by Martin Anton Smith
Joe thought of a few lines of prose to describe how he felt – he wrote the following:
“A one-inch-tall man who lives inside a ten-inch-tall glass jar, shouldn’t be surprised when no matter how fast he moves or jumps – that he remains inside the glass jar. But even worse off, are the many many people next to him, that all insist the glass isn’t even there.”
He was happy with that description. He often wrote a few words down as an escape from his far-too- ordinary life.
He was now in early middle aged, & he had had it up to the neck with everything – a large subset of that being the townsfolk.
Specifically, he was sick of their culture of avoidance. But really it was more passively violent than that -it was more like a pandemic of avoidance.
In this two-bit-town – Just like the Roman empire times – these plagues came in waves or differing intensities.
There was the plague of dilapidated housing. The plague of unemployment. There was the plague of depression. There was the plague of self-harm. There was the plague of alcoholism. There were many other subsidiary plagues to all the above.
These plagues were never routed out they were only papered over, leading to an environment where the townsfolk had to emotionally & financially fend for themselves.
Joe was more than sick of all this general ‘sweeping under the carpet’ – he was especially annoyed at the biggest singular problem – which was an idea, an idea that was replicated to all others in town – a mind virus if you will.
This mind virus Joe was always thinking of, was about the fact they all lived behind a giant dome of inpenitrable glass. It was like a giant upturned glass tumbler, plopped over the small town. No one could get in or out – they were trapped. And everyone in the town avoided questioning anything about it – this is becasue to them it didn’t exist.
This created a permanent mental blindness. Of this matter the townsfolk had blocked it out entirely. The realisation of this real-life domed prison wasn’t even a concept that existed their conscious minds.
You see – the brain is a funny thing – anything that’s really really bad the brain will decide to hide from you. It will hide the badness deeply in the subconsciousness & will even create hallucinations to stop any contradictions appearing in your conscious thoughts. These hallucinations weave a more psychologically palatable fairy tale.
But for some unknown reason Joe wasn’t at that same ‘advanced mental trickery’ stage that all the townsfolk suffered from – he could still actually see the glass, the domed prison that was all their lives.
After stewing away thinking about all this, he put down his pen & paper & told himself tomorrow morning he would march to the glass boundary & make a big scene – big enough to attract a lot of attention. He’d attract a swarm of interested townsfolk. He’d act to try to snap the townsfolk out of their collective mind virus.
He didn’t sleep soundly that night – he tossed turned & even had to get up to drink a few beers. While he was up, he fought with his own mind – one moment he was steadfast – the next a quitter. After three beers he was finally groggy enough to fall asleep on his couch.
He awoke fully clothed & with an empty half-crushed beer can still in his hand. He went to the empty cupboards & found some half mouldy bread slices – he stuffed one in his mouth. Feeling parched, he went to the sink. He ran the water & drank straight from the tap. He did that all the time.
He saw a priorly forgotten old & shrivelled apple on the outskirts of the kitchen bench – he gulped that down whole, including the stalk. He put the heavily father-time marked metal kettle on the stove – it soon whistled its off-key half broken tune.
He poured himself a black instant coffee & sipped away at it while staring out his kitchen window. The thoughts began.
“What the hell am I doing with my life? How did I get into this crappy situation?”
“Why can’t I just be a zombie just like everyone else?”
“Why can’t I just pretend to be happy just like everyone else?”
“What the hell happened to the last twenty-five years?”
“Things were going great till I was twenty-five – then the world attacked with its full fury”
“Was it just that personal failings slowly accumulated as I aged? – or was I just blind & insulated to the worlds innate we-will-get-you-in-the-end-prison-ness?”
Joe had been asking himself the exact same questions at the same time, while having black coffee & staring out the window every morning for the last fifteen years. He finished the last half of his coffee with a final slug.
But the last thought this time was more original – he knew much of his & the other townsfolk’s reality of being stuck in a rut was due to the osmosis of living in this town. he resolved to change things, He’d ‘shake up the box’ with the hope taht a new pattern would emerge. He would do it, he would be strong & try to make something happen to pry the towns long super-glued eyes open.
He marched out of the door, leaving it open as he left…his stride was that of a new first day military recruit – his clothes were of course displaying the wear & tear of his being a long term workman.
He walked for the full fifteen minutes to a section of the towns glass boundary. Sweat was running off his brow & the other bodily sweat was making his top visibly wet.
The townsfolk had noticed his stridency & focus and a small mob was now trailing behind him – following him in avid interest but being sure to be a few safe feet behind. The all muttered amoung themselves their separate but also related theories.
“He’s been drinking again while on his anti-depressants”.
“Nah…He’s broken up with his on-again-off-again mrs Joanie Phelps again”.
“You fools – He’s finally decided he can’t handle that shitty ditch digging job of his”.
“You know it could be all of the above you know”, said the town know-it-all.
Joe reached the destination put his hands up on the dome forward & part outstretched – like someone would on a large lodge window that was overseeing a fantastic wooded view. He half turned his head & shouted at the crowd mobbed together behind him.
They crowd of townsfolk stood like small children who were awaiting the instructions from a bad -tempered & frazzled school teacher.
Joe spoke up, his voice part quivering yet firm & with a certain robustness.
“Hey you idiots can’t you see the glass imprisoning us – the glass that’s been here forever?”
This verbal attack put more than a few of the mobs backs up.
“That’s just a gravitational effect you fool – there’s nothing the matter”.
Said one of the much older males.
The others all chimed in in agreement with jeers aplenty – someone even threw a shoe that missed the mark then bounced off the dome glass wall & hit the turf.
But Joe – the man who could now see it all in perfect clarity, decided to continue to prove his point – he wouldn’t back down despite the crowds now increasing excitement, animation & abuse.
The crowd didn’t affect sway his emotions one iota – he had always been an outsider, so what difference did it matter now? He had taken plenty of abuse & even the odd punch in the back of the head.
He doubled down on his message – this time using a physical persuasion technique. He started smashing his head rhythmically against the glass.
BANG…..BANG…..BANG…………….BANG…..BANG…..BANG………….BANG…..BANG…..BANG
So much was his vigour that blood started to flow down the glass. Of course, he & everyone else knew the six-inch tempered glass dome was never going to break. The bloody trickles actually made the crowds rising anger dissipate away – they now saw him as a madman & their anger morphed into fearfulness.
They again whispered & muttered amoung themselves.
“My word, that’s some might gravity contortions we’re having today”,
Said one lady, those in the crowd arounf her simply nodded in serious agreement.
Again the crowd chimed in their reality avoidant themed theories.
“Yeees yes, isn’t it terrible what weather conditions & condensed gravity can do when combined”.
“This effect is well documented in the library – the same thing happend back last century in ’29 & ’87”
One oddball said something that even sent a light chuckle aroung the group.
“I knew we would see some bad gravity field effects this year, I just knew it when my onions came up so late – not to mention me pumpkins were way way small!”
Joe heard all their typical & predictable explaining away of the smack-you-in-your-face-crap-reality before them. This time Joe felt the anger bubble inside as more gashes & blood spurts happened.
“Can’t you see that my fucking heads bleeding because it’s hitting this all-encompassing-monolithic-full-surround glass wall!!??….”
He continued.
“You guys are fucking addicted to your own fucking prisons!”
“So much so you deny it’s patently obvious reality!!!”
“Your tiny brains have tuned it out for decade upon decade!!!”
“This is not a fucking localised weather ot gravity effect!!!
“Can’t you see I’m bleeding because of these domed prison walls…”
“How can we ever escape this drudgery if we never admit to our shackles?”
He said in staccato fashion:
“We Are Trapped Behind A Massive Fucking Glass Jar That We Can’t Escape From,
It Traps Us In A Fifteen Minute Walking Radius, So We Have No Fucking Resources,
We Live Shit Lives As A Consequence And You All Have Brains That Have Buried This Fact,
Because If Your Brains Didn’t Do It You Might End It All…I’m Sick Of This!! Can’t You All See We Need to Escape!!!??
Every Last One Of Us….Why Are Will Agreeing To a Shit Life In A Shit Prison Not Of Our Design!!!???”
They all heard his words clearly – but Joe’s theatrics had garnered little support.
Joe’s idea of igniting a successful rebellion was over before it began.
He would be no latter-day Che Guevara.
The townsfolk having now seen more than enough of Joe’s breakdown, all made their particular excuses to leave.
“Uh…Look Joe I’ve gotta go & fix that fence I backed into the other day…good luck”.
“Sorry Joe – I gotta organise a babysitter for tonight, see ya later”.
“Look man, I have to go cook dinner my in laws are coming over, I’m sure you’ll be ok”.
“Joe – I gotta run, that old retro 1980’s show ‘unsolved mysteries is on the tablet, take care”.
“Joe my old hydro-car isn’t electrolyzing the water properly see ya later when you’re better”.
Joe heard all the excuses one by one & watched them all disappear off into the distance in single file.
They walked away just like normal – in stiffened fashion, all avoiding each other’s gazes, heads down & shoulders slumped. But inside themselves, Joe had actually had some effect on them. They were all worried one of them would crack & might take Joe’s uprising for what it actually was – the sudden appearance of the once well-hidden truth.
Each of them had moments where they saw this epiphany ever so briefly, but their well-controlled brains were working well against them.
As soon as the kernel of truth of the reality of their mass prison lives became apparent, it was again quickly shoved back into the realms of their unconsciousness’s. None of them could yet handle properly facing the reality that Joe was talking about.
The Truth was simply too damaging to address on a cellular level. They were now all out of sight, having gone back to their normal, simple, repressed lives.
Now he was fully alone, Joe slumped his head down along the glass in defeat. His bloody head making the characteristic ‘squeaky glass’ sound as he moved it around.
Having lost an the non-serious but still substantial amount of blood, he now felt woozy. Joe started to slump down the glass, hit the ground & then nodded off.
Seemingly days later he woke up. He looked at the date on his holo-watch – the green numbers floating above his wrist confirmed 48 hours had elapsed.
Now Joe then noticed he was now somehow on the other side of the glass. His circumstance reminded him of something he had read about in a physics book – the quantum tunneling effect. This is where a particle suddenly finds itself on the other side of a quantum well – even though it doesn’t theoretically have the energy to traverse it.
He looked at all the people on the other side going about their business, he saw the stooped shoulders, the lined faces, he saw the permanent downward trending mouths, he saw the clothes that were threadbare & stained, he saw the depressed gaits – the walking that almost screamed “get me outa here”.
he noticed that one man was seemingly moving a big mound of dirt with a digger to one end of a paddock, then he would move it back to the original spot, over & over again.
He got all his courage together & turned & faced the other side – the outside-the-dome side – he’d finally see & maybe feel what was out there.
He saw blackness, total blackness. It was as if this part of reality was “as yet unprogrammed”.
He took a step – suddenly a grey garden-like stepping stone emerged. He even felt a slight breeze on his face. He took another step & more stones appeaed & some light crept into view – some new reality was slowly generating itself as he moved ever more forward.
Just as he was feeling like he was about to walk to freedom…Joe started to have typical ‘small town’ doubts.
“What if in this new place I end up starving! – I mean my life back there is bad but I can at least eat!”
“Man O Man!….What if I’m going towards Hell! – maybe my town back behind the glass is actually a paradise – maybe paradise is still kinda unavoidably shitty!”
“Maybe I’m the idiot & the townsfolk are right – maybe they are just rightly avoiding Hell in the most simple & direct way – via positively functional delusions!”
Then he thought of the other possibility.
“Maybe I’m on the pathway to Heaven – maybe I’ll be going to the real paradise – maybe back there is the real Hell & now I’m simply escaping to where I was always supposed to be“.
He also had a whole bunch of somewhat similar but much less likely thoughts interrogating him. Joe now tried to think straight. He knew he had to make a tough decision – a gamble if you will. Should he go forward to a possible hell or heaven or conversely go back to a possible heaven or hell?
This mightily big decision was all too much for him – like the pro sportsman who is picked far too early to national prominence – he panicked lost all of his composure.
As he crawled backwards, back toward home, all the prior things he saw disappeared – they were replaced with total darkness & he could not feel any gravity. In fact, it felt like he was in space, he was like a Space Man who had become untethered from his craft. He was moving his arms & legs but there only blackness.
He kept his crawling going, hoping that something would change – time seemed to disappear.
“I guess this is what eternity feels like” he thought.
Joe was now feeling very stupid fearful & totally helpless. The only thing was to keep up his crawling motions & somehow hope he’d somehow pop back home like one of those quantum tunneling electron he read about recently.
he couldn’t stop the negative speak.
“I’m a coward..I’m such a coward…I’m a faithless coward & I can’t change it for nothing or for no one”
“I thought I was a big shot – I thought I was like General Patton & would save the day for my towns troops – I thought I had courage, so much for that – bang goes that theory!”
Then out of nowhere he heard a clunk – he was back inside the domed glass hitting his bloody head.
He had been somehow squeezed back inside the glass jar prison that was his usual life, back to the moment before he blacked out.
“Thank god I’m back” he thought to himself.
He stopped smacking his head against the glass & mentally dusted himself off. He turned around & looked up at the view in front of his bleary sore eyes. Everything about the town & townsfolk going about their days looked totally totally bog standard normal.
Joe convinced himself to steadfastly to give up his immature wild thought of a better life outside the town. He’d go about his business, as if none of this had happened. He’d think of it all as ‘a psychotic break’ – he now wasn’t so sure that it wasn’t. Maybe he’d simply ‘lost his mind’ for the last forty-eight hours.
He resolved to act just as everyone else in the town was acting & had always acted. After all – everything happens for a reason, he told himself.
It turned a few locals had seen him pop back into the town side of the glass dome. Not that it mattered. Not one of them was stupid enough raise the matter of what had happened to Joe or why – their brains simply didn’t allow it – it was an automatic process of survival.
Joe had thought he was smarter than the locals – but he now new differently – he felt like a hack, a fraud.
Yes, Joe knew the truth of his & everyone else’s prison cell, but even when he was about to be totally free of it – he lacked the courage to truly embrace the moment & soldier on.
He would forever know that he had literally come ‘crawling back’ to this two-bit economically depressed town. For that he felt like a coward for the rest of his life & as the years passed by, that feeling only intensified. On top of that was the burden of ‘not knowing’.
Joe had the pitt of his stomach pain of forever not knowing what would have happened if he’d had more courage to continue into the unknown outside the domed glass town prison walls.
One thought would now be his endless companion.
“Was I such an idiot that I rejected the chance for eternal happiness, beauty & endless love?”
One day years later as he was digging a ditch under the scorching sun, he pulled his gnarled overworked body to the side of the ditch & gazed upwards through his sweat filled eyes.
He saw a commotion outside near the town boundary – a mob of townsfolk was watching someone do something.
Some guy was bashing his head seemingly against nothing.
He thought to himself.
“Man looks like there is another localised gravitational contortion field a-brewing – we had that back in ’29 & ’87. I’m sure I read about it in the library way back when”.
Joe then ignored it & continued digging.
THE END
Anton Martin Smith Writer 