Advent

I. Foundations

This used to be my house.
This is my house.
I need to hold on to that thought, though it seems these days remembering anything has become increasingly difficult. I can't actually remember when I stopped remembering, if that makes sense. I have to struggle to recall the past, and even then the facts get so jumbled up and confused that I can't be certain I'm even remembering what actually happened, or remembering it as it happened. Or if it actually happened. It's so hard these days to even have a thought of my own: it's like there's some terrible, irresisible force acting on my mind, my brain – my soul, I sometimes feel, though I don't believe in them – trying to crush out my memories, mangle them up like trash in a compactor, reshape them like putty into whatever form it wishes them to take.

There is of course no such force; how could there be? But my headaches are definitely getting worse.
Sometimes, when it gets really bad and I have to sit down and just force myself to breathe, I pray for death. I pray for anything that will release me from the intense, unbearable pressure that squeezes my head as if it were caught in some giant vise. Luckily, these attacks don't last too long – though when I'm in the throes of one it seems an eternity – and oddly, I often feel much better as soon as one has passed. I can think more clearly, reason better, sometimes even remember scraps of a life I have mostly forgotten, if it ever existed, or was mine.
Having just come out of one such now, this is why I can now remind myself of the fact I tried to hammer into my brain a few moments ago, as if somehow – though I can't think how – it's important. Essential, even, perhaps vital to my survival.

This was my house.
This is my house.
I live here alone.

Or at least, I used to. Nowadays, I am never alone, Lights burn in every room through the night, and voices mutter as I try to sleep. I once found myself worrying about my electricity bill, but oddly it never arrived. Nor did any others. Fearful – I remember now (you see? After an attack, for a quite short but wonderful period I am quite lucid and can think for myself, and remember things, things I have forgotten I have forgotten) – fearful that I would either be cut off, or that an even larger bill would drop onto the mat in the hallway, replete with warnings scrawled in red pen (though really, I know, printed out by a cold, unfeeling inkjet printer that does not even know what a red pen is, or any pen, come to think of it) about final payments and penalties, I rang the electricity company.

That is, I tried.

I remember distinctly punching out the number on the dialling pad on the landline, holding the receiver to my ear, hearing the chirruping ring sing its happy little tune like some imprisoned songbird trapped inside the phone's workings.

The next thing I remember, I was waking up the next morning, with (at the time) no recollection of having even made the call. Had I remembered, I could have checked the last-dialled number, to confirm if I had actually called the electricity company or had just dreamed it. Had I remembered. Which I did not. And so I didn't check. Because there was nothing to check.

But despite a lack of communication with – and more importantly, any payment to – the electric people, my supply was not discontinued, and though power continued to be expended and consumed throughout the night, every night, even at weekends, no bill ever arrived. And I don't just mean no electricity bill. No bills of any nature dropped through my letterbox. In fact, no post at all was delivered. No junk mail, no one-time-only special offers to join gyms, no cutprice sales at carpet and tile shops, no screaming adverts for holidays. No letters. No cards. No flyers. Even the ubiquitous agents of the local Indian takeaway seemed to give my house (this is my house) a wide berth. Look outside and you will see every single doorknob, letterbox, windowsill and gate festooned with menus from A Taste of Mumbai, but my house (this is my house) stands as a pariah among houses, like the kid not picked for the soccer team or the wallflower at the disco, alone, untouched, avoided.

Unclean?

My memory, which I know will soon degrade like badly-stored fruit in the summer heat, tells me that it was not always this way. In fact, it reminds me that on more than one occasion I had made irate phone calls to the manager of A Taste of Mumbai, the improbably-named Gerald Lynch (very Indian!) and had even visited their premises once, to complain about the practice of their little munchkins slapping a menu on anything that didn't move (and, I'm perhaps not too reliably informed, but I would not be surprised, some things that do). My efforts had been rebuffed, and when I had in impotent anger phoned their head office, I had been left on hold for so long that there was only so much bad Indian covers of fifties rock and roll songs (the Indian Elvis? Give me a break!) that I could take, and I had hung up irritably, my mission unfulfilled.

So I know that my house used to be like all the others, a target for the roving ninjas of A Taste of Mumbai and its parent corporation, Blue Fish Industries. But then, one day, it all stopped. No more did I find menus extolling the virtues of Biryani, Chicken tikka or other stuff I would never dream of eating. I found – to my initial delight, though that did not last – that I could open my door in the morning and not see the ominous cardboard menu with its half-hook hanger swinging precariously from my doorknob like some climber who had lost his hold and was trying desperately not to fall. It was great for a while, but then some nagging voice inside me started asking Why? Why was my house the only one – and it was the only one; the Indian takeaway ninjas even continued to put their menus on old Mr. Bennett's house, and he's been dead now for six months and the house vacant – that the indefatigable agents of A Taste of Mumbai ignored, even avoided? After a while, I began to feel an outcast, left out, ignored, shunned. There was a time when I would have given anything to have seen one of those stupid, badly-printed menus hanging from my door, just once.

But my door remained menu-less, and still does.

My letterbox never rattles, my door bell never rings, no footsteps wend their weary way up my pathway to breathlessly inform me that Virgin are doing a great deal right now if I switch my TV and broadband, or to try to convince me to switch to prepay power. How I used to loathe these people, who badgered and annoyed me and always seemed to call at the most inconvenient moments. What wouldn't I give now to watch one smile his or her plastic smile and rattle off a list of benefits, screw up his or her face in surprise when I inform them that I'm an “old-fashioned sort, not prone to change”, and send them off, shaking their head? Well, now I wouldn't be so eager to see them off. I'd even invite them in, make them a cup of tea. I might even sign their form, make their day, earn them a few quid in commission. What, in the grand scheme of things, did it matter if I had Sky or Virgin, or got my electricity from this or that supplier? Just to have human companionship...

The mention of electricity supply brings my already staggering mind back to the recollection of the bills that never arrived, and the huge amounts of electricity being consumed, and for a moment I'm confused. I don't use that much electricity. I don't stay up late at night. So who is using this power?

And then I remember, as I believe I continue to forget, and remember, and will forget, and remember again; as I perhaps always have done, and always will do.
I remember when they came.

II. Cockroaches

This is not quite true. I don't remember when they came. I don't even know for certain if they ever did come, or if they have been here all along. Perhaps this is their house. Perhaps I am the interloper, here for some strange reason I can't fathom. A relative? A friend? Business colleague? But no: I do not know these people, though I know them very well. That is to say, I am aware of them. They are always here. They are always around me. Perhaps they always have been. I know they are here. I know they may always have been here. I know they probably always will be here. But I don't know who they are.

My fragmenting memory throws shards at me, like a drunken knife-thrower who knows he is about to lose his job, but some weird sense of ... I don't know, call it honour maybe? Dedication? Professionalism? Whatever it is, it compels him to see out his last night. Which, given his profession and his current state, is probably not wise. It's a pretty safe bet someone is going to get hurt, perhaps badly. My memory surely knows this too: bombard me with too many unrelated pieces of my past – if it is my past, I can never be certain: my brain may be playing tricks on me – and one may take my very reason out, reduce me to a gibbering simpleton. Perhaps this has already happened. Perhaps I am, even now, sitting at a metal table in a featureless grey room, the table bolted to the floor to prevent my using it as a weapon, I myself shackled to the chair and locked into a jacket without sleeves, drooling and humming quietly to myself. Behind me, perhaps I have scrawled on the wall messages I believe terribly important, but that nobody will read, or even come close enough to decipher. The stench drives them back, but I just laugh. It is not a happy laugh.

If I am mad, then in a really strange way all of this makes sense, because it makes none in the real world. One of the memory grenades impacts upon or near me, showering me with jumbled images and sounds, and I see a man arriving at my door. He does not knock. He does not ring the bell. Somehow, he is inside. He has not spoken one single word. His eyes are hidden behind dark mirrored sunglasses, although it is a cold October morning. Why my memory chooses to allow me to remember this seemingly random fact I have no idea, but there can be no doubting it. It is one of those very few fixed facts that I can rely on. I know the sun rises into the sky. I know night follows day. I know this is my house (this is my house) and I know that on the day everything changed, a thin sleet was in the air and I was feeling cold, and making vague plans for Christmas.
October. It was definitely October.

And the man was standing inside my house. I had not invited him in. He had not asked to be invited in. But by the same token, I have no recollection of having tried to stop him, to question him, to bar his entry. Somehow, it seems almost laughable that I would even think of having done such a thing. A voice in my head, to which I try unsuccesfully not to listen, tells me that the man has always been there, and why should he not? It whispers seductively: some things are fixed. Day follows night. The sky is blue. This man is in your house. There is no need to ask why, it is enough to know that he is, that he should be, and he is. There is no conversation to be had. Here is some music...

And as naturally as the man arrived in my house (this is my house), others came too. I have hazy visions of black vans, SUVs, people moving equipment into the house, the man directing them – or was it him? Suddenly, there are two, three, four, exactly like him. No, ten. Fifty. A hundred? How can a hundred men fit into one small house, I ask myself, and I am told Here is some music. I listen to the music. It's quite good. Ambient. I forget my reservations. There are a hundred men in my house. A thousand. I have lost count. Every single one of them is identical, and none of them have spoken a single word, neither to each other nor to me. I believe, with a quite earth-shattering faith, that they never will. I don't believe it's that they can't speak, I just feel that in some odd way I am beneath their notice, as if I were an insect, and who speaks to insects? By the same token, who requests from a cockroach permission to enter as they walk across the threshold? That's what I am to them: a cockroach.

And yet, to me, at times, the decription better fits them. They have taken over my house (this is my house). They all dress identically, in black. There is no way of ever even conceiving of getting rid of them, and every day more arrive, till the house (this is my house) seems like it will burst if it has to accommodate any more. It doesn't, though. How many hundreds of them are there now? How many thousands? They swarm all over my house (this is my house), surging up the old rickety staircase in huge numbers like a black wave, swirling around the kitchen (though they never seem to eat) and constantly banging, hammering, kicking at the walls as if testing for something. There is barely room for me to carry out my daily activities, few as they are.
They have infested my house.
This is my house.
Cockroaches.

They don't sleep, or at least, they never seem to. Nor do they talk to, or even seem to really interact with each other. Just as I am seemingly beneath their notice, they seem to be beneath each other's notice. I can't even tell which is the original man who arrived, if he is even still here. They have all melded now into one giant, shapeless entity, and the phrase hive mind flits briefly through my brain, (Here is some music...) and I think Yes, that is what they're like: a bunch of drones, all working to (presumably) the one purpose, all of one mind, and quite possibly each unaware, or uncaring of, the existence of the others. And yet, for all that they do not speak (or at least, have never done so in my presence), they do make sounds. I lie awake and listen to them, their deep, sibilant hissing, that unnerving scratching that goes on till well after dawn. I once had mice make their nest in this house (my house ... is it?) and I remember lying awake and listening to them scratching, clawing, nibbling at my walls. They sounded just like that. In the end, I had to put down poison. For a mad, giggling moment when insanity seems to beckon me, its promise of sweet oblivion and no longer having to care, no longer having to work anything out or worry about anything, seems so seductive, I wonder if I should buy some more poison. Will it clear my infestation? But cockroaches do not succumb to poison: they are one of the hardiest creatures on the Earth, and will probably be one of the last, when we are all gone. They would laugh at poison, if cockroaches can laugh. And these are not cockroaches. These are men, or seem to be, and yet, I feel certain that they, too, would laugh at my pitiful attempts to destroy them.

Cockroaches...

Not that I have ever heard them laugh. Or speak. Or evidence any sort of emotion, or even acknowledge my presence. More than once, I have come up against one of them trying to get past (with who knows how many hundreds or thousands of them constantly crawling through the house this is inevitable) and though there has been no communication of any sort, and neither of us has turned or moved out of the way, somehow, I have never bumped into one of them, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, none of them have ever bumped into me. I have never looked one of them in the face. I fear what I might glimpse behind those ubiquitous mirror shades, and though I would not consider myself a coward, I feel even the bravest man would rather not see beyond those darkened lenses. Thankfully for me, though it may be odd, they have never once removed their shades. Perhaps they can't. Perhaps they're blind, afflicted by the light in some way. Perhaps...

Perhaps they're vampires.

No, no, that's ludicrous. Vampires do not exist. And anyway, I've seen them out in the garden. Not relaxing of course – they never seem to take any leisure time – but measuring, charting, checking things in the garden while the admittedly weak but still present sun beats down. Vampires burn in the sun. They can't be vampires. Also, vampires don't exist. Here is some music ... I almost came close to speaking to them when they first entered the garden. I love my garden. It is my sanctuary, my refuge from – from .... where do I work? Do I work? I can't remember. I think there's a place I go during the day, tasks I perform, but if so I do them in an almost sleepwalking state and never remember afterwards what I have done or where I have gone. Perhaps I go nowhere, and I simply dream this other life. Or perhaps this other life, this life with the hundreds of mirror-shaded, unspeaking men and a house that is no longer mine (this is my house) is the dream, and I will at some point wake up. I hope so. But soemthing tells me that no, this is the reality, and if there is a dream, well, I don't remember my dreams.

But every man has his limit, and I reached mine when they went out into the garden and heedlessly trampled my prize lupins and sunflowers. I had spent years cultivating them; they were my children, and nobody was going to hurt my children. Yet, when I opened my mouth to speak, one of them, as if registering my presence for the first time turned his head just the tiniest fraction and looked at me. His hand (gloved, I now remember: they all wear white gloves with black fingers) rising just to brush off the sides of his shades, and I remember running, back into what I somehow stupidly thought of as the protection, the shelter of the house (this is my house). Silly really, when you consider that it is now completely and irrevocably infested by the cockroaches. Still, at least I didn't have to look these ones in the eyes. Have they eyes?

Here is some music...

When I checked on the damage later, once I had mustered up the courage, I found that every flower, every stalk that had been touched and crushed underfoot was scorched, burned to a cinder.