Bloody Waters:

A Brief

Reckoning

The Stickleback Press, Bolton

Copyright © Edmund Johnston 2012

Edmund Johnston has asserted his moral right under the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1998, to be identified as the

author of this work. All rights reserved.

www.sticklebackpress.co.uk

Uncommon New Fiction

One

I often find myself standing in the kitchen during the night. One half of the

room is lit yellow from the street outside, and I face into its shadows.

Speaking aloud, I say,

‘With my own hand I brought myself to chaos.

‘I brought myself to chaos and I cannot wish it undone.

‘With my right hand I killed a man.

‘I lifted a knife and spilled one man’s blood, and brought myself away

from life to chaos. His spilling blood drenched my life, then washed it away.

‘The Lord said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered into one place,

and let the dry land appear.” And we were given time, and this dry earth to

stand upon. Earth that stayed dry until God’s patience passed, until he piled

the waters high and there was nothing to see but Noah’s darkened craft.

‘And though He is hard, God does not spill his people’s blood. As with His

oceans, the Lord gathered the bloody waters of humanity and made them

apart. Though we have often invaded the shores of the body, it is not God’s

way. Instead the many drowned and the fish fed themselves fat.

‘With a knife in my hand I opened the heavens, and even now I flail and

splutter on a bloody sea which I know to be without limit and which exists

before God’s ordered creation. Darkness now and ever covers these depths,

and in this dark God and I watch one another, waiting for whatever is to

come.’

As I speak, I hear my voice waver and change, newly different each time.

These words, my words, have been the same for some time now and they

seem emptier to me each time I speak them. They seem always more strange

and mistaken. I think, though, that I am done with them now. I spoke them

last a week ago. That night I walked from the kitchen into the front room,

where the light is more orange than yellow. Standing there, I said to myself:

‘There is a continual sickening motion of the same things returning time

and again. Perhaps I have always stood in these rooms, speaking and silent. I

cannot get away from these words. I cannot leave speaking them.

‘I know myself to be lost and crazy. I believe I killed a man in the

knowledge of what I was doing. How could I not be insane? And I feel this

certainty and believe I have found my truth, and call it sanity, taking me back

to foolishness and lies, and on to recognition and further deceit.

‘Here too is the tug and release of this rolling chaos.’

These words are as familiar as the others, but they were followed by a

sudden heave of panic. I stood afraid. Every terrible thing came free, casting

off the ballast of my words and rising fast within me with one massive bulk. I

would be stretched out into some monstrous shape, or shrugged apart into

tatters. And then my voice again,

‘Yet perhaps I am a prophet, and these sickening swells are the continually

correcting motions of God within me. Perhaps I am a prophet, and this is the

mountain of the law rising strong and fearful within me.’

Such a thought cannot be understood. Such a thought is nothing but itself,

and cannot be explained.

I walked out of the room and up the stairs, moving quickly. I wanted to

stop at the point I had reached and look about me, take heed of what there

was ahead, behind and at my side, but I felt no hope; these waters will not be

still. I turned my thoughts to the fiery men of God, the men of scripture who

carried the wild grandeur of the Lord in their mouths, who walked with their

God in feral humility and bore His heavy wildness into the quiet homes of the

nation. And I thought of Jonah and Noah both. And then Moses, with his

back-breaking tablets of stone. At the top of the stairs I stood quiet for a

moment, and within me rose the memory of holding myself still with my neck

stiff and a shoulder cramped under the weight of my companion’s body; of

sitting side by side on the settee, with a stranger falling asleep against me and

my body feeling less and less my own. And then tiredness came, and I took

myself to bed.

Two

The next morning I walked out from my house. I walked towards the hills,

and then up along a scrubby path till I felt high and clear. Looking out, I felt

somehow privileged, blessed even. The town sat under my gaze like a

gathering of silt in the pit of the valley. I felt clean and safe, free of wrong in

the way that a fox or an ant is.

During the night I had dreamt of the sea. The blood of the waters had

gathered about me as never before. The waters stank, and were thickening

with clots. Stood on the hill, I thought ‘My life has become a sticky place. I

live in a house which is cold and dirty, and my life is sticky with habit and

neglect.’ Whether I spoke these words out loud, I do not know. Below me, a

walker was taking the steep way up. I was suddenly conscious of how odd

my dirty beard and torn coat might look here on the hillside. So far I had not

seen him look up from the ground.

As I stood there, I tried to forget any shabby anxiety over my appearance. I

called out,

‘Good morning!’

My voice sounded strange, even to me. He carried on towards me with his

head down, saying nothing. Once he was close he looked to me.

‘Afternoon,’ he said, quietly. And then he was gone. I turned and watched

him walk slowly up and away from me. I despised him for his

accomplishments. I despised his ease and normality. Two hundred yards

further on, he turned and looked back. He was too low to break the skyline,

so I saw him surrounded by the hill’s bulk. I nodded to him and raised my

hand. Silently, I spoke to him:

‘There’s a mountain at your back,’ I said. ‘Think on.’

Three

The house is dirty. I have not cleaned it for many years. Dust and grease

and spilt food have gathered and mingled through all my rooms. It is really

only a matter of arrangement, of dispersals and gatherings. I have made no

more dirt than those who live in clean homes, but I have failed to distance

myself from it. Apart from what I flush down the drains, I have kept the

evidence of my existence close by. In this I am honest, but not wise.

When I lived with my wife, the house was clean. This was her doing, and I

spent much of my time struggling against it. When she left, I kept the house

as clean as she had. I put empty packets into plastic bags and moved the bags

from one bin to another. I wiped up food spilt and rinsed it away down the

drains, and so on. I do not know why, but it seemed fair. I even spent some

money on maintenance and alleged improvements to the house. And then my

visitor came, and I struggled to keep moving the dirt away. He was more

ruthless, he took himself away from his dirt, and eventually he left. And now

the house is dirty.

After my walk I sat in the front room, trying to decide what I must do next.

All day, I had been avoiding the word. Prophet. It had come upon me to go

forwards, and my only chance was not to know what I was doing. I felt like

one stood in huge darkness, waiting for his eyes to remember their sight. I

could take the matter straight on – consider myself, consider what a prophet

might be and how I could converge with that existence – but I had only my

own understanding, a match’s worth of light with which to blind myself. To

go forwards, I must act in darkness, trusting to a path hidden from me. I

would have to leave the house and my life, and I was not yet ready.

Since my wife left, I have become less conventional in the ways I think of

myself. Unusual ideas take hold of me, and I feel bound to do them justice.

So, for some time now, I have tried to live like a knife, to make a knife of

myself, and that is why I write these things down. I am gathering myself. A

man of God must gather, and he must divide. I believe that God beholds me

with expectancy, but the darkness before me is empty. It has come to me to

cleave this darkness and to part the gathered waters, yet I have nothing and it

is not enough. So I must make myself into something, and I cannot think how

but by gathering my loose words together. I am trying to gather myself.

So, the first story, which is all the story.

I woke alone. My wife’s warmth was in the sheets, but she had gone. The

room was dark, and the house silent.

I came down the stairs, and into the kitchen. My wife was stood with her

back to the window, facing me in the darkness. A shadowy man was stood in

front of her, with his back to me. An intruder. Neither of them moved, but I

could hear my wife breathing.

This man would kill my wife unless I killed him. He did not hear me

approach. I stood still, close behind him, and strained to hear him breathe.

Nothing, as though he was already dead, but the sound of my wife’s

breathing came slow and strong, inescapable, a life to be cherished and

protected. As she drew air in, I gently lifted a knife from the table. I reached

forward, and slit the stranger’s throat with her outward breath. I do not know

whether he was surprised.

She watched as he fell back against me, flailing in his own blood, burbling

horribly. For a moment, I held his weight, then he slid down to the floor. I put

the twice dirty knife down where I had found it, on the table.

We stood facing each other, wordless, for over an hour. Eventually I turned

the light on. The stranger’s body lay across the floor between us and there

was blood around our feet. My wife’s face was rigid and pale. I stepped

backwards, and held out my hand. She took it to step over the body, then

walked past me out of the room.

I said her name. She turned and looked at me.

‘If,’ she said, her voice shaking, ‘if for once you only would wash up... if

you would only put the things away...’

She went up to bed. I stood there next to the body, alone on the sticky floor,

and felt chaos lapping about me. She said the same thing every night.

I don’t how long it took her to leave, but it began that night in the kitchen,

with the knife and the blood and the rest. We argued about it many times

over. My memories were not hers. She talked of the knife in my hand, but

never the body, never the act itself but just the threat, the knife waving wildly

in my hands, the long hour alone together in the dark, as though there been

no intruder, no stranger to bleed to death on our kitchen floor. Slowly we lost

each other and one day she walked out of the house for good.

She left and I stayed and now I must leave. No prophet may stay at home

mired in the life he knows. I must escape. Leaving the house must be an

escape from myself. I am fearful though. If it were not enough, if I were to

leave the house but keep my old self, I would be truly lost. No prophet but a

madman, a lonely wretch. So I must gather. I must pull these two things, my

house and my self, as closely together as possible, making them one thing, so

that losing my home means sloughing off my old life. Pull yourself together

they say. That is what I am doing.

That afternoon I sat in the front room, only moving when I leant forward to

write, taking new sheets of paper when it occurred to me. I was writing all

evening, and then through the night. When it was light my words looked

scrawled and manic, but they seemed right. My body was stiff and tired; I

wanted the toilet and then my bed.

Four

I woke, confused, at dusk. Downstairs I found my papers, and carried them

through to the kitchen where the light still works. I read through, and decided

against writing more in the dark. I copied most of what there was onto lined

paper, and tore the night’s work into shreds.

I have long wondered at the mystery of the knife. I wonder at its power to

pass through the world by virtue of its slightness, its tendency towards non-

existence. I am no scientist, and for a long time it seemed to me that it was by

almost not existing that a blade could pass through whatever it met. And so I

took the idea that to be like a knife I needed to let myself disperse, that I

should cease struggling to hold my existence together. And now this is a cold

dirty house.

One of my few remaining friends does know something of science. I am

fearful of the mundane, and I was afraid to ask him. We sat on a bench in the

park, flanked by municipal greenery, and I said ‘What is it to be sharp? How

does thinness cut?’ He answered, and I was surprised not to have guessed. He

spoke with a smug, chiding tone, but his words were clean and true.

He said, ‘Pressure is force divided by area.’

‘Right.’

I passed him the bottle, and he took a swig.

‘Pressure is force divided by area. The smaller the area over which a force

is applied, the greater the pressure.’

‘Yes.’

‘Hence sharpness.’

‘Ok. Yes.’

‘Yes?’

‘Almost.’

He took a penknife from his pocket and opened it. He held it up in front of

me.

‘Three inch blade. How wide would you say the edge of the blade is?’

‘It isn’t. It’s an edge.’

He looked amused.

‘So. Area is length multiplied by width. Here, three inches multiplied by

bugger all. Which comes to an area of bugger all square inches, or very close.

So any force applied is divided by bugger all, and consequently achieves

sufficient pressure to cut through the material in question. Yes?’

He passed the bottle back to me.

‘Yes.’

It took me some time to decide I had been wrong in thinking of sharpness

as a tendency towards non-existence. But I was precisely wrong. A blade cuts

by accuracy, by its own exact presence. It is a tool of physical communication

by which vague forces can be brought to a scale at which they have terrible

potency. The sharpness of a blade is the gathering together of a hand’s easy

strength into a cut’s width. Such is the danger of a knife.

And this is the presumption of a prophet. I believe God could need the tiny

scale of my life to magnify His strength, or that He could need a tool to act

with precision. Such belief belongs to the prophet of a vague, weak God. In

truth, the prophet is a crude and lumpen object, wielded with unimaginable

precision and strength. Though we are minute in the face of God’s power, we

are messy and huge amid the infinite details of God’s attention. And it is ever

God’s kindness to withhold the cutting edge from humanity. But a prophet

may not comprehend his God. It is mine to believe that I must gather myself

into sharpness, and so I write.

Five

And so. My visitor came.

I slept poorly for many years. I would drift away from consciousness

without trouble, but I rarely slept well. During the days I was of little use and

by night I could not properly rest. I suppose this is not unusual.

One night, I did sleep. I know because I felt myself wake.

I woke in the dark. My body was tense, and I was sweating. I felt full with

fear, scared of the room about me and scared of the house below me. I could

see nothing that looked wrong, but the room seemed darker than usual,

thronged with shadows. I lifted my head and stared into the darkest corner to

convince myself it was empty. Instead, it brought to mind the welling

darkness of a bruise. I lay there for several minutes, listening to the house

creak gently. I was afraid to move, but I could not stay as I was. I got out of

bed and felt my way to the door. I paused by the light switch, unsure if I

would feel safer with it on or off. After a moment’s thought, I left the light off.

I told myself I might see better in the dark, but really I was afraid of drawing

attention to myself. The landing looked as it always does. Part way down the

stairs, I began to regret leaving the light off. In front of me there was only

darkness. I stood still for a moment, then hurried down the remaining stairs.

I could see nothing in the front room but the streetlamp’s orange tinge at

the door and window. The kitchen light switch was close, so I reached for

that. The lit room looked normal, an empty kitchen. I began to relax a little. A

floor board creaked behind me and I kept myself steady, turning round

gently to see that it was nothing. The light from the kitchen made the front

room safer. I walked through the dark, along behind the sofa, to the next light

switch. Once I had looked about the room, I turned the light off again to see

the darkness which had unnerved me. It seemed gentler now, as though the

light had not gone, but settled softly into darkness. Above me the house

creaked again, and I wasn’t afraid. I stood a moment longer, then opened the

inner door to check the key in the front door.

As I stepped into the porch, I felt something pierce the ball of my foot. The

hurt seemed clean and slight. I shifted myself carefully back into the front

room, using just the heel of that foot. With the light on I leant back against the

wall and balanced on my right foot to see the underside of my left. I found a

tiny splinter of glass, which came out easily. It disappeared from my fingers

straight away, falling to the floor or maybe onto my clothes.

With the light on, I could see into the porch. My front door was double

glazed, or it had been. The inside pane of the door’s upper panel had

shattered; the lower panes were whole. Glass had fallen across the floor. And

the door was locked shut, with the key in it. The door had been smashed from

the inside. I felt weak and small and foolish. The blow had fallen from inside

the house. Perhaps that was what had woken me. I looked back to the bright

front room, but it did not help. I looked again at the shattered panel. The

centre of the inner pane was empty, lying in pieces on the mat. The pane was

patterned, and without it the smooth glass of the outer pane showed dark and

whole. They seemed terrible, those dark spaces where only one pane of glass

stood between me and the outside air. Around the missing centre of the inner

pane, curving triangles of lost glass reached out to the door frame. A dark,

jagged flower had opened its petals where my door stood.

I groped around the room for a pencil and a pad of paper. I took my page

for the pane, and tried to follow the harsh lines of its breaking. I soon felt it

was wrong, and began again, and then again. My pencil seemed hopelessly

slow against the sudden bloom of the flower in the door-pane, as though I

were dragging wax across the paper. I kept trying until there were no noises

upstairs, and then I went back to bed, averting my eyes as I went for fear of

what else I might see.

In the morning the house seemed normal, but for the door. I cleared the

glass from the floor, and made a neat pile of the paper I had used. That day

passed and then it was night. I went to bed and again I slept.

I woke more gently, and followed my previous night’s movements but

without any lights. Again, the floor creaked behind me and again I found

myself standing in front of the broken door. There was nothing new to see

and I had nothing to do. So again I drew, and eventually went up to bed. And

the same the following night. Each time the noises sounded no more than

floorboards creaking under footsteps, and perhaps a muttering. My fear

settled a little, but I would not go upstairs till the noises had ceased. The third

night, I woke again after returning to bed, this time to the sound of water

gurgling and echoing in the pipes. I got out of bed and went out to the

landing. The bathroom light was on, and there was a man stood with his back

to me, bent slightly forward over the toilet. As I watched he pulled the chain,

waited unmoving for the tank to fill and then pulled the chain again.

I waited quietly for a moment.

‘Here I am,’ I said, loud enough to be heard. He flushed the toilet. I said it

again, louder, but he did not move.

I did not know what else to do. I could not approach him. The thought of

seeing his face terrified me, though I couldn’t say why. I imagined a slit at his

neck, flapping wetly with his breath, or my own misshapen face leering back

at me. If I touched his shoulder he would turn, and I would see. Instead I

went back to bed, and fell asleep to the sound of my own toilet being flushed

by a stranger.

Six

Next morning, I found a pile of dirty clothes on the bathroom floor. My

stranger was asleep in the front room, snoring on his back. He had made a

nest for himself. All around him there were crumpled tatters of paper – my

attempted flowers – like a drift of leaves. He was wearing clothes from my

wardrobe and drawers: old, worn dress trousers, odd woollen socks and a

grey cardigan, inside out. I gathered the scraps of paper up. The sheets had

been torn lazily, without apparent pattern. Some were ripped half way across,

others just crumpled, but most had been torn into three or four pieces. I took a

handful and carried them out to the bin. He did not wake but snored and

shifted about a little. I soon realised that his nest held more than my

drawings. I found shreds of bills and bank statements, even an old insurance

cover note, all of which belonged in the dresser. He still did not wake, even

when I began pulling pieces out from under him. These were damp, and came

apart in my fingers.

I had not been so close to another person’s body for a long time. I was

struck by how warm he was, and how strongly he smelt. His arms seemed

heavy and strong. I suppose he was young, but I thought of him as already a

man. His face was dark with dirt and stubble. I wanted to touch his hands,

but I was afraid he would wake up.

Once I had thrown away all the paper I could, I began washing the clothes

he had left in my bathroom. For some reason, I washed them by hand. They

were dirty, and smelt strongly. I ran a bath of hot suddy water, and sank his

trousers into it. They seemed much too small for him. I knelt by the bath and

rubbed at the trousers till I thought they were clean, then I rinsed them out,

twice. Then the same for the other clothes.

Half-way through rinsing his sweater, I heard him on the stairs. I stopped

still, with the sodden bundle dripping over the bath, and waited to see what

was coming. He reached the top step, and he was completely naked. His skin

was pale against the grime on his face and hands. He paid no attention to me,

but walked straight into my bedroom. A few minutes later he emerged,

wearing another assortment of my clothes. He went downstairs again, where I

could hear him pacing back and forth from one room to another. I finished

washing his clothes, and hung them to dry.

I ran another hot bath, this time for him. I persuaded him up to the

bathroom without any fuss. He seemed happy to be led, and I found myself

strangely at ease. Already this felt like a situation I could live with. He

undressed quickly, with little prompting from me, but then he was reluctant

to step into the bath water itself. He stood shivering on the bathroom floor,

one hand idly covering his privates, and in the end the cold persuaded him. I

wanted him to wash himself, but he showed no interest. Eventually I set to

work myself, sponging him down gingerly, trying not to touch his skin with

mine. He grunted several times, perhaps in appreciation, looking anywhere

but at me.

After the bath, I shaved him. I left him in the tub while I went downstairs

for a mug of boiling water. When I got back, he was sat dripping and naked

on the toilet seat, waiting for me. I found a razor and changed the blade, then

left it to stand in the scalding water. I gave him the tube of shaving cream, but

he held it a moment and then dropped it, so again I set to work. Once I had a

lather I rubbed it into his rough beard by hand; first his cheeks, then his lips

and chin, and then his neck. I shaved him with tiny strokes, the razor clogging

up quickly each time. All the while he mumbled gently and stared over my

head. He did not seem to mind any of this, not even the few small cuts I gave

him. When I had done, he looked like a boy. He sat on the toilet, naked and

wet and freshly shaved. I tried to give him a towel but he would not take it, so

I put it down on the floor in front of him. I did not know how to show him

that I had finished. I went downstairs and left him sitting there. After a while

he came down dressed, but still wet, with his shirt soaking and stuck close to

his back.

Later that day, I cooked some food and we had our first meal together. He

would not stay on a chair, but ate on his feet, shifting about the room with his

plate in his left hand and a fork in his right. He did not seem at all interested

in me. He wandered away to another room after a couple of minutes, taking

his meal with him. Slowly, the afternoon passed. I left him alone in the house

while I did some shopping, and he seemed not to mind. I did some more

laundry, this time in the washing machine, and he came to watch. I could not

think what to do with myself with this oblivious stranger in my house, so I

went out again, this time for a walk round the park. After that I tried to read,

but I could not help wanting to tell him about the book, so I gave up. The

evening came and went without us managing to communicate anything with

one another, and eventually I went back to bed.

Seven

I don’t know what else there is to say. He came for a while and then he left.

I stopped being alone, then I started again.

He would not wear the same clothes for more than a few hours. Piles of

crumpled clothes would turn up all through the day, and I would tidy them

away. And likewise, I would discover small turds left about the house. He

was always in another room, away from his leavings, whether they were my

old clothes or his dung. I did not know what else to do but clean up after him,

time and again. Eventually I too became one of his leavings. I came to feel

more his than my own, though I was nothing to him. Like everything else he

left me behind. He took nothing from me, but some little time, and he gave

me nothing in return.

I never asked where he came from or why. He could not have said. All that

mattered was that he came. He was a visitation, not to be questioned or

explained.

Strangely, I barely remember his leaving. There was a fire, but only a small

one, perhaps a couple of old newspapers and some clothes, just fierce enough

to char the kitchen table and melt a hole in the lino. I remember being lifted

out of my bed and carried through the house, to be set down in the back

garden and left there. It was raining and the grass beneath me was wet, but I

stayed there and watched the orange light flickering behind the kitchen

window. And from then he was gone. Maybe he went home. I always

assumed he had escaped from somewhere. People were supposed to look

after him, and perhaps they did or perhaps they didn’t, and then he escaped

and made his way into my house, but only for a while.

I am still where he left me, lying stunned as I watch a paltry fire inside my

home. Since I rose from that wet grass, there has been nothing but the past. So

what is my gathering? Perhaps I have gathered only gaps, dark spaces which

tell the shape of my life. I try to gather myself, and I see my visitor. With him,

meaningless details proliferate and slip away, as though I were gathering

sand. I do not know how long he stayed with me, and I do not know why or

what any of it meant. Numerous moments and incidents come into my mind,

but I have no proper knowledge of him. I do not know myself. This much I

can say: a strange unspeaking man came to stay with me, and I tried to keep

him clean.

No. There is a little more. I have two memories of him, two shadows that

did not leave when he did.

He would not always tolerate the intimacy of that first bath. Some days he

walked out of a room as soon as I entered. If I followed him, he became angry

and would wave his hands loosely at me, as though shooing away a flock of

birds. I remember him then. His eyes were fierce and aggrieved. It felt

dangerous to ignore him. He carried some deep and serious harm with him, a

kind of damage that might be passed hand to hand, from one person to

another. So I would retreat and let him have what he wanted, but he would

follow, still angry, still determined to be rid of me, till I was shifting from

room to room to avoid him.

And I remember his voice. He was often quiet, but never silent. His mouth

seemed full of half-spoken words, continual mumblings that could not escape

his tongue. I used to imagine them, welling forwards in his mouth, cramped

too close together to take their proper shape. Sometimes he seemed to narrate

his own movements, and sometimes mine. Even when he slept, his voice went

on. The sound could be gentle or harsh, regardless of his mood. Responding

got me nowhere, and I do not know if the words meant anything to him. But

still they came, and eventually they were a sort of company for me, alone in

my house with a stranger.

This is all I have. I want more, but wanting has nothing to do with this. I

gathered it all into one thin bundle of papers, barely enough to swat a fly.

Perhaps this is why I let myself disperse. I did not want to see what my life

amounted to. This business of gathering must be a reckoning, however slight,

however lacking. So be it. Now I must keep my words close.

From that time to this is nothing to me. But perhaps I do not keep pace

with my own life. Maybe I have come to take the terrible bloody sea for

granted, feeling the ghosts of its waves long after the waters have fallen away.

I remember Noah, locked close in his dark ship, blind to God’s earth. God

said to Noah,

‘Build a world with your hands, and you few will live. Piece together a

darkness and you pass safe through Mine.’

And so I do not know whether I am balanced on the peak of a mountain or

the crest of the steepest wave. Perhaps there is not so much difference. But it

is time to leave this house.