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The Utopian Void

Psychological-Horror-Thriller

By S R GurneyPublished 3 years ago 23 min read
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The Utopian Void
Photo by Ján Jakub Naništa on Unsplash

10.30am – The Oakhill

I drive my silent vehicle into Sycamore Lane looking out for the grounds of number 31 – The Oakhill. A Live-in Home where one of my closest friend’s Mr. R Lester resides. I have known him since I was a boy, and it is all true that he is ostentatious, egregious, pious, hot-willing, inordinate, garish and bizarre. He is entirely complex and has always shown as much, tossing ten pence to the pound to flow beyond the limits of a dreams reach. Which leaps fourth with its fingertips onto something magnanimous and imprudent. Hence his adorned title: Mr. Lavish. It seems odd and ridiculous to pay so much attention to this fact, that at all times it seemed even he was tender of his anxiousness, as to precede the thought which takes an individual from and not to the place one needs to be. The Dreaming Trinket.

The car stops smoothly as I guide the steer gently into the available spot, I look out the front screen and there is a grey sky twisting with wind and leaves. I see the three-piece of a man, woman and child, in all its inseparable connections, following the path of a billion steps. Towards another second beneath the mist of dew and droplets of rainwater alike. The driver-side door has an empty open, like there is no audible sign that the door is open nor closed. Well, other than one seeing or feeling so, and with the lightest feather touch, one is outside the car. I look over the now stable water droplets on the front screen, as of which when driving I saw shake and tremble like cold swimmers from the sea. I depress the lock on the key-switch to my car, and a yellow light flashes from the indicators on the wing-mirrors, before themselves manoeuvring to a more stream like shape parallel with the car, to avoid the potential of another driver knocking them invalid.

There are clicks from the heels of my shoes which seem to echo and reverberate gently across the lower edifice of The Oakhill. White marble, and orange-brick line wide and tall windows, that are intersected with brilliantly white shapes. Nestled in front of the edifice are rose bushes of soft pastel pink and white, yellow and pure red, which stem before the imposing sight of the building’s grandeur. I think to myself that this place is as well-kept as all places ought to be, and I think it would be pertinent for one to pay an environmental hygiene tax, which without seems never to allow most of society to upkeep in the same pretext as officials or the wealthy. Seems awful odd to me, that money can buy one hygiene, when it ought to be the sensibility of any nation to protect itself from the fear of living dirtily.

I enter and the air is clean with indoor plants and bustling medicinal staff, which are dressed much more casually than one might imagine. I turn my attention to the desk, which looks more like the foyer of the Titanic, than the reception for a Dementia-Home; but I guess that’s what money can buy. I approach the middle-aged woman behind the counter, and she is wearing her auburn complexion in a ponytail and dressed in a navy unflattering all-in-one. Her blue eyes are glued to papers that she seems to rummage with, and I feel impolite to interrupt, so I accidentally sort of stare at her awkwardly awaiting her to naturally realize I am there. In what I suppose is actually a purely inauthentic anxiousness. And there it was, the Great British Monotone of Mundanity; Impolite over-politeness. After clearly too long, I tire of the game, and approach closer now and introduce myself, but before I can, she inconveniently notices and interrupts.

“Oh, Hello. Please excuse me, I am looking for something very important, Oh blast it! Never mind, I’ll have to find it later” She is like the stream of a friendly consciousness “I’m Heather the manager of The Oakhill, I’m so sorry, how are you, can I possibly help?” She says listlessly because I’ve met her every Thursday for the last two years, since Mr. Lavish moved into The Oakhill. This place has the strangest ability to seem both completely and incompletely competent. I respond merchantly, “Er, yes, Hello. I’m here to see Rex, Lester.” There is a pause. “Oh, of course, I knew it couldn’t have been Wednesday” she says confidently. I stare at her a little vacantly, squinting my eyes in a priming disbelief, before she drops her paperwork, and runs off shouting “I won’t be a minute, I’ll just go get Rex for you.” I am bewildered, and glide my head left to right, wondering if she even knows my name at all? I mean she didn’t ask, and I don’t think she has the attention span to even remember, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was caught in an endless loop of people asking favours of her, and to that she never has even the opportunity to finish one task without the arrival of another, as the distraction to the previous. The thought stays with me a while, before I decide I will make two cups of tea. One for myself and one for Mr. Lavish.

I reach the communal kitchen area and place two cups below a machine; I press the corresponding on-screen button and the hot water begins to spurt. I am relieved of even this task; it makes me wonder what will be left to even prepare in the future of the future? The death of Human Agency. The intermittent explosivity of boiling water into the mug sounds abrasive but tastes consistently excellent when mixed with a bag of leaves, so it really is a price worth the cost. As I seat myself on a couch by the window to the outer gardens, where people walk, often accompanied. I catch Heather’s eyesight walking past, and I wave a hand. She sees me and is unconvincing in her eyes. That I know now too, she has not yet requested Rex and by the time he comes down, his tea will be cold. I suppose other than the waste of my time and the tea, no harm done. She looks around, and excuses herself mouthing the words one sec, running off, presumably to forget to tell Rex she forgot to tell Rex I am downstairs.

I go to the fridge and retrieve some green milk, as to say that it is actually white, but the bottle cap is green, and this is my preferred choice; semi-skimmed.  

11:00am – The Rose Path

I look out over the garden seeing beautiful shrubs and trees and flowers, which grow amply and look healthy and vibrant. I take a sip from my tea, and it is pleasant enough, the light I see is both clear and bright and I can see it illuminate the faces of the people around the garden, talking and looking and living. That’s the power of the mind, to delude even ourselves that we aren’t always living, because we as a condition of having this very thought; incite those moments which are memorable aside those which are forgettable. And in this balance comes fourth the design of storytelling, as if only to break the eighth wall. Where it is in our natural tongue to convey, discuss, express and argue, continuously, but it is this very mundane endurance of repetition, year-in-year-out, which causes these moments to become petite.

There is a man, around his sixties, and he is grimacing because the apple he picked from the tree is sour. He goes for another bite, and I see the fear in man, that is existent in his expression. He throws the apple on the floor and tries to crush it. I take another sip. I see a woman on a bench in a sun patch, looks like she is in her late 50’s. I watch the smoke curl away from her as she exhales, she releases a little cough. I lift my eyebrows and watch closely, as she appears not to blink once over the course of her entire cigarette. I am first astonished, a little bit by both the ability to daydream so intensely that one forgets to blink, and her future potential as a staring contest champion.

I take the last sip of my tea, and I see Mr Lavish turn around the corner, and he is looking for me, because his eyesight is woeful; he’d be better off with sonar instead of style. He’s dressed like a British Prince for a dinner party, but that’s Mr Lavish. I put my tea down and rise from the couch to greet him. As I get within five feet of him, he notices me and elates “Mr. Anchor, how long has it been? Come let’s take a walk in the garden, I’ve been inside all morning, and would love to smell some roses.” I acknowledge his request and extend my hand in front of me to gesture as to follow his path and preferred walk, and we leave back into the foyer, to the outside gardens, along the south of the building’s exterior.

As we step through the exit into the outside, there is a breath of fresh air, and the sun begins to tear the clouds apart, splitting them like a knife. We take the route around the grounds which stretches right, and I can see there are few on this journey. The ground crunches with pinkish stones underneath the shoe, it is a nice sound, that I rather like. The weather is fairing brighter by the minute, and there are bouts of heat which hastily retreat when the sun returns behind faint clouds. We reach a line of roses which follow the path around the grounds, Mr. Lavish leans over to them and smells intently. “Mhhh, O’ wow! They really are the most terrific flowers to smell, just divine!” Mr. Lavish has a way of being cultivated, by life and the experience of actioning, memory crafting and the likes. I find it wonderfully endearing.

“You know this reminds me of the old days. Sitting on fields and laughing and joking our lives away. Isn’t it weird how nothing ever feels more fleeting than a memory, especially the longer its lasted, like a worn photograph to the mind, the picture becomes hazy and scattered in fragments of forgotten detail?” I say to him in earnest.

“Are you still trying to tether everything down Mr. Anchor? Because you’re doing a good job. But life doesn’t stop because you’ve got memories, and there are times when it seems you have all the memories you wished for but no ability to remember them. Just be thankful you had them, and hopefully when you can’t remember them like me, you have a kind friend who can remind you. It’s nice walking today, you’re making me forget my age.” Rex says this without lifting his eyes from the beauty he finds in the roses. Through sight and by scent, we slowly begin to advance.

“And so, are you going to tell me about any memory in particular, because I can’t remember a single one?” Mr Lavish inquires provocatively, catching my eyesight and winking.

“Well what about the time that we snuck into an active quarry on a Sunday? And had a fire extinguisher fight in the lot of demountable offices, piled like juvenile pieces on top and beside one another? And how the owner of the Quarry happened to be walking his dog that day and noticed us, and we ran for our lives, like if we didn’t escape, he was going to lock us away in some Stephen King inspired Melo-Horror.”

“And did he Mr. Anchor?” Rex replies as he adjoins the rock path.

I wait a few moments before we begin a walking again “Well he did catch up to us, after we scaled the clay cliff above a swampish pond, and left the way we’d gotten in. But he was rather a gentle giant in the end, and so was his dog. I guess looking back now he could have easily called on us, but we were children and didn’t really know any better. We didn’t want to hurt anyone, we were just there for a summer thrill, and in some way, I think he knew that. The Quarryman was confronting children wearing masks of the villain, and it was our salvation in this confrontation, that allowed us to remove these masks with our fleshy and innocent skin, which made it seem impossible for the owner to retain the danger of a punishment beyond a verbal banishment… but I guess it worked, because we never went back again.”

“And so Mr. Anchor, what is it about roses and this walk that reminds you of the Quarry?”

“You know, it’s funny you should ask, because I suppose other than us in the memory, there is no obvious connection. Isn’t the mind such a marvellous thing, that even like a rose might poison itself, so might the mind. Forgetting even its own memory. What a power we all passively operate.”

“Well, there you have it. Mr Anchor strikes again. Tell me another, you’ve got such a wonderfully anxious memory, it makes me feel free not to have it all stored up in my head and to hear it like someone else’s book. Just magnificent.” Rex looks wantonly of another story, in a very child-like sarcasm. “Come on Anchor, what else have you got in that memory bank?”

“Hmm, alright Mr Lavish. What about the time we were thieved for our mobiles in London, and we got to ride around in police cars looking for our robber?”

“And did we find him?” He says unknowingly, like a genuine question.

“I’m afraid not Rex. But we were driven near enough around the entire borough before the police accepted that it was unlikely we would retrieve the phone. I must say I am still a little disappointed we did not find our mugger; it would have added to the belt to see a police showdown with the 7 ft gold-toothed pirate offering circular rubber tips as ecstasy. And even though we said no to the rubber tip, he still took the phone, which I don’t know why he hadn’t started with. I couldn’t have given a shallot about ecstasy at the time.” We both laugh.

“And what is it we were doing in this borough of London?” Mr Lavish deploys in earnest.

“You know, I believe we were seeing a show, and it always seemed that no matter the outcome, there we were. Attempting to see our lives through, in the limitless scatter-scapes of modernity. Trifling existence as the robbery of possession, but you know what? He could have that phone a million times more, so long as he hadn’t taken you.” I say so with a softness.

“You are sweet today, sweeter than the scent of flowers, but what about the memories even you’ve forgotten?” Rex says so sardonically.

“I sincerely doubt it Mr Lavish. I have near remembered all of my entire life, but there are always memories we can wish to forget, and maybe even thankfully you have. But I fear you will never forget how to dress yourself, that I believe even your skeleton will don the garnished clothing of your wardrobe. How many rooms does it occupy now Rex?” I say diminutively and the conversation quietens, I think Rex hadn’t the bother to even respond.

We pass over the act of communicating and are engaging in the pleasantness of walking aside one another as old friends, and there needn’t be more said; though I want to and so I do. I palm his attention with my voice and say “Rex”, giving slight pause of my thoughts lilt to emphasize my sincerity “do you remember your husband?” His face shimmers with light, and his eyes burn passionately like a furnace, he smiles at me and says with earnest “I had a husband?” And I take great pride in reassuring “Yes you did Rex, and he was amazing, he treated with such deference. You would say to me that you’d trade your entire wardrobe collection for another second with hm.” I see a tear well on the edge of his eye lid, and his shaking lip exhales with emotion. “Would you please my mind and tell me his name Mr Anchor?” I desire to oblige.

“His name was Phoenix Blue.”

“Mr. Anchor, do you know what happens when you forget that you miss someone?” Rex speaks with uncertainty, like he can feel the buzz of a bee as it echoes the musical vibration of A through his throat.

“I’m afraid Rex, my memory seems persistently incapable of forgetting.” I say so solemnly, but with heart.

“Let me tell you Anchor. Across my apartment I see photos of Phoenix and I every day, and sometimes I can barely recognize my own self in the photo. But it’s like when you’re doing a puzzle, and every time you get it out, you lose more and more pieces of what we hold to dear to be memories, which is in fact events that shape our souls. And the shame that I feel because I know these photos and those memories mean the entire cacophony of human emotion to me. I am despised of my own saudade. And I know is as a strange ne savoir faire experience to feel the glint of something you don’t really know is missing.”

11.30am – In the Note

A bliss breezes gently through the air, Mr. Lavish baffling the eyes, we have nearly walked the entire stone-y pathway. I see the back-edifice of The Oakhill and it does have this eerie stature, as it imposes and protrudes. And that is when you feel a body shudder or see something truly horrific and you have a guttural and instinctive reaction, something so foul and wretched, that it would be a pleasurable experience to forget. Through the shivers of angst, I look on at Rex enigmatically, exuberant of his styles and accoutrements, and I am astonished that he is so well kept of himself, still, considering. Once we near where we first left on the rose path, I point towards a bench, where I previously saw a woman smoking and he nods his head. I pursuit of relief from the weight of the body against the worlds grasp.

We sit silently for a minute, enjoying the slight rays of warmth from the sun, bounding around through dotting clouds of translucence. I lose my sight into the distance and the grounds around me, before I start to feel like I am being watched. I turn to see Rex staring at me, and had been doing so for a while, and shakes his head gently, as if remembering me again. He takes a moment before sinking his hands into his inner jacket pockets and gasps with an innocuous smile.

“Mr Anchor, would you do me the honour of reading me this note aloud, I keep finding them in my clothes, and I cannot read the blasted handwriting, may you give it a go, and then maybe decipher the rest in my room?”

“How about we start with this one first, and I’ll get to decoding the rest another time.”

Mr. Lavish passes the letter over to me, and I take the paper firmly, his hand and forearm shaking. The Letter feeling weighted, and burdening. I take the letter carefully and unfold it third by third.

“Okay, well here goes the reading of mysterious letter number one.” I say reluctantly:

Rex,

Await another visit, counting the hours till the next?

This place is no good for you, I’m going to break through text.

Can we settle the charms with the shrill-trill-drolly-muppets?

Jolly fuck-its and untrustworthy tablets.

` Did you dodge a cruiser and the heart-stop-shockers?

A prison befits them as does string to the strung-up puppet.

Might you secure victory?

The one that makes the face delight from what is trivial.

Did it occur, nonetheless?

The worse of these evils derives from the blooded mess.

“Who wrote this Mr. Lavish? This is surely, the somewhat poetic, ramblings of a madman! How many more of these do you have?”

“Quite a lot Mr. Anchor, it really has been happening for such a long time.” Mr Lavish speaks with a soft fear in his voice, his eyes watering almost to brim over and spill.

“If it is alright with you Mr. Lavish. I would very much like to read the rest and see if we can get to the bottom of who is writing them. And ask, if you might allow, why it is that you have not told me until this very second. I have visited you every week for two years, and in all of those visits, long and short, how is it that you…” I take a deep sigh, and calmly recompose my emotions “Never mind Mr Lavish I am glad you have told me.” I feel a fool for even getting my hairs up like a dog.

“I can’t believe I hadn’t told you; it’s happened every day since I moved here.” I feel guilt wash over me. Before I realize the words falling from Mr Lavishes mouth. I stare disbelievingly.

“Mr. Lavish, you can’t possibly expect me to believe you have found a letter every day for two years, and you have no clue of the recipient? That’s…How many is that? Three hundred…”

“I know, it’s an awful shame. And, well, yes, naturally, if you count all those days there is 730. There are tons of them. I’ve been storing them in a closet in the walk-in wardrobe, I wasn’t entirely sure they were even for me, until you read aloud my name.”

“Would you show me the rest? I just find it remarkable that someone has hand-written you 730 letters consecutively, and you haven’t read a single one. Let me rephrase that, entirely unbelievable.”

“Fine. Come with me, and I’ll show you. Mr Anchor reality to the bed rock of banality.” He quips sarcastically.

I give him a concerted look of slight bemusement, I guess he is sort of funny.

And so off we go, to the closest in a closet.

12.00pm – The Closet in a Closet

I exhort my mind with thoughtful ideations of intrigue, as my eyes look over the rising white banisters which are shaped like bulbous ringlets that climb the curvature of the adorning handle wood, which is a polished dark red mahogany. The stairs circle the centre space of the foyer and as we climb alongside the chandelier, floor to floor, till we reach Mr Lavishes room: 609. The hundredth signifying the floor, and the integer determining the room, and still. To me it is a palindromic number, and not in the mathematical sense that a number added to itself backwards, will give you a number you can add to itself backwards again. And it will give you a palindromic result. This is true of the number 85. (+58 = 143 + 341 = 484). I mean it more to be that actually if one were eyed in reverse, as in seeing upside-down, Mr Lavishes room number would still read 609. I guess I aim to determine palindromic as the reverse of perspective and not the reverse of position.

We have taken our time, and I say to Mr Lavish “You know, we could have taken the elevator, six floors is a hell of a height to climb by stairs at your age.”

Without hesitation Rex responds with “It’ll keep you young Mr Anchor.”

I respect it, and now looking down on the foyer, from an over-the-banister bird’s eye view, I see it with renewed eyes. The structure of the view it crafts, is both itself the magnificence of ingenuity as well as the formidability of Logic, Numeracy and Communication.

Rex already keying into his apartment half-shouts back “Come on Anchor, this way! Step to it sire.” He chuckles to himself.

I enter the room, and it like one of those apartments that looks out over Manhattan, it looks out over the estate of The Oakhill and its accompanying gardens, which make the grounds feel almost world’s away isolating. It’s a commanding experience, like a captain of a ship whom sees miles of empty oceans and is revered for the continuity that sits between perspective and knowledge. So, to say that beyond the taunting vision of an endless sea, there are lands a plenty. It is this challenge of sight, which is the good in all of humanity, to beckon beyond the utopian void of disbelieving without a true cause.

There are furnishings of speckled marble which shines in the light through the windows, and trinkets and photos which encumber the sills and frames of Rex’s living quarters. It is pleasantly tidy, aesthetic and purposeful. The three points at which build the broad pyramid of good living. As I step further into the room itself, I feel myself succumbing to the aura of its voice and palette. Deep and rich colours which trick the eyes of an autumnal season, lofting around the room in its pristine pertinence.

He chimes in with another rushing of the tongue. “Come on Mr Anchor, chop chop!” I follow, a bit more diligently than before, into the bedroom area where Mr Lavish stand to a double-door closet, and I think to myself that this is sort of ornate and preposterously small for a man known for his prized collections. And I say to him “They must have made you sell your entire collection to fit it into here?” Rex laughs to himself opening the double-door, and as the light settles, it is less of a closet than he calls it and seems to extend to the size of an entire apartment room.

The room seems endless with clothing, shoes, hats, watches, wallets, and everything between and beyond. It’s a genuine Wonka Factory, of experimental clothing design and construction. There are immense and detailed drawings and sketches of collections I assume have not even been made yet. I am perplexed and I ask how you manage to keep it so well managed. And he replies with a hush.

“Come Mr Anchor, we are not quite there yet.” I stare banal.

“How much further does this closet in a closet go on for?” There is a sarcastic tone that I deploy, that no one I have ever encountered finds comedic or engaging. And too, this time is no exception, and so I now believe it true; I try way too hard to make others laugh.

We continue on further, and there a door painted black with a white question mark on the front, he says, “They’re in there Mr Anchor.”

I approach the door tentatively, a feeling of coldness running over my skin, I sense it pimple and goosebump; my hand sort of shaking at the handle. I pull down on the brass handle, and with ease open the black door, revealing a date organized treasure trove of letters, which to me looks like the mailing room of a small business in the eighties.

“Rex, this is absurd. Why have you kept all these?” I look back in shock, and he explains simply “I don’t know.”

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About the Creator

S R Gurney

25.

Graduate. Author. Director.

Inspirer to noone.

Compulsive Hypochondriac.

Elusive Dreamer.

Thought Hallucinator.

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