Nod by Adrian Barnes

Author:Adrian Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

DAY 9

PANJANDRUM

A village boss, who imagines himself the ‘Magnus Apollo’ of his neighbours.

Dear Diary, So what’s the deal with all this dear diarizing?

In order to write or, more precisely, to be sane and write, one needs either an audience or at least some idea of an audience; there’s a fine line between ‘writing’ and babbling to oneself. You can’t just write to no one—even if no one ends up reading what you’ve written. And with the world about to end and everyone I’ve ever known either dead or done for, that’s a problematic caveat as I sit here scribbling away on this pad of yellow paper. I tell myself writing helps keep me awake, keeps me from drifting off permanently into the golden light, but that’s not really the whole truth.

So who are you, invisible reader? You’re not one of the Awakened, and I don’t think you’re the kids in the park, either. Neither of those groups strike me as particularly bookish. Are you one of my fellow Sleeper adults? But surely I’m not spilling any beans here that haven’t already been pelted down on their heads by the million. They’ve had the dream. They’ve lost everything and everyone. They don’t need this little memoir. Besides, they won’t be hanging around Nod much longer either: their dreams will swallow them up whole about the same time the Awakened pass on out of this world. So who are you?

Maybe you’re alien archaeologists and you’ve discovered this yellow tablet a thousand years from now. Maybe you’re a diary-snooping God. But then again, maybe you’re the truth, and you just need some figuring out.

* * *

Shortly before dawn, Charles’s red-veined hands jerked me from my Dream and back into Time. Time for our chat with the loping, oozing citizenry of Nod. Time for my debut.

While I gnawed at a rancid bagel that tasted for all the world just like a rancid bagel (one retrieved from a dumpster and given a good polish by a sticky shirt sleeve), Charles fussed about where the speech was going to happen.

‘We could have it in the gym, but there are only fifty of us and it might look empty. We could have it outside, but who knows what could happen out there.’

His school marm-ish anxieties were almost endearing. You could tell he wanted to ask my opinion but was worried I’d mock him. In the end he decided we would speak on the front steps of the school. There, we’d be within earshot of the street and available to the walking wounded, but, if we found ourselves under sudden siege, we’d be able to retreat and barricade the double doors behind us.

* * *

Outside, a grey day. The faithful were garbled together, waiting and restless on the lawn. A fight erupted at the back of the crowd as two burly, bearded guys set about ripping one another new assholes—literally from the sound of it—while everyone else either pretended nothing was happening or egged on the combatants. I watched, Charles watched, we all watched.

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