Benny in the shopping mall. Benny standing there.
His mind was quite clear now. Nothing was what it seemed, not the shops, not the shoppers, not Benny himself and not the knife beneath the grubby brand new coat he had not yet got round to buying.
Maybe it was all the years on the weed or maybe the acid but Benny had been losing it. Life had become a mist of fixes and sleep and vomit. Reality was disappearing as fast as the voices accumulated.
Until that Saturday just a couple of days back when he awoke as bright and cheerful as the morning sun shining across his soiled bed. The voices and the confusion had all gone. He could not believe it; his mind felt as clear as it had before the long slide. In the park the May blossom was starting to bloom. "It symbolises my return to a normal existence" he thought. It was a good day. It was Halloween.
Around seven thirty that evening both bells rang, each sounding higher than the other, and he opened the door to a little girl in a long pure white dress. Benny looked up and down the endless road for an accompanying adult but there was none. "What are you supposed to be? a ghost?" "I symbolise the innocence you lost" lisped the little girl in one of those so irritating 1950s oh so sweet Hollywood little girl voices. It seemed she even had an unnatural 1950s Technicolor glow to her. Symbol or no, she was too obnoxious to be borne and he crushed her skull with the mattock that had lain, just waiting for this moment, in the cupboard under the stairs. "I didn't think you'd understand" she simpered. He buried her beneath the damp concrete floor of the cellar. "Will you be my daaaddy and plaaay wif me?" came almost inaudibly from beneath the rubble.
He awoke just as alert the next morning and his conscience struck him like a mattock. He was reaching for the phone when the bell rang. It was the police. He was almost relieved. Relief turned to puzzlement when the two policemen sat on his bloodsoaked sofa in silence and drank his tea. "Why are you here?" "We symbolise benign authority sir" He killed them with the axe his mother in law had nearly brought him for Michalmas in accordance with the usual traditions. He would have buried them beneath the cellar floor too but when he had finished digging a hole of suitable size he came back to find no trace of the bodies.
It seemed a shame to waste a perfectly good hole so he asked old Mrs Perkins next door around for a drink. The old lady never went out or had any visitors and was pathetically pleased to sit on the bloody sofa with a cabbage juice. "I symbolise the mother you never knew dear" she whispered. "Of course you do" he answered, wielding the only crowbar he had never known. After he had buried her he had another three hours to kill before he could score off Laurie. He was in a cheery killing mood and it seemed a shame to waste a perfectly good hole so he dug old Mrs Perkins up again and killed an hour. "I symbolise the devoted and affectionate wife you always longed for" murmured the old lady as he reburied her.
"Will you be my daaaddy and plaaay wif me?" came almost inaudibly from beneath the rubble. So he dug the little girl up and played with her until it was time to go to Laurie's.
Just as he was going out a man arrived in a clean but misty boiler suit. "What do you symbolise?" "Pardon me sir?" said the man "Your landlord asked me to come and look at your boiler". Benny showed him where it was. When he came back half an hour later an enormous gleaming machine of steam and cogs and cylinders and rotating wheels and wires and circuit boards and copper pipes occupied most of the house so he was barely able to squeeze past to reach the kitchen. "It symbolises an uncaring society sir" said the man. "I see" said Benny.
He killed the man with his own pipe wrench which to his inexpert eye appeared to symbolise a thing for wrenching pipes. It would not do to use the mattock or the axe or the crowbar again after all. He pushed the man's body into one of the many hatches in the gigantic machine. It reappeared from another hatch further up, was drawn upwards along a spiral cable into another hatch. It kept going in here, along there, out somewhere else, never the same hatch twice, indeed there were no hatches that stayed in the same place for even a second so that would have been quite impossible. The shattered face popped out right on front of him. "I symbolise your inability to cope with the complexities of life" it mumbled through leaking brains.
The next day he still felt quite unatturally alert and cheerful. After his fix he went for a wander around the shopping mall. People were scurrying backwards and forwards, up and down the escalators, in and out of shops but never buying anything. "We symbolise the pointlessness of existence" intoned the housewives and anoracked men and jumpered children. He looked at the adverts in the shop windows and knew they were all symbols, as do we all know, symbolising the sex that had never been willingly offered him, the success he had never had, the respect that had never been shown to him. And it seemed like an infection spreading outward. The shops, the goods for sale, the precinct, the piped music, all the inanimate objects were symbols too although they could not say so.
Benny in the shopping mall. Benny standing there.
If everyone and everything was symbolic of something else surely there had to be something real left for them to symbolise? A young women carrying a toddler stood in front of him. Where was the reality in this symbol of hope for a future that would never come? He had to start somewhere and it was as good as any. The knife went in. Was the opening in the child real? Was the opening in the woman real? One to the other back and forth. Benny began to stab at the people around him, trying to cut through the replicas, the symbols, the archetypes, the icons and find the happiness he had never enjoyed, the success that had eluded him,the love that had always passed him by.
In some dark and quilted room he is cutting still but has never found these things. For some or perhaps all, these things do not truly exist, there are only symbols. Benny keeps on trying. If this was a philosophical tale rather than just a story of one man's madness one might think that that too was a symbol of something. It is not. There would be no point.
His mind was quite clear now. Nothing was what it seemed, not the shops, not the shoppers, not Benny himself and not the knife beneath the grubby brand new coat he had not yet got round to buying.
Maybe it was all the years on the weed or maybe the acid but Benny had been losing it. Life had become a mist of fixes and sleep and vomit. Reality was disappearing as fast as the voices accumulated.
Until that Saturday just a couple of days back when he awoke as bright and cheerful as the morning sun shining across his soiled bed. The voices and the confusion had all gone. He could not believe it; his mind felt as clear as it had before the long slide. In the park the May blossom was starting to bloom. "It symbolises my return to a normal existence" he thought. It was a good day. It was Halloween.
Around seven thirty that evening both bells rang, each sounding higher than the other, and he opened the door to a little girl in a long pure white dress. Benny looked up and down the endless road for an accompanying adult but there was none. "What are you supposed to be? a ghost?" "I symbolise the innocence you lost" lisped the little girl in one of those so irritating 1950s oh so sweet Hollywood little girl voices. It seemed she even had an unnatural 1950s Technicolor glow to her. Symbol or no, she was too obnoxious to be borne and he crushed her skull with the mattock that had lain, just waiting for this moment, in the cupboard under the stairs. "I didn't think you'd understand" she simpered. He buried her beneath the damp concrete floor of the cellar. "Will you be my daaaddy and plaaay wif me?" came almost inaudibly from beneath the rubble.
He awoke just as alert the next morning and his conscience struck him like a mattock. He was reaching for the phone when the bell rang. It was the police. He was almost relieved. Relief turned to puzzlement when the two policemen sat on his bloodsoaked sofa in silence and drank his tea. "Why are you here?" "We symbolise benign authority sir" He killed them with the axe his mother in law had nearly brought him for Michalmas in accordance with the usual traditions. He would have buried them beneath the cellar floor too but when he had finished digging a hole of suitable size he came back to find no trace of the bodies.
It seemed a shame to waste a perfectly good hole so he asked old Mrs Perkins next door around for a drink. The old lady never went out or had any visitors and was pathetically pleased to sit on the bloody sofa with a cabbage juice. "I symbolise the mother you never knew dear" she whispered. "Of course you do" he answered, wielding the only crowbar he had never known. After he had buried her he had another three hours to kill before he could score off Laurie. He was in a cheery killing mood and it seemed a shame to waste a perfectly good hole so he dug old Mrs Perkins up again and killed an hour. "I symbolise the devoted and affectionate wife you always longed for" murmured the old lady as he reburied her.
"Will you be my daaaddy and plaaay wif me?" came almost inaudibly from beneath the rubble. So he dug the little girl up and played with her until it was time to go to Laurie's.
Just as he was going out a man arrived in a clean but misty boiler suit. "What do you symbolise?" "Pardon me sir?" said the man "Your landlord asked me to come and look at your boiler". Benny showed him where it was. When he came back half an hour later an enormous gleaming machine of steam and cogs and cylinders and rotating wheels and wires and circuit boards and copper pipes occupied most of the house so he was barely able to squeeze past to reach the kitchen. "It symbolises an uncaring society sir" said the man. "I see" said Benny.
He killed the man with his own pipe wrench which to his inexpert eye appeared to symbolise a thing for wrenching pipes. It would not do to use the mattock or the axe or the crowbar again after all. He pushed the man's body into one of the many hatches in the gigantic machine. It reappeared from another hatch further up, was drawn upwards along a spiral cable into another hatch. It kept going in here, along there, out somewhere else, never the same hatch twice, indeed there were no hatches that stayed in the same place for even a second so that would have been quite impossible. The shattered face popped out right on front of him. "I symbolise your inability to cope with the complexities of life" it mumbled through leaking brains.
The next day he still felt quite unatturally alert and cheerful. After his fix he went for a wander around the shopping mall. People were scurrying backwards and forwards, up and down the escalators, in and out of shops but never buying anything. "We symbolise the pointlessness of existence" intoned the housewives and anoracked men and jumpered children. He looked at the adverts in the shop windows and knew they were all symbols, as do we all know, symbolising the sex that had never been willingly offered him, the success he had never had, the respect that had never been shown to him. And it seemed like an infection spreading outward. The shops, the goods for sale, the precinct, the piped music, all the inanimate objects were symbols too although they could not say so.
Benny in the shopping mall. Benny standing there.
If everyone and everything was symbolic of something else surely there had to be something real left for them to symbolise? A young women carrying a toddler stood in front of him. Where was the reality in this symbol of hope for a future that would never come? He had to start somewhere and it was as good as any. The knife went in. Was the opening in the child real? Was the opening in the woman real? One to the other back and forth. Benny began to stab at the people around him, trying to cut through the replicas, the symbols, the archetypes, the icons and find the happiness he had never enjoyed, the success that had eluded him,the love that had always passed him by.
In some dark and quilted room he is cutting still but has never found these things. For some or perhaps all, these things do not truly exist, there are only symbols. Benny keeps on trying. If this was a philosophical tale rather than just a story of one man's madness one might think that that too was a symbol of something. It is not. There would be no point.
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