Everything that's in my head

Chapter 7

During late afternoon as the neon strip flickered on automatically, the beetle got too cocky and was caught in the open, too far either for the skirting board or the safety of the bed frame, he was scooped up and placed upon a blanket that smelt of sick.
With his eyes screwed tight he saw in his mind’s eye untold horrors unfolding; a wing would be torn off followed by the other, then a leg then an arm. His legs turned to jelly and in a blind panic he excreted as much of the yellow liquid from his anus as he could and waited for the axe to fall. It didn’t. Nothing happened for a while and he lay there wriggling with his legs in the air feeling more and more ridiculous, all the while cursing mankind through gritted, black teeth.

‘Have you any idea what I’ve been through?’ came a voice from behind a fold in the blanket.

‘Have you any idea what I have had to endure?’ The voice ventured again.
‘Look at this shit, I mean just look at it’. The beetle felt obliged to look about the room and to be honest couldn’t see anything wrong with it. Anyway, what did it matter? He was about to be squished any minute, so he could be forgiven for thinking the décor didn’t hold much ascetic value.

‘That it should come to this’, came the voice again; this time more earnest.
The beetle peeked from behind the fold in the blanket and took in the source of the voice. A pair of blue, blood-shot eyes stared at him intently and the beetle felt almost obliged to say something in reply. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at his numerous feet, speechless and embarrassed.

‘I tell you, it’s just not worth it’. It’s not worth nothing, although you think at the time, it’s like so easy, just stretch out your hand and pluck it from the tree. It’s that simple. I mean I was trying at first, I tried very hard, but in the end, you just give in. You become in the eyes of God’……the voice searched for a word, ‘worthless.’

The beetle nodded and the voice from the bed continued.

‘I can’t go on holiday, do you know why? I haven’t had a holiday for 3 years, do you know why?
The beetle honestly didn’t know and hoped against hope this wouldn’t mean a squishing.

‘Because I’d be there and I’d only ruin it.’

The beetle stared past the figure in front of him and didn’t know where to put himself. He squirmed a little and mumbled, ‘I see’, before another stream of conscience flowed that left him dumb and ashamed.

‘I threw it away, because I couldn’t see it for what it was. That was always going to be the problem. I mean the day it was all signed up, that was when I thought this whole thing was on a timer, one year two years, I mean the thing was going to go off; it was going to explode in my face at some stage. In every man’s life, no matter how cowardly he is, there will come a time when he is called upon to be brave, I was given that time and I was found wanting. But to be brave, doesn’t necessarily mean winning a medal, or walking through a burning forest to save an orphanage but knowing when to stick the knife in deep to serve a greater good. Sometimes being brave is leaving someone behind, walking away, with your back straight and not looking over your shoulder even if you love that thing more than anything else in the world'.’

'It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t made a vow before God Once you do that there is no going back. I tried going back. I lit a series of candles for my salvation. With the choir and everything and the Christmas lights, all of it, and there was I on bended knee in fervent prayer but I knew that all was lost. God would never forgive me. In church, having done all the things I had done, with her knowing and me knowing about her, it was all vile and I felt covered in spiders. I felt big black spiders all over my body so I started to scratch at them, but the more I scratched the more they itched. I have a forked tale and the legs of a goat and I stink. I stink of dead flesh for at that moment when I took the Eucharist I felt like the fallen one, I felt like a fallen angel. When I walked home, the night air was so cold I got home and stood by the heater and I was still cold. I couldn’t get warm. It was a terrible place to be and me with no redemption, I was hated and hated in turn but the person I hated most was of course....'

'You' said the beetle first.
'Me', the voice concurred
There was a tut; followed by an ugly pause that compelled the beetle to speak. He wasn’t very good at this kind of thing but now, to save his life, he felt he had no option. He cleared his throat and looked to the heavens for inspiration.

‘What’s done is done and cannot be undone’. What can be done? What you have done obviously is fairly, err….well…..undo-able’.

The beetle winced at this and looked at a distant horizon. He flapped an antennae unconvincingly as if to emphasise some point and lapsed into a silence heavy with expectation, only to gird his loins and try again.

‘What ever you did do, cannot be put back into its bottle, the toothpaste is out of the tube’.
This was even worse. When the word tube left his lips, the beetle knew he was talking balls His only hope now was to say something very, very profound indeed and quick otherwise he would be a blob of black blood on the dusty lino below. His mind was racing, snatching at thoughts as they hurtled through his mind. He grabbed at one and spoke.

‘Firstly, you have to be a man’, he began, with exaggerated confidence.

‘You have to stand up and be a man for these tears will get you nowhere, precisely nowhere. What good are they? What purpose do they serve? They will wash away your very eyes in the end’.

The gravity, with which this opening was delivered, shocked even the beetle. But it had certainly caught his custodian’s attention and he felt for a moment at least, that the noose had been loosened from his neck.

‘What is there to do when there are no more tears to shed? Will you starve for want of them? The buck, my friend, rests with you. There is only you and these four walls and this miserable bed. How long are you going to be here; a week, a month, years? You aren’t one of them’. The beetle nodded contemptuously towards the door and continued apace.

‘You will have to stand up one day. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week but you will have to stand up sooner or later, no matter how many tears you part with’.
He stopped suddenly, having run out of steam and frowned at the floor.
He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable, this time with a dignity and fortitude that had abandoned him earlier.

Nothing happened. His sails caught a passing gust of inspiration taking him to a crest in the blanket and he stood statesman like, clutching at the cloth as if it were a dispatch box.

‘What is in your head is in your head, it is not real. Imagine your mind is a kind of cinema and there’s only you in it. You don’t like the film because you can’t follow it. The script’s bad and the actors are hopeless; there is no plot, just unconnected events. The score grates and sets your teeth on edge and that’s what it’s like in there at the moment’, said the beetle, tapping the side of his head.
‘It’s your private viewing and no one else’s invited. While you bemoan the ending of the world, there are people out there who are thinking about their supper, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ that kind of thing. They don’t care or they can’t care, because they just don’t know what you are going through, it’s only you and you’re endless, unbearable matinee’, get me?’

The man nodded slowly.

‘The moving finger writes and having writ moves on.
Nor all thy piety or wit can have it back, nor all thy tears
Wash out a word of it.’

The beetle fought vainly to suppress a proud grin at this and satisfied.
He crossed his many legs and sat down.