Chapter Six

The heavy glass door, framed in fungal growth and adorned with an array of A4 unacceptable offers, opened with an awkward resistance, as if extending a mute expostulation against him proceeding any further. "Believe me, I'm not here through choice," grunted two black bin-bags bloated with laundry, as Jake's lungs were filled with the scent of citrus-fresh, chlorine-irrigated spring meadows, overcast with the jaundiced cirrostratus of stale nicotine.

The rows of archaic rusting monstrosities - conjointly forming a vibrating aquarium bearing a plethora of portholes into private lives - were not the only things fuming. It was only two weeks ago that biro had made contact with chequebook and an aluminium appliance had been hauled into the kitchen, ready to spin itself into a malfunctioning frenzy - from Hotpoint to sore point before one could shout 'who ordered the indoor swimming pool?'

He expeditiously shovelled tangled garments as creased as his anger-stricken features into the machine's metallic vacuity, slotted a few coins into the appropriate aperture and, locating the least-stained section of the decaying bench behind him, sat down.

An idle hand slipped into his jacket pocket, to re-emerge grasping the take-away menus, bank statements and payment reminders that constituted the day's post he'd removed from the doormat on his way out of the house. Only two handwritten envelopes survived the ensuing mail massacre intact, whilst the mangled, multi-coloured shreds of deli and debt were laid to rest in a nearby waste paper bin.

Envelope Alpha's exterior markings - both the familiar handwriting of the address and the brightly hued battle scene raging across the reverse - incontestably identified its origins. Jake paused a while in appreciation. As he became immersed in the child's intricate illustration, the surrounding mechanical tumbling became the pounding of felt-tip feet; the occasional collision of an enthusiastically slammed door - artillery fire; the clattering of keys and currency? The clashing of ink-metal blades. The scream of a fallen stick-soldier transformed into the screeching of breaks outside the laundrette, a distraction, and the scene became a well-postured truce. Any message from his girlfriend and her son would be read in the privacy and concentration-conducive climate of his own room.

His attention now turned to the second survivor, intriguing in its lack of both stamp and postmark. Carefully tearing an opening, the contents were extracted - a single postcard. The glossed 6" x 5" picture was one familiar to him, the enchanting spatial illusion of M.C. Escher's 'Drawing Hands'.

For several years he'd sat opposite this very image every Tuesday afternoon, framed as it was above Mr. Forrester's desk. All six feet of that skeletal, stereotype-shunning high school art teacher made the observer feel indefinably uncomfortable. It was as if his creator had used pencils he was unfamiliar with whilst sketching Forrester's form, inexplicably deciding against the much-needed use of an eraser. He was an over-sharpened 6H of a teacher, brittle, uncompromising and prone to snapping at the slightest pressure. Perpetual caffeine-induced jittering would occasionally erupt into fits of fearsome fulminations.

First he would arraign: "Master Jenkins, did you break the trend and condescend to contribution? Or does your sketchbook remain as pathetically vacant as your current expression?"

Jake would 'explain': "But there's more, sir - merely implied, you see? It's... a metaphor, sir. An austere... kind of... reductionism, almost an attempt to locate the elusive beauty present in simplicity."

Forrester would detain: "Intriguing. All this from what would appear, prima facie, to be a rather limited assortment of badly drawn lines. I 'simply' hope your plans for this afternoon are equally void of content."

Something was wrong though, something strangely incongruous with memory. Jake subjected the image to a more detailed analysis.

It was the paper.

In the original, the paper - upon and above which the two hands were engaged in mutual creation - was secured at all four corners with drawing pins. In this representation, however, one corner lacked a pin, appearing loose as a consequence. The cuff link, too, was divergent; the plain, rounded-edged rectangle of the classic had been replaced by a novelty equivalent - a miniature clock.

He was in the process of being amused by the coincidence, and determining whether that's all it was, when his Nokia began to spasm beside him, writhing in a polyphonic rapture. Accepting the call he stepped outside onto a puddled pavement, soon finding a not-so-dry stonewall to rest a shoulder against.

"Ahh, I could submerge myself in your mellisonant tones, your voice... a lake of euphonic bliss in this rugged raucity of reality," he professed semi-seriously through a vulnerable smile, intermittently illuminated by the headlights of passing cars.

"Uh huh, happily received, but so far I've only been able to survey Dylan's cover art. Send my compliments to our artistic warlord, would you?" His shadowed smile doubled in magnitude as he listened to his praise being duly communicated to the felt tip pen-wielding youngster, before overhearing the child's enthusiastic response settle into recently-learnt nonchalance - "Really? He thinks it's cool? Tell him 'thanks'."

"I'll be home soon, I'll-" Time for the smile to dissipate, dissolving into the distinctive muscular distortions of disappointment, a smile dismantled by the realisation that 'home', for them, was not a shared concept, and that his presence at that location brought him no closer to her, "I'll call you from there, Sweetness."

Effete, his feet returned to his seat, his thoughts returned to the postcard, his eyes turned to the precise yet charismatic black letters arranged thereon.

"Salubrious Salutations!

The creative processes of one mind are distinctly limited. To say we are 'standing on the shoulders of giants' is to betray only one part of the greater mystery, for the weight on our shoulders is theirs. The circle of this life is, in fact, a square, and you, my friend, are cornered. A decision has been made, and you are to make it. Choice has always been a matter of limitations."

Jake's eyes, roofed in raised eyebrows, stared blankly at the peculiar declarations. If there was a single intelligible point in the five sentences that formed the first paragraph, it had competently evaded him. He read on.

"Do not worry if comprehension comes slowly, or on its own terms, some concepts struggle like butterflies against being pinned down, and we all know what happens when those broad-winged beauties flap their chaos-makers. However, sometimes the dice of chance must be loaded.

More to follow. For now, indulge me, if you will, in a-"
Jake's reading was interrupted by the immediacy of a sobbing. A glance askance revealed it to be originating from a set of vocal chords, covered in the ivory flesh of a classically curving neck-line, partially obscured by auburn ringlets.  There was no obvious cause for the tears now falling from her bloodshot eyes to the grime-smeared tiles below, so, with a frown, Jake looked away - only for the whimpering to intensify, then to cease entirely.

She had disappeared, but the washing machine door she had been facing was now open, and scarlet rivulets ran, mingling with escaping soapy water, down a surface which was hard to imagine as once being white.

"Blood?" Jake vocalised the possibility with disbelief.

Curiosity opened the round door wide and lowered his head, allowing him to see the stained purple suit slouched within. Shocked, he stumbled backwards, the card slipping from his fingers into a puddle of half-dissolved detergent below. When he knelt to retrieve it, only the last line was legible:
"display of things to come."