50 Stories from My Early Twenties

By Samuel James O'Brien

A comprehensive collection of the author's early short stories and flash fiction pieces.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780244822361

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50 Stories from My Early Twenties

50 STORIES FROM MY EARLY TWENTIES

SAMUEL JAMES O’BRIEN

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my incredibly supportive family and friends, as well as to those readers who found these stories online, somehow, and kindly showed their encouragement and belief.

Thank you all.

.

Copyright ©  Samuel James O’Brien 2018.

All rights reserved.

ISBN:

978-0-244-82236-1

To the Bunch of You,

Often in dreams I find I have memories of things, knowledge of things that in my waking life I have no idea whatsoever about. Invariably this knowledge or those memories turn out to be quite accurate and factual and I find myself thinking ‘when did I learn that?’ or 'I can’t believe I’d forgotten that, how could I have?’ and I find myself frightened afresh at the veneer we, each one of us, build over ourselves. Do you get this?

How scary the unconscious soul of humanity. How terrifying to imagine the unseen depths of our own consciousness. To consider the horrors we things have hidden below the surface, even from our own minds, which we fool one another into believing we have control of. How laughable that one might exercise any semblance of power or dominion over the sinking vapidity of their own thoughts. Goodness, this is an odd start isn’t it?

On those mornings I will rise, my mind fully roused before my eyes even open, and sometimes it will take until after I shower, or even after breakfast, before I can stop thinking these things and move on from the lies we tell ourselves, the lies we tell one another, and begin thinking normal thoughts. Thoughts about things like the weather and traffic and whether I need petrol or what we’ll have for dinner. I tried to explain it to Thomas once over breakfast but he just gave me that look, as if I’d pointed out a constellation that he couldn’t see but rather than disappoint me he’d rather just look blankly at the sky and say 'yes, I see it now, I suppose it could be a horse, yes’ and swear adamantly that I was clever to have spotted it so quickly.

Sometimes I feel I should never have married Thomas at all. I’m certain I don’t do him justice, dear soul that he is. It’s a despicable thing to think so young, I know, but I can’t help it. My mind is scarcely my own. I have daydreams sometimes. I’ll just run away. Empty my bank account and clear off while he’s at work. I suppose I’d leave him a note:

"Dear Thomas,

Had to shoot off, shan’t ever be returning I’m afraid. Do be a darling and forget I ever existed. You need to buy milk and the bins need to go oout tonight, don’t forget again or you’ll get that smell. Fed the cat before I went.

Lot’s of love, L. x"

And he would find it after work and just think 'oh yes, I’d forgotten about the bins,’ and just get on with everything. I’d move to Cumbria or Brittany or Abu Dhabi or somewhere and buy a dog, take a local lover with a simple heart and a decent sized cock and simply carry on as somebody new entirely. Maybe learn how to play backgammon or something, who knows.

Then of course I’ll come crashing back to Earth when my phone rings or Harriet (you remember her) comes in and asks me something about the budget or when the new computers are being delivered or whatever and I’ll answer her and think 'oh Tom and I are having salmon for dinner tonight, how nice,’ and I’ll be back and my Abu Dhabian backgammon career will be forgotten.

Poor sweet Harriet. I believe she’s still with that chap we met with the big bulging eyes. Her diet’s not going well, perhaps he’s cleared out. I think of Harriet and how normal she seems, how intolerably ordinary she seems and I wonder if she thinks the same way I do. Is there anything curious under that flabby, pale surface? Perhaps she too has these wild daydreams and meditations on the strange infrastructure we’ve all built up around human interaction. Does she acknowledge the peculiarities of the human spirit and its unfounded, unattainable quest for order? Or does she merely worry about the calories in her lunch and whether it will rain that evening. Heaven forbid she should take her walk in the rain! One couldn’t possibly exercise in the wet! Goodness me she is a tedious bore. So nice though.

How much simpler things would be if all the interesting people were nice and all the boring people were horrible or smelly or something. Perhaps people should be forced to wear signs. I’ve no idea what mine would say. A brutally truthful summary of myself to wear around my neck and present to strangers? Perhaps:

Bullied at school for reading too much and having lank hair, never quite got past it. Idolise my great aunt’s sense of humour. Various unfulfilled sexual fantasies and still an anal virgin. Enquire within for details.

Would that do?

I seem to have been harping on forever now and I’ve still not come to the point. This is precisely why I couldn’t be trusted with writing my own suicide note. Nobody would be able to make heads nor tails of it. I should imagine the very act of writing a note would drive me to suicide in itself. All they’d get was 'Dear world, nope, that’s shit. Bugger this,’ and maybe a frustrated squiggly nest thing that looks like something people do in the corner of a page when their pen’s running out. And they’d find me later in the garden, drowned, with my head duct taped inside the fish bowl and one of those remote control vibrators in my knickers with flat batteries, just to throw them off the scent. Poor Tom.

Ah yes, the point. I’ve got to be honest I’ve rather lost my appetite for the point, it’s not that it’s unimportant, it’s always important for one to have a purpose and to reach that purpose if it’s at all possible, otherwise why does one do anything? My secondary school headmistress, that raging lesbian from Cardiff, taught me that. But in this instance I’ve begun to feel that the very process of reaching that point may have outstripped the value, which now seems negligible, of this entire concerted effort at sisterly correspondence. Which is a tradition of course, that you already know full well that I despise and enjoy in equal measure.

Traditions like this seem to me to be quite ghastly creations. Do you remember when Mother used to make us write thank yous to all those moon-faced cousins every year? I imagine there are poor young girls all over the world being subjected to similar tortures even now. Aren’t mothers the devil! And now I have Thomas harping on at me to write people. I try to shirk such things but he won’t hear of it. He’s very good like that. Age is no excuse, he says. I wonder if he’s realised yet what he’s married into. Too late I fear, I’ve got him now.

Still, I’m quite sure you’re bored stiff by now and are off somewhere on the internet looking for a good institution to put me in, so let me digress and get this out of the way,

MERRY CHRISTMAS

The usual warm greetings and wishes from myself and probably Thomas (not that I’ve asked him).

Give the children my love and by heavens don’t let them read all this old nonsense I’ve written you, I don’t care how old they are!

Write back in pen and ink - if you email me again I shall disown you - and have a wonderful, sunny start to the year, as I’m sure you always do out there, you belligerent deserters, you.

Heaps of love,

L.

xxxx

Ps. I’m trying to talk Thomas into becoming a cross-dresser. I’d do the same of course and become the husband. So far no interest but I’ll endeavour to keep you posted. Say hello to Anthony for me too, if you still hang around with his sort.

Hands

I have lived many lives. They overlap and smear together and it’s hard to tell them apart but I know that there have been many. Once I was a person in London shopping for cashmere socks. Once I was an ugly girl who couldn’t get out of bed for a week. Once I was a man who climbed mountains and conquered horizons. Once I think I blew my own brains out. Once I was an orphan and died of disease. Once I lived a whole lifetime only with animals. Once I was rich and careless and mean. Once I was widowed. Right now I want to be alone and walk everywhere. Funny thing, I could always recognise my own hands. Anytime I wasn’t sure who I was, if I ever got worked up over it, I’d just look at these hands I’m carrying around and then I’d know. Oh, I’m a criminal, okay. Oh, I’m a father, okay. Oh, I’m a scholar, a cook, a murderer, okay. Oh these hands, they’re in love now? Okay.

Of Loss

Not long ago there lived a young man who fell in love. He was fiercely and completely in love – as only young people can be. Unlike the feelings of many other young men in this world however, his were returned, and because of this he was very happy.

Fortune had always been a friend to him and his entire youth had been a calm, easy journey into adulthood. It seemed to him only right and normal that he should be in love and feel happy. As he got older he began to do very well in business too, and this also seemed natural and fitting to him. He felt privileged and fortunate to know so much love and success. He was a humble and good man.

As a result of his gentle upbringing he was not soured by cynicism or sadness and his demeanour was both innocent and kind. He saw much good in the world and was glad to be a part of it. He had many friends and business colleagues and was liked by those who met him.

His business prospered and he married the woman he loved. Years went by and as the snows of winter passed, and the long tranquil afternoons of summer drifted by, their love for one another deepened. It was a strong, true love borne out of a feeling of contentedness and mutual respect. It was a rare love, one that good people could recognise and be happy in the presence of. They had two daughters and lived happily in a home that they made together.

Three weeks before his thirty-sixth birthday the man was sat in his office on a Tuesday morning looking over some figures. By now his business was a thorough success and the time was approaching where he would scarcely be needed at work, except for making major decisions regarding the future of the company. He pondered what he would do about this, considering how he would spend his time when he had more of it. He knew how inactivity bored him and he resolved that he would have to find some new work, or at least a challenging and productive hobby. He would ask his wife what she thought; she always had answers and ideas in situations like this. It was one of the many reasons he loved her. She had a way of making him feel exactly how he desired to feel at any given time; with just a few sentences she could smooth out the wrinkles and creases he made in himself and somehow rekindle in him the simplicity and peace of his youth. He was thinking this and noticing the smile that had crept on to his face involuntarily when his secretary came in and told him there was an urgent call for him from the hospital. His smile disappeared.

Afterwards, as many good men have done in the past, and as many more will do again in the future, he turned to drink. He had lost his family and he did not want to live, but whether through bravery or cowardice or a cruel mixture of both he continued to do so. He hid from his grief in whiskey and rum but every day it found him. It squeezed him and pressed on him like a great weight. He began smoking, having not done so since he was a teenager. He would watch day time television for hours on end. He stopped shaving. He distanced himself from his friends and passed the running of his company over to a manager. Sometimes in the middle of the night he would sit under the shower for hours at a time, until the water got too cold or he ran out of whatever drink he took in with him.

He drank heavily and relentlessly at that stage and was alone as often as possible. Occasionally friends would stop by and he would give them a drink stronger than they wanted and ask about their lives. Then eventually they would feel his sadness creeping into them, as a chill on a warm day, and they would make excuses and leave politely, wishing him well and feeling that they’d done something kind, before going home and gossiping to their wives, whom they did not love as he had loved his. He guessed this and preferred time spent alone with his thoughts and his drinks.

He would positively lose himself sometimes, finding himself suddenly, as if waking from a trance and wondering how he ended up in the garden smoking on the swing he had built for his daughters, or sitting on his wife’s side of the bed in the dark, his face soaked with tears and his hollow eyes aching and sore.

Despite his pain and the drinking he was still no fool. He knew he was treating himself poorly, he maintained a firm grasp on his reasoning and knew that indulging himself so shamelessly was unsustainable and downright pitiable. He resolved to move. Move house, move towns, just move. His business was proceeding well without him and money was not a problem. He emptied and sold the family home as quickly as possible and with as little inclusion in the process as he could manage, as one might rip off a plaster without looking. He bought a small, humble cottage a few towns away (close enough that he could visit the graves at short notice) and began to accept his future alone. His drinking lessened slightly. He took up fishing and gardening and tried to live more as his wife might have wanted. He reacquainted himself with his friends. He still had bad days but now there were also good days, or less bad days at least. He became less a slave to his grief and more an acquaintance, greeting it comfortably when it visited him and being a gracious host for as long as it stayed, much like an old friend or drinking buddy whom we know is a bad influence, but are bound to forever through shared experience.

One day