"You’d blackmail me with drowning?"

5

What Mean Father?

HOB WENT TO THE SURFACE for rope and then he came down again and worked in silence. He ignored the pleading and roaring which alternated from beneath. He hauled the Colman lamp up and hung it from its peg. He untied the bucket and tied on the new length of rope and he tied off the other end to the line on the winch. He flung the bucket down the hole and left the rope to play out how it would and started to climb out again.

That be better, said Jack Delfan, when the vessel splashed down next to him. He felt about in the dimness and found the bucket and reached up and took hold of the rope. He took a good breath and he hauled himself up hand over hand until he was nearly clear of the water. He hung there a moment and felt about with his foot and after a little cursing he got that appendage into the bucket so that it bore his weight.

He hung and shivered and rotated slowly. He saw in the dim glow that filtered down that the lake was longer than it was wide and that the cavern containing it might lead on to others for there were places at either end where he could discern no concluding wall. So the patriarch revolved in one direction and then another and then he yelled for Hob and got no answer. He tried, as form of communication, to jump a little on the rope. A rock came down in answer and it struck him on the skull and came close to concussing him. When he had finished howling he felt a slick wetness flowing over his forehead and into his right eye. He tasted it on a fingertip to confirm that it was blood.

Hob, he bellowed, haul me out for the sake of the living world.

            But his cries brought no reply and when finally the rope jerked upwards it came as a surprise to him and he nearly lost his grip and then he began to rise and spin more freely. The rope was snagging on the rough surfaces of the hole and biting into the rock and Delfan began to fear that it would work its way into a crevice and jam or fray to parting. And indeed as he rose to the hole he could see that the rope was close to giving way and then the upward motion stopped.

Hob, he yelled. Hobby? Hobblet?

There was no sign, no sound, from above. Delfan stood tall and reached through and took the rope above the place where it was about to part and pulled himself up and as he did so a slab of rock gave way and he nearly followed it into the waters.

Jack Delfan’s mood was in no way improved by the time he emerged from the shaft to see Hob squatting in the shade cast by the trunk of the rapture tree. Delfan stood bent with hands on knees and reloaded stores of breath and then he straightened to point a finger at the boy.

You’d blackmail me with drowning?

You only listen when you need help.

You bastard!

Whose fault be that?

Delfan pacing towards the boy. Searching for a line of enquiry less open to blunt rebuttal.

Blackmail. Where learnt you that?

Hob standing quick and turning to climb the trunk.

From you. Like everything else.

The boy leaping for the branch the Qhilika hangs from, scrabbling upwards as Delfan reaches for an ankle. Which is pulled out of reach. A desperate game developing. Hob dropping a foot in and out of range. Delfan growling below as he jumps to grasp it. And does. Hob kicking savagely so that his heel impacts the top of Delfan’s nose. A new stream of blood issuing from his left nostril to compliment the dried matter above his right eyebrow. The patriarch a fearsome sight now. In tattered trousers and rope belt like a castaway. A brown and hairy torso topped by a battered cranium. He stands with feet apart and knees bent and ready to spring. His bloodied head canted back on its vertebrae.

Hob stares down and Delfan roars and leaps and grasps the branch. Hob skipping up branches above. Like a jack tar on familiar rigging in a book from a world long gone. Delfan grunting as he gains the lowest branch and stands and looks up and commences climbing. So that he forces Hob higher and finally there is no branch that will take Hob's weight and he lowers his groin to the one he stands on and begins to shift along it. And turn with much trouble to face his father. Who advances out towards him by the same method of hands and arse.

Why won’t you listen to me?

You don’t listen to me, says Hob.

I am your father!

What means that?

What means that?

Delfan leaning forward as the boy edges back, lunging to take him with one hand by the shoulder. Father and son precariously joined on their perch.

I’ll show you what means that.

He releases the boy’s shoulder and draws back his hand to form a fist and launch a straight right which Hob evades with an elegant and instinctive sway of the head. Delfan toppling forward to takes his son about the chest and hug him like a bear. As they begin to turn together on the axis of the branch. Coming to a halt entirely inverted. Hob wriggling in the patriarch’s embrace. Their four thighs and bended knees losing their precarious grip on the bark. And they tumble. Locked together and grunting from branch to branch. Landing in the sand with Delfan below and Hob clasped yet to his bosom.

            Hooooo, said the Patriarch. Hooooooooo.

His breath was entirely knocked from him and he was uncertain if he would ever be able to recover it.

Hoooooo, he said. Hooooooooooooooo.

Hob had the best of the landing and it was he, as he freed himself from his father’s embrace, who saw the Gcwi.

"Cold as a polar bear's arse."

4

The World Below

           

THERE WAS A FACTION in the unruly parliaments of Jack Delfan’s head which hoped to be the one to make the discovery, but nine years would pass before such a wish had chance of fulfillment and it was Hob who was digging in the depths with only the hiss of the Colman paraffin pressure lamp for company when the break through occurred. Hard years under his belt and a wisp of beard about his chin as he turned with loaded shovel in hand and felt the rock give way beneath his right foot so that he fell forward onto his face. And cursed. He lay there for a moment. Rose gingerly onto hands and knees and turned to see what had occurred. There was a hole in the floor of the shaft.

            Hob stood gingerly and he went to the rope pull and tugged five times for emergency. He looked about and then he went to the chest of tools and opened it and took out a ball of twine. He lifted the pressure lamp from the iron peg where it hung on the wall and he placed it on the ground. He tied the end of the twine to its handle and freed a length as long as himself and left that coiled on the ground and he tied off the twine to the peg. He slithered forward on his belly with the lamp in one hand. He reached forward and lowered the light into the void. He did not hear his father descending. Far below him a pebble dropped into water and the ripples spread and the sound of it sang as if in a cathedral designed to take a singer’s voice and amplify it and its accompanying harmonies in praise of god or whatever means the good.

            Holy shit, whispered Hob.

            There was a scrabbling above and then the patriarch’s head came down to join him.

            My cock’s a Scottish kipper, said Jack Delfan. Pickled in brine.

            Yes, father.

            Tie the bucket off on a length of rope and bring it to me, boy.

            To do what with?

            I’m going to bring up some water, Hobby. I want to taste it.

            This rock be brittle, father.

            So?

            You will fall down there.

            Delfan grabbing the twine that holds the lamp. Roaring like a wounded beast.

            Bucket and rope, boy.

            Hob nodded slowly three times and then he was gone. Delfan could hear, he could feel, the vast spaces of the cavern. He inhaled the clean holy scent of water on rock. Jack Delfan murmuring in awe.

            This would make Abraham himself quake at the knees.

            Delfan flinging out an arm as a layer of shale gives way beneath his chest, three feet of twine going through his fingers before he arrests the fall of the lamp.

            Hob?

            What?

            Where the hell is the bucket?

            Why don’t you say please?

            Jack Delfan braced and disbelieving where he hangs over the abyss. A shower of rock and sand dropping to splash and ripple and echo in the world below.

            How thy mighty scrawn are fleshed. How are thy hormones riz. Get your prime beef hence and bring me the bucket. With a rope on it. We’ve found water, boy!

            You will fall in, father.

            Delfan listening unbelieving to the mutinous voice from above.

            Bring me the bucket!

            Rock giving way beneath Jack Delfan’s chest. The lamp dropping to the end of its line. Its light reaching out towards new mysteries. And Delfan falling past it to plunge into waters he so desired to taste. He comes to the surface with much thrashing of limbs. His voice biblical in the resonant arena.

            Cold as a polar bear’s arse! Hob? Hobby?

            He sees, peering into the light of the lamp, his son’s face appear above.

            Don’t stare at me as if I was a monster in a zoo. Drop me a rope. Drop the bucket down and I’ll put a foot in it, and you can winch me up.

            Why can’t you say please?

            Jack Delfan an astonished traveller upon dark and uncharted waters.

            Hob? Hobby, me boy? You’ll lose me of the drowning!

            Why can’t you say please?

            This is not a time for philosophical discussion!

            Why don’t you say please?

            I could truly kill you for this!

            For what have I dug for sixteen years?

            I said, not now.

            Drown then.

            I will kill you!

            How?

            Delfan treading water a little. Strategizing. Speaking in a tone of gentleness and reason.

            Hobblet, fruit of my loins. Speak true what troubles you now.

Hob’s eyes careful as he stares down. The wielding of power a strange sensation to the boy. The father’s voice coming plaintive from the chilly dark.

Speak true and I will do what I can to answer it.

You promise?

            I promise.

            Hob considering his options, searching for some kind of leverage on this situation.

            You be my father.

            Yes.

            In the book. When they go to Bethlehem.

            Yes?

            And the child is born in the stables.

            Yes?

            Mary be his mother.

            Yes, Hob, that is what the book says. Mary be his mother.

            Who be my mother?

            Jack Delfan emitting the wail of a saint betrayed.

            You hooking swine!

            What is her name? I want to know her name. You said I must speak true what troubles me.

            Delfan's legs pumping furiously. As if the liquid was a ladder he could climb to throttle his offspring.

            Hob, bring me rope or I will curse you and haunt your life in all the corners of the tired world. I will walk with you in foul spirit and turn your every waking minute into nightmare I swear on the book I will.

            Hob’s face hanging far above, sliding out of sight. Delfan shivering and circling by means of an energetic doggy paddle.

            Hob? He calls. Hobby, me boy? Hobblet?

#literary #dystopian

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Boom Times for the New Dystopians

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

The Excavations, Chapter 3 - Rules

THE EARTH PASSED seven times in its ellipse about the sun and Hob grew taller than the spades his father taught him to dig with. A day that started much like any other found the boy at midday ten meters down the shaft and shovelling. He was as lean and brown as beef jerky and he scraped at the earth and rock until he formed a pile and then he forced the iron blade beneath it and lifted it up and deposited it in the bucket next to him and the receptacle was nearly full. He shovelled in a last pile, to save him from parental quibble, and he reached for the rope–pull that hung down the side of the shaft and tugged upon it three times.

            Up above the slave bell tolled on the poles and piping of Delfan’s mineshaft headgear and the prophet came hurrying across the sand. He placed his feet for purchase and grasped at the handle of the winch and grumbled as the bell tolled again.

            Impatient little tadpole.

            Delfan sweating and winding and cursing until the bucket comes up into the mouth of the shaft. He takes the rope and swings the vessel out across the sand and tips it onto the pile of rubble. He turns back to the shaft and sees his son emerging up the rope ladder and scrambling out and scraping his knee.

            Shit, says Hob.

            He sits on the sand and he bends forward to suck on the wound.

            Watch your breadhole, says the father.

            Hob lifting an aggrieved head.

            I talk as I’ve been taught.

            Jack Delfan staring at his son.

            We be gone down another two feet, says the child.

            Good.

            Delfan frowning and peering into the bucket. Reaching in to scrape at the soil adhering there, bringing a finger out sniff at it. To work the earth between thumb and forefinger, testing, whispering.

            There’s a hint of dampness here …

            Jack Delfan giggling and chortling now.

            A hint of wetness.

            He runs across to the pile of rubble and kneels and leans in close and sniffs at the last deposits.

            I swear on the book I can smell it. I can smell it, Hobblet.

            Jack Delfan capering in the shade of the rapture tree. Reaching up to take down the Qhilika. And drink deep before plugging the bag again. Bellowing at the horizon.

            You bastards. You doomed bastards.

            May I drink father?

            Jack Delfan staring startled at the boy. Then pointing to the rusted water drum next to the tree trunk.

            Help yourself.

            I mean, may I have some Qhilika. For celebration.

            A boy does not drink fermented beverage, says the father, until he has become a man.

            How do I do that?

            Wait.

            Until when?

            Until you come of age.

            When will that be?

            Eighteen years. Not seven. Not eight. Eighteen.

            Why eighteen?

            I thought you cared nothing, says the boy, for their rules.

            Whose rules?

          Them. People.

            Delfan advancing towards the child. Speaking low and quiet and clear.

            Get your spindly arse down that hole and caress the shovel with your pink little fingers.

            Hob lifting a hand to examine his grimed and callused palm.

            Or I shall remunerate your hide with the lash, says Jack Delfan, and by the holes in the sky you will turn into a man one fine ultraviolet day. Until then, you dig.

            A confrontation there in the desert. Parent and child with eyes locked together and then Hob turns to go back to the mouth of the shaft.

            Hobblet?

            The boy halting to listen.

            I'll go down. It's your shift above.

Literary, dystopian on Kindle

The Excavations, Chapter 2 - The Mother of Discord

IN THE FIRST weeks the patriarch carried the child about with him in little hessian hammock that he rigged to a length of piping and he would hang the contraption from a convenient davit when he worked on the maintenance of the solar panels that lit the few dim bulbs below and fed the batteries for the lumbering solenoid that powered the lift. When the boy woke, Delfan would sit him down in a patch of shade and continue his labour and he came to know the small grunts and the frowns of interested concentration which signalled the child’s evacuations.

            He would exclaim then and lay down his tools and take the boy up one-handed by the ankles so that their heads were level with each other and the inverted Hob would gurgle and chuckle and clench his little fists and wave his arms about. Delfan carried a bucket with him and when the diaper was removed he would wash the arse of the child most thoroughly with crude soap and cold and precious water from the dew traps. At these times Hob would bellow in a fashion that gave clear evidence his provenance. Delfan, as he stashed the diaper for later incineration, would hold the offending garment distant from his nose and holler curses of his own so that the whole vessel rang with the noise of the little family.

            Sometimes in the evenings when the sun was low on the horizon Jack Delfan would walk about the deck with the child and on such an evening he discovered that the tyke had an impulse to straighten its legs. He set Hob’s feet in his rough right palm which he held before him at chest level and he supported the boy’s back with his left hand and Hob straightened his legs. Delfan removed the supporting hand and the boy was much astonished to find himself standing, and so high above the world. He opened his eyes wide and bent his knees and dropped and his father caught him as he passed his groin on his journey deck-wards.

Hob came to enjoy the sensation however, and often enough at sunset Delfan would be found marching about with the child balanced like a juggler's pole on his palm. Delfan would shout out the poems he had learnt by heart in his youth and Hob would ride before, bobbing and swaying like a figurehead on the prow of a clipper.

            She was boarded she was looted, chanted Jack Delfan, she was scuttled till she sank, and the pale survivors left us by the medium of the plank.

             The infant stood with his little knees locked straight and he waved his fists about and he caught this father' rhythms and he shouted, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da.

            Not long after Hob's delivery, Delfan moved his belongings from the iron dungeons below and into the captain's quarters below the bridge, and there he slung hammocks and placed the primus stove that warmed their tins of beans and corn. It was Delfan’s habit to read before sleeping and he found that sometimes the child complained for lack of attention but he complained less when Delfan read aloud. And so Hob, before he could understand the words, became intimate with the rhythms of the book.

            Now King David was old and stricken in years, read Jack Delfan. And they covered him with clothes, but he gat not heat.

            Da, said Hob. Da.

            Wherefore his servants said unto him, let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin.

            Dada?

            And let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.

            Da, said Hob. And then he seemed to ponder a little. Ma?

            Jack Delfan’s eyes were drawn away from the text by this new sound in the infant’s mouth.

            Not ma. I am your father. Dada.

            Ma? Said Hob.

            No, said Jack Delfan. Da.

            Ma? Said Hob.

            Dada, bellowed Jack Delfan.

            And he turned out the light and when Hob howled the patriarch took precious wax from his stock of candles and he blocked his ears with it so that he might not hear the child’s cries.

Dystopian fiction in the age of Trump, Brexit and Zuma.

When the going gets weird, said Hunter Thompson, the weird get going. Well, the going  has never been weirder. America is ruled by a dangerous buffoon, aided by a family of cyborgs. South Africa's situation is not dissimilar, although, thankfully, we lack the power to launch missile attacks.  Liberal democracy has failed so badly that citizens  are voting out of desperation for whatever looks most different from said liberal democracy. Which perhaps explains the growth surge of Dystopian fiction. Wikipedia lists one example in the 18th Century - Gulliver's Travels, by Johnathan Swift. There are eleven examples for the 19th century. By the 20th, the list is growing exponentially, decade by decade.

On the 29 January, 2017, the BBC posted brief list of The Trump Era's top selling Dystopian Novels, featuring George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Sinclair Lewis. Writers imagining the worst, hoping that if they portray it artfully, humans will read, understand and avoid.

Literary, dystopian, end of the world