By Alex Aspden.
They put—put—me in the countryside. There’s no other way to describe it.
It happened suddenly. They grabbed me from my hospital bed one morning right after I had just slipped my hand under the sheets to begin my morning ritual. They must have known my habits, because they came in just as I was getting going, grabbing me first by that arm, then the other, then my legs, lifting me, carrying me downstairs and throwing me into the back of the van.
It was a long drive out of the city. There were no windows but I knew when we were in the countryside. I could smell the filth of the animals. I already missed the view from my room of the hospital incinerator and its chimneys. I missed the porter who would give me a smile or a beating depending on how he felt that day. I missed the bed where I had spent so many happy months shedding what remained of myself.
They drove fast and kept stopping suddenly, sending me flying across the back of the van and slamming into the sides. I thought that maybe I wasn’t meant to survive the journey, that when we reached our destination they would just tip me out and roll me into a ditch, doing their bit to reduce the state’s social care budget by one.
The sunlight was blinding when they opened the doors. It was like being born again. They dragged me out and threw me into the dirt. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw we were in a clearing surrounded by dense woodland, with a big rundown house in the middle. They were staring at me and panting heavily. I thought they were going to give me a kicking or brain me with a shovel and leave me to die. I lay there waiting for the first blow, but instead they picked me up by the arms and started dragging me towards the house.
They opened the front door but refused to carry me over the threshold. They looked nervous, despite their colossal size. One said he didn’t like the vibes, the other said the place made his tummy feel funny, so they dumped me on the doorstep, gave me a few kicks and waited impatiently as I shuffled inside.
I watched from the doormat as they walked slowly backwards to the van, waving and smiling the whole time like they were securing their safe extraction from a hostage exchange, before bundling themselves in and setting off at speed.
I would miss them. They had charmed me during our brief time together, cracking their ribald jokes non-stop, constantly one-upping each other. The competition was intense, but the final joke was unbeatable, delivered with finesse and brutal in its unflinching depiction of human depravity, as the defeated one put it. They spent the whole journey laughing. They laughed and I laughed too but when I laughed, they stopped laughing. Then the silence was heavy and only got heavier. I had ruined the journey. As they sped away I had a premonition they would lose control of the van and wrap it around one of the trees in the woods, killing them both. I prayed for it to my gods.
I closed the front door, sealing myself inside the house. I had no idea where I was. Had I been moved to another institution, or returned to the care of my family? The night before, I thought I had overheard relatives of mine in the corridor arguing with the hospital authorities. It sounded like them, with their greased words of love, spoken through gritted teeth. I hadn’t seen them in years, only ever heard their voices through heavy hospital doors. They were arguing with the manager, as ever, about whose care I should fall under, each trying to palm me off on the other.
Looking around, I thought at first that the house was one of those grand, decrepit houses bought on the cheap by the state to be turned into so-called community hospitals, the rural surroundings designed to induce feelings of calm in patients, or at least lessen the impulse to insanity, but there wasn’t anything grand about it. It was all peeling plaster, rough brown walls and lino floors. It smelled like wet towels.
There was nothing to indicate it was a medical facility. I wondered whether it belonged to my family and whether I had been here before, years ago, but it didn’t look like any of our homes, not the main one or any of the holiday homes located in increasingly remote regions where we spent many bleak winters, and where, gradually, over the longest and bleakest winters, I became people other than myself.
But it was good to be alone again. I hadn’t been truly alone in years. It wasn’t allowed in the hospital. Solitude was suspect, especially when it was desired. I’m always surprised that more demands are not made on the authorities to institute absolute solitude as a form of social care, even from apparently healthy citizens. Why were they not massing in the streets, sieging the walls of the Department of Health, demanding to be extracted from the pressures of life, to be made anchorites? Many, if they could, would choose to be assigned hovels and empty attics to occupy without obligation.
I realised now that I had no idea if I was actually alone. There was every chance other patients or staff were lurking around. I secreted myself in a broom cupboard to make sure, silently listening out for them. I heard nothing. Instead, in the darkness I saw thousands of hands placed upon me, washing every inch of the journey from my body so I could emerge fresh into my new life. They placed on my head a crown of oak leaves collected from the woods. I felt a damp breeze on my face as the crown settled into position. It was raining outside. I could hear it crashing down, the birds screaming in the deluge.
When I was sure I was alone, I emerged back into the silence of the house. I took a turn around the ground floor. The hallway was lined with photographs in gilded frames. Old people who had let themselves go, decay etched into their faces, less-than-photogenic children needing extensive dental work. Were they relations of mine? I thought I saw a family resemblance, but it was hard to say. Great aunts? Cousins? The same flared nostrils. The same bovine appearance.
There were various notices enforcing codes of conduct pinned up in what were unmistakably common areas, judging by the sofas, TVs, ping-pong tables. There wasn’t anyone around, but these rooms implied there had been someone once and there would be again. It was crushing to realise I wouldn’t be alone, but I should have expected it. Such a big house to have been assigned just to me. Such uncharacteristic largesse.
I didn’t plan on doing most of the things prohibited by the notices, like smoking (no), swearing (never), playing ball games (no), making love (only to myself), leaving the taps running (no), lighting fires (…). They said that sleeping anywhere except the dormitories was prohibited, that it was a health and safety hazard. I climbed up to the first floor and found a dormitory. There was a row of neatly made beds with a coat hook attached to the wall next to each of them. I didn’t recognise the names on the peeling labels above the hooks. They were not my kinsmen. Some were not even names: Pat, Walter, Slog, Slat, Plug.
Actually, I had known a Plug, years ago. We shared a kiss in the hospital grounds on a midsummer evening, under the acacias as fireworks lit the sky. It was hot and I remember the smell of our sweat mingling with the fragrance of flowers and cordite and his reeking breath. Later, in the cold light of early morning, when the celebrations were over, he tried to drown me in the hospital’s reflective pond. But this probably wasn’t the same Plug. If it was, I would find somewhere to drown him, having decided long ago that the only way to survive the carceral care system was to adopt a policy of strict reciprocity.
I couldn’t sleep in any of their beds, not even Plug’s, not when I wasn’t any of them yet. I peeled back the labels above the coat hooks to check whether there were any other names underneath, people I could more easily become, or maybe already was, like my own or those of my siblings. But there was nothing, just wall. I stuck the labels back and stared at the names. Pat, Walter, Slog, Slat, Plug. For each of them I tried to think, that’s me. Then I tried to believe it, but it didn’t work.
I found a couple of other rooms containing nothing but broken furniture and dust. There weren’t any others, despite the size of the house. Corridors led to dead ends. Stairs led to bricked-up walls. This lack of consistency bothered me. Why was there a room at the end of one corridor, only for the others to be blocked off? Stuff like this had always bothered me, even before my incarceration. If a dog was sitting outside my house staring up at my bedroom window one day, why not the next? Or if my lover came to me yesterday, why not again today? It was the same at the hospital. I couldn’t handle it if an apple arrived with lunch one day but not the next, or if the nurse took my blood one hour but not the next. I would throw myself out of bed. I would procure my own apple. I would take my own blood.
I decided to get to know my housemates when they returned. I would not be unneighbourly. I would make an effort to understand their quirks, their talents. Everybody has a talent. I would learn theirs by heart. That way I would know who to call when I needed them. If I found a patch of mould that needed cleaning up, I would call for Slog. If the cooker caught fire, Slat. And would we eat together? Would someone bring us food, like the last place? Would it arrive on trays? Or would it be like the place before that, appearing in boxes on the doorstep in the morning? With vegetables and oil to cook them in, roots splaying from the cardboard, sometimes husks—all provided, I assumed, by the state. My family would never have fed me. They weren’t interested in sustaining life, only in stamping it out.
I was sure now the house didn’t belong to my family. They were allergic to any communal feeling. They would have sealed off the dormitories and common areas. The rooms would have been as they were when I was young, entirely self-contained. Each bedroom with a toilet, sink and cooker, all bespoke fittings, and the slot in the door through which they would slide trays of food. You wouldn’t see anyone for days. I only saw my siblings on weekends, even when they were just down the corridor. But the place didn’t feel like it belonged to the state either. For one thing, I had been left alone. I wasn’t being addressed, monitored, asked questions by doctors, fondled by guards.
State or family, it was hard to tell the difference. The same frozen embrace. The same invoicing process. My enquiries, shouted loudly from the windows, went unanswered. Even the woods seemed to quieten in response.
I went outside. That wasn’t prohibited, as far as I knew. The door wasn’t locked. It was still raining. I ran for the shelter of the woods but didn’t stray far beyond the treeline. I could have continued deep into the woods and fled to whatever was on the other side. But why flee when I had finally been left so alone? It was liberating to turn down this freedom. I found a spot under a tree and laid down, nestling in the undergrowth with the rain crashing around me, stinking up the soil. As I nestled I thought to myself, how would Pat nestle? Or Slat? Would Walter adopt the foetal position, like this, as if still coiled in the blastula, or just hold himself tight? Would Slog return to the house, like I would the next morning, retreating again to the woods at night, or just stay here, soaking and slowly sinking into the wet ground under sun and moon? Would Plug push his face into the dirt like this, biting the stones buried within?
If it got too cold or the rain got any heavier, I would build a shelter out of sticks and leaves. I didn’t know how to do this but I didn’t need to know. I would be someone else by then, and they would know. Or else I would go back inside, entering the house as them, walking their walk, sleeping in their bed, sweating up their sheets with their sweat—one or all of them. There wasn’t any rush. It was a beautiful night. The wind was whipping through the trees and making a sound like hi, or sometimes die. The moon was blazing, the birds were screaming. The moon is still blazing. The birds are still screaming.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex Aspden is a writer based in London. His short fiction has appeared in various publications including The White Review and The London Magazine. In 2022 he was shortlisted for The White Review Short Story Prize and longlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. His work can be found at alexaspden.com.
