Leave No Stone Unturned
The rock hit down again, and again. Flesh gave way to rock. Bone gave way to stone. Such is the way of life: the weak gives way to the strong. The weak may resist, but little can stand in the way of a force with the power of determination behind it. Such was the way with the man who had taken this rock from the earth and utilised it beyond all purpose of its existence. He had will and determination and he had utilised these intentions through the rock. The rock held no intentions of its own; it was a rock, something which it had been for longer than its wielder had drawn breath upon this earth. It was simply a rock which could have been used for something greater than it was being used for now. It could have been used to create great things, to have been part of something bigger, for part of a foundation of a great house for example, but it was only through the will of men that this change would have occurred. Instead the rock had sat in place amidst this park, un-chosen, until now. Yet, ultimately not everything had changed for ever. The rock would always remain a rock. This brief momentary change of purpose had merely altered the relationship of the wielder and that of the receiver and so as the other man’s life ebbed away into the frosted soil the rock was as it always had been.
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“It’s your go,”
“But I just went.”
“It’s still your go.”
He rolled the pearl across the wooden surface, the clatter echoing back from the surrounding darkness.
“It’s the same again,” he said, neither disappointment nor excitement revealing itself in his words.
The shimmering sphere came to rest at the same place it had fallen previously. For as long as he could remember it had fallen in that same place. But when he tried to remember how long he had been remembering he could not. He couldn’t remember why he was here. He had been in the park before. The grass was frosted, he could remember that. He remembered the feel of the frost upon the nape of his neck, piercing through his exposed skin and plucking at his nerves. Now he was sitting here, with this other man, playing some game. He couldn’t feel anything now. He remembered the sharpness of the early light in the park. Now he was surrounded by a shroud of darkness; its hem was only lifted to what lay on the table before him. He couldn’t remember how he had come to be here; so he rolled again.
“That was the first time you won, wasn’t it?” The other asked.
“I don’t know, it seems like it was,” he replied.
“Remember how you felt then?” The other pushed him.
“The last time?”
“No the first time,” the other corrected his path.
“Which first time?”
“There is only ever one first time.”
“Of course,” he replied, his brow creasing as the distant past crossed into where he was now, his memories colliding with the present to make the sensory cinematic experience, frame by frame. “I was four. It was a birthday party, Dan’s birthday.” He smiled as if the memory was a prize he had managed to win, a prize that had been kept above him and beyond, a prize they had both been aiming for and now he had been the first to get.
“It was Ben’s, his fourth birthday and you were three and a half” The other amended.
“Ben! Of course, I remember. Thanks.” He frowned, sarcasm brushing his appreciation. The prize of his memory was not just his; it had been completed by the other.
“And you won.” The other reminded him.
“Yes I did.” A sense of retrieved pride crossed briefly through his brainwaves, a stroke of happiness again flitted into the emotional memorial. For a moment he was four again, or three and a half as he had been reminded, and was sitting on the chair as the music stopped. Ben stood there in front of him, arms folded, dressed in his new striped jumper looking like Dennis the Menace. Ben looked like he was going to cry while he sat there smiling awaiting his prize.
“And how did you win?” The other asked, staring across from the other side of the wooden surface. The game pieces seemed in one way to be randomly scattered but at the same time it seemed to be the way it was supposed to be. Could something be the same as what it opposed?
“By being the best of course!” He answered.
“You have to move your piece.” the other gestured to his playing piece on the board, a piece resembling the rook of a chess board, a miniature castle, yet upon its surface nuances were revealed by the faint light; tiny bricks, a thin deep green vine creeping up from a crack in the base, a crumbling parapet, a small window which revealed nothing of the interior. Details he had failed to notice.
He moved his piece. The stone looking surface was fraudulent; instead of the expected cold, hard stone, it was soft and pliable. His fingers left their whorls upon the impressionable surface as he placed it down, forever changing the piece from his interaction.
“You cheated.” the other said. The other was not looking at the board but instead was staring at him. He felt violated as the other’s stare seemed to be penetrating through what he chose to exhibit.
He looked down at the board. Everything looked as he thought it should.
“No I didn’t, that’s what I did before. You told me that’s the rules”
“Exactly, that’s what you did before. You held onto the chair, that wasn’t part of the rules. Ben didn’t stand a chance, you changed the rules and the others let you have your win. They didn’t want to tell you otherwise” The other’s words made the edited film reel rewind in his head, and he saw his hand on the chair as they ran around, music controlled by an unseen parent deciding their fate.
“So, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change anything” he defended, staring back at the other.
“It’s your go again,” the other said, offering him the pearl, “roll.”
“I won then. I did, and it doesn’t matter.”
“You are right, and you are wrong,” The stare from the other stirred something deep, he had to look away. “You won, but it does matter.”
“Why? Why does that matter?” he almost felt as though he was pleading to the other, pleading like he had to Ben’s mother, almost crying like he did that time as his win was almost taken away. “That was the past. That was when I was a child. That was the first time.”
“Precisely, roll.”
He rolled the pearl which rolled, and rolled, the shimmering surface revealing its kaleidoscopic reflection of histories, that which had been alongside what could have been. It rolled, revealing the past, of where things had begun, of where tiny seeds of past moments had grown into the present. It rolled past other castles, past papier-mâché birds, past tiny cakes with white frosting and past toenail clippings yellowing at the edges. It rolled past chewed pencils with rubber tips, past crickets with their legs pulled off, past burnt matches whose scent still lingered. It rolled past love letters written in red biro and past credit cards with edges speckled with cocaine. It rolled past plastic trophies, past stones from a beach, past a platinum ring, past rolled up bank notes, past a broken record player. It rolled past mementos and keepsakes he recognized from another place. The board proffered no friction for this roll to end. After all friction was just a notion of physics, a set of rules applied to a particular place. This was whatever it chose and whatever it didn’t. The shimmers of past, present and future all rolled into one.
The rattle echoed back from the surrounding darkness as he looked up into the eyes of the other. No words were spoken. The pearl rolled to the precipice of the board. Silence filled the void. He looked harder at the other; the other looked harder at him. One was as one, indistinguishable from one another yet deceitfully so, as he knew what separated them both. The pearl hung momentarily as if deciding which rules or laws of action it was choosing, it chose one and fell to the floor. The pearl, shattering into a myriad of shimmers, uttered no sound, no sharp clattering of a broken window whose reflections are disturbed, no contact of one against the other, it was just silence. All things come to ruin, and it had no reason to announce this inevitability, a life had been wasted and there was no reason of further wasted action.
The other stood up, still staring at him. He nodded solemnly
“So it’s time? But I thought I had another go, it cannot be the end.” he said glancing again at the board. The pieces were beginning to fade, already just whispers of what they were a moment before.
“You reached the beginning,” the other said, reaching out as the board and all its pieces faded into nothingness and taking his arm.
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The life moved away from the light and into the soil, fading away quicker than the light and glimmer which stared up from the one good eye, the eye that stared back, appealing in one eyed despair, a silent whisper of shock and surprise.
“A job once started must always be finished, Benjamin” his father had once said, addressing him with fatherly formality. The arm had tightened around his neck then, letting it be known that it was always here; it had always been and would always be; a comforter and an executioner. That’s when he began to listen. All things must be addressed in time. Everything must be balanced out in the end. In the most experienced moments where all activity and emotion become centred in one place, time often seems to slow. What is experienced and thought in one’s mind; a long period passed through seemingly minute by minute, is nothing but a brief burst of synapses. The life he had just returned to was no feat of time travel, it was no period of reminiscence which allowed the situation in front of him to revert back to before the first strike or to leap forward to the state of decay and worms. And so as his synapses sprung back into true formation he struck again. No sound of resistance, no whimpering, no cry for salvation. It was disappointing, just the eye that refused to stop its glimmer. In that eye was everything he hated. Why must something carry on when all is lost? Is there a reason for this, why not accept fate and be done with it? Yet he beat and beat but could not bear to beat upon the eye that stared. That would be to accept what it silently whispered back, the answer he wanted reflected in the black pupil, the image of all he was what he wanted to hear, that was all, and it was only in death that this came true . Now it was only another’s intentions and reasoning reflecting back from the blackness. He saw that someone raise a rock up again and again, striking down upon that which had cheated him. Nothing in the reddened mush that seeped around the ground could have been capable of registering what was happening, all the synapses had long flickered their last time many strikes before. This thing before him could no more tell him what he wanted than the rock in his hand could. He had no intent to use this rock before he had seen it lying amidst the frozen grass, it had been there as his intentions arose. He had possessed no intent to deliver what he delivered now until he had seen that man who had once cheated him. He had always ended up second best in work, in love, in life and he had blamed many for his misfortunes. He always let others walk over him. For as long as he could remember it had been this way. He always remembered that first time but had never seen that boy who had first set the pattern in motion. He had never seen him until this morning as he walked across the frost bitten grass and birds irritatingly chirped from leafless branches. This morning everything had come back to the beginning. Now all three, with no pre-intentions of the act they were engaged in, were as equal in their silence as they were in their purpose. It did not have to be this way, but this was the way it was and so shall it be. A job started must be finished. Unfinished business equates to nonexistence, what is created is everything and all. The creation process is the creator itself, the creation the very essence of being. If nothing comes from something then there had to be nothing to begin with.
And so he smashed the rock down to complete the play.
Such is the way of life: all things come to ruin even great houses and the men who built them.
