Stop Motion

This was originally published in the Verandah Literary Journal #25.

Slightly burnt toast, butter on the outside. Avocado between the two slices, chicken pieces, some tomato relish and cheese not melted to a satisfactory level. I like my cheese melted you see, and I hate it when it’s not. The taste of unmelted cheese. (Note: to un-melt cheese is physically, and theoretically, impossible. Unless of course someone is referring to previously melted cheese that has hardened due to cooling but one may argue that this cheese is still the product of being melted so therefore is melted cheese.) Well, it has this tangy surprise that melted cheese loses to create what I feel is a superior flavour. Anyway, this is my sandwich. Not integral to the story, but if you are to enter my eyes to see and my ears to hear you better damned well enter my mouth to taste. But know now, this sandwich does not influence the plot.

I was sitting there, ready to masticate a portion from my toasted avocado chicken (that’s avocado and chicken, not some sort of vegetarian replacement chicken made from avocados), when she came through the door. When I say through the door … let me explain something — I am obsessive compulsive. I mean, I have an obsessive compulsive disorder. Things need to be evened out. For every itch I scratch, I must scratch an itch on the opposite side, for every wink I must wink again on the other side. It can get tedious but I’ve learnt ways to deal with it.

‘Is this seat taken?’ She wore thick glasses at the tip of her nose and a long brown fringe down the side of her face, half of which was stuck behind the frames of her glasses and this bothered me.

‘No, it is still there.’

She laughed at this, a young laugh. She was at least a few decades younger than me and the braces she wore to hold up her shorts made her look even younger. With several other empty seats in the café I was unsure why she chose the one opposite me; my pedantry didn’t often attract people.

I took a bite of my sandwich, and then another from the other side to make sure the chicken and avocado stayed in the centre of the sandwich and did not slop out the side. I placed the sandwich down and, like lady Macbeth outing her damned spot, cleaned my old, oily fingers.

‘My name’s Anna.’

My eyes played dot to dot with the freckles on her face. ‘That’s a palindrome.’ I wiped some avocado from my wrinkled mouth.

‘A palindrome?’ she said, her eyebrows high as if trying to form a question mark.

‘A palindrome. Same backwards as forwards. Forwards as backwards.’ I paused. ‘Same.’

‘Oh, wow.’ I watched her eyes lose focus as she thought with purpose. ‘Do geese see god?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not religious.’

‘No. Sorry. It’s a palindrome. Never mind.’

I chose to start eating my sandwich with my knife and fork to avoid the mess and … oh, right I get it! I told her I got it.

‘I got it. Your joke. I got it.’

‘Yeah? Cool.’

I had one mouthful of sandwich left when the alarm on my watch sounded.

‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing.

‘This? This is a watch. It tells time.’

‘I know what a watch does.’

‘Oh? That’s good.’

‘Yeah. I meant that.’ She was pointing to the bag of clay figures next to me.

‘These are clay figures. For stop-motion animation.’ I made motions with my hands that somehow related to stop-motion animation. ‘I’m a … I was a stop animator.’

‘Really? Like Wallace and Gromit?’

‘Yes. Like Wallace and Gromit.’ I stood up and started to leave.

‘You’re a bit weird,’ she said to my back. Not to my back, exactly, she was addressing me as a whole but as my back was facing her while my face was backed away she had only my shoulders to address.

I turned to face her. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘David.’ I don’t know why I lied to her. George never seemed like a strong name. The forgotten Beatle.

‘Nice to meet you, David. I am Anna.’

‘We have already been over this.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, yes. We already have.’

I walked away, waving once with my right hand and then waving again with my left. I opened the door four times and left the cafe.

——

The sun started to set. It cast an indigo hue across the sky. I could see the moon through the clouds, almost full, and several stars started to appear as well. I counted them left to right, and then I counted them right to left. I counted them from the centre outwards, alternating from left to right and then repeated that process but starting the alternation on the right instead. As more stars appeared the task became overwhelming and I began to get dizzy. I could not tell which were real stars and which were stars in my head.

The studio building stood before me like a prison. Large concrete walls, glass doors that slid with little user interaction and a roof that had no inclination. A big, dumb, efficient building that was easy to count and check. So even and calculated: windows placed equal distances from each other, stairs of equal size and railings along all the ramps. I suppose this efficiency was handy for me as I would have often been tardy to work if the building proved any more distracting.

I swiped my employee card on the door but it flashed red at me, three times. I knew it was unchangeable but I felt the usual compulsion to swipe the card several more times. Nine more times, in fact.

The light of the setting sun made the glass too hard to see through. I put my eyes right up close and cupped my hands around them to block out the light. I could see the cleaner, whose name I never knew and never cared to know, in the back ground. I tapped on the glass fourteen times, spacing each tap approximately two seconds apart. Eventually, he heard me through his headphones and stopped his mopping to come over to the window.

Please recognise me.

Please recognise me.

As he walked over he squinted until he could see more of me than just my silhouette. He smiled.

Thank God.

‘Forgot your card, hey, chief?’ He punched me on the shoulder, upsetting my equilibrium. I quickly sniff-laughed a reply and hurried around the corner so I could punch myself in the opposite arm to reset.

Studio 62 was where we used to shoot my show. I created everything except the writing. I built it from the ground up. The ground made of material bought at spotlight, the walls a mixture of cardboard and MDF, meticulously painted, the windows pieces of cellophane. The first episode was shot in a garage. A small production company picked us up and shopped us to all the television stations until we finally wound up here. They promised us so much and delivered so little.

We weren’t a hit but we pulled steady figures. They kept moving us around, one night we were on at one am, another at eleven pm on a Monday and then at eleven am on a Wednesday. To cancel us now was rude, but to not let us do a final show was insulting.

I turned on the lights to the studio one by one. I would usually turn them off and on again several times (most definitely four times each) but I was in a hurry, so I settled for twice each.

I pulled the three main characters from my bag. The father, the mother and the son. Arms crossed, faces dull (a bar of soap helps take the shine off) and powdered white (ground up marshmallow.) Also from the bag I took out three tiny wooden coffins I had made from a broken table and glossed with spray-on cooking oil.

The father looked so sad. His face more wrinkles than face, eyes hidden underneath drooping brows, cheeks so saggy that with every swing of his head he would threaten to knock someone out as his cheeks tried to catch up with the rest of him. I combed his moustache down (a lock from my almost bald head) and slicked his hair back with clag. I placed him in his coffin, long and skinny to fit his tall frame.

The mother had a bust disproportionate to the rest of her body, with breasts so low they could be confused for hips. Even in death her smile was large and vibrant. Housewife is branded around as a dirty word these days but she loved being one, caring for her family. Her white face contrasted against her big red lips and her frizzy ginger hair (from my cat) reflected strongly in her glossy coffin.  Her coffin was twice as wide as the father’s, short and fat to fit her plump frame.

Then I came to the son. A pimpled young boy with teeth as large as his hands. His coffin was half the size of the mother’s and he looked pale and emaciated inside it.  As I prepared his body inside the coffin I found my hands starting to shake. It was always the son I connected most with. We were so alike, both bullied and lonely. His only friend was the dog (for whom I had failed to prepare a coffin). He was luckier than I ever was, two caring parents and the unconditional love of a pet. I never had such luxuries.

I stuck his cap on (quite literally), placed his ever-loyal dog next to him and carefully wheeled his coffin between his mother and father. I closed the bottom lids on each coffin so that only their top halves were showing.

I pulled my camera and small tripod from my enormous bag and set it up, angling it down to see them all in the frame. Tears started welling in my eyes. I took off my glasses to wipe the tears away. I set up a lamp to cast a strong shadow across the coffins and I closed all the curtains in their mock home, which luckily hadn’t been removed from the studio.

I hit record.

——

She had followed me to the studio and she knew what I had done. Plumes of smoke masked the already dark sky and sirens could be heard in the distance. She followed me to where I sat on the track, waiting for the train to come and end this.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, but I’m sure she knew quite well.

‘Waiting for the train.’

‘This is not a train station.’ The flames coloured the sky orange and I could just make out her bespectacled and speckled face.

‘I know.’

‘You’re pretty self-centred.’

Shock. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You’re pretty fucking self-centred, wanting to kill yourself.’

‘I’m old. They cancelled my show. I don’t have anything to live for.’

‘You’re not old.’

‘Look at me. I can count the number of hairs on my head. I once did.’

‘That doesn’t mean you’re old.’

‘Leave me alone.’

She noticed the camera and the note next to me. ‘What’s this?’ She picked them up before I could object. I watched her eyes read over what I had written. ‘This is the best you could come up with?’

‘Give me that.’ I snatched the note from her. ‘If you’re trying to talk me out of this you’re doing a stellar job.’

‘I don’t care. Kill yourself. You selfish prick.’ She opened up the camera and pressed play. I could see her reacting to what she was seeing. I could hear my voice coming from the tinny speaker. This is the last frame that will ever be shot in this studio. I could hear the sound of the petrol hitting the studio floor and my cursing when I managed to get some of it on my pants. Then I could hear the rustling as I picked the camera up and ran away from the flames. Her expression stayed still. No shock, not even a raised eyebrow.

‘What are you thinking?’ I asked.

‘I’m thinking you’re an idiot and you don’t want to kill yourself.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you didn’t stay to watch. Come with me.’ She held out her hand. I looked at it.

‘No.’

She stamped her foot. ‘Just fucking come with me, okay?’

I grabbed her hand reluctantly and she helped me to my feet. My callused hands would leave her soft hands red with irritation, but she held tight. She led me up the embankment to the top of the hill. From there we could see the studio on fire, fire-engines just arriving, their blue and red lights merging with the bright orange coming from the flames.

‘Watch it.’ She squeezed my hand.

And I did. I watched as the firemen fought the flames and the flames fought back. We both stood there, watching till dawn, till the fire had finally been conquered and all that stood was the empty shell of the building. Smoke was in the sky and the sun lit the ground with grey.

‘You did that,’ she said without looking at me, our fingers still interlocked. ‘Are you proud?’

‘No.’

‘What did you think you would feel?’

‘Nothing.’

She looked at me.

‘What do you feel now?’

I looked at my hands. Callused from years of posing figures frame by frame.

‘Numb. I feel numb.’

She punched me in the shoulder.

‘Did you feel that?’

‘Not at all.’