from the plot [pulse]

	Sign In Sign-Up

thehinterlandonline:p l o t:r.b. johns_PULSE

p u l s e

One minute.

It was an automatic reaction, an instinct to leave my flat this morning.
I remember sitting, as if it were so long ago, that once-was when time
and reason were relevant, sipping morning tea, peacefully reading the
Gazette. The Sunday sunshine bore down upon me there, in my armchair,
the centre of true relaxation, when I was accosted by a buzzing sense
of restlessness. It was irritating and uncontrollable. The news in
front of my eyes became unreadable; I couldn't focus. With a feeling
of total restlessness, I checked my mental notebook but realized there
were no errands to be run, no ends to be met. But so strong was the
sense, this buzzing, that I dropped my paper and threw on a pair of old
jeans and a jacket. I was like a man with his head on fire looking for
water - I ran - hoping a change of atmosphere would extinguish the sensation.
Now, as I look back, I realize that I should have crawled back
to bed beside my wife (Oh Rhea!) and buried my head in a pillow. The
buzzing.Or beat my head against a wall, anything, anything to stop the
need for action. But whenever we look to the past, we instantly achieve
omniscience, don't we?

My achievements have never been exceptional. I was an average
student who somehow made it through enough classes to become an average
psychologist. My practice is small; my patients have simple problems
-feelings of abandonment, bad dreams, normal lives (the worst of all
diseases!). My wife is a sales clerk in a fashionable boutique. I listen
to her anecdotes loyally; they inject the antidote of excitement into
my veins of routine. It is so easy to be honest now.

50 seconds.

She was waking as I left this morning. She called my name as
I walked through the doorway. I hesitated for a moment, realizing that
I couldn't understand where or why I was going, so I would not be able
to explain. At that point, between here and there, I could not even
think of a lie. Like pure pain, like heat, like severe concentration,
a force too powerful controlled me.

I walked down the three flights of stairs to the lobby of our
building. The doorman stood, his chipped front teeth exposed in a confused
half-smile, holding the door open.

"Morning, Amos!" I called as I rushed by. He didn't seem to
understand why he'd been standing there, with the door open. I think
of him now, puzzle-faced and absent, a puppet to some kind of world-will
that made him open the door, that led me here. I wonder if he has a
family.

I continued walking. Left then right on Main Street, toward
the Market Square. My pace was rushed, twice as fast as usual. My legs
felt controlled. I was on a predetermined track, I see that now. I
was like the electric rabbit, although I was running toward the dogs.
I stepped briskly past the church, the cathedral where I made
Rhea my wife. The tired, aged Father Caffrey was out on the lawn, reading
the paper. Our eyes met and he threw a blessing over the lawn and trees.
I think it missed. A good man, Father Caffrey, righteous. This is
the good in the world, the purity that balances the corruption. Everything
reciprocal.

I walk onto the Market Square. I wonder what I am going to pick
up, for I think there must be something I'm lacking. This compulsion
is planted somewhere.

The square is bustling. The street performers gathered around
combine their flutes, harps and drums to create a rough texture of sound,
which floats gently above the varied fabric of browsers, buyers and sellers
I saw the faces there as I always had-in shades of gray and pale.
I concerned myself only with finding my reason, and quenching the buzzing.
I walked up to a booth filled with fresh fruits and vegetables. I palmed
a squash, then a melon, finally an overripe tomato. My thumb broke through
its rotting skin; its red juice flowed down my hand. The booth owner
stared blankly as I placed it down, neutral faced, waiting to see if
I would become either angry or ashamed, show strength or weakness. I
turned away and walked further into the market.

It was then that my feet stopped moving, and then that the buzzing
(and the market and the world) for a moment, silenced. In the middle
of the market stood St. Marco's fountain, a renaissance styled marble
structure that has been inactive for as long as I can remember. Leaning
over the side was Harold James Rise, a patient that I had treated for
a time - classic psychotic behavior, a religious fanatic who believed
that he would be responsible for the destruction of commerce, to prepare
the world for the Second Coming of Christ. He called himself a deconstruction
worker.

I had seen fire in his eyes; a deep, angry stare which scared
the hell out of me. His words were ice; his thoughts drawn with a mortician's
steel will. I sent his files to another, less qualified doctor after
Rise attempted to sever my ear with his teeth. I thought he'd be incarcerated
by now. But there he stood, half bent with a package under his arm.
He stared for a moment into the sky, melodramatically beating his chest
with his free hand, and dropped the package into the base of the impotent
fountain.

Then, the decision, the instant and sporadic blending of the conscious,
the subconscious; the memory and the immemorial; the virtue and the vice.
And when it settled, when the factors added, subtracted and multiplied,
I found myself with the package buried in my stomach, ticking in my ears.
I was divided, the rational and irrational hemispheres of my mind waging
a quick war. But beyond decision lay instinct, and I was subject to
the mind, that complex and unknowable creature. But the one defense
I had was and is attempting to renegotiate.

Doubt.

30 seconds,
reads the digital timer on the cruel face of the dynamite and wire symbiote
as I pull it back from my chest.

My eyes burn, open for the first time in my life, seeing emotion
as colour, seeing life as shapes, death as suddenly irrelevant, memory
as meaningless as the seconds tick away in my arm. Is this revelation,
or revolution?

I pull myself back against the far wall, still invisible to the crowd.
The people in the market glow, an unreal contrast to how I had always
seen them.

20 seconds.

Knowing that I can not move, I am thinking that I can. I can
run, run through this still faceless crowd, through these sinners and
saints who won't ever know who I was, but
eternally thankful for the sacrifice I made for them; through the market square where I could never return, home to Rhea, back into the warm bed in time to hear a faint
explosion in the distance.

I could raise that family that we talk about. My son, with her
straight nose and deep, haunting eyes-with my sharp chin and thick eyebrows.
Our home in the country, our picnics in the tall, summer grass, our
feet ticking against the salt of the ocean tide.

Such a nice dream, but always a little more than average, always
a little more than I deserved.

10 seconds,
and I feel my heart beating three times a tick, the rushed drumbeat,
the sound and rhythm of my death. It is strangely loud, and I find
a strange, embryonic comfort of it.

5 seconds.

I am on the edge now. I am thought, action, euphoria, sloth, envy, greed,
lust; I am the alpha and omega,
I am the beginning and the end.

0:01.