Futuredebt - 5 - The building and the breaking
Futuredebt - 5 - The building and the breaking
I’m releasing a novel called Futuredebt across 2024, letting it go one chapter at a time. The first chapters are available for free, but you’ll need to join my Patreon to read later chapters.
Click here to go back and read from chapter one.
How long do you stay when you know it isn't going to last? The future has told Kerry the man she loves today will not be the one she marries in the future. Now she has to decide what she does with that knowledge. Meanwhile, at the other end of society, Fi finds herself struggling with a world that seems to be working against her, pushing her into the heart of a revolution plotting to bring the system crashing to its knees. Futuredebt is a story of free will, self-determination and how small acts of kindness can be a catalyst for change.
The building and the breaking
you stand
beside her
one foot lifts
leaning out from the edge
and then...
...and then she is awake and the dream dissolves like breath on a winter morning.
She is home.
John is there beside her, like hot coals beneath the covers. He is deeply asleep, exhausted by his own effort. She remembers in flashes. Her body against his. His need for her. His tremor and the emptiness that followed. The closeness and the distance. The building and the breaking.
and yet
She was dreaming of you.
It is his body but it is you. Then it is your body but it is him. Then all three of you until she can’t separate one from the other any more than she can part water from wine.
How strange to dream of the dead in this way, she will think, her head still heavy with alcohol. She throws off the cover and lets her skin cool in the liquid night.
Dawn bleeds across the sky. She will have planned to sleep through the morning because that is the sort of thing someone like her, someone like *the person she wants to be*, would do but now her whole body is churning. The bedsheets cling to her like unwanted attention. Sleep is a walled garden and there is no way she can climb back over. She is awake now and she will stay awake until her body collapses of exhaustion mid-way through the afternoon.
John sleeps on peacefully. The rise and swell of his chest pulls at her like the tides. Hours at the pool have left him toned and fit and stronger than he knows. Sometimes he's too rough but it's just because he gets so excited. But she can’t think about that now. Her brain is working hard on something else. The cogs of her subconsciousness are spinning but whatever they are working on is still hid from her. She needs to paint. She needs her hand on the brush and her soul on the canvas. Nothing makes sense until it is on canvas. That's when she'll understand.
But until she gets back to the studio, it is hidden from her.
She sits up in bed and the world continues to move like it’s at sea. It was inevitable you would find a way into her dreams, she will suppose. Maybe John was right. Maybe she should have spoken to Dinah at the party. She revises the night, searching for the perfect could-have-been moment to reach out for help. But she is still drunk and the memory of the evening is disjoined, the faces and the names of Dinah’s friends lost like smoke in the wind. She feels a wave of nausea rising and switches her attention elsewhere.
The night is dark as ink. There is nothing for her to look at.
There was a girl she knew from high school who was practically nocturnal. She would sit at the back of class, bleary eyed and dazed by sunlight, dark hair already greying by sixteen. Jane Something-Or-Other. She racks her memory for the last name. A few years after college, Jane took a job with a news firm, covering their night time feeds with a vigour unmatched by any day walker. Most journalists flake out after a month or two, unable to cope with the disruption to their circadian rhythm but Jane had stayed and thrived, finding her niche in nocturnal solitude. The feeds were full of her posts come morning. Jane… something. What was her last name? She switches on her phone, tenting it beneath the covers, and searches her friend list. It doesn’t take long. Crawford, Jane Crawford. Political posts, mostly. Lots of US stuff. Left leaning. Most of it links to the Washington Post. She reads one and her brain stumbles over every other word. She is still drunk. She switches to photos but there are only three: a profile picture in the style of a school yearbook, two more of family gatherings where she’d been tagged, the only proof of her existence beyond her articles.
She slips back to the newsfeed but it will only show her posts she is sure she has seen before, heavy with digital deja vu. She scrolls so fast it would give you vertigo.
You never got vertigo.
John begins to stir. She hides away her phone and slips from the covers before she disturbs him further.
She thinks of the years that knit her to John, binding them like fabric. The night they met. The morning after. The pokey little flat. The missed period. The excitement and the swelling.
The hospital ward.
The baby she never got to see.
And now this. The magnolia blandness of the everyday.
The kitchen sways as she switches on the coffee machine. She pours herself something black and strong and finds somewhere to sit as the world tumbles towards sunlight.
Maybe she should welcome it. The steady march of the ordinary. Just the two of them. At least she knows he isn’t with her because he has to be. She hasn’t trapped him. He stays with her because he wants to. But, still, something hasn’t been right. What binds them has become loose. Maybe it is inevitable, she thinks. Not every relationship lasts. When the tapestry grows thin, curious hands can pull at the stray threads. Dinah and Isaac couldn’t hold themselves together. It was the right thing for them to part, she knows that. But even then, the fabric ends up torn. Dinah now is different from Dinah then. Not less - and in some ways stronger - but there are still frayed ends where Isaac used to be.
She thinks of John. His heat. His presence. She should be grateful. There is a beauty in things that have stood the test of time. Even damaged things. Every knock tells a story.
But sometimes staying where you are is harder.
There is noise from the corridor. John shuffling his way to the bathroom. He goes inside without seeing her and she listens to the lift of the seat and splatter against the porcelaine.
What a strong, virile young man, hisses the steady flow of piss.
She opens the cereal cupboard and pulls out the granola, closing the door just as he enters the room.
Hey, he says, smiling beneath his bed head. You’re up early.
I couldn’t sleep.
Can I, he asks, pointing to the cupboard.
Let me, she says, passing him a bowl.
He settles himself down to breakfast, setting everything on the table at right angles: the spoon perpendicular to the knife; the orange juice sat in the centre of an invisible square at the corner of his placement. She watches him fill the bowl, pour the milk and scoop the first mouthful, sending her a grin as he chews. His mind is still caught on last night, she will think. She may be in the kitchen - frumpy dressing gown pulled tight, ancient slippers on her feet - but to him she will always be naked on her back with her legs in the air, perpetually at the peak of pleasure.
He finishes his bowl and leaves it beside the sink for later. For her, no doubt. He places a hand on her waist and plants a kiss on her head.
I’m going to the pool for an hour, he says. What’s your plan for today?
He is already heading back to the bedroom, not waiting for her answer. His fingers have left a dampness at her hip.
I’m meeting Dinah later, she calls out, regretting it immediately and placing a finger to her temple. Gonna help her nurse her hangover, she says, somewhat quieter.
Are you gonna talk to her about yesterday?
I can’t see how it won’t come up, she admits.
That’s good, he says. I think that’s important. It will give you a chance to process. It’s important to process something like that, you know?
I know, she says.
He comes back through, buttoning his shirt. So what about the rest of the day?
She turns to the sink and starts rinsing the bowls. Might pop by the studio in the afternoon, she says. I’ve got a canvas to finish. Clear up some of the old work. That sort of thing.
He nods. A slower nod than it needs to be.
Go on, she says.
Huh?
You want to say something.
He chews carefully. She hitches herself up on the counter and covers her thighs with the dressing gown.
I’ve been thinking, he says. And I know this might not be the best timing but I was wondering if you’d had any thoughts about going back to Cyan.
The bank? I don’t know, she says with a shrug.
He raises his eyebrows in mock-disbelief. She pouts and rolls her eyes.
I don’t even know what it is, she says. It’s probably just some sales pitch for a new bank account or something.
Sales pitch? Kerry, they’re an FDF company. They’re not going to invite people in to ask them to open a bank account.
I’ll call them, she says. They can just tell me what it is over the phone.
But they could have just done that already, he says. Kerry, this has to be something big.
Like what?
James McClane, he says.
Who?
The singer.
OK.
Before the FDF he was a nobody. Now he’s got, what, three straight number ones? The future knew he had talent and they got in on the ground floor. Snapped him up before anyone else could.
I’m not a musician, she says.
No, but you’re an artist. And a damn good one.
She slips down from the side and begins to load the dishwasher.
Look, he says, what happened when you were there was messed up. That girl.
a heartbeat
It was horrible and I completely understand why you don’t want to go back there.
the walls reverberate
But this is the future we are talking about. If they are inviting you in then it means they know you. They know who you could be.
the cupboard doors rattle on their hinges
You have to take this chance, he says.
darkness clouds the windows
She will take a breath and force the cupboard doors to stop shaking. Reality takes back its place from imagination and the morning returns filled with golden sunrises and blue skies and twittering little birdies on the window sil.
OK, she says. I’ll go back.
Excellent, he says, leaping to sweep her in his arms. This is gonna be something good, he says. This is going to change things, he says.
He has so much to say, you see, and she will look him in the eye with a smile on her face and hope kindled in her restless heart. Well, she will reply. Change is always a good thing.