“We’ll be live in five.”
I feel something on my forehead. It hovers there like a nascent thought awaiting identification, categorisation, validation.
“…four…”
Maybe it’s a flower. I feel it growing. Blossoming out from a bud. Opening to the air. Sweet flower of my soul.
“…three…”
There is liquid there now. Must be a single drop of nectar squeezed out into reality, undecided on its next step, wary of gravity.
“…two…”
It falls.
It hits the tip of my nose.
My tongue squirts out chameleon-like, taking it on the fly.
Salt strikes my tastebuds as my tongue retracts.
“…one…”
Somehow more nectar manifests upon my brow. Strange that. A chammy had passed there only a minute earlier.
“…and we’re live.”
The light is blinding without the welcomingness of the sun.
It is barbaric.
It is überheat.
More buds arise, immaculately conceived, funnelling their power straight into photosynthesis, multiplying frenetically.
My forehead feels as wet and lush as a rainforest full of ferns.
“Welcome to ‘Talk the Talk’…”
What is the point of eyes beneath this light?
And what is the point of eyebrows too thin and unthatched to dam the flow of salty nectar streaming down my face, emptying their biting bile into already-blinded eyes, drubbing salt into my wounds?
“…and here’s your host…”
Is this my fate? To be thus blinded? To be left at the mercy of this life-draining light?
“…Patrick Fitzgerald.”
And his lover Gerald Fitzpatrick.
“Thank you. Thank you kindly.”
They aren’t flowers anymore. They are triffids, wrapping their sap-salivating tentacles all over my face, down my neck, under my collar. Buboes have budded in my armpits and now they burst. It is like there is blood, hot hasty blood, flowing freely out of my glands.
“Today we have a bunch of guests. A bouquet if you will…”
Now they aren’t flowers anymore but thorns. Digging into my skin. Impaling me like a butterfly onto canvas.
“…to tantalise your senses.”
Surely they can see that I am suffering here. Is this light not offering me up to a million eyes, to be discussed and dissected without mercy?
“Our first guest needs no introduction…”
No introduction? Even a butterfly stuck to a board gets a little label.
“…because, well, he has no name or occupation or any other attribute which I can assign to him as an introduction. He just is.”
OK, that’s sort of right, but he could’ve said it less glibly. Just because I don’t talk doesn’t mean that I’m due less respect than the average person. That I’m not a person with a mind.
“So, without further ado…”
What more ado could there be? He has already asserted that I am completely unintroducable, without any features or characteristics, redeeming or otherwise. Ado?
“…please welcome…”
That’s a nice touch. I’m an absolute no-hoping nobody and yet I’m being welcomed.
“…this chap sitting on my left!”
Bravo! Bravo! I’m starting to like this guy. He’s minimalising his vocabulary to suit the scenario.
“Word has it that you have taken a vow of silence. Can you confirm that claim for us?”
Silence can be my only response to such a ludicrous question.
And a broad beatific smile. Hanging taut from two tightrope lines.
“But more importantly, there is a significant reason behind your decision to fall silent.”
So many significant reasons.
So little means to signify their significance.
I lift both hands, fingers formed into Vs, like some aged apostle of peace.
It’s the best I –
“…and it’s not a wife who never ceases to nag you…”
No, not a wife but a damned chatty talk-show host who is trying to gain personal mileage out of my situation. Anything for ratings.
“…or…”
Anything to increase his own public profile. To raise him one iota above his rivals.
“…that you’re aiming to enter the Guinness Book of Records for the longest ever game of charades.”
Especially by interviewing a guest who doesn’t talk. That’s a whole new angle. Genius really. Twisted genius.
“No, I’m told you want all of us, all of humanity, to join you in your vow of silence.”
I nod briefly but vigorously.
And that smile still. Straining. Salt-stained. But still standing on the saintly side of sanity.
“Can you please explain why.”
My smile broadens into a fiasco of itself.
What else can it do?
It can’t speak.
Not anymore.
“I mean, you’ll be doing me out of my job.”
Oh, how you love the sound of your own voice, Mr Fitzgerald. Is that what gets you off in bed, hearing yourself and not him or her? Is that your take on oral sex?
My smile is rejuvenated.
“Hell…”
My smile is reflected in his. Or is it the other way around?
Either way, there is now a coat of insanity painted over both our faces. Thick and suffocating.
“Cat got your tongue?”
I poke my tongue out on cue.
He has turned me into a clown. A plaything. A freak. A monstrosity.
No, I have. I am dancing to his tune. I’ve become deaf to the silence borne within.
My smile returns but, beneath the onslaught of bright lights, salty sweat, dry mouth and verbal tripe, it sits invisibly on my lips.
My eyes cannot continue the charade.
They speak volumes.
But not in a language intelligible to this fool.
“Well, since you have nothing to say for yourself, I’ll say it for you.”
He turns to the audience with a face lit with ecstasy.
“This man wants us all to be like him. To sit around without a word. To spend our lives in perfect silence.”
I am shaking my head at every phrase but he has gained a rhythm to his march. He is goose-stepping over a dead duck.
A basted duck now, under these burning lights.
“So how do you propose that we communicate?”
Why do they even need these lights? They bore into me like words, each beam an insult.
“Have you somehow managed to learn the elusive art of telepathy?”
He brings splayed fingers to his forehead in a theatrical gesture.
I lean forward with clenched brows, part of the play.
“Wait!” he says. “Maybe I’m telepathic, too. I sense a tremor in the air. As if … as if someone is trying to contact me.”
He faces the ceiling, eyes turning like spotlights spanning the night sky for aircraft.
“Hang on a sec.”
He looks over at his producer. Some supernatural figure invisible behind the blaze of lights.
“I’m getting a message through.”
A telephone sitting on the coffee table between us springs into life.
“Well, whaddya know! Something tells me this call is for you.”
He turns to me briefly with a wink.
Then he is back in the audience’s embrace, begging them, appealing to them with a sadistic smile and raised hands.
“Would you like him to take the call? It’d be rude not to.”
The call is answered, then flicked onto loudspeaker.
For a moment, there is silence without as well as within. The reprieve is short, broken by the low hum of a live line interspersed with short breaths. Whoever is on the line doesn’t know they’ve been put through.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
The host’s smile is aflame but it is the voice on the line which burns my ears.
“Scott…? Scott honey, is that you?”
“Your son’s right here, Mrs Macklin.”
His smile is radioactive now. This is the knockdown after the setup. The coup de grâce.
“Oh, I’m sure he is,” says my mum’s voice, so much larger than the tiny form out of which it arises. “But he’s doing that vow of silence thing, so I won’t disturb him. I know how much it means to him.”
A line of tension rusts onto the edge of his smile.
“But … don’t you wish to speak with him? Isn’t that why you called?”
“You called me,” she fires back. “And I’d prefer to talk to you. I’ve been a fan for years. Never miss a show.”
Mr Fitzgerald smile has cooled and set.
“We’re live now, actually.”
“Really?” My mum can’t contain her excitement. “That’s wonderful. There are so many things I’d like to ask you. Like your very first show all those years ago. You were so young and good-looking then. Still are, of course. Good-looking, that is. Tell me – ”
She prattles on and the host has gone into meltdown. Sweat seeps over his smile, melting it into a grimace.
He is as silent as me. If anything, even more so. His mouth is shut tight, breath held in abeyance, the actions of a novice.
My mum continues to talk. Inane stuff about episodes many moons old, long forgotten by everyone except her.
The lights swing away from me. My eyesight returns, mottled and muddled.
The host’s eyes are pleading with me, wild, frantic, but he has nothing to grapple with.
No name, no past or present. Just a mirrored silence leading him deeper into speechlessness.
A Canberra local, Maurits enjoys writing short stories, poetry and essays but suffers writing novels.
