Outdoors
by Bailey Ferry
WH Publishing 2006
ISBN-10: 0-9546618-1-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-9546618-1-6
£11.99
EXCERPT
The story really began when Achilles decided to kill his parents. This wasn’t a long, considered mental debate, weighing all the pros and cons, concluding with a mental checklist of potential consequences. No moral dilemmas that one might have expected when considering to prematurely retire one’s loved ones. It was more of an inspirational, industrious concept. Further fuelled by an inexperienced imagination handing out sneak previews on exhilarating chapters that a new life might possess. If the restrictive parameters were suddenly removed, how would the resulting changes then meander down exciting, unexplored tracks, rather than plodding down the predictable high walled alley, preordained at birth? That sort of thing.
Sure, a cynic would point out there was more than a little financial motivation, and there was, it would be immoral to deny it, but in the big picture this was quite simply beyond good accounting. Way beyond. This was a lifestyle choice. Something Achilles had never considered involving himself with before, not previously being overly exposed to such ideologies as personal preference. Anyway, that was his decision and at least from a financial perspective, it would be one his family unit would have been proud of, had they been allowed to survive as witnesses to it.
Achilles woke at about 4am. Unique in itself, considering he was unconditionally a very late sleeper. The fact that he had actually achieved consciousness at that hour, an abnormality in a lifetime’s routine, served only as further endorsement. It may seem to a casual viewer that this minor act was perhaps not really of inspirational value in the traditional sense. However, on any other given night, this young man wouldn’t break out of his cot if it were engulfed in flames, molten glass dripping from the ceiling, and demons rising up through the mattress. Probably an unlikely prospect, but stripping approximately eight hours from his religiously ordered sleep requirement was something beyond mere extraordinary.
For a few minutes that seemed like an age, Achilles stared unblinking into the darkness of his room. Almost trancelike he craned his head, listening to the metronomic puff and wheeze some distance away that he guessed would be his mother’s unconscious breaths. He had never, not on one single occasion, ever heard the dull echoes of the night before. A fleeting spasm shivered anxiously across his thin frame. It wasn’t the silence that was disconcerting despite the oppressive value that its accompaniment with darkness added. This dwelling never became noisy at any time, day or night. It was the bleak, quiet combination dictating to his instincts that he should respect this environment lest even his heartbeat was detected. Achilles didn’t like this tense, solemn feeling, it was dirty, like some criminal embarking on an evil deed. It added a strange tension where, in his eyes, there should have been none.
With several silent, calming chants, a self-taught and well-practiced art that he often used to shut out his surroundings, particularly his mother’s rants, Achilles refocused. He clearly understood that reservations, so late in the day, were not a healthy contribution to a mission that he had set for himself with good intentions. There was no room for doubts and uncertainties now if he wished to attain that harmonious conclusion which would bring forth his new beginning. Resolution and stealth would need to be keywords and there was no backing out now. Achilles shivered again, running his long, thin, white fingers over the domes of his shoulders. His mother always had the atmospherics one or two degrees lower than what he would have liked it to be, summer or winter, and that night was no exception. During the daytime mere exertion would compensate moments after rising but it felt unusually chilly to him that night. Suppressing the notion that nerves were playing some part in his condition, Achilles filled his lungs and let the oxygen go to work on repairing some of the dented high that he had obtained when conceiving this plan the previous evening.
With a quiet “Light”, he illuminated the room in a dim yellow hue and slid from his cot, the rustle and creaks seeming measurably louder than usual. Again he paused for a second, but declined from running over his ‘plan’ for the umpteenth time, fearing that he might find an undiscovered motive to make him reconsider. Strengthening his resolve with a good stretch, Achilles took another deep, heady breath, letting it amble out on its own volition, a giddy stimulant for the mission.
Without having the mundane chore of dressing (his mother didn’t like the idea of her family unit leaking globules of body waste into unhygienic apparel), Achilles shuffled out of his sleeping quarters and began trotting downstairs. His only item of clothing was a brilliant white pair of crisply starched shorts that were the happy result of numerous bouts of careful negotiation since puberty. Achilles didn’t know why he wanted his groin covered, just that he felt somehow spiritually calmer when everything was tucked away. After some stubbornness, then retribution from his mother, followed by more stubbornness, his angry parent wavered and gave in to his curious demand. “It isn’t like you are in company,” she used to say. Achilles had no real idea of what company truly was, or what company even felt like to be ‘in’.
© Bailey Ferry