Michael Scott Hand

Life comes at you fast, like a pro wrestler, like a bull. There’s no time to step aside, there’s no alcove to hide in. It’s just you and life… mano-a-mano.

It’s just you and life, a tsunami you can’t run away from. Don’t turn and run–it’s too late for that now–just stand and watch the wall of water approaching. Watch it crush everything away.

But we still stand, immortal in our own way. Immortal until the point we are mortal. Dodging and feinting and ducking and dodging, feet glued to the spot.

We fight ninjas. We fight mad dogs, bad dogs, not our dogs. We weather the tsunami and then there’s another. Then there’s another.

A tornado whips through and around. This one stings your eyes and cuts you to pieces; but you’re still alive. Debris from every other disaster surrounds you and it is a crackling, flooded wasteland of downed wires and metal shavings.

Snakes and shit circle around your feet. You are standing in ankle-deep, dirty water. This is life, this is your life and it’s coming at you fast, already and again. Another tsunami. Another.

A news helicopter hovers above you, there is a camera looking down. A million people are watching you standing in the flood water. The vision is LIVE. They see that it’s too late for you to run and yet they watch, eyes glued to the screen.

You can hear the helicopter. Whep-whep-whep-whep-whep. And on the horizon another wave is coming. You cannot tell if it is bigger or smaller than the last. You hope, at least, it will wash away the dirty water.

You make the motion of rolling up your sleeves, but really your clothes are nothing than rags. No matter what you’re wearing, beneath those flimsy fabrics you’re still naked as the day you were born. And like a baby waiting to be born, you’re waiting once again.

You’re waiting once again for the wave that will break you. The wave that will crush and destroy everything in its path. The wave that strands sea-creatures in takeaway restaurants and boutique clothing shops: the tsunami.

But your sleeves are rolled up. Or your almost-sleeves. And your feet are glued to the ground. And this time, you’re not even trying to move. You’re beginning to understand this illusion to which you are bound–but only just beginning.

Don’t move–just watch. Ball your hands into fists. Grit your teeth if you have to, because this is going to hurt. It’s just you and the tsunami now. Mano-a-mano.

The pages of the calendar yield to me, another page torn free. Yet it is not to me they yield but to the ceaseless march of time.

Pages. Pages. Glossy paper. Does anyone use a real calendar any more?

Days become boxes and boxes become full of scribbled ink. Some days. Other boxes remain empty and, sometimes, those empty days are the best days of all.

The end of the page draws near–the end of the month. What trials await our hero on the next page, in the next chapter?

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday.

It is December. It is the last page. But not to worry, there’s a sequel already available in stores called 2022.

Here, in Australia, the air becomes hot and dry. Trees creak and splinter in the heat. There is the smell of smoke, a haze in the air. The sun does not feel warm and comforting but like it has been, somehow, turned up too high.

This blasted wasteland, ever-approaching. For when the new year begins and the new calendar is opened, we begin that march anew. That march towards today. That march towards December.

Friday. Saturday. Sunday. Monday.

The names of foreign holidays printed in tiny text. Days of Independence. Days with scribbled-in notes. Is it January already? Is it really 2022?

Not yet, of course. Not yet. But we are marching there. And if it were a castle on a hill we would be able to see it now, perhaps decked out in festive lighting.

A year ends and another begins and it is nothing but the turning of glossy pages. It is nothing but a cacophony of fireworks. A glass raised in a toast. Another rotation around the sun.

Around the sun?

Around the sun we spin and whirl and days skip by like hopscotch squares drawn in chalk. In time the rain will wash them away, but we will draw them again. Over and over. And we will hop across those squares. And we will keep on turning calendar pages.

Time and the seasons spiral like a painted design on a cylinder, a double helix of history.

These fleeting weekly words are the links between them, reaching between the chains: AGTC.

Ancient and unlikely combinations synthesised by ionising radiation, raining down like scattered space rocks.

Generously, the seas foam and chemicals reacting form bonds and age-old enmities that we find recorded in the scars of fossils.

Tenacious are those that persist amongst these wretched waters and across these wretched lands.

Conflict drives the evolution of an echo of the very first.

What of the Old Gods?

Those who slumber beneath mounds. Those whose ancient stone faces have been worn away by age.

What of the Old Gods?

Those whose names we have forgotten. Were they deleted from the pantheon, by some celestial democracy?

What of the Old Gods?

Those who we claim to still remember. Names and forms repurposed for brands and action figures.

Does the power in the Old Gods depend on our belief in them? Does that obese oven, Moloch, yet hunger for a sacrifice in flames?

Or… has he starved to death by now and, withered, powerless remain?

Hello again.

Perhaps this is the first time we’ve spoken like this, but probably not. Sit down with me, here on the sand, that’s right. Look around: do you like this desert I have created?

There are sand dunes all around us and that peculiar shade of twilight that hovers above the desert.

Would you like some tea?

I look up at the sky, perplexed, for although I can see the colour of it (and it is something more than seeing, I would even go so far as to say that I can feel this particular shade of blue) I do not know how to convey it to you in words. My sky, your sky, they are the same but different.

Do you like this desert you have created?

This type of conversation suits me, I must admit. I get to speak and you get to listen. I mean, you could get up and walk away I suppose, out across those dunes, but I doubt you would get very far. I doubt you would find anything. In fact, in time, I have a feeling you would find yourself back here, with me.

Firelight flickers between us, casting us in shades of bronze. Above, there are pale stars in that twilight sky.

Sip your tea now, there you go. Is it too strong? Too sweet? Is it not tea at all? It’s an idea at least, the idea of tea, the idea of a desert, the idea of a twilight sky.

See what I have built here? See all these sloping dunes? It is nothing. It is only sand and sky. Oh and there is you and I, of course. A campfire. A tin pot and two cups for the tea.

But there is nothing else; we are alone here. In fact, you are alone here, for what am I except some disembodied voice in your mind and perhaps not even that.

Grand ideas stood here once. Cities and civilisations arose out of the sand. Bedouins trekked across these dunes without ever getting lost. But all that is gone now, I have destroyed it. Or time destroyed it, I forget which.

There is so much buried beneath the sand.

Why did we bury it, why did I? The desert is beautiful, no doubt. But it is empty.

Now the desert waits.

Twilight fades and the sky begins to fill with stars and I offer you more tea. And the dunes turn to silver as the cold face of the moon peers above the horizon. Hello moon.

Why must we retread the paths of old in nightdreams?

Again and again things happen to us in dreams that once happened to us in life. Of course the shapes might be different; there will be walls where there were no walls and doors where there were no doors.

Old traumas play again and again; forgotten monsters arise, dripping, from the muck.

And the structures of our memory collide with one another, morphing and reforming into hybrid places. One school becomes every school, every school becomes your living room, your living room becomes a dark pit of despair.

If there is a light it is the light of morning sneaking in from under the blinds. If there is a way out it is by following the sound of your alarm clock.

Alarm clock; morning; awake; alive.

Sit up in bed and be thankful. Let the dreams fall away like the bed covers.

Dreams evaporate like drops of water on hot cement. That is the rule–they cannot follow you. Only a certain amount of a dream is allowed into the “real world” and it is not very much.