Instruction Manual For Swallowing by Adam Marek

Author:Adam Marek [Marek, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781905583041
Publisher: Comma Press
Published: 2016-03-14T23:00:00+00:00

The next night, George put a pillow on the windowsill. It was not wide enough for him to get comfortable, but he was enjoying watching raindrops rolling down the pane, making fireworks of the lights in his neighbours’ windows.

He rolled through his list of music, which had increased, as he’d spent a couple of hours late that afternoon downloading the songs he’d most longed for. There were songs that he’d heard on car journeys with his parents, songs he’d listened to on a giant 80s Walkman, trudging through leaves on the way home from school. There were songs used on adverts, which he’d never been able to find in record shops, songs he’d listened to, drunk and morose, at 17, feeling sorry for himself because he was too ugly and self-conscious to date someone like Stacy Kellegan. All these songs, touchstones to transport him to moments from his past, he’d harvested from the Internet in just a couple of hours, and now they were preserved in a playlist. A musical history of George in forty-seven minutes.

The light from the iPod made a crisp blue shape in the window. He gazed into it, letting his eyes drift out of focus, thinking about–

The cat leapt at the window, wet and wide-eyed, and George leapt off the sill, heart thumping, his hands shaking and unable to catch the iPod as it fell and tugged the headphones from his ears.

While he retrieved his iPod from the floor, he struggled to control his breath. Inside him, the blood pumped hard against the underside of his skin. ‘Bloody cat,’ he said. ‘Piss off.’

The cat opened its mouth, showing teeth and a pink tongue, but the rain drowned the sound of its meow. George made shooing gestures with his hands.

‘Go home,’ George said. ‘You’re not coming in here soaking wet.’

He thought to himself that he would let the cat in if it stayed there another fifteen seconds. But the cat jumped down onto the flat roof of his kitchen below, and scampered away.

George put on brushed cotton pyjamas and climbed under his duvet. It was late, and he had work in the morning, but he was still feeling unsettled. He put on his earphones and listened to the music he had downloaded earlier. With his head, he made a tent beneath the duvet, illuminated by the screen of his iPod. The music made him feel solid, like he’d made a connection with something inside himself that had remained constant throughout his life, unchanging despite age, fashions and shifts of geographical location. The tent grew warm with his breath and his memories.

His arm escaped from beneath the duvet and rooted, trunk-like, through his bag for his mobile phone. When he located it, he pulled it into the tent and dialled Jess’s number.

‘Hi George,’ she said as she picked up the phone.

‘How, oh have you got–’

‘I’ve got your number on my list.’

‘I was just wondering if you want to come round again tomorrow night?’

‘Tomorrow? I er, hang on a

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