Mush was long listed for the Fish Short Story Prize
When does life end? For Ken it ended abruptly. He lost his balance on a traffic island and fell under a cement truck. Horrified onlookers turned away from the grisly sight. Others covered their mouths, retching. The truck driver didn’t feel the impact but realised something was wrong when he saw people gesticulating in his wing mirror. Ken’s head did not escape the ten ton onslaught. His memories and daily routines, such as the trip to the corner shop, had been reduced to mush.
Passing drivers slowed to gawp at the body. A builder on a scaffold described the scene to someone he had been chatting to on his mobile phone. A man of military bearing returning from the same corner shop to which Ken was heading carefully unfolded the business section of his newspaper, the part he never read, and placed it over the new synthesis that was Ken’s head. News of stock market turmoil took on a more sinister hue as blood seeped through the headlines.
The truck driver arrived to inspect the scene. He was pale, shaking and looked round for support but none came. He had not seen Ken. No one saw him trip. The inner ear infection that had been troubling his balance remained undiagnosed. The ambulance siren heralded a change of mood. Those with jobs to go to, headed off. The drivers behind hooted to encourage the gawpers to move on. A police car arrived. The two young officers decided against lifting the red blotter. Traffic was diverted and the onlookers were corralled behind blue and white tapes. A shocked neighbour identified Ken who apparently lived alone but had a sister somewhere, New Zealand possibly.
However, Ken was not entirely gone from this world. True, he had forgotten the reason for his outing that morning, to buy some cigarettes. And although his thoughts were unstructured, there was a lot going on within the hyperactive mousse formed by the merger between the logical left and the intuitive right sides of his brain. The compulsions that once crowded his daily thoughts had evaporated into the traffic fumes and he was thinking clearly in five dimensions. Had it been possible to capture this outpouring, he would have won at least a Booker and a Palm D’Or. Decades-old sexual encounters he rehearsed in his masturbatory fantasies rallied to grant Ken one last volcanic orgasm. In short, Ken’s fall from grace had produced in a few seconds what years of mysticism and meditation had failed to achieve, complete creative and sexual liberation.
Plastic gloves were stretched over sweaty palms – scooping Ken off the road would be a messy business. His precious DNA, four billion years in the making, would soon be swimming alongside sanitary towels and the morning’s ablutions. From the perspective of the scaffold, he struck an odd pose. Who wears brown corduroys these days? His legs were twisted awkwardly though he felt no pain. In fact he was running, running along an empty beach, splashing in the shallow waves. He felt the sand splurge between his toes and the tropical sun beat down on his red, sunburned back. The crystal clear water shimmered with a myriad tiny lenses until he dived in headlong to shatter the illusion. At first he swam low, simulating flight, his tummy almost touching the barren sand. But then the sea bed fell away and Ken became king of a rocky metropolis festooned with gently undulating fronds. Sea cucumbers trawled the avenues for detritus while clusters of star fish searched for buried treasure. A large jellyfish gently pumped its way towards the light: a regular heart beat, not Ken’s. Then through the blue-green, sun-dappled water emerged the coral mountain where tiny polyps waved their greetings and brightly coloured fish played dare among the sea anemones. Ken felt at one with nature, an equal among his fellow creatures.
The strong undercurrent had carried him beyond the sandy bay and when he looked back he could barely see the shore. But Ken was where he belonged; away from denial, away from belittlement. Back on the beach, Ken’s mother Eileen was busy with her youngest, a curly-haired little girl of around three. Ken resented this demanding infant, even more so because he was expected to play father when the child’s own father was away. He spent the rest of his life trying to escape this trap – a trap of obligation toward a mother who could not understand his pain.
Eileen didn’t look up as Ken walked tearfully towards her across the hot sand. ‘Couldn’t she understand? I nearly drowned out there.’ That would have taught her. A man with dark skin and strong, swarthy arms had plucked him gasping from the sea and rowed him back to shore without a word. If only he had taken him back to his mother, if only he could have saved her too. As he lay in the middle of the road, Ken saw the baskets of silly baby things he would have to carry back to the car park. At least she hadn’t forgotten his snorkel this time.
The police were measuring distances, taking photographs. The truck driver sat on a low garden wall, his head in his hands. He would see these forensic images at the inquest six weeks later which would decide upon an accidental death. He had been dreading it but thankfully there were no grieving relatives to corner him, no recriminating looks. His well-rehearsed apology was not required.
Some weeks later, Ken’s half-sister Cheryl received a solicitor’s letter informing her of the news and that she had been mentioned in his will. ‘Poor old Ken, only fifty eight. Shame he never got married. At least he can keep mum company now. Still, it was nice of him to remember me.’
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