Aleastory

Installation 2.5

Nora Whiskerson

It said its name was Nora. I say ‘it’, because I cannot be sure the feline race follows the same gender-naming structure we humans tend to follow. In fact, you may decide upon a gender, if it helps you imagine its voice. I recall making this observation quite clearly, because Nora proceeded to pull me up on it. With part of my attention still retained by the phantom puzzle-bag, I may have distractedly muttered a quizzical Nora? and offered my most confused looking frown. Nora grilled me:

“I’m wondering if it’s more than a little insulting that the bulk of your clearly disturbed attention has been drawn to my…rather odd…choice of name, aside from the revelation that I am, in fact, a talking cat.”

I could scarcely argue.

“In fact, I could hazard a guess that you’re now musing over how my name came to pass, and whether my Namers were of the human nature, or else perhaps I was named by my loving parents just moments before being plucked from their tender care and dropped in a box filled with blankets and my squabbling siblings.”

“Would you blame me?” is all I could muster. Nora, towering above (and yet below me, around knee height while I squatted over the open puzzle-bag) seemed to mull over this response for some time; it was as though it were weary of its own answer and was trying with what linguistic prowess it could summon, to pick its words with antique-handling care.

“It’s symptomatic, so blame is as absurd as-“

“-a talking cat?”

“Quite.”

A pause; Nora purred over another epiphany. I thought it time I seized the initiative, perhaps to swing the absurdity of this conversation into my court – those puzzle pieces weren’t getting any less puzzled:

“I suppose that file strapped to your mane lists the many symptoms I appear to be in possession of, concluding with a picturesque diagnosis?” It’s having another slow-orbiting epiphany I thought, as the light within which Nora had parked her enigmatic mass, surrendered yet another degree of luminosity. I say her, because, in my present and contemporary state, any proper noun that may be followed by a description containing the word ‘enigmatic’ must immediately indicate a female subject. However, if you are comfortable with the gender you have afforded your Nora, please ignore my pedantry.

As though acknowledging the interminable decline in luminosity, Nora spun on her hind legs and trotted away, back across the road, toward a small leafy, impossibly green bush, presumably from where she had previously emerged.

“Your diagnosis is this way,” came the order, but I had already begun zipping up ‘my’ bag in anticipation of following.

The impracticalities that arise when attempting to follow a cat through its various crawl-spaces are numerous; impracticalities Nora seemed all too happy to ignore, if not exasperate. Immediately following my somewhat ugly navigation through the deceptively branchy bush, I followed Nora, on something lower and infinitely more uncomfortable that all-fours, through a lengthy stretch of soil-rich undergrowth, situated between the west facing wall of a semi-detached fortress and a garden fence that can only be described as having been modelled on the doors of Mordor. If I were to have entertained thoughts of a retreat, it would have meant a particularly awkward reverse-crawl, without the aid of wing mirrors or a window out of which one could angle one’s head. Suddenly reverse parking a caravan doesn’t seem so disagreeable. From what elevation I could achieve with my neck, I could see only blue, and the occasional jet stream protruding the wash.

Convinced I’d be crawling (barely) in this direction for the foreseeable future, I allowed myself a few moments to catch up. If apparently missing the important, or at least most obvious point, was a symptom of my presumed condition, then perhaps I had better review this ‘episode’ so far. It also occurred to me that, somewhat sidetracked by, yes, a talking cat (it doesn’t appear to become any less absurd the more I say it) I had abstained from describing my furry tour-guide. So, true to my ‘symptom’ I shall deal with this first, as a priority, and a courtesy to you, my guest. This would later come at detriment to my contemplating the circumstances in which I had found myself; however, knowing what I do now, it is something of a relief. I am not quite the sharpest tool in the shed, and attempting to make “56” of (4xy + zxy)(666 – 42) – answers on a postcard – would surely have resulted in some debilitating breakdown.

Nora was an athletic little thing; slender (for a cat) and agile, with overtly controlled movements that betrayed a confidence almost bordering on swagger. Her tabby fur was flat to her body, giving her an air of aero-dynamism (bad pun) that further accentuated the darting and weaving that had me banging heads with many a thick branch. Her eyes were impossibly amber, with islands of black swimming around in circles; they darted from side to side in practiced surveillance, and I had the feeling that even when her attention appeared to be dead-ahead, she still had one eye trained on my clumsy antics.

Just as I was beginning to get the hang of dislocating every limb and joint in my body like a practicing contortionist, we came to the end of the impossibly long passageway, and emerged at a concrete doorway set into a shroud of braches and leaves, that paternally sheltered a small grassy courtyard. To the left of the doorway a monstrous, beige beanbag was propped against the wall; Nora trotted over to the bag and leapt silently and elegantly into the middle of it, filling out a perfectly cat-sized indentation, with practiced athleticism. She turned her amber stare to pick me up from all fours.

“If my geography is correct, we’re somewhere in Whetstone…?” I managed, to fill the silence more than anything. On reflection, I never thought I’d have to fill the silence whilst in the company of a cat.

“Your geography is terrible.”

“I expected as much. Is that also a symptom?”  She ignored me and continued:

“The where is unimportant, the why perhaps less so-“

“-perhaps?”

“The what however” Nora raced on, unperturbed, “is key.”

Another lengthy silence. I was beginning to get wise to my cues; “So what, pray tell, is this place?”

“That will be for you to decide.”

“Brilliant. Riddles.”

“I can, however, advise you that sarcasm will not be welcome here.”

“Well now we’re getting somewhere!”

“Nor will your persistent cynicism.”

“I’m British; comes with the label.”

Nora’s eyes narrowed in that cat-like Why do I bother with you? fashion. It actually upset me a little; I’m a stickler for being liked. She looked back to the passageway from where we had come, and then to the concrete door. In a past life, I thought, Nora must have been a teacher – that or an intelligence officer, who specialised in protracted interrogations and defector debriefing. The silence and lack of eye contact was making me want to confess to my sins; give up the other naughty boys in the playground and gush forth with a river of tears. Fortunately, Nora took pity:

“Listen; we’ve come to the end of our line – for now. Through this door is the next episode to which I am not privy-“

“Above your pay grade?”

“When did you ever hear of a cat getting paid? Do you honestly think I have a bank account?”

“You may have a mattress…”

“Or a bean bag?” I considered this, throwing a quick glance at the bottom of the bag. “Pull yourself together, man” Nora snapped. I must confess I didn’t fancy my chances; she is clearly quicker, more agile, and has claws. I have six months of Judo under my belt (excuse the pun) and I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag.

“On your bike then” purred Nora, rousing me from my daydreaming. Is it possible to daydream in what can only be described as a Day(lucid)dream? I mused, satisfied by my own philosophical insight. Nora leapt off the beanbag and sauntered past my right leg, entering a passageway on the other side of the building, in the direction we had come. “Curious one-way system” I mumbled, as I returned my gaze to the concrete door that was no longer visible: the door had disappeared, leaving a gaping hole with not a ray of light neither escaping nor penetrating its inky blackness. It was almost Biblical. Against all my better judgement – against all sense of sense, and in accordance with any predictable horror film that was just about to get nasty – I tiptoed into the darkness, arms outstretched like a zombie, just in time to observe the light I was leaving behind decline once more, greying to leave a supremely forlorn complexion.

Second Installation

Jigsaw Puzzles

Somehow I’d managed to uproot myself from the spot, and apparently also found time to manipulate my jaw shut and blink two or three (million) times. In between these episodes I’d retreated down the stairs to the kitchen, to the kettle I’d filled with too much water for the mere two cups I’d anticipated. I was in no state to consider any such Freudian revelation that I’d filled the kettle with enough water for three cups on purpose, though retrospectively I imagine I’d always been expecting the arrival of a massive elephant, to assume its position in the corner of the living room.

I made the elephant a cup of tea, having to think far too hard about how a kettle works and what to do with a tea bag.

In times of crisis (for want of a better word) the auto-pilot usually kicks in. I forget, but I assume I sent mine on vacation and didn’t find a suitable replacement. In the kitchen – an open plan oblong space with a mile of granite running along one wall and a dining table opposite, adjacent to a half-wall partition leading through to a thee sofa living room complete with coffee table and hamster cage – in the kitchen, now, that is, some five minutes since I had contracted chronic vertigo, the walls and their pristine white faded and dulled; not even the kaleidoscopic hue of a bustling fruit bowl seemed able to retain its colour. Everything was darker. Everything washed and bled into nothing, with the exception of the elephant’s cup of tea, steaming audibly, almost apologetically.

TV. That is what is needed, I’d thought. Some brightly coloured pixels, flicking ecstatically to form the shapes of Entertainment and Commerce. Noel Edmonds flashed into view with that garishly over-practiced and condescending smile, as he explained, for the billionth time the principles of Deal or No Deal. Some awestruck idiot was being presented with the ultimate two-box dilemma: the bright blue one penny and the slightly darker shade of one hundred pounds mocked the depravity of her ‘game’. Her happiness floundered somewhere, a few rounds back. To lose with dignity or lose with sanity? The offer came in at forty-five pounds – I already knew my response and hers too: they were not the same.

I left it on, knowing full well I didn’t really give a toss, and cursing those damned pixels for the audacity of thinking they could offer escapism. The room notched down another level on the dull scale, as the hamster climbed the bars until she was cliffhanging from her little paws, pining to get a first look at the grief painted across my face like clown makeup . My tea beckoned, but I knew its game: the bearer of bad news and subsequent comforter – Devi’s fucking advocate.

I do not recall entirely why I decided, then, to leave, much less why I took the un-drunk tea with me. Perhaps I wanted to show it that life goes on, before pouring it down a drain and disposing of the mug to a charity shop. Adorning, again, my coat and bag, I ambled down the corridor (feeling a little drunk, I believe) and purposefully stepped out onto the snow-bitten pavement. There may have been a voice that called out behind me. I don’t know. I think it’d make me feel better if that were the case. It may have offered proof that the world hadn’t yet lost its pivot. As I said, though, I had stepped purposefully into the cold February air, which would presume I had a purpose to do so, which would by extension indicate the Earth was still spinning. The wind was gently orchestrating the swaying snowflakes – perhaps yet another indication that all was (largely) well, though I’m no weatherologist and so cannot be certain.

Digging myself into my own coat, thrusting my chin into the knot of my scarf, I began my pilgrimage down the road and away from the high street. I said I had purpose, but that purpose has since escaped me and, subsequent events considered, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to substantiate this claim. Some way down the road I’d stopped and opened my bag. Though I could swear to its contents, apparently I could actually see none of them. It was as if I had picked up someone else’s bag; someone who had picked up this bag, decided it also wasn’t there’s, and left it for me to find and similarly discover the unfamiliarity. Doubly unfamiliar. Twice the confusion. Or something.

The bag brimmed with a multitude of jigsaw pieces: some 3D, some 2D, others Meccano-like and yet others self-sufficient as per their architectural and functional integrity. I began to connect the first, circumstantial, pieces: 1) the world appeared to be (increasingly still) losing its colour and light; 2) the contents of my bag in which I kept all the worldly assets required to operate on a day to day basis (phone, wallet, cash cards, door keys, oyster card…) had metamorphosed into tiny building blocks in need of assembling; and 3) there was a cat approaching me, somewhat suspiciously, wearing a folder strapped to its back. And yes, of course… the folder had my name on it.