A Dentist: a Rubber: a Mountain Loch

A dentist: a rubber: a mountain loch.

Today is one of those days when feeling anything is too much. It is a matter of grave disappointment that even here, I still feel nothing. Rather than escape this feelinglessness, I have simply brought it somewhere new: of all places, Scotland. I have outrun nothing; achieved nothing. In fact, all I seem to have done is treated my depression to a holiday, and then kept it company for the duration of the trip.

Take it from me: it is hard being the one people hate seeing. It takes its toll, I assure you. They barely mask it these days: what used to be warm exchanges have either become marionette hollow or bellowed-hellos as they struggle to balance etiquette with terror and show just how not afraid of me they are. I have stared into over 8000 mouths, and I would wager that a significant proportion of that number would choose, if they could, to clamp down, snap shut, maul and gnaw and bite right through my trespassing knuckles, dismember the cold metallic tools with which I pry and prod their teeth, and use my filthy, feckless fingers as first-time floss to shut me up and serve me right. intrude

I’m not being over-dramatic: I know. I appreciate you won’t believe this, but I can feel it in their bodies, their desperate urges for vengeance. I can feel it. You would be surprised at how much you can understand of the human condition when you are the one standing tall over another, who is locked and supine on a chair: when you are dominant, and they, unwilling submissive. With my hands on your skin, my fingertips in your mouth, you come to feel the tingle of their fear and worry and anger, working their way from within, up through their prostrate body, out through their aching, gaping mouths, and into me. It’s exhausting. And the horrible thing? All those mouths, but not a single pleasantry, not a question, an enquiry as to how I was feeling, not one passed their flaked and cracking lips. The closest I come to a warm word is a gassy belch, or the moist tug of a retch. All those mouths, shorn of a voice and bereft of words; all those mouths, all that silence and all this loneliness. Each of those 8000 mouths was a little round pool of sadness to me, and in each, I tried to drown myself a little.

And so I left it all, and me and my depression headed north, seeking a Scottish solution. We have driven through the day, into the night and through to day again. The car is a jungle of open maps that wish to ever close no more, of dangling pine air fresheners that smell of copper pence and styrofoam cups necklaced with bite marks. En route, I have written down and rubbed away and re-appointed a list of places that might make me happy on a scrunch of service station tissue, and I have finally arrived at number 1. Here, I am 6 years old again. I get out of the car and the grey wet wind slaps across my face. I stagger down, stretching cramping legs to the sea, and watch the stretch of dim and glassy water plateau into the horizon. I am here at last: the great wide world is before me, and I make the choice of Scotland. Of all the world, I have arrived; I am here, finally here, at Loch Ness. I am a great explorer: indubitable, brave, the charm and envy of all. I seek nothing less than the Loch Ness monster.

I stand looking for this monster at the water’s edge for 7 hours in a barren Scottish wasteland where the light remains the same bleak tint of dullness and my body slowly ossifies with cold as this silly futile dream recedes. Why I thought I might be happy here is an absurdity, I stiffly realise, though my slight embarrassment doesn’t stop the warm, wet feeling of anticlimax rushing through me: that having finally made it here, I don’t feel any better. You can’t recapture the excitement, the creativity, the imagination of your youth, it seems. Or perhaps you can! Maybe I’m just too far into the past. With one hand, I ferret out the pencil-scrawled bucket list crumpled in my kagoul pocket; with the other, I clutch the rubber. One down: ninety-nine to go. Happiness awaits somewhere.

1 2 3 4 5

Beliefs of millions written across the pages. The Bible lies open on her bed upstairs as the child tiptoes down, in search of her mother. She wishes to demand an explanation to why every character, in this text that she has been commanded to read, has a brother or a sister, while she has none. Even a brother like Cain seems preferable to her, in her lonely naïve mind, stuck in this godforsaken shop of her father’s. The black-headed sprite, suddenly distracted from her original purpose by the sight of an open door, sneaks into the storage room in the back of the shop, ignoring the sign of ‘Private: Sainsbury’s employees only’. She takes one of the shiny, tempting, scarlet apples – a drastic contrast to the bruised, sour, acidic, green and yellow apples from the orchard in the park nearby, the ones the children are permitted to take. After polishing her prize, she returns to concentrating on her problem. Walking into the shop, she hears voices in the adjoining room, followed by a pensive silence. Opening the door gingerly, she is sure in her certainty that it must be her family. Nervously, she enters the room: it isn’t her parents– instead present are her father and a group of severe looking ,formally dressed gentlemen, some making notes with a quill and ink. They’re all silent, each poring over a street map of London. She’s curious; sidling up to the table, the men too absorbed in their work to notice her, she absent-mindedly crunches on her stolen beauty. A bite of crisp apple in a silent place – a worse sin than Eve’s. All the men look up at once; it would be comic to her, if her father didn’t manifest such a furious glare. She backs away, accidentally banging the table in the process, knocking over a bottle of black ink. Its contents spreads quickly throughout the maps’ fibres, making a flood to obscure all the fine lines on the parchment and fill all the cracks. She flees – queries forgotten in the face of her father’s wrath.

Ten years later, her father’s grocery business empire quickly spreading, Sainsbury and his daughter laugh when coming across the memory in conversation. The original question has no need to be asked anymore – she has two brothers and a sister; whenever she catches them stealing apples, she always just winks and pretends not to notice.

The hairdryer droned on as I dried my dripping wet hair. My mousey brown hair cascaded down my back as I shook it to dry faster. My mind drifted off into my own world thinking about the week to come. Monday mornings suck. I need to remember to pack my hairdryer. God, what would I do without it? My hair is still dripping and I can’ t seem to stop it, I still haven’t packed and I still haven’t eaten my breakfast… I officially hate Mondays. I glanced at the clock on my bedside drawer, shit. I’m going to be so late! I still haven’t packed anything and I’m leaving this afternoon! Dropping the hairdryer and sprinting round my room trying to find things to go in my suitcase but only came up with clothes and a toothbrush. Hairdryer. I can’t forget my hairdryer. I unplug it and shove it in the very corner of my suitcase, then to surround it with pants and socks, then to surround that with more clothes that I probably won’t need. I shove the other toiletries into the remaining space and then put my uniform on scruffily. I pile on my usual mask of make-up and then ram all my stuff down the stairs towards the kitchen.

“You ready to go my little tourist, it’s nearly quarter pa- oh my God, look at you! All ready to go! What time do you set off again this afternoon?”

“Mum, I told u like 15 times yesterday! 1:30! I have to get to school NOW! I can’t be late again!” kicking my bags across the floor as my mum continued to stare, “NOW!”

“I’m coming! Sheesh let me get the keys! It’s only 8:15 I don’t know why you’re rushing.” Mum and I waddled out of the door and into the courtyard that was covered in snow “Pick your bags up Mollie, they are going to be sodden by the time u get to the car!” I yanked the bags off the floor and into my already full arms. Mum locked the front door and ushered me to the rear end of the car.

“Thanks for the help mum!”

“Sorry honey, I was distracted, I-I-I was wondering if…”

“Mum, everything is going to be fine. I have everything and I’ll be with Zoe and Josh so if I do forget anything I’m sure they will help me out. Besides, I am going to be a bit preoccupied don’t you think, Spanish boys are gorgeous!”

“Alright just don’t have too much fun.” I know what she meant, and refused to take note because this was my first trip alone with my friends and we where going to go full out and just let loose. No more secondary school pressure or girls saying ‘OMG look at her skirt! Eww! No wonder she’s a freak, she wears her mothers clothes!’ or guys constantly burping, farting and making rude gestures as you walk by. I promised my mum I would be good, but not all promises can be kept…

“Are you a priest?”

I look up from the pile of paper I’m sorting—did I leave my door open? I’m so forgetful nowadays—grateful that someone’s come to distract me from my monotonous task.

“Not exactly, son, I’m a deacon of this church, can I help?” I ask, rather politely, though it has been a long day. He stands, almost folded in on himself, his shaggy hair falling in front of his face. He doesn’t look like he’s ever been in any Church, let alone a Presbyterian one.

“It’s just, I’ve seen in the movies that you can go to a priest to confess, or something. And they can’t tell anyone.” His voice doesn’t match his broad shoulders, or his height—approximately 6’3—it jumps between high octaves and skitters around each word. I’m no longer sitting comfortably in one the padded office chair donated to the church last year, but upright, leaning slightly into my toes.

“Sit down then, I can’t promise anything, but a Deacon’s supposed to give advice when asked.” How I wish this mass of muscle and hair—reddish now that he’s sat down in the sun—was not looking to be consulted. I take out a faded red handkerchief, rub my glasses and stifle a yawn. He shakes his hair off his face, exposing a thin scar stretched from his right cheek down to his collarbone.

“Right, well. Visiting the penguin exhibit wasn’t as interesting as I’d hoped. And it just bummed me out…because it’s supposed to be the best in the world now; they’ve made all sorts of cutbacks to create it. Let go of their old lion, Tabby, and fired all the lion tamers. It should’ve been great. Fantastic.” He picks one leg up, placing his foot on his other knee, clearly upset.

“Did you say penguins?” I squint at him through my lens, where did he find penguins in this city? He seems like a decent young man, despite the dark circles his light brown eyes are sinking in, and those purple bruises on the inside creases of his elbows. I run my hands through what little white fluff is left on my head, trying to grasp hold of the story before he continues.

“Well, it isn’t fantastic, and that’s upsetting. Because Tabby was a gorgeous girl, and taking care of her—I’m an ex-lion tamer—it was my favorite job.”

(Ah, dash! The zoo, it’s too long of a drive in the spring with the roads in such a state, but I took my granddaughter last summer.)

“Well, I had a right to complain to the zoo manager. I wrote a letter. Only, when he agreed to see a couple months ago, he didn’t know I’d have Tabby with me. She and I’ve been living in our SUV, see…” His voice has spiraled higher and higher during his ramblings, out of breath, he close his eyes and inhale properly. He plants his feet shoulder width apart, I notice how tiny they look beneath him.

“In a series of events, I let Tabby kill him, sir.” The confession squeaks out of my new friend while he plays with a loose thread on his jeans, shooting glances at me from between those reddish bangs. I’m shocked; I’m so used to advising teenagers to stay abstinent, or for the overweight members of our community to keep an active lifestyle.
“I’m not exactly sure, if I’m the person you should be, um, consulting manslaughter with.” As I try and stammer out some other worthless phrase, his phone rings.

He starts to pace up and down in front of my cheap pine desk, those small feet moving quickly, listening.
“Oh, Mrs. Kelley, sorry I am late. I’ll be right there, 85 Prospect Street right? Just around the corner ma’am.” He bounces to the doorway, “Thanks, deacon. I’ve got to go, Tabby and I are now garden party entertainers.”

The eccentric murderer gives me a small wave, and runs out of the churches back office, leaving me bewildered; I stand up and try and stop him; I get to my doorway—out of breath—only to here his Ford kick start and pull out of the Church’s gravel drive. I turn to my phone, pick it up, and then place it back down. Who to call, the police? Animal control?

Left...Right...Forward...Hold on. Take it back, take the last left and follow the cobbled path. The ink stained map was stiff and shredded. The splodges of ink were scribbled all over the entire battered map. The map was directing us towards the quiet town of Dussledorth, located in the hidden surroundings of the British countryside. There in that quaint town lived about 200 Dwarfs that all lived in holes in the hills above the town. The dwarfs were about the size of an average 6 year old. They had outsized pointy ears and a minute plump schnozzle. The dimples in my cheeks were like a crater engraved on my face. They dressed casually and had wooden shoes engraved with their name in. There in the town it was filled with shops and cafes even a gym in the alleyways of the town.

The sun gleamed into my face and my eyes were gleaming with tears. I wiped away the sadness and drew a smile onto my rosy cheeks.