the turn

“The Turn”

         If anything was remarkable about the flat on the corner, or its occupant for that matter, it was that it was wholly unremarkable.
         The tall windows looked out from the top floor onto the winter street like long sad eyes.  Grimy and framed with snow they had been replaced more often than cleaned.  An old aerial jutted out like a quizzing eyebrow and the line of allegedly decorative brickwork below was a stern upper lip.  The owner had often pointed this out as he returned home (generally to passers-by at three am) meandering down the road, avoiding his door and the end of the night.  Looks just like a face he would say, go on, look.  Invariably, no one looked.
         This very scenario had occurred only hours before our tale begins, so we find him snoring manfully on his frayed couch, a knee on the floor and hand in a bowl of nuts. 
         As he emerged from a very ordinary dream (about wearing the wrong shirt to work) he found himself, rather unusually for seven oh four am, musing on just how ordinary his life was.  The previous night he had drunk cheap French lager, talked about football and ate a kebab of unspecified meat content on the way home.  Wiping congealed saliva from his face, which stuck like glue, he felt strangely… mass produced.  He couldn’t, in fact, recall the last time he done something truly… individual.  And who was he, anyway?  Today, he thought, he’s going to stop smoking, throw away his ipod and… and get a tattoo.  A rude one, at that.
         With that thought the doorbell rang.  Which was strange as it was so early.  And, more importantly, he didn’t have a doorbell.  Logic waded in through the shallows of hungover confusion.  It must have been the flat opposite or some kind of prank.  Nonetheless he struggled to his feet and headed for the door, groaning as he knocked over an ashtray and trod barefoot on a stray crisp which crunched in horror. 
         He opened the creaky door (it had never creaked before) onto the chilly stone hall and a gust of cold air leapt in, seeking out his bare skin and twitching all the curtains.  There was, you may have guessed, no one there.  There was, however, a box.
         It was no more than a square foot and not quite as deep, unmarked and a little battered.  He glanced out, one eyebrow raised.  There was no-one around.  Hmmm.  With no other options presenting themselves he lifted the box and deposited it on the kitchen table, where he glared at it over a poor coffee and damp cigarette.  Ten minutes passed.  With the sensation of being watched crawling all over his back, he opened it. 
         Inside was a great deal of white wrapping paper and Styrofoam.  Only after a few seconds of frantic digging did another object reveal itself.
         Roughly the size and weight of a book, it appeared to be an intricately carved and constructed ornament.  There were two glass bulbs, one at either end and filled with a clear liquid.  They were connected by several dozen strips of varying metals, woods and clear tubing, all forming a solid mass which resembled nothing he had seen before.  It did, however, sitting slightly warm in his hands, give off a strange sense of life.  Like holding a sleeping animal, he thought, or a heart.  The image shook him a little and he pulled it from the remaining wrapping.  He realised as he lifted it that the glass bulbs were slightly flattened on their tops, so it could be stood on either end.  He wasn’t sure (and never could be no matter how long he stared at it afterwards) but the interwound lengths of materials, like locked fingers or sinews of muscle, seemed to create a word on the front.  In long, stretched letters, in the right light, at the right angle, he thought he could see turn.  But then it would be gone, and he would only have a headache from straining his eyes.
         With that word in his mind he walked to the window and stood the piece on the ledge, turning it so that for the first time it was no longer lying flat.  Early morning sunlight glinted through the glass and there was a feeling of movement beneath his fingers.  The clear tubes filled with liquids of a dozen different colours.  As he watched, unable to release his grip, the top bulb began to blacken.  The sounds from the street below faded to nothing, his eyes stung but he couldn’t close them and sweat broke out across his brow.  In a few moments it was completely black, the sinews of wood and metal pulsed in his hands and a thrumming noise rose in his ears, like the beat of his heart fresh from a nightmare.  His breath caught in his throat and something invisible clutched his chest.  Voices, he could hear voices…
         Then… it was gone.  The room, the sounds from the street, all normal as before.  It was as if he had been terribly drunk then sobered in an instant.  He stared at the black globe.  Like the pupil of an eye, malignant yet for now, passive.  Outside the light had faded to grey and the rain began, dotting then streaming down the window, drowning out the world.  He breathed deeply and shook himself, thinking, what a hangover this was.
         A small but incessantly irritating noise began to edge its way into his consciousness.  It had been there for a long time, he realised, but was only now being heard.  What was it?  It was important, somehow.  The noise continued.  Dammit, he thought.  It was his alarm clock and he was late for work.  The time was almost ten thirty.  He tried not to think that he had stared at the object for nearly three hours.  That was impossible.  Ten minutes later he rushed out into the rain, not noticing that he failed to close his front door correctly.  He stumbled on the stairs and twisted his ankle as he checked the time on his watch.  Hopping and cursing through the puddles in the road, he didn’t look back at his flat.  In the long sad eyes of his windows, the black pupil glittered unseen. 
         His day had, he was forced to admit, started badly.
         It didn’t improve.
         On the way to work he lost his wallet.  His phone was out of credit.  He had no change for the bus and was soaked through by the time he arrived.  It wasn’t the first time he had arrived late, unsurprisingly enough.  After a short and painful meeting with his manager, he was rather predictably dismissed.  He couldn’t argue.  The sun which had glinted through the clouds when he had been indoors now vanished the instant he stepped out under the sky.  The air was thick and cold and his hangover had returned with a vengeance.  He returned home to a ransacked shell, everything he owned gone or ruined.  He searched his memory.  The door.  Had he closed it properly? He couldn’t remember.  This had never been the nicest neighbourhood anyway.  Slumped in the centre of the floor, he sighed, a broken man.  All he had left was his mobile phone.
         With a chime it announced that he had a voice message.
         It was his girlfriend he noted, with a smile.  At least this couldn’t be bad.  Sorry, she said, but it was over between them.  Oh well.  He was a nobody, doing nothing and going nowhere.  She wanted more and apparently being single was more than being with him.  He was, she confirmed, a loser.
         The sun, which had hardly shown itself all day, finally went down to the tune of his feeble sobbing.  He slept on the bare floor under the watchful eye of his only other possession, sitting untouched, un-noticed, on the window-ledge.
         A troubled night’s sleep passed. 
         In the morning a gust of wind rushed across his face, waking him and knocking the strange ornament from its perch.  It turned a perfect 180 degrees, the thick base landing mercilessly on his testicles.  As he whimpered, curled in a ball, his phone rang.  After a few deep breaths, he answered.  Once again, it was his girlfriend.  She had suffered a sudden change of heart.  She couldn’t ever leave him because she loved him, she always had.  If he would, could, take her back she would be there.  Please, please would he consider it?  Just a chance.  Forgive her.  Just one more chance?
         As she spoke he felt his eyes inexorably drawn to the glass globes.  The black globe, now at the bottom, was rapidly clearing.  The globe above had begun to sparkle, as if light were being shone on tiny pieces of glitter forming inside.  As before the tubes filled and the wood and metal pulsed but it was fresher, clearer.  The air became crisp around him, fragrant and alive.  Even his skin seemed to be stripping of the clammy lacquer of sweat it had accumulated over the last twenty four hours. 
         Yes, he said, of course she could come round.
         Intrigued, confused, feeling slightly foolish, he reached out and tilted the piece slightly.
         What? she replied, just like that?  Was he taking her seriously?  Was this all just a game to him?
         He immediately let it sit steady again, the top globe settling into a starlight glow, the base globe clear as still water.
         Sorry! she howled suddenly, she was sorry.  She didn’t know what was wrong with her.  She would be there, be with him, in a matter of minutes.
         Moving carefully he placed the ornament in the centre of his cracked table.  This he thought, required a little further testing.  He checked his phone balance.  It seemed his network had given him some free credit for being such a good customer.  Of course they had. 
Next, he called the police.  A robbery? they said.  Yesterday?  In fact they had caught someone in that area, two young men stopped for speeding turned out to have a car-full of goods.  He could collect his possessions later.  No, nothing was damaged.
         Then, the job.  No, the manager wasn’t there.  She had quit this morning.  In fact, the gentleman temporarily in charge had asked for his number.  He knew him from years back, and would be delighted to have him return to work.
         Before his girlfriend arrived, he ran to the shop to buy a lottery ticket.
         One of the many powers granted the storyteller is the easy manipulation of time, and now is the moment to utilise it. 
         We will skip forward ten years, give or take a day. 
         Where is our hero after all these years?  He lives in the country now, a millionaire’s mansion in the centre of acres of pristine grounds, perfect to the last blade of grass.  He climbs a huge, spiralling staircase, bounding up the steps and marvelling at his good health.  Below he hears his wife and children. They laugh and he smiles.
         In a moment he comes to the only locked room in the house, to which only he has a key.  Inside are a table, a chair and a small locked cabinet.  Again, only he has a key.  The contents you see, have been preying on his mind.  He woke this morning and thought how perfect his life was.  He couldn’t, in fact, recall the last time anything had gone wrong.  Anything had been interesting.  He felt strangely… pointless.
         Before him, in the cabinet, sits an odd kind of ornament we may or may not recognise.  The atmosphere has grown heavy in the room.  For the first time in a long time, he seems to notice the clouds. 
         The glass ball on top glitters, but his eyes are drawn away to the lower.  Clear it calls to him, waiting, aching.  In the centre, among the twisted strands and shadows, the word flashes.  Turn.
         He reaches out.