Craig has a dream. In the dream he is dead. He has just died. He is in a room, with things in it. The things in the room are: a desk, a bed, a chair, a coffee table, a sofa, a wardrobe, a cup (with some tea in it, gone cold), a computer, a copied CD of , a coat, a hat, a pair of tweezers, a sheet of writing paper, the lid of a biro, an empty cassette box, a packet of Walkers crisps (prawn cocktail flavour), a poster of Ben Affleck, an emptPlanet Waves by Bob Dylan, a pair of shorts, a sunlounger, a bottle of Daiquiri, a pair of mirrored sunglassesy ice cream tub, a toy car, a toy boat, a miniature ‘gift book’ style copy of War and Peace (6 pt. font), a 50p coin, a cigarette lighter, a cornflake, a wisp of hair, a blank greetings card (‘Best Wishes!’), a pornographic magazine from the seventies, no windows, no door, and the smell of cats.

Craig looks around at all the things in the room and then sits down on the sunlounger.

A voice from somewhere says, ‘Well done.’

Craig waits for the voice to say something else.

The voice doesn’t say anything else.

Craig wakes up feeling cold and confused. There is sweat on his back and legs. Carol’s asleep. She’s taking up all the pillows. Craig is almost hanging off the bed.

‘I had a dream,’ Craig says.

Carol shifts around a bit. She doesn’t quite wake up.

‘I had a dream,’ Craig says again, louder.

‘Uh,’ says Carol. She is now ¼ awake.

‘I was dead in the dream.’

Carol doesn’t like people talking about dreams. Craig knows this. She finds it boring. She finds lots of things boring. She finds Craig boring, Craig thinks, then, in the bed, looking at the pale arc of her back and something, maybe a pube, stuck to her skin. It looks like one of Craig’s pubes. It is a long and black and crooked thing. Craig picks it off her back.

The other ¾’s of Carol wakes up, suddenly.

‘What’re you doing?’ she says, curling round and looking at him. She sounds defensive, like she is coming out of some kind of violent dream.

‘You had something stuck to your back,’ Craig says.

Craig flicks the pube down the side of the bed.

‘Your hands are cold,’ Carol says.

‘Sorry,’ Craig says, then wishes that he hadn’t said it. They had an argument, the other night, about his passivity, his meekness, how he apologises for everything almost all the time. If someone murdered your whole family, Carol said, you’d probably say sorry to them afterwards.

That’s not true, Craig said.

(It was probably true.)

‘You’re sweaty,’ Carol says. ‘Your legs are wet.’

Craig gets out of the bed. Some of the covers pull off Carol, and she tugs them back over her and makes a small, pissed-off hissing sound from her nostrils.

Craig goes into the bathroom. He turns on the light and wipes the sweat off his back and legs with a big coarse towel. He’s naked. He looks at himself in the mirror. It is maybe four in the morning. His body looks weird and sunken and fluorescent, like there’s something wrong with it; a kind of invisible, un-diagnosable cancer, maybe.

Craig thinks of the scene in The Royal Tenenbaums where the Owen Wilson character attempts suicide to the song ‘Needle in the Hay’ by Elliott Smith. If Craig attempted suicide he would do it to something like ‘Lady in Red’ and probably just write a suicide note that said ‘Sorry’ on it. That’s what Carol would say right now if she knew what he was thinking.

In four hours Craig has to be up for work.

In four hours Craig will wake up and fumble around with Carol’s naked body, using insinuating finger movements on her non-erogenous zones to try and imply what he’d like to do to her erogenous zones, and what he’d like her to do to his. Craig will do this for a bit, and maybe Carol will respond and they will have sex, quickly, and if they do Craig will occasionally use one eye to look at the alarm clock as they do it (missionary position) to make sure he doesn’t miss the bus.

Then Craig will go to work.

Nothing will happen.

Then Craig will come home again.

Nothing will happen.

Then Craig will go to work.

Nothing will happen.

Then Craig will come home again.

Nothing will happen.

Then one day Craig will retire.

Nothing will happen.

Then one day he will be dead.

Etc.

 

Chris Killen was born in 1981. He is currently living in Manchester. His first novel, based on amateur internet porn is a black comedy called The Bird Room. It will be published by Canongate in spring 2009. Influenced by Richard Brautigan and Knut Hamsun it has been described by Toby Litt as 'an extremely engaging combo of sex, melancholy and killer one-liners - a beautiful Chinese puzzle of a novel’.

Chris has been known to give readings with a miniature plastic horse in his pocket, and is also the winner of the 2007 Manchester Literary Festival's Blog Award for the following - www.dayofmoustaches.blogspot.com