LOCKER ROOM by Margaret B. Simon and DF Lewis
When they put me (the man in white with glass eyes) into the freezing compartment I shredded a hole in his lapels but he got away so they changed their minds about procedures.
Banging behind me always: the voices the boomdurm boom a durmaboom! Wall to wall to wall to wall with these four stress fracture failures delete compose icons (he comes to inspect me) I tolerate the disgusting routine. Him to me in four years. Language that is mean.
To escape, I concentrate on recalling a place by an ocean, surrounded by green glades. I was supposed to meet someone there for the annual holiday celebrations. My family was to attend. I remember a family. My father, and my three sisters and a white-haired female. I’d bought a new shirt for the occasion at one of the local Hiphop shops, and shaved for the first time in months. Cut off the tags, swallowed the receipt.
But when I got there, I found Old Tom Mahler was to be smoked from his erstwhile locker room (now a coal bunker) by the fostered forces of his daughter, wife and mother. Old Tom was my father’s older brother. The women, my three wide-apart sisters, although they would have denied any such connections, for obvious reasons.
Tom'd probably blink wildly upon staggering out into the late afternoon sunshine: amazed to see that I was a member of the crowd that had mustered since early morning ... on hearing that good old dependable Tom had threatened some form of felo de se. If even men like Tom could consider just a smidgin of self-annhilation, what chance others? Depressions being two a penny these days, half the world should have met their maker in this fashion long before the likes of Tom, or so we the crowd thought.
But none could quite believe Tom's choice of venue. Secreting himself in his bunker and waiting ... just the sheer waiting for the Heavenly tip-lorry to disgorge its freight of Earth's black curds upon him.
To my surprise, Tom was not out to greet us upon our arrival. Yet to be sure, the usual amenities were exchanged; a few slaps on the back, a kiss on the cheek from pimply-thin daughter, fat wife, faded mother. I headed for the wet bar, without waiting to be asked. Make it to fake it yourself, I always say, and I announced as much between pouring and drinking several tumblers of Absolute and tonic, with a twist of lime. I’d brought the lime and a bottle of Absolute. Our families never serve alcohol, though several are closet drunks. Quel surprise?
Eventually, I found myself wandering about in search of Tom’s new Locker Room. Not because I was curious, but because I was slightly drunk and very bored. Quite abruptly, I felt a falling sensation as the earth opened up momentarily and took me into its dark, gaping maw. That was the last of the sunlight I was to see for four days, as it turned out. I’d found old Tom’s new Locker Room.
As the coal dust cleared, I could see I’d interrupted Tom playing strip poker with four zombies. Up to his old tricks, obviously on a roll. Three of the four had lost both their hands by now and the other one was bone naked. Only one among them wore white hair.
Meanwhile, Tom's above-ground womenfolk had searched the house long and high for some sign of his living body ... but none thought of his deepest den of dens ... until the puppy-thin daughter tossed her hoop randomly round the yard and it glided like a dream through a narrow gap between the hinged slats of the coal bunker door.
To the pompom daughter, the rooms of the house were dark enough. So, imagine her consternation when she heard stifled breathing from inside the bunker as she approached to rescue her hoop. If she'd known it was the breathing of her father, the terror of the situation may have reduced. Thank Heaven, zombies couldn’t breathe even if they wanted to do so.
"Mummy, mummy, fat mummy," the pimply-dimply daughter screamed, as she escaped into the house. But none answered, for none admitted being the one thus called. The sun had
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come round to the bunker's side of the house. It fell in streams of golden light, bathing the early evening in an aura of non-reality. The leading lights of the neighbourhood shuffled into knots of further onlookers, as Tom’s womenfolk sidestepped into the assumed roles of Earth Mother, Half Daughter and Sibling Wife. Each hung upon the same set of constricting bones. With muffled voices, the onlookers waited until the twilight snuffed, dispositioning the bonewomen’s frames, sucking them into one unholy, darkest of the Darkness Pit. Then everyone went home to fornicate, dance and/or drink themselves into oblivion, as usual.
My concentration on this escape-dreaming increased as old Tom stood up and came towards me, smiling in welcome. I was, indeed within his safehold, and he assured me further of this fact by hugging me close to his boney chest. Then, taking me by the elbow, he gave me a tour of his locker room, which contained several caverns, some decorated with plaques and trophies relating to the poker games (skulls, and the like). When I questioned Tom about how he’d met those who chose to challenge him, he pointed to a vast hole in the darkness of the main chamber.
“They comes from dar,” he confided. “Down dar, where dey is, and all’s I do is go boomdrum booma durmaboom on me mine, here, and up comes one and another, by an’ by. An’ we sits here, what’s of them and all of me, and we play cards, y’see?”
“What a fine place you have here, Tom,” I replied. “I rather like it. Do you mind if I stay?”
“Yep and none,” said Tom. “This is your four days on holiday. More than this, ye’ll not get right about.”
Four years, four days, four hours, four ... A number without a noun to master is merely nothing, however big.
And so it went. Tom handed me a fresh deck to cut and in doing so, I noted that the queens bore a remarkable resemblance to his rumpty-dumpty Daughter (hearts) and Sibling Wife (spades). The queen of diamonds had three faces (my three sisters) and the last—the queen of clubs—faceless.
The newly kindled fires inside the house found exits for their heavy smoke, as the main chimneys expelled it fitfully ... thus darkening the sky in tune with day's war with night. Having himself by now fed on coal till his belly was a ruptured carrier bag, Tom eventually floated free, in equal ghostly garments of choking grey ... and disappeared into the gaping cellar of night, the proud wielder of death's gilt-lit halo.
Those who were left below wended back to their tasks and re-apportioned roles; they soon reminded themselves that ghosts can only appear in dreams.
The pump-easy girl pointed into the sky at the fading ring of golden light. Thunder roared: boom dooma doom. Bim bom, as Mahler says. (Who’s Mahler?) None could reconcile her lisping tears with any feasible sadness ... if it were possible for feasibility to encompass sadness at all. I bet my total Free Will on four of a kind or a full house rather than an oubliette or locker room.
“Only God has the power truly to become a Goddess.” - Rachel Mildeyes, from Four Halos and Hoops
