White Icing| Steve Byrne
The Day Everything Changed began like any other. Tass silenced his 7am alarm, dressed in his SmartFlue workclothes, and ate the quick breakfast that Anne had prepared.
Later, he’d come to muse that the transition had begun inside his brain right then - molecules fizzing like Alka Seltzer, synapses firing wildly, new connections forming, old associations fading, while on the outside he sat there, oblivious, crunching nut cornflakes like a cow chewing cud while he watched Anne drink tea.
As usual, he was running five minutes late, so everything was a last minute affair conducted at 1.5x speed, like a DVD on search. He finished eating, dropped his bowl into the sink, hastily filled it with water, grabbed his coat, headed for the door, and scooped Anne into his arms on the way.
“I’m off” he said, needlessly.
“Thought I could smell something!”
“Ha, ha.”
They kissed, and he savoured the skin contact, the fresh scent of her hair, the feel of her tea-hot breath on his cheek.
“Love you,” he told her.
“Love you, too.”
His old Ford Focus started on the first turn of the key, a small puffball of grey exhaust smoke its only concession to old age, and he pulled from his drive and joined the 8.05am commuter conveyor belt.
The weatherman on morning television had confidently told him it would be fine and dry, but as he queued to join the motorway, fat drops of rain began to peck at the windshield. Soon it was raining so heavily he had to turn up the radio over the pounding.
As usual, the motorway traffic dawdled. He hated the commuter run. Hated having to drag himself out of bed, spend the day at an unfulfilling job he loathed, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. He’d wanted to be a musician, but knew he just couldn’t play well enough, knew that Guitarist in a Rock Band just wouldn’t pay the bills. So you travel, you work, and you pretend you like it.
The Today program droned reassuringly above the squawk of the wipers and lash of the rain. He knew he was not your typical Radio 4 listener, and wondered what they would think if they knew their listening demographic extended to long-haired, over-the-hill ex-rockers who still held a secret penchant for patchouli oil.
He was half listening to the radio commentary. “Let’s see who’s dead and dying, shot and shooting,” as his mate Kensie would say every time the news was announced.
A Middle Eastern nation had opened fire on a US plane in its airspace. This was the last straw for the USA, as some terrorist organisation or another was being financed by the government of the country, and America was seeking a UN resolution to take retaliatory action. Britain would seek ratification from the House to join their American partners in their ‘endeavour for justice’.
And that’s when it happened. The Defence Secretary was explaining about terrorist regimes and the need to secure world peace and… and the noise of the rain and the wipers and the static of his words blurred, and Tass’ mind seemed to melt and re-solidify, and suddenly he KNEW the truth. Not just intuited, not just suspected because of timbre of voice or innate antipathy towards the Defence Secretary’s politics. He KNEW the truth with a cold, diamond certainty.
This was a ‘false flag’ operation. Western Special Ops teams on the ground had bankrolled a bunch of wannabe insurgents, supplied them with weapons and US flight plans. The plane had been deliberately set on course that day, the crew unaware that they’d just become pawns in a plot to garner support for an invasion of the country. Unaware that contracts had already been drawn up, waiting for Western companies to sign on the dotted line for oil and mineral rights. For lucrative construction contracts to rebuild what their countrymen would destroy. Unaware that a corrupt puppet leader had already been picked to replace an overthrown dictator. Unaware that said puppet’s pockets were already lined with US dollars, and he was salivating at the prospect of opening the countries coffers to fill his offshore bank accounts…
The sound of the wipers kicked back in. The world outside his windshield was grey and rain-blurred, dotted with the smeared red flowers of brake lights.
Whoh, what the fuck was that? The feeling – the knowledge – still hadn’t left him. He was aware that this sudden ability to drill down into the core of the truth was something alien. But something real. He’d never even heard the term ‘false flag’ before. Where the hell had that come from?
Despite having stopped smoking over a year ago, he suddenly felt the need to light up.
The radio spot had changed. The subject was now finance. Tass heard the voice of a leading economist, and felt a subtle warming in his brain, another brutal incursion into the truth behind the words… He snapped off the dial.
For long seconds he savoured the silence that seemed to salve his brain. He stared out at the grey roadway, lost in thought.
By the end of the journey, his ‘little episode’ seemed like nothing but a minor fugue. A blip, an aberration. Nothing to worry about. A strange but benign phenomena like déjà vu, or that thing you do in half sleep when you imagine tripping and your leg twitches.
Drilling down to the truth? Had he really thought that crap? He needed more sleep.
SmartFlue was a shabby old industrial unit that had seen better days. Flueless boilers had eaten away profit margins, and now only the middle class fad of wood burning stoves and heaters kept them trading. Sighing, he zipped his fringed leather jacket and trudged the rainwater-slick Green Mile into work.
Brenda had called in sick, so he ended up on the trade counter. He hated the trade counter. The general public could be obnoxious. His first customer was a guy who wanted a discount. Tass explained that he’d already given the guy a standard trade 10%, what more did he want? The guy gave him a sob story about how he’d have to go to the bank and get more cash.
Tass looked him in the eye. That weird feeling of dislocation came over him again. He saw the man’s face in HD detail, each pore visible - the slight smear of dirt across his cheek, that small gob of liquid sleep at the corner of his eye.
The guy was doing a ‘foreigner’. He was overcharging the pensioner he was working for, and he had a grand, cash, in his wallet, more than enough to pay for the 350 quid’s worth of flue he was after.
Tass stood his ground, and was glad when the guy left.
The rest of the morning passed like this – his brain flashing unwanted truth across his cortex. By breaktime, he had a pounding headache.
In the canteen – or the scruffy kitchen with a chipped and scarred Formica table that dared to call itself a canteen - there was a pristine, iced birthday cake on the counter. Tass eyed it suspiciously as he passed, swallowing two aspirin, and bending to suck water straight from the tap stream. His hair trailed into the sink, soaking the tips.
“Have some cake.”
Gloria, the receptionist, stood in the doorway, gesturing towards the cake with a knife, looking like an extra from a slasher movie.
She entered the room, knife outstretched, heading for the perfect white icing. The tip broke through, crazing the surface, revealing the sponge beneath.
Tass watched the process, strangely mesmerised, absently pushing his wet hair away from his neck. He felt out of kilter, cast adrift. His newfound insight had blasted away everything that symbolised stability. If his life were that perfectly iced cake, he’d always taken for granted the fact that beneath the icing was sponge, jam, maybe cream. But what if beneath, the cake were hollow? Or worse – what if it were made of dogshit?
“How big a slice?” Gloria asked.
He forced a smile, hoping she didn’t mistake his unease for lack of sincerity.
“Just a small one. Headache,” he said, massaging his scalp.
“Poor thing.”
She passed him his slice on a chipped side plate dragged from the cupboard with more ruckus than seemed necessary. He took the proffered plate.
“Happy Birthday…”
The news showed on the ancient, cathode ray tv in the corner. As he sat, cake and newly brewed tea in hand, he reached for the remote and killed it instantly. Some Catholic archbishop was apologising for incidences of child abuse within his church. Rich, seeing as how, as a parish priest, he’d enjoyed dipping his cock in wine and asking the altar boys to partake of the blood of Christ.
As the tv screen faded to black, he cast aside his cake. Suddenly his appetite had gone.
For the rest of the afternoon, he tried to avoid people. He took a stock count of the vitreous enamel pipework at the back of the warehouse, checking off rows upon rows of plain cardboard boxes stickered with white labels. The work was monotonous, and monotony was soothing.
Bend, 45 degrees, White, five of. Check. Straight, half metre, White, 10 of. Check. Bend, 30 degrees, White. Three of. Che…
He studied the label. Bend. 30. White. He took the box off the shelf, the feeling that something was wrong strengthening when his fingers made contact with the outer packaging. Bend. 30. Black. He took out his penknife and opened the box. Peeking inside, he saw the shiny black surface of the mislabelled pipe. He sighed and placed the box back without taping it up.
So this is how you go slowly insane?
He tried to drag himself through the day without having to think, without having to know. Know that the boss didn’t like him, thought he was too opinionated, thought that long hair and tattoos were no image for an employee of any value. To know that Gloria, always crowing about her marriage and her man, was having an affair.
Around 3.30pm his phone rang. His mother, cancelling dinner for Sunday. Dad had flu, they had to go to the garden centre - when what she really meant was that she didn’t like Anne, didn’t feel she was good enough for her son, and couldn’t stand Anne’s ‘bullshit’ for another weekend. His parents never approved of anything he did, anyone he chose, but the revelation of just how much she didn’t like Anne, despite the smiles and small talk, hit him hard.
Deflated, he killed the call. He just wanted to be home. Close the door, shut out the world, relax into the welcoming arms of the woman who was his only real family and not have to think about life outside.
Eventually it was time to go. He grabbed his leather from the coat-rack, avoiding his workmates and awkward goodbyes, skirting the wall like a rat.
Out in the car park, the wet breeze whipped his hair as he hastily sealed himself into his car. The radio came on automatically, as it always did. He snapped it off before he could register a word of what was being said.
The world was still grey. Fine drizzle misted and obscured the dirty façade of the Smartflue warehouse. An almost sub-audible rumble could have been muted thunder, or a juggernaut passing over the nearby motorway.
He crawled his way home through the rush hour traffic, his mouth a compressed stress line. His brain idled like the engine of his beat up Ford. Rev. Rev. He thought of the icing on Gloria’s cake, cracking and caving under the pressure of the knife. He mulled the implications of the things his new, renegade brain told him. What if truth didn’t even exist? What if it were merely the mortar that held together the building blocks of lies?
Once home, he closed the door and, feeling like a character in a poor Hollywood comedy, leant his back against it and closed his eyes.
“Hey you,” said Anne, emerging from the living room. She eyed him curiously.
“Man, am I glad to see you. You won’t believe the day I’ve had.” he pushed himself away from the door into her arms.
“Oh dear. You’ll have to tell me all about it over dinner. Shower up. It’ll be ready in 20 minutes.” She held his shoulders, gently broke the clinch.
“Yeah, ok.” He managed a half smile for her. Always for her.
She smiled back.
“You know I love you,” he told her.
“Love you too,” she called over her shoulder, heading for the kitchen.
His world tilted. The ground was so uncertain, for a while he was unsure whether or not he had actually staggered.
He turned away, moisture blurring his vision.
The Day Everything Changed began like any other. Tass silenced his 7am alarm, dressed in his SmartFlue workclothes, and ate the quick breakfast that Anne had prepared.
Later, he’d come to muse that the transition had begun inside his brain right then - molecules fizzing like Alka Seltzer, synapses firing wildly, new connections forming, old associations fading, while on the outside he sat there, oblivious, crunching nut cornflakes like a cow chewing cud while he watched Anne drink tea.
As usual, he was running five minutes late, so everything was a last minute affair conducted at 1.5x speed, like a DVD on search. He finished eating, dropped his bowl into the sink, hastily filled it with water, grabbed his coat, headed for the door, and scooped Anne into his arms on the way.
“I’m off” he said, needlessly.
“Thought I could smell something!”
“Ha, ha.”
They kissed, and he savoured the skin contact, the fresh scent of her hair, the feel of her tea-hot breath on his cheek.
“Love you,” he told her.
“Love you, too.”
His old Ford Focus started on the first turn of the key, a small puffball of grey exhaust smoke its only concession to old age, and he pulled from his drive and joined the 8.05am commuter conveyor belt.
The weatherman on morning television had confidently told him it would be fine and dry, but as he queued to join the motorway, fat drops of rain began to peck at the windshield. Soon it was raining so heavily he had to turn up the radio over the pounding.
As usual, the motorway traffic dawdled. He hated the commuter run. Hated having to drag himself out of bed, spend the day at an unfulfilling job he loathed, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. He’d wanted to be a musician, but knew he just couldn’t play well enough, knew that Guitarist in a Rock Band just wouldn’t pay the bills. So you travel, you work, and you pretend you like it.
The Today program droned reassuringly above the squawk of the wipers and lash of the rain. He knew he was not your typical Radio 4 listener, and wondered what they would think if they knew their listening demographic extended to long-haired, over-the-hill ex-rockers who still held a secret penchant for patchouli oil.
He was half listening to the radio commentary. “Let’s see who’s dead and dying, shot and shooting,” as his mate Kensie would say every time the news was announced.
A Middle Eastern nation had opened fire on a US plane in its airspace. This was the last straw for the USA, as some terrorist organisation or another was being financed by the government of the country, and America was seeking a UN resolution to take retaliatory action. Britain would seek ratification from the House to join their American partners in their ‘endeavour for justice’.
And that’s when it happened. The Defence Secretary was explaining about terrorist regimes and the need to secure world peace and… and the noise of the rain and the wipers and the static of his words blurred, and Tass’ mind seemed to melt and re-solidify, and suddenly he KNEW the truth. Not just intuited, not just suspected because of timbre of voice or innate antipathy towards the Defence Secretary’s politics. He KNEW the truth with a cold, diamond certainty.
This was a ‘false flag’ operation. Western Special Ops teams on the ground had bankrolled a bunch of wannabe insurgents, supplied them with weapons and US flight plans. The plane had been deliberately set on course that day, the crew unaware that they’d just become pawns in a plot to garner support for an invasion of the country. Unaware that contracts had already been drawn up, waiting for Western companies to sign on the dotted line for oil and mineral rights. For lucrative construction contracts to rebuild what their countrymen would destroy. Unaware that a corrupt puppet leader had already been picked to replace an overthrown dictator. Unaware that said puppet’s pockets were already lined with US dollars, and he was salivating at the prospect of opening the countries coffers to fill his offshore bank accounts…
The sound of the wipers kicked back in. The world outside his windshield was grey and rain-blurred, dotted with the smeared red flowers of brake lights.
Whoh, what the fuck was that? The feeling – the knowledge – still hadn’t left him. He was aware that this sudden ability to drill down into the core of the truth was something alien. But something real. He’d never even heard the term ‘false flag’ before. Where the hell had that come from?
Despite having stopped smoking over a year ago, he suddenly felt the need to light up.
The radio spot had changed. The subject was now finance. Tass heard the voice of a leading economist, and felt a subtle warming in his brain, another brutal incursion into the truth behind the words… He snapped off the dial.
For long seconds he savoured the silence that seemed to salve his brain. He stared out at the grey roadway, lost in thought.
By the end of the journey, his ‘little episode’ seemed like nothing but a minor fugue. A blip, an aberration. Nothing to worry about. A strange but benign phenomena like déjà vu, or that thing you do in half sleep when you imagine tripping and your leg twitches.
Drilling down to the truth? Had he really thought that crap? He needed more sleep.
SmartFlue was a shabby old industrial unit that had seen better days. Flueless boilers had eaten away profit margins, and now only the middle class fad of wood burning stoves and heaters kept them trading. Sighing, he zipped his fringed leather jacket and trudged the rainwater-slick Green Mile into work.
Brenda had called in sick, so he ended up on the trade counter. He hated the trade counter. The general public could be obnoxious. His first customer was a guy who wanted a discount. Tass explained that he’d already given the guy a standard trade 10%, what more did he want? The guy gave him a sob story about how he’d have to go to the bank and get more cash.
Tass looked him in the eye. That weird feeling of dislocation came over him again. He saw the man’s face in HD detail, each pore visible - the slight smear of dirt across his cheek, that small gob of liquid sleep at the corner of his eye.
The guy was doing a ‘foreigner’. He was overcharging the pensioner he was working for, and he had a grand, cash, in his wallet, more than enough to pay for the 350 quid’s worth of flue he was after.
Tass stood his ground, and was glad when the guy left.
The rest of the morning passed like this – his brain flashing unwanted truth across his cortex. By breaktime, he had a pounding headache.
In the canteen – or the scruffy kitchen with a chipped and scarred Formica table that dared to call itself a canteen - there was a pristine, iced birthday cake on the counter. Tass eyed it suspiciously as he passed, swallowing two aspirin, and bending to suck water straight from the tap stream. His hair trailed into the sink, soaking the tips.
“Have some cake.”
Gloria, the receptionist, stood in the doorway, gesturing towards the cake with a knife, looking like an extra from a slasher movie.
She entered the room, knife outstretched, heading for the perfect white icing. The tip broke through, crazing the surface, revealing the sponge beneath.
Tass watched the process, strangely mesmerised, absently pushing his wet hair away from his neck. He felt out of kilter, cast adrift. His newfound insight had blasted away everything that symbolised stability. If his life were that perfectly iced cake, he’d always taken for granted the fact that beneath the icing was sponge, jam, maybe cream. But what if beneath, the cake were hollow? Or worse – what if it were made of dogshit?
“How big a slice?” Gloria asked.
He forced a smile, hoping she didn’t mistake his unease for lack of sincerity.
“Just a small one. Headache,” he said, massaging his scalp.
“Poor thing.”
She passed him his slice on a chipped side plate dragged from the cupboard with more ruckus than seemed necessary. He took the proffered plate.
“Happy Birthday…”
The news showed on the ancient, cathode ray tv in the corner. As he sat, cake and newly brewed tea in hand, he reached for the remote and killed it instantly. Some Catholic archbishop was apologising for incidences of child abuse within his church. Rich, seeing as how, as a parish priest, he’d enjoyed dipping his cock in wine and asking the altar boys to partake of the blood of Christ.
As the tv screen faded to black, he cast aside his cake. Suddenly his appetite had gone.
For the rest of the afternoon, he tried to avoid people. He took a stock count of the vitreous enamel pipework at the back of the warehouse, checking off rows upon rows of plain cardboard boxes stickered with white labels. The work was monotonous, and monotony was soothing.
Bend, 45 degrees, White, five of. Check. Straight, half metre, White, 10 of. Check. Bend, 30 degrees, White. Three of. Che…
He studied the label. Bend. 30. White. He took the box off the shelf, the feeling that something was wrong strengthening when his fingers made contact with the outer packaging. Bend. 30. Black. He took out his penknife and opened the box. Peeking inside, he saw the shiny black surface of the mislabelled pipe. He sighed and placed the box back without taping it up.
So this is how you go slowly insane?
He tried to drag himself through the day without having to think, without having to know. Know that the boss didn’t like him, thought he was too opinionated, thought that long hair and tattoos were no image for an employee of any value. To know that Gloria, always crowing about her marriage and her man, was having an affair.
Around 3.30pm his phone rang. His mother, cancelling dinner for Sunday. Dad had flu, they had to go to the garden centre - when what she really meant was that she didn’t like Anne, didn’t feel she was good enough for her son, and couldn’t stand Anne’s ‘bullshit’ for another weekend. His parents never approved of anything he did, anyone he chose, but the revelation of just how much she didn’t like Anne, despite the smiles and small talk, hit him hard.
Deflated, he killed the call. He just wanted to be home. Close the door, shut out the world, relax into the welcoming arms of the woman who was his only real family and not have to think about life outside.
Eventually it was time to go. He grabbed his leather from the coat-rack, avoiding his workmates and awkward goodbyes, skirting the wall like a rat.
Out in the car park, the wet breeze whipped his hair as he hastily sealed himself into his car. The radio came on automatically, as it always did. He snapped it off before he could register a word of what was being said.
The world was still grey. Fine drizzle misted and obscured the dirty façade of the Smartflue warehouse. An almost sub-audible rumble could have been muted thunder, or a juggernaut passing over the nearby motorway.
He crawled his way home through the rush hour traffic, his mouth a compressed stress line. His brain idled like the engine of his beat up Ford. Rev. Rev. He thought of the icing on Gloria’s cake, cracking and caving under the pressure of the knife. He mulled the implications of the things his new, renegade brain told him. What if truth didn’t even exist? What if it were merely the mortar that held together the building blocks of lies?
Once home, he closed the door and, feeling like a character in a poor Hollywood comedy, leant his back against it and closed his eyes.
“Hey you,” said Anne, emerging from the living room. She eyed him curiously.
“Man, am I glad to see you. You won’t believe the day I’ve had.” he pushed himself away from the door into her arms.
“Oh dear. You’ll have to tell me all about it over dinner. Shower up. It’ll be ready in 20 minutes.” She held his shoulders, gently broke the clinch.
“Yeah, ok.” He managed a half smile for her. Always for her.
She smiled back.
“You know I love you,” he told her.
“Love you too,” she called over her shoulder, heading for the kitchen.
His world tilted. The ground was so uncertain, for a while he was unsure whether or not he had actually staggered.
He turned away, moisture blurring his vision.