Dear Carla,
The common short story has more in common with poetry than prose.
- A random thing I read in a bookshop today
Okay, so I spent all of yesterday writing a short story (it had to be sci-fi) for a short story competition at school. I am pretty proud of it, in terms of the fact it’s a definite abandon of my usual style which tends to be pretentious and poetic (or so I try).
So here it is (it’s really long, sorry). I’m not so sure about the ending, so any tips would be useful!
HAROLD HOCKLEY
They say that every life has its score. For some it would be the opening and closing of train doors. For others it would be the quiet crack of the keyboard, as furious fingers dance across lettered faces.
For Harold Hockley the hum and groan of the photocopier would be his swelling orchestra. Almost every waking minute of his adult life, Harold was bent over a photocopier. The glow of the flare of light as it passed beneath paper became his rising sun in the darkened room where he spent most of his time.
The photocopy room was at the very back of the office where he worked. It was an up-and-coming law firm, full of men and women with too much to do and not enough time in which to do it. Scrimjaw and Scrimlock was its name. It had been virtually unknown when Harold had applied for his position. He had little interest in law, but the pay had been good and the managerial staff had been overwhelmingly friendly.
The little photocopy room at the back was about nine square metres in total. There was just enough room for: Harold, the photocopier and a chair, underneath which the paper was kept and on top of which, Harold sat. Upon the door, Harold had pinned a typed notice-:
“Please do not use the photocopier if I am not present. Regards, Harold.”
The knocks upon the door were few and far between, but Harold received them with the efficiency that denoted the trained professional.
The day before it happened, the photocopier had broken. Harold had been copying the arrangements for the firm’s Christmas party when it had stopped working. Without warning, at 3:33pm promptly, its mechanics coughed and collapsed into palsy, drawing breath for the last time. He called the management as soon as it had happened and they had called the photocopier repairman.
The photocopier repairman arrived within the hour, and he worked as quickly as he came. Harold eyed the repairman jealously as he unscrewed and oiled various pieces of machinery. A burning revelation came to Harold. For all he knew how to copy and enlarge various sized type he realised how very little he knew about the actual operations of the machine. Much like a human friend or animal companion, he appreciated only the seen and not the unseen.
The day it happened, Harold arrived to work as usual. He hung his coat in the cloakroom, and ascended the stairs to the fourth floor. He walked through the rows of desks, through flocks of people chattering excitedly in professional tones and past numerous office doors, until he reached his quiet sanctuary at the back. He unlocked the door and eased inside, leaving the door ajar to show the lawyers he was in.
As a rule, the employees of Scrimjaw and Scrimlock found anyone who didn’t dress in a suit to be unusual, and Harold was no exception. Unless it was necessary, they avoided him at all costs. They found his constant cheer oppressive, and his country small talk jarred with them.
Harold unwrapped an egg sandwich, and began to devour it with enthusiasm. A phone rang somewhere in the office. Soon the firm would be alight with calls, but for now the phones remained relatively quiet. A foot pushed open the door of the room.
“Excuse me?”
The occupier of the voice was a short, unpleasantly plump, bald man. His scalp glistened with a frosting of sweat. In his arms was a heavy stack of paper. Harold rose quickly, and removed the stack of papers from his outstretched arms. The bald man smiled. His teeth were offensively yellow. He looked tired.
“Could you bring these to my desk as soon as possible?” he asked. Harold didn’t recognise the man. He assumed he was one of the higher-ups. “We go into court this afternoon, and we’ll need these for then. If you could do two copies of each, that would be wonderful.”
Harold nodded. He looked at the man’s breast pocket, to which was pinned a nametag, which identified him as Simon Bloom.
“Of course Mr. Bloom, I’ll bring these to you right away.”
The man hurried away.
Harold picked up the uppermost sheet. He skimmed his eyes over it. It was mostly dates, facts and numbers. It was intensely boring to Harold. He placed it face down on the glass, and tapped in the correct instructions. His finger found the large green button as his eyes looked elsewhere. He pressed it.
It happened.
The photo-conducting drum began to roll as the light scanned the paper. Two sheets of fresh paper rolled through, as carbon, warmed gently, began to rise and stick to it. The machine gave a tremendous roar as it vibrated vigorously, and out popped two copies of the dates, facts and numbers he had just read.
Harold reached for the next sheet of paper, but the stack was gone. He searched frantically for it. Hadn’t it been perched upon the chair? A phone rang somewhere in the distance, and suddenly Harold noticed his freshly wrapped egg sandwich. He picked it up and sniffed it. He could have sworn he had already eaten it. In fact, he could taste the morsels of egg in his mouth. A foot pushed open the door, as Harold’s mind perplexed.
“Excuse me?”
It was the bald man again, Simon Bloom, holding the papers. Harold took hold of them.
“Thank you,” he smiled in relief, “you forgot to leave them when you were here earlier.”
The bald man furrowed his brow.
“Earlier?”
Harold, too, furrowed his own brow.
“Just now.” Somehow he felt he was explaining to this poor man, that he had been there just a minute ago. “You were here. Just a minute ago.”
“Excuse me?” He sounded offended. “I just arrived.”
Harold’s eyes popped a little, and his jaw slackened. He appropriated himself. He thought it best to ignore the situation. Perhaps it was merely a case of déjà vu. Yet much didn’t make sense to him-: the egg sandwich; the disappearing stack of paper; even the photocopied sheets had disappeared now.
“You want two of each of these as soon as possible?” Harold guessed, presciently.
The bald man nodded and smiled with the same unpleasantly yellow teeth. Harold could tell he was perturbed. The man backed out of the room, and did a half-run/half-walk away.
Harold turned to the photocopier and the photocopier stared at Harold. He picked the piece of paper he had photocopied before, and slipped it onto the glass. He pressed the green button, and waited. Whether he repeated the action because of habit, or because he wanted to see if it would happen again even Harold didn’t know. He justified it to himself as a little bit of both.
At first, because of the blinding glare of the photocopier, Harold didn’t realise his surroundings had changed. When he lifted his head from the photocopier, however, he noticed with a start.
The room, for one, was much grander. The walls were still thin, but now they were covered with decorous wood framing and there were even skirting boards around the edges. The room was larger, too and the furniture had changed. The sparsely furnished photocopy room had bloomed into an office. There was a mahogany desk, upon which resided a paperweight and a nameplate, with mahogany chairs straddling it. There was a large window, too, where once there had been only wall. The only thing that remained the same was the large incongruous photocopier. And Harold.
For a while, he was too stunned to speak. He sat, hugging the photocopier for a while and biting on his lips to try to numb the reality of the situation. He fiddled with the controls for what seemed like an eternity trying to revert what had already been done. It was after five minutes of quiet contemplation that he decided to get up and leave.
He trod gingerly to the door. Something was amiss, and so Harold felt the utmost care must be taken when performing the everyday action. He opened the door slowly, daring not even to breathe as he did.
When Harold looked outside, he saw a tumultuous crowd formed outside the door. It was a brilliantly lit marble room that stretched (so it seemed) for a mile. There were rows of wooden cubicles, where men and women sat with mostly elderly gentlemen in deep discussion. Harold guessed it was a bank, though he could not be sure.
Harold did not notice it at first, but every patron in the crowd was dressed in unusual clothing. All of the men wore long tailcoats and many of them wore top hats, or carried them under their arms. The women wore modest black dresses that nearly all of the time covered every inch of their leg and foot. They wore their dresses with high lace necks and had unflattering haircuts. Underneath one man’s arm was tucked a newspaper. From afar Harold read it contained the words “Queen Victoria” and “opens”, but the rest was covered.
Let me explain as simply as possible the sensation one feels when they learn they have travelled one hundred and eleven years into the past. At first, one loses feeling in the legs. Ones knees buckle from underneath one and there is such a feeling of vulnerability about oneself that one thinks one may be struck dead at that very moment.
Harold felt this, and more. His knees buckled from underneath him, and he very nearly crashed to the floor had he not steadied himself with the door handle. The hairs on the back of his neck and arms stood erect and he began to break out into a cold sweat. His torso chilled ice cold, as his head flushed fever hot. In other words, Harold showed all the symptoms of a dying man.
After the startling revelation, Harold suddenly felt quite lost as to what to do. Until then, he had felt quite confident that he would simply get up, and find out how to get home and what was the best bus to get. Now, however, Harold had lost all of that confidence. His family and friends were unreachable – they had not been born – and Harold had little to no understanding of time travel and how to go about it.
He looked back at the photocopier. Now, as the sun set behind it, it cast a long shadow across the office. It formed a malevolent grin. The giant behemoth purred in the corner, and awaited its next victim with parted lips.
Harold stared at the buzzing throng before him. The situation was dire as Harold saw it. He thought of locking himself in the room he had left, and sitting there until he awoke from the terrible nightmare he had created for himself. His final decision, however, was a more stoic approach. If he were to awake from this dream, he would awake in the middle of things. He would leave the safety of what had once been the photocopy room, and enter the city. He stepped forward and was dissolved into the bulging crowd.
Harold Hockley would never touch a photocopier again.
So that’s that!
Also, my photo challenge:
Sorry it’s so fug, but it sums up one of my hobbies!
YOUR CHALLENGE, Carla, is to: take a photo of an object, on a white background, that sums you up. Simple, huh?
Also, (sorry, this is short because my cat is going a la vet soon!), I saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona today and it was really good! I was genuinely surprised, because though I love Woody Allen, his last films have been shiteous. But it was a nice surprise.
Penelope Cruz was amazing in it. She is definitely a very passionate woman!
Lots of love,
Your AM I SEXUAL friend,
Ben.
) Sorry, it’s a tad blurry – I didn’t realise.
