DEAD TIME
There is a period of time when life’s too boring even to warrant boredom. Boredom is a human feeling, a sense of ennui, minutes dragging by, nothing happening….
Susan looked at him. She knew he was thinking again. Thoughts were his worst enemy.
…Yes, boredom entailed nothing happening except a human being lounging around to warrant such a description. My name is Neville. I am bored.
Susan smiled at Neville. She knew where this might be leading. Soon she would say something … to fill the silence.
But when there is nothing, not even boredom, that is when the dead time begins…
Neville stared at Susan daring her to intervene in his thoughts. Thoughts once begun always threatened to continue forever. Even through the dead time. But thoughts weren’t allowed during the dead time, were they? They ought to fizz away into the emptiness, as the natural chemical reaction of dead time meeting thoughts.
My name is Susan. I am bored looking at Neville staring at the screen. I can’t see from here whether it’s switched on, but there’s no light flashing on the surface of his face. I am having thoughts about Neville. He is my partner in this crime that some call life. My thoughts are not characteristic of me. I am not used to thinking. I am merely used to being. Shopping, cleaning, caring for Neville, wanting his children. But his children don’t want me … somehow. They are part of the dead time. How can you be born when you’ve already died?
Susan is staring at me. She calls me Neville. So I call myself Neville. Names are allergic to the dead time. Names melt away into a gas that then float at ceiling level like coloured steam. Susan and Neville are up there together, making colour schemes, if not children. Thoughts that are not grounded in reality are what some call dreams.
He calls me Susan. So I call myself Susan. I am pretty. He is handsome. In an ideal world we would be partners and live happily ever after, with loads of lovely children. Children are necessary for the furtherance of the human species. This is all very strange, since these thoughts, let alone the words used to make up the thoughts, are not characteristic of me. And if I’m having someone else’s thoughts…
I am worried about Susan. She is having terrible trouble with her identity. She wavers in front of my eyes like a migraine. The onset of the dead time will eventually be a happy release for her. First in the sequence, one senses boredom creeping up, then the coloured gases vanish off the face towards the ceiling where they just creep away into the top corners of the room. Then full-blooded boredom. What a relief. I can see it on her face, her face that is now crystal clear. She is approaching nirvana. Boredom is the first step towards the blissful dead time of the soul. Meanwhile, Susan struggles with her identity, like David meeting Goliath… But, oh no, boredom has escaped through the window. She has inadvertently re-awakened the busy time. She cannot sit still. She simply needs to be doing. A being must have doing.
I walk over to Neville, and dust the top of his head. He is staring into space. I thought he was looking at the screen, but I guess he was simply staring at my reflection in its blankness. Staring at Susan. Once screens, in the old days, were black and white, but now they’re full of mixing colours, sprays of pixels forming the perfect colour to decorate our lives. I touch his lips with mine.
Susan has walked over to me. I am scared. And I just heard the letterbox go. There is too much happening. The dead time is an impossible goal. Too many thoughts. Too many emotions. Too much air. Too much of everything. The world crammed with ambitions and duties. Anxieties and fears. Loves and hates. The need to be … someone. To leave oneself behind – through one’s children or one’s works. I feel Susan near – nearer…
Neville has gone. Neville never was. It will be such a relief for him. He hasn’t died, because he was never born. No memories left behind. Only the crushed cushions and the dropped remote control. I pick it up from the floor. His favourite channel is rubbed blank on the button. The down volume switch rubbed blanker still. As if he didn’t want to know about the goal that put his team out of the cup.
I am in Heaven, looking down on Susan. I never once existed. It is such a clean break. Death is merely just one more boredom to bear. But never having existed at all that is the only true dead time. When time itself is dead. Never Neville.
Susan plumps up the cushions, switches on the screen. Her thoughts have settled back down into her own thoughts at last. Even her memory disowns the colours she once saw. She turns and looks through the window at the departing back of the postman. Brought some junk mail no doubt, along with some emails.
