle and the glass. He drank it at one go, and poured himself a second. He rolled himself a cigarette and lit it. Now ready, he accessed the computer program, and an image of the room of the gunmetal green safe came into view. He smiled with pure delight, and brought his hands together – the angle had been good; he nodded as he congratulated himself.

The light in the room was immediately extinguished. By imperceptible degrees the light in the room lifted as the light of the rising sun entered under the door. The safe, which had sat in pitch darkness, was at first lightly illuminated at its base. George skipped ahead on the footage, and the room suddenly blazed with a different light; the first day person had switched the light on, and left the door ajar. After some time passed, another day person entered the room; he was dressed in the uniform of an inspector. He was large and he dressed with care; he had close cropped grey hair, a beardless face, and wore black-rimmed glasses. The man went down on one knee and placed a mug of coffee on the ground. He reached for the first dial, and George leant forward in anticipation, holding his breath as he watched; but he was to be disappointed, as the man’s method had obscured the dials. With one large hand he turned a dial, but he leant on the safe with the other; he was right handed, and the other arm obscured George’s view entirely. The door of the safe soon swung open, and revealed four shelves on which sat trays of coins; trays from tills; bundles of paper, and yellow manila folders with red ties; and linen bank sacks, some of which were filled and others that sat empty, folded; and a number of rolls of bank notes. After sighting the wealth contained within the safe, George’s eyes traveled to the painting of the little house that hung on his wall, before returning them to the screen. The man moved his cup of coffee; and took from the safe three black plastic trays, which he sat on the ground beside him. Each tray had notes and coins in it, each with about the same amount, – probably the same, from the look of the trays. The man shut the door of the safe and turned a couple of the dials; he got up and leant down and took the trays, balancing them on one hand and arm, then he carefully reached down and took up his mug of coffee. He pulled the door open with a foot and left the room, leaving the door quite askew.

George took a sip from his glass, and skipped ahead and ahead, but nothing else occurred in the room until late in the afternoon, when the Controller – who George recognized from his picture – entered the room and sat down on his haunches before the safe. The technique of the Controller also obscured a view of the dials; he cupped his free hand over the dials as he turned them. The door swung open, and George watched as money was added to bags, and rolls of coin were taken. The Controller steadily moved through his duties; he marked some things on a piece of paper held by a clip board, which he returned to one of the shelves before he got up and closed the safe. He turned a couple of the dials, and pulled at the handle in experiment so as to check that it had been locked, before turning and leaving the room. George thought that he might have to repeat the procedure of planting the rigged book, in the hope of capturing the code.

He had not seen all the footage yet though, and he spent some time going though the footage, moving backwards and forwards as he clicked on spots on a time line beneath the little screen that showed the footage. He poured himself another, and rolled another cigarette, which he lit. Eventually he found another person that was to open the safe: she was one of the last to leave that night. It was a stout woman with short curly hair, red spectacles, and wondrous large forearms. She turned the dials very carefully, holding the dials delicately between two fingers at the very extremity of each dial – this was simply too perfect for George, who watched open-mouthed, almost afraid to breathe: the white painted lines of the dials stood out clearly, he shook his head slowly in amazement at this stroke of pure fortune. One by one the numbers were carefully shown to him: 36, pause, a wipe of her hand on her shirt; 61, pause, another wipe; and 3. Bingo. 

A place to stash

George stood by the white-painted wall of the cinema and department store building on the fifth level, out of sight, but beneath a pole upon which was mounted the roof-level camera. He had arrived early and had left the lights off; the cameras were limited in what they caught when the extra lights were left off, this was especially true for the roof, since it had almost no lights at all on, when George’s switches were left off. George stood there and regarded the wall and as he did so he felt chuffed and upbeat, as if he were a successful general inspecting the next obstacle in a campaign. He figured that he would hide the takings up on the roof of the neighboring building. If he did that, then he could not be caught with the funds on him, and then, on one fateful day, when all was safe, he would return for it and with it, he’d buy himself the little house.

He threw a hook with the yellow rope attached to it, over and onto to the top of the white wall. He had tied large knots at intervals on the rope, so that he would be able to climb up it with added ease. At his feet sat a black sports bag, which had accommodated the rope and hook. The hook caught.

A fog descended onto the higher rooftops of the town – so much the better to hide his efforts. George managed to clamber onto the wall, an effort he had found draining. He found himself facing an indistinct landscape of slanting tin roofs, and low walls. George could see two monstrous-of-size cement sculptures of classical bowls filled with fruit and draped in garlands – the second, further along, was a dark grey-coloured, slightly smaller shape, – which sat atop the façade of the cinema and department store building facing the street at the bead shop end of Queen’s Gate. He had never noticed these remarkable pots before, from on the street below.

He turned and looked behind him, back at Queen’s Gate’s roof level, which was covered in swirling fog, sections of the stairwell-box buildings came into and out of sight as the fog shifted. He pulled the rope up the wall, and then he dropped down onto the angled tin roof of the building, three feet below him, and began to explore. He went over and up differing angles of tin roofing over the large expanse, and in two spots he arrived at flat spaces covered in tar. Only a short distance away he came across an old water tank, which sat on a wooden framework made of thick wooden beams, which was no longer in use. Beneath this water tank, that was the spot where he would deposit the take.

George sat down on a low wall, over which ran a covering of thick tar, which was slick with moisture. He rolled himself a little cigarette in this serene, quiet paradise, as little eddies of moisture swirled about him, to which was soon added tufts of smoke. The cigarette glowed pleasantly in the gloom. The fog began to thin. The moon sat high above, and she looked muted and content. It did not look like anyone ever made their way up here, except maybe for air-conditioning repairmen, of which a few large units were dotted about, at some distance away. He’d have to hide the take well, so that repairmen would not come across it accidentally.

When he got back to the storeroom he felt drained. He wasn’t fit enough for just one strenuous effort. He would have to cut back his cigarettes, and he would have to eat more. It would take him quite an effort to get the take up onto the roof of the department store. The take, which he intended to shift in sports bags, would be heavy.

When the time came, he would shift the filled bags from the office to the base of the white wall using a two-wheeled trolley, which was kept in the storeroom. He would pull each bag up with rope, once he’d gained the top of the wall himself.

An exercise regime to build his endurance, that was what he needed – he’d start with long walks near his apartment, then he’d jog. He pulled his work trolley from the room and commenced work.

Pointy shoes

A persistent headache had plagued George that night – he figured that it was likely caused by the healthier living, which the take to come had required from him - irony. The headache sat at the forefront of his brain and made the muscles of his neck tight, in particular around the back on the right, and extending into his shoulder. George of necessity was drinking less beer, and he had compensated by drinking more coffee, not by design, but through longing. He had not yet mastered how to manage this new interest in coffee, but it would come.

George was moving about on the first floor. There were far less cars parked than was usual on this level for a weekend night, which he put down to the moon being near her darkest during that weekend. As he brushed a bottle cap and a cigarette butt into his dustpan, the leaves of one of the trees that sat by the car park began to rustle, and branches shook: someone was making their way up the tree; shortly a large, disheveled looking man dressed in a fine business suit climbed over the containing wall, he grunted and moaned as he did so.

The man’s eyes lacked focus and he did not at first notice George, who was standing a mere ten feet from him. When he finally did notice George, he became alert and alarmed, and began to straighten himself out, and carry himself taller; but after he guessed who George was, he quickly abandoned most of his concern for his appearance; he casually began to brush at his clothes that had become marked from his ascent up the tree and into the car park. Without at first again looking at George, he began to question him. ‘You work here. You won’t mind letting me out, will you? I will fetch my car, and you’ll let me out.’

George did not respond. He should have gotten out of sight, the man looked belligerent on account of the drink, and George was very little in the mood for such.

The man looked closely at George, seemingly a little bemused at not having received a response back. He repeated the question, ‘I said: how about you open the door and I bring my car down so that I can leave? I was not aware that the car park would shut.’ He put emphasis on the word, ‘not.’

Once again George did not respond, instead taking a moment to sweep a can into his long-handled dustpan out from beneath a white utility.

‘Oi, you’ll open the God-damned-door,’ he demanded, pointing first at George, and then down at the floor.

Just look at his shoes, thought George, which appeared made of dark green-coloured snake or crocodile skin, and were very pointy. They’re like shoes that an elf would wear: elf-shoes; elves were tall as well, just like this fellow; elves climb trees too, – he smiled and guffawed at his joke.

The man was a little disconcerted by George’s behaviour, and he looked briefly down at his shoes.

George shrugged his shoulders and frowned apologetically, indicating that there was little that he could do; and then he turned back to his sweeping, tightening his grip on his long handled broom, and keeping alert as to the man’s movements, as this bloke might well accost him. The man did not, instead he stalked off towards the stairwell, and soon George heard its door open, and then shut. George was not worried about him; he would either go to sleep in their car or leave of his own accord, back out via the trees, as they all usually did.

George wound his way up to the second level, and as he was sweeping the beaten grey painted floor of the lift foyer, he heard the sound of a car starting in the car park, on one of the levels above him. ‘Here we go,’ he said automatically of response, as his head lifted. He leant his dustpan against the wall and waited for the theatrics that were bound to follow. Shortly – after a number of loud squeals, of rubber wheels turning at some speed around tight corners, – a large, glossy black-coloured, expensive four-wheel drive car turned into view and hurtled down the ramp to mid-level, where it squealed around down into the next.

George smiled – this one has lost it, theatrics would follow; he hurriedly took up his dustpan and made his way down to the ground floor via the stairwell. As he came down the steps to the ground floor there was a crack-and-snap noise, which he identified as the wooden slat of the boom gate breaking, and almost immediately after a loud knock reverberated through the car park, – unbelievable, the man had struck the roller door – real life in town, thought George. He walked by his storeroom, moving with care so as to be able to move unseen onto the scene; he pushed at its door first, so as to make sure that it was locked, after which he moved carefully around towards the front of the ticket office. The man, still in his car, had come to rest in one of the exit lanes before the roller doors.

Raised beds of concrete kept the car locked in its tracks, leaving him with little space for movement other than forward and backward, unless he climbed up what was a substantial curb. The two roller doors that covered the gates had electric remote controls as well as each having a block and chain, – they were virtually invisible unless specifically looked for, since they were covered in black dust and grease; they hung to the left of each gate in relative gloom, and the man had not noticed them. The switches to the electronic controls were contained in the ticket office.

George watched on, amazed, only a little out of sight by some council-owned cars that were parked in front of the ticket office. As he watched, the man reversed the car some feet, and then launched it forward; he struck the gate again, which sent a second loud knock reverberating through the car park, the hit instantly stalled the car. The metal of the roller door had buckled and bent around the front of his car, but was far from giving out; the sides of the gate, which ran along metal tracks, had pulled slightly away from them.

As the man struggled to restart the car, George let himself into the ticket office and made his way to the controls to the roller doors. He sat himself down in one of the chairs that had a clear view of the entry; the buttons to the gates sat on the bench next to the book he signed each day. The man, who had been busy trying to extricate his car – which had become stuck, – by moving it in turns tiny distances forward and backward as the gate held it, stopped his maneuvers and began to look about. He paused when he noticed George sitting in plain view behind the window; he rolled his car window down, and asked a question laced with threat. George could not hear him, and just sat there, he did not want the man to lose his mind even more than he was about to. The man began to yell obscenities, and turned back to worry at the roller door again – he hadn’t gotten loose yet, maybe the car was giving him a bit of grief too – perhaps the gate had gotten it.

George smiled with schadenfreude: this man probably possessed a house, and a wife, and children; and yet, look at him, what on earth was going on with him? Silhouettes had begun to move about in front of the roller doors, and George pushed a button that sent the roller door covering the non-harassed entry-way rattling upwards; it was the police, who had been alerted by the two knocks, and by the noise of the car’s straining engine, and had made their way across the road. Three of them moved into the entry, and each carried a smile of wonder and amazement at the situation; which only became guarded when they turned to regard and address the man. A couple of them soon noticed George and nodded a greeting, which George returned, as he prepared to leave the room.

George locked the office and made his way the officers. He indicated his dustpan and broom and asked one of them that if they did not mind, that he had best finish his work, and that the day staff would be here relatively soon. The officer told him that they had the contact details of the Controller – whom she called by his name, Flinders, – and that they would arrange the details of proceedings amongst them; George was bade to carry on with his duties, and they did not need to have the office unlocked. Before leaving to go back up the levels George pointed the heavy blocks and chains out to the cops – in case these should be of use to them. The man, who had been removed from the car, stood trying to explain matters to the other officers; he did not think that he had done anything wrong; indeed, he believed that the rules of the car park were incorrect, and that the cops had no right to detain him.

George returned to his work; he’d better hurry, he was well behind now.

Ready

            George sat in his comfortable couch at his apartment and went over the details of the plan, by him on the little wicker table sat a cup of tea.

            He had ready three new sports bags still folded up and in their plastic wrappers, which he would fit into a larger, green canvas army bag, along with the rope and hook. He had latex gloves in plastic bags, and a quality pocket multi-tool, in case it was needed.

The D.N.A. planting-plan had been abandoned – all should have alibis (since they hadn’t done it), and if they did, suspicion of George would simply grow, since whom else could have planted such material? The plan was simple. He’d get there early. The precise time of his going to work had always been at least a little irregular; but since watching the frog cartoon he had, by increments, begun to stagger these times even more: the people of the apartments would not be able to tell exactly when he went to work, at most they could say, if interrogated, ‘it would be around…’ – and such was hardly useful for investigators. His leaving early on the night of the attempt could attract no attention, since there was no regular time of leaving.

He would exit with the bagged-up funds from the safe and the security tape, which he’d remove from the recorder, and lock the two doors. He’d leave the alarm off. Then he would take the lift to the fifth floor, climb onto the department store building, and put the bags into storage beneath the water tank.

When he had cleaned the gutters, he had found numerous narrow, but deep cavities, which could be used to stash away items, beneath grates and grills with round holes. The rope and hook would be hidden on level four, in a carefully selected cavity. The latex pairs of gloves would be burnt, and the remnants shoved in between the filthy rubbish of one of the fuller red-lidded bins. The security footage tape would be opened and the tape within burnt, – it should light easily – and its remnants would be put into another cavity.

 He would then return the trolley and single green canvas bag to the storeroom. After the stash, he would take care of Queen’s Gate. If, towards the end of taking care of Queen’s Gate after the take, he sensed naught amiss, he would retrieve the rope and the hook. The rope he would put in a bin by the beach, or somewhere else suitable; and the hook he would cast into the waters of either the Swan River or the sea. He’d take the remnants of the tape too, and reduce it entire.

He would go to his apartment and await the inevitable visit of the police, which reminded him that he’d have to prepare the apartment and his belongings for a possible absence should he be put away. His body felt good, ready for the take; he had been going on many long walks, and he had been doing sets of push-ups and sit-ups.

Melancholic World – the Devil

The earth was bright with the light of the full moon. George stood on a bitumen surface before the façade of a long, low building. The appearance of its architecture suggested to George that the building was dated to the 50’s or 60’s; it reminded him of the television show The Flintstones. It contained much plain concrete, painted in blues, light-greens and whites; there were also unpainted slabs of concrete that contained small stones of granite and tiny shells that caught at light; the building was all straight lines and tactile surfaces. Palm trees stood behind the building, visible above the roof, which had added to the feeling George had of the building and the television show. George looked behind him, and he found that the building sat at the top of a rise. A road led in a graceful curve up a long shallow hill to him.

George had an uneasy feeling when he again regarded the building. It had two entries, each of which carried a great deal of signage warning of the dangers within, which included organic hazards and toxic hazards. George chose the door on the right through which to enter. He turned the lights on, and he found himself in a laboratory; he took up a long-handled dustpan and broom from behind a metal filing cabinet that sat near the entrance. A large, high table stood in the middle of the room, which was surrounded by four high chairs with long white coats draped over their backs. The floor was covered in dark red droplets and smears of blood. The equipment and glassware that sat on tables in the two laboratories, was immaculately clean.

He moved through a door at the back of the room. At the end of a short corridor, he entered through another door into a space, which had a floor of untreated, darkened concrete. In a wall, immediately before him, sat a solid, heavy grey door. To his left ran a short corridor; attached low to the wall at the end of the corridor was a metal basin with a grill, on which sat a mop and bucket. This space was lit by a single globe that dangled from a chord at head-height above it. It looked eerily familiar, but he could not place the scene.

George moved through the solid grey door, and found himself in a square little room the width of his arm-span. Each of the four walls contained a door, which sat raised off the ground – George had to step over a brick-high, metal-lined ledge to enter the space, on which the solid grey door sat. The floor of this space carried rectangular, glossy, dark-grey coloured tiles. The door to his right carried a circular window, beyond which lay an identically tiled laboratory that was lit by the light of the moon, which streamed through large rectangular windows in its far wall. A sign hung on this door that forbade entry, and which warned of great danger. The door to his left was open, and revealed, through a short corridor, a neatly contained unit of showers, which held racks that contained clean white towels, and hooks on which were hung more of the long white coats.

George opened the door directly opposite the solid grey door through which he’d come and stepped through it. He found himself in a ten meter-long hallway. It was bright in this hallway, and he was forced to squint for a moment. The walls and ceiling were painted white, and the floor was covered in pale beige-coloured linoleum that also ran part way up the walls. The walls of the hallway carried eight sky-blue painted doors, and a ninth narrow access way without a door, which led to an incinerator.

The details of the hallway barely registered with George, because at the end of it stood a man dressed entirely in dark-coloured clothing. He wore a thin, black and dark brown knitted jumper; dark blue-coloured trousers; and well-made, matt-black, sensible shoes. His hair was predominantly dark, with spots of grey streaked through, and was neatly kept; he had a little stubble that was tinged with grey. His nose spoke of character, and he had slight bulges under his eyes. He smiled at George as if in recognition, and as if pleased.

George responded to the situation by making to leave, ‘pardon me,’ he said, ‘I did not know that there was someone here. I’ll leave you to it.’

Before George could back his way entirely out of the room, the man responded, ‘I do not mind, stay a while.’

George moved back, to face the man.

‘Well then, how are you?’ asked the man, after a brief pause.

‘I am well, thank you,’ answered George in wonder.

‘I am here to set you at rest, and answer a few questions that may be bothering you.’

‘Very good,’ answered George, clearly seeing that this would indeed be the person to answer his concerns, – ‘am I doing this for you? – this does appear to be your sort of thing, doesn’t it?’

‘I do want you to succeed at your ventures in life, this is my ‘thing,’ I guess, as you call it, – or by ‘thing,’ did you mean something else?’

‘Yes,’ answered George slowly, ‘theft.’

‘Success is what I want for you; theft may be a means by which you might gain success, and should success be gained, that is good.’

‘I am surprised that you wish me to succeed, – do you not want people to fail? Do wrong?’

‘No, that is a misconception. I want mine to succeed. I am one for the success of the individual, others are for the success of the many.’

‘You want me to do well for myself? By any means, is that what you are saying?’

‘I want you to do well, and your plans have merit.’

‘Am I to sell you my soul?’

‘No,’ he paused for a moment, thoughtfully considering George, ‘that can only be done if you wish to carve out something substantial, and you have much to learn and achieve before you could even do so.’

The attempt

George sat in his chair and waited; in an hour or so, he was slated to go to bed. The night of the take had arrived. He felt like a cigarette, but would leave this until he would get into the car and be on the way to work. He had eaten a large meal of sprouts, kidney beans, and spinach; and he had boiled five eggs, three of which he would have as soon as he woke up, and the other two he would take along in the car, in case he needed them.

 His car had received a detailed service, he had replaced the oil filter, causing a minor but momentary environmental disaster in front of the stairs to his apartment; the spark plugs and leads had been replaced, as well as the air filter.

The apartment had been prepared too. It had been detailed, and he would certainly get his bond back. He had sold almost all of his books and his video disks; other than this, there was little of value that he could sell. He would arrange to put his prized possessions into storage; he had investigated locations and prices, and he had found that it was possible to arrange to have them collect. He wouldn’t need a large storage space.

He had gone over the apartment to remove any incriminating items. The computer and the camera were long since gone; he had removed the hard drive from the machine beforehand, and had smashed it with his hammer. To have simply deleted any software on the computer would not have done; computer genii would probably be able to drain evidence from it, even when it was deleted. He had gone through all of his paperwork, searching for anything incriminating; he removed unnecessary material, while he was at it. He had destroyed the poster on which he had drawn the spots of the safe.

He now had substantial funds built up in the bank, against his coming ‘trials,’ – he grinned at this last. He reached over and took up his cup of tea; his eyes fell on the little round wicker table. He would keep that too, he decided, as he grabbed its edge with a hand and gave it a little push in mock-appraisal of its sturdiness. He looked up at the painting and its depiction of a house – suddenly he frowned, funny, he thought, his savings might be enough for a deposit on a little house like that.  

He went over the plan again, and found it to be sound. All was well, all should come up trumps: George could not possibly know the alarm code: they would have absolutely nothing on him. He went to work, and took care of his duties: this was his tale. His conscience was, and would be entirely clear. On the wicker table sat a bottle of Madeira, which would be his reward when all was over.

He walked into Queen’s Gate carrying the green canvas army bag with all his equipment. Just previous, he’d spotted Broken-Tail, who had not been interested in George – he had not even looked his way. He soon felt a sense of misgiving, as if he should be careful, although he could not quite figure out why he felt this way. The precognition caused him to abandon his green army bag in his storeroom, placing it on the ground by the sink. This was wasting precious time, he warned himself.

He felt entirely calm, which he put down to experience. He thought. The moon was dark; she was aiding him again. Dark, that was it, he went and checked the lights of the car park, and found that they had been left on. He had never known this to happen. He walked towards the office in order to check that, when a sense of foreboding grew: what if they were still here? He was in sight of the doors, when suddenly the mess room door opened and four employees spilled from it laughing, which stopped when they noticed George. ‘Hey,’ began one; but one of the others recognized him – it was Flinders the Controller, who said, ‘Hang on,’ and turning to the others, he continued, ‘this must be George,’ which he must have guessed from looking at his garb; or perhaps he had seen George before, on security footage.

‘Yes,’ said George, as Flinders walked up to him, extending his hand. George shook it, and Flinders clapped a hand to his shoulder.

‘Come join us, will you have a drink; or a tea perhaps? We know that you like tea.’

‘Um,’ said George mindlessly, he looked momentarily at his wrist to find no watch there, and continued, ‘yes, I would like a tea.’

Soon, they all sat in white plastic chairs by the mess room door, exchanging friendly banter. They too appeared to like this spot. George had gained a little time to get his story straight. He blessed his instincts; it would have taken quite some feat of explanation if he had walked up to the office with the two-wheeled trolley and the bag.

He figured that these employees had decided to visit the one that had been left at work on this night of the party, so that they too could share in the festivities. George rolled himself a cigarette, as a lady who wore a metallic red party hat, and a large bloke, – both of whom he recognized from the footage – each lit one too.

‘We won’t be long,’ said Flinders to George; he had also brewed himself a cup. ‘Are you early today?’

‘A little,’ said George, ‘I’m thinking of going crabbing in the morning.’

Flinders nodded at this. The conversation around the group continued amicably, it was a pleasant little gathering.

‘You know,’ began the large man, ‘you do your job very well.’ Flinders nodded at this, and the man continued, ‘and we’ve had some stinkers in the past.’

‘Say,’ said Flinders upon reflection, ‘why do you yourself not put in for the tender? Did you know we’ve put the contract to tender? You would not need much, just a van, some insurance, and your expertise.’ The large man nodded and reached down for his bottle of beer.

           

George sat percolating in thought at his apartment. He sipped at a cup of tea and glared at his bottle of Madeira, which sat on the table before him, he was unsure as to whether he should have it.

Perth, Western Australia, 2013

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