“Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten I’m here. You need me.”
The carnival of commuters and retirees and bunkers and flunkers and mad dashers and young mums pushing prams paraded to and fro in front of him and behind him and all around him. Shadows shimmied and skittled around his trainers, orange and green and athletic, pointing inwards, toes together instructed by colluding knees, his hands finger-nailing the closed zip on his fleece pockets from beneath crossed arms with a satisfyingly rhythmic “plick, plick”.
Cars circulated round the town, passing him on the aortic high street, pausing at lights and crossings. Tarmac trucks thundered by with a metronomic regularity, heading up towards the new housing development to pour the next wave of cul-de-sacs upon which children would soon scoot and skate and shout and stumble and be a part of something. And then they would grow up and learn how their elders thought the world should work. Some would move away, promised something they’d seen on a screen; others would trundle back down to the town, past the playground, the empty swings shrieking with joy in the wind, the seesaw nodding along approvingly, past the police and ambulance stations, and past the school and the corner shop, which became one as pupils scurried back and forth at break times, to join the daily parade marching purposefully in unison to the beat of actuality.
“You know you don’t belong here with them. You know you’re better off in my world. Join me again. I’ll save you from this place.” Listening, he unfolded his arms and reached for his phone. Dormant and restful, but unconsciously whirring away, it lay to his left on the bench, binding spells to whisk him away with people he’d never met, to places he’d never set foot, in a succession of supercars he’d only ever seen on TV, with riches aplenty, with clothes awanting, beaming smiles from filtered faces, skin pulled taut, chins tilted chestwards, heads frozen in a nod, eyes locking on, unspoken pep talks spurring him on to achieve greatness himself: This is not your life, but it could yet be
His thumb knew the way. A mind of its own. It opened and scrolled. His eyes saw. His brain lusted. It scrolled again. His sore eyes saw. His lacklustre brain lusted. Thumb scrolled. And scrolled again. Until nothing. Caught in a place between seeing and perceiving, he sat staring down. Still nothing. Just an empty wanting to have it all.
“You look like something’s wrong. Let me show you what’s right.” He took a deep breath, his chest inhaling with a sense of purpose, and paused momentarily before exhaling with a resigned sigh, knowing nothing would change from this breath to the next and beyond. He thought to himself, How truly happy are these people?
“Immensely happy! Can’t you see?! They grin from ear to ear, PRAISE BE, living the lives they knew they could, achieving greatness and riches beyond your wildest dreams. And they want you to dream wildly. They are here to help you. To guide you. Just let your thumb find role models working jobs they love for money they deserve and recognition they shirk, and know that you, too, can. I will facilitate connections that will enrich your life. Embrace the overwhelm.”
Another deep sigh. He could feel the sunlight warming his legs through his jeans, working and weaving its way between the cotton creases, comforting him. The wind, not long having cavorted with the swings, flapped at the white t-shirt playfully. He hadn’t looked up from beneath his baseball cap since he had sat down and now he slowly started to lift his head upwards…
“You don’t need to look up. Come back down to me. I am what you need.” His thumb poised impatiently. His mind patiently numb.
“Leave the boy alone. He knows not what he needs, but know that he needs not you.”
“Who are you to tell him what he does and doesn’t need? I am the elixir of the thumb-fingered. Hopelessness is the affliction and I am the spoonful of hope.”
“Hope? Ha! You give hope a place to hide behind ephemeral snapshots, a promise to live life through the filtered lens of another, photos without negatives, without the struggles and pain and hard work and anguish; always #livingmybestlife when there is no other side to Life’s coin. Life for this boy is not in his pocket or on his desk or cradled in his palm at 3am when he’s lying on his side feeding his delusive contentment before he can finally switch off, and, bathed in blue light, truly escape behind shut eyes, before he wakes to do it all over again. Your idea of life is what happens when he’s busy staring at his hands. No. The life I have to offer him is bricks and water and cobbles and mortar, and it can be beautiful and compelling and hello-and-goodbye-with-a-cheery-wave, and gritty and frowning and not-today-thanks-with-a-tired-glance, and above all else, real.”
As his thoughts raced, he noticed that the people had stopped parading and the cars had stopped circulating and the trucks had stopped thundering, and the noise had subsided. Life’s distractions had taken a deep breath in and exhaled the sound of birds chittering from tree top branches, and nursery children joyfully playing, and the shrill jingle of the tirelessly jubilant shopkeepers’ bell inside the door of Mr. Filbert’s local hardware emporium as he pottered out with a smile and a fresh stack of something-you-never-knew-existed-but-how-have-you-ever-lived-without delivered earlier today. He could feel the relative serenity when the town’s voice was quiet, and the voices in his own head for once were quiet, and he wanted to prize reality away from his thumb’s control. Then, refreshed, the town surged into life again, real people with real faces glowing and fresh and lumpy and tired and ageing before his eyes, and he found himself reassuringly lost together with everyone else.