HIMArts Award Silver unit 1

A creative writing/photography project by Noah Langford

1

1

Eyes wide, the child looked toward the sky for a moment and watched the bubbles as they drifted past him in the strong winter’s wind. As other children laughed and popped bubbles around him, he knew he was the odd one out. He had no childish humour and did not enjoy bouncy castles, slides and all the rest of it. When his parents were encouraging him to join in with the dancing under the sprinkler on a hot summer’s day, he preferred sitting alone studying the light reflected on a blade of grass, or how the soil formed a tunnel as he moved his finger gently through the flowerbed. It seemed as if he appreciated everything but his own kind. He felt more connected to nature than he did to humanity.

He watched as the light refracted into the glassy walls of the bubble in all the colours in the rainbow, and was completely at peace until his brothers slapped him in the face with soap-slobbered hands and he was ushered back into reality’s grasp. The twins sniggered to each other as they took turns tormenting him, unaware that his mind was different to any other. He ignored pain, as he didn’t experience a need to feel it. He hated life, yet he loved thought. The only living thing he felt connected to was plants, but he connected to the whole universe, animate and inanimate, in his thoughts. His mind was his saviour, and his saviour was his mind. He hated life, yet he loved it at the same time. And so he morphed back into the child he was, and started to look as if his brothers were annoying him, as he knew he should, and let it unfold without further thoughts of nature. He was a human, and he knew he needed to accept that.

This is life.

2

2

The city lights lay below him as the plane raced into the sky. He looked down at them, knowing he would never see them again. There was his high school football pitch, the floodlights on for Friday night, and the school itself plunged into the darkness of the night. He knew it was only a matter of time before they discovered what he had done. He sought a new life back in his birthplace, his home before his family relocated. The police would figure it all out in about a week’s time, and he had until then to disappear. He didn’t even remember how it started, but he couldn’t not see how it finished. A moment’s bad judgement and boom--she was gone. He didn’t realise for the first 5 seconds, as he had his back turned and was still talking to her. But when he looked around and saw the blood dripping from her head, he knew he’d messed up. He knew this was the end for his life as he knew it. He loved this city but now, because of this, because of everything, he could never go back. He couldn’t go to prison. He had always led a privileged life and being put in a pit with subhuman killers would be too hellish for him. He thought of himself as above the rest, because of his unique views of life. When he married her, he thought he was complete, because she was a pawn. He could say anything to her and she would agree, he could do anything and she would support him. But this night, when she disagreed with him, he was so shocked that he didn’t react at first. She barked and barked and barked and unleashed an avalanche of unspoken opinions upon him, which she had stored up for so long. He listened, and evaluated, and with each word he was getting closer and closer to breaking-point. But when he did, and it… it happened, he realised that he did love her, that she mattered, and that she wasn’t just a pawn- she was his pawn. Now she was gone, and he was dragged back to the reality that he was on the run. And he was determined to survive and start again.

3

3

‘That’s not how it works!’ he barked at his secretary. ‘Once you bet against the stock market, you can’t go back as soon as it’s not going your way. You have to live with the facts. We lost a ton of money today and that’s how it is. Jerry screwed up. And if you don’t get him in my office by the time I’m back, you’re going to be out the door right with him.’ He stormed out of this office. The whole sales force had clearly heard his rant. The usual frantic hubbub of day trading was in complete silence. He walked out of the suit-haven of Canary Wharf and down to the South Bank. He went into the café and bought a bowl of Gyoza soup. He went and sat on the small, litter-strewn riverbank and lit a cigarette. Today had been horrible, just like every other day of his working life as a hedge fund manager. He wanted to go back to the trenches. He was tired of having to take responsibility for everyone below him. His firm would start crashing after this. What was he supposed to tell his investors now? He screwed up because he couldn’t control his workforce? He slowly ran his hand through his hair, contemplating what to do. He could probably get a job at another firm, as a partner possibly. The real decision was whether to leave or see how things panned out. He realised: this was a moment of choice. He stubbed out his cigarette and left it on the dirty urban beach, and chucked his Gyoza soup into the river. He needed to sort this out. He stormed back into the office and the whole room went silent. He picked out Jerry from the crowd. ‘Jerry, stand up!’ he bellowed. He slowly but menacingly stomped up to Jerry. He gave him a deathly stare and then said ‘Congratulations. You’ve been promoted.’ Eyes widened, jaws dropped and glances were exchanged. Everyone was shocked. But he didn’t care. ‘See, Jerry here was the only one to be smart enough to take a risk. All the others in this office are way too conservative. Imagine the payout if Jerry’s move had worked. But it didn’t. Boo hoo. All of you need to wake up and start doing some real trading. Back to work.’ The office erupted into its usual stock market chaos. He raced into his office, slammed the door and sat down. He smiled. It was all going to be okay. He was the best leader the world had seen. And he was going to trade his way back to the top. He realised there was one last thing to do. He opened up his email and clicked ‘new’. He started writing.

Dear investors,

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A guy lost a load of your money today, so I promoted him. Sorry!

Thanks, the CEO.

5

4

He let the sun invade his soul, burning away all the doubt and fears of his life. He breathed the humid, thick air into his lungs, which felt like a welcome break from the cold, sharp air back home. Even though it was his first day in a foreign land, he felt as at home as ever, almost more so in this idyllic fantasy land. His new family beside him, he signalled the passing attendant for another soda, with no lemon and extra ice. She responded instantly, and he went back to enjoying life. His high powered working life had let him forget his family and the values that matter most in life, as he worked so much to keep them afloat he had almost forgotten who ‘they’ were. His holiday had made him feel blind to who they were and what they had become recently, so he vowed to make more of an effort to be involved in their lives even if it meant doing less work for their benefit. He wanted to make them proud, but not by working for them, but by being with them. So much had gone on in his life in the last years that he had been blinded by the eclipse that was work, earning money, and providing food, so as he lay here on this beautiful vacation, he vowed to never forget what was of real importance in life.

As he played catch in the sea with his family, he knew that he had been blinded for a reason. It had not been because of greed, it had been out of compassion. He loved his family so much that he had been blinded into working for them, so much so as if he had forgotten who they were and what they stood for. He needed to work hard in life but he also needed to enjoy it. He shook himself out of his emotional trance and went to play with his children, and stepped into the warm sea which engulfed him with love. He thanked himself for booking this holiday, as he felt he had rediscovered himself. He needed to tell his big-shot friends back home to go on a holiday like this and spend time as their real selves not just their work selves, as it would change their life, like it had changed his. After all, they had only just got here, so God only knows what else he would discover about himself as the holiday went on. He floated on his back in the salty sea, and let the sun invade his soul. He felt at peace. He felt… Complete.

6

5

At every turn, around every corner, the street jumped out at him. He staggered around the city centre, getting awful looks from lawyers and businessmen as they barged past him. He couldn’t believe what it was doing to him. One minute he was normal him, lurking on a bench in the urban jungle of the city. The next minute he was face to face with a bright purple tiger, with glowing beige eyes, in an actual jungle. His mind lurched following the sequence of illogical changes, as he felt the after-effects of an insanely stupid decision. He was sweating like a waterfall yet he felt as if he was naked in the Arctic, shivering his brains out. He regretted it as soon as he had taken it, if only he hadn’t listened to the guy in the club just a few hours before. He regretted it not because it was uncontrollable, but because he thought it was lame and didn’t do anything to you. But then he felt it. At first, he was in the best mood of his life, as if he was living on a Utopian planet far in outer space having the party of a lifetime. He was in complete euphoria for 5 minutes, just living it up in his head, but then came the monsters. They invaded the party and started homing in on him. They always targeted him, but they never got him, leaving anticipation and doubt hanging in the balance. As soon as it happened, he tried to run away, but they were everywhere, coming off every street corner, parading right in front of him. He tried to close his eyes but they were still there, seeping into every crevasse of his brain, as if they were storming up his prefrontal cortex and cracking his skull. Finally, he was left in an idle state in which he just looked at them and literally waited for hell to freeze over. He knew it had only been a few hours but it felt like an eternity. He gave up and let them terrorize him, as if he had actually been scared to death. Then he knew it was time to stop letting it happen. He stood up, and walked forwards as he watched the monsters tear up the city before him.

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6

Christmas was his least favourite time of year. The pure happiness and joy on everyone’s faces made him fume. A mask was being pulled over their eyes; they were deluded by bright lights and happy children. He wasn’t being a Scrooge, or a Christmas miser, but he simply could not believe that people, including his own children, were willing to forget about wars and poverty all in pursuit of a PlayStation game and some cash. The sheer mindlessness staggered him. He had never been in tune with society, but that didn’t negate his ability to understand society. He realised that people needed this festival of happiness and hope, but he felt bothered that the hope couldn’t wait until world peace was already upon us. When he looked at a Christmas tree, all he could see was that each bauble represented another death in the Middle East. His empathy was not for the people close to him, but for those far away, people he didn’t know. Their cries for help had reached him across oceans, through insurmountable barriers and ended up in his head. And they were most alive at Christmas time. It was like their eternal call for help reached out to him, as if he could feel their house shudder when the bombs dropped, and the children cried. He needed to do something. But the reason why he hated Christmas was not just because of their distress, it was because he never did anything about them. He just sat there in his pleasant Western home, thinking about those suffering people, wishing he could do something, knowing he could, and yet never doing anything about them. He was a selfless man bound up in his own selfishness.

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7

He sat there, picking away at the bark, lost in thought like he used to be when he was younger. Since then he’d become more sociable, and left his old, lonely, youthful self behind. With age, he had become wiser, fitting in first by imitating the actions people around him. Over the years, he made himself into a more seemingly normal person by watching normal people be themselves. He sometimes still escapes into his antisocial, primitive state, like now, while he is just sitting, watching other people go about their day in an orderly fashion. Sometimes he wonders why he isn’t like them, a normal, perceptive human being who cares about other humans, not just everything but humans. He felt surrounded by people he loved when he was on his own, and vice versa. However, that was his old self, and now he can finally relax into a new alternate persona, at least for the time being. He dreamed of growing old in some irrelevant, isolated part of the States where it would just be himself and nature. But for now he has to love his wife, raise his children and be a normal human being, the exact thing which scared him the most.

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8

He was old now. He was there, looking at the children playing, in the exact same spot that he had once played as a child. Over his life, he had taken on many different personas, but in his loneliness and old age he had taken on a more reflective outlook, the same outlook he had had as a child. He was always more inclined towards nature, as he could relate to it more than human beings. As he got older, he realised that there was a beauty to human beings, too, which he hadn’t experienced when he was little. However, he was always inclined to spend time in nature because his siblings and parents hadn’t shown love for him or each other, there had just been that apathetic ignorance of him and everything he stood for. His parents would feed him and ignore him, and his brothers would abuse him and ignore him. He hated childhood. The only place you ever found him was in his room or the garden, studying the plants. The plants had never shown him the pure indifference that humanity had and he had gravitated towards them for this reason; they had just peacefully co-existed. But when he met her it all changed. She changed him into a sociable character, and he started to learn to love and respect other people instead of just judging them. And this made him resent her. She made him more and more unlike his original self until it pushed him to breaking point and he had to stop her. There was nothing he regretted more. Then remembered all his other stages of life: his work as a trader to support his family, his addictions and his troubles, all of which had led to him sitting here right now. They were all different people, but they were all HIM.

This was life.

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