Tuesday 13 November 2007

Chapter One

John Glanton had felt tethered to a life that no longer held any meaning. He sensed he was in his decline, and as time carried him towards the grave instead of being afraid he was losing his fear, fear was being replaced by constant morbid fixations with death. Thoughts of grand scale destruction loomed large in his mind. While eating dinner, brushing his teeth, fucking his girlfriend, he thought of the last moments before a nuclear strike, the feel of his skin boiling and his head expanding into nothing.


It was accepted that John Glanton was a successful man, a face people knew. He was familiar to every household because he was the national evening news reader. He had always been lucky, nothing had been much of an effort for him. Talented and good-looking, opportunities and women fell at his feet ever since he passed puberty. Even now, as he approached his 50th birthday, people admired how well he aged, how his thick, greying hair made him look sophisticated and wise and how elegantly he could turn a phrase. All the qualities needed for a newsreader, a stern and authoritarian televisual entity.

Arriving at the studio that evening, John wiped a cold sweat from his brow. His hands shook and he braced himself for the barrage of attention, the make-up girl Suzie, the ever-changing runners with cups of coffee like buckets of mud, the set manager Anne, with her lonely eyes, briskly briefing him on the job that lay ahead. As he stepped through a small door at the back of the studio he could feel the sweat down his back. He felt a mild panic. Suzie approached him in her naturally good-natured way, and called "There you are John! Let's get you done and dusted, no delay!"
"Evening Suzie" whispered John, hearing doom in his own voice.
Suzie pulled a rack from across the room, hung with suits and shirts like wasted bodies. She picked one out and hung it next to the chair where John now sat. She looked over at him, for the first time she felt pity for him - for the first time she noticed his age.
"John you haven't shaved! We'll have to sort that out first."
"Sorry Suzie, I'm not myself today."
"Well let's see what we can do to make you feel more...yourself!"

Suzie, always professional, asked no questions and did a good job of smoothing his features and colouring the death away from he eyes and cheeks. Soon John was propped up behind the desk, in a fresh suit and a new face. Sad Anne whispered in his ear piece;
"Ready on three, John".
John felt confused.
"Five...four..."
His heart thumped out the words jesus creeping shit.
"...three and...."
His face mechanically arranged itself and his eyes focused on the auto cue, he was a seasoned professional, even with his own mind AWOL. He read the digital scrolling letters, dipping his voice and pausing between perfectly executed sentences. Anne bares her teeth behind her clipbook as John reads "At least 13 Afghan civilians have been killed in a Nato air strike near Kabul".

John reads, his heart pounds, he begins to feel enraged at the hollow words of terror that fall from his lips like sombre goodbyes to something that was once familiar, but had since become strange and grotesque. He thinks what the hell does it mean. John stops reading.
The auto cue continues to scroll, Anne frowns as the anxiety rises in her throat like bile. John massages his forehead with one large hand as if trying to coax sense from it. Everyone is waiting, somewhere between curiosity and panic. Anne sees the deranged uncertainty in John's face and begins gesturing emphatically, like a concerned parent waving from the shore as their child swims away from them into deep, shark filled waters. John looks straight at her and she stops and waits. He straightens his tie and carefully straightens the papers on his desk, and begins:
"Dear, faithful audience, I can't...I can't."
John pauses and runs a bear-like hand through his thick greying hair.
"Fuck..."
John raises one fist and spits the words "this world is SHIT. TV is SHIT. And you are all morons for letting this thing enter your conscious with no fucking thought! You just CONSUME like fucking ANIMALS! Like meat tied to a pair of eyes! Dull, vacant, all-consuming..." Here Johns voice cracked and trailed off. He coughed quietly. A incongruous feeble little cough from a large angry bear of a man.
Everyone watches for his next move. John stands up and tears his papers, they are blank apart from a doodle of a cat drawn by some bored runner, its' leering face now cleaved in two. he turns and punches a hole clean through the beige set wall sending a sound man fleeing, and the three clocks labeled London, New York and Tokyo dislodged and nudged off their axis, New York crashing to the ground. He grabs his fist back as blood seeps from the knuckles and wails "YOU DUMB FUCKS". He tears his blazer off and flings it at scattering runners. Two set hands run on and grab his arms, he takes a swing at one and knocks him to the floor as transmission cuts to a commercial for tampons; a young woman in a striking red evening gown ,with an unreasonably perfect smile giggles while saying "I feel more...myself!" before turning away and floundering off on the arm of a homosexual-looking man.

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