Thread

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Thread

 

I woke up with a thread attached to my toe.

By golly, what's this? 

A white line went from my toe, down across the floor, round the corner, twisting past the leg of an occasional table then along the corridor to the dark entrance hall and under the front door.

 I was in the t-shirt and shorts I use to sleep. I opened my front door gingerly. No-one about.  I pursued, floor smoothly cold on my feet. Down the steps. Under the main door: I opened it, peering into the street. I couldn't see where it led.  Should I go out like this? There didn't seem to be anyone about.  But it's London. No one cares what you wear. 

Different cold roughnesses: flagstones, then the texture of tarmac more insistent on my soles. I traced the thread as it skipped over the road past the corner store. A light breeze whipped  through my t-shirt and shorts. But...few cars. I got across the road to the grassy area where the bus stop is, and a lady in a raincoat waited and the giant chestnut tree towered behind. I followed the thread with my fingers: it clung to the bark, moving upwards. No low branches: I couldn't climb.  The thread disappeared into a maze above.

What the hell.

When your day begins like that you can easily become irritable: I decided not to. That's my philosophy, you see, bend like the willow. I wasn't going to follow that thread any further.

On return, I put water into the lower section of a metal thing that looks like a terrorist device and spooned coffee into a metal funnel which fitted into it. I screwed on an upper section with a lid and a spout and put it on the stove. Then...

Coffee! Yum yum! I set it down on the table next to the laptop and put some biscuits with the word:

 

 N I C E 

 

on them on a butter coloured saucer and opened the laptop and waited and the article I needed appeared. 

 

Durability Assessment of Vacuum Cleaners, 2015. 

 

I was part of V.E.M. Engineering's Strategy Team for Vacuum Cleaner Motors and Suction Mechanisms. 

Looking down to the saucer, I mused, nowadays not one eats these sort of biscuits any more except me. I'd once asked the guy in the shop downstairs about this. He'd replied, "It's true.  You are the only person in north London who buys these. I've never had one. Are they any good?"

"But why do you stock them?"

He shrugged. "They come from central office".

That's how things are nowadays, it's never clear who is responsible for anything.

I worked steadily. The coffee was bitter and rich and good as anything that has traveled 3600 miles from the bum of an Ethiopian goat should be. I sipped happily as I worked.

But at about 9.30 am came a knocking.  It was the neighbor, a fat fellow. His face flushed: he was puffing having climbed the stairs. We had met, we would very occasionally greet by the mailboxes. It embarrassed me that I couldn't remember his name.

"Hi Carl," he said.

"Hi" , I said. "Caspasian."

"Ah yes." He was still breathing heavily, though there was only one flight between us.

"Caspar!"

"Whatever. You're Ja..? Jo..?"

"Neville!  "

"Of course!"

"Well," he said, finally catching his breath. "It's the threads."

"Oh?"

"Did you get threads?"

"I think so," I replied, "just one."

"Well, we got more than one! Come and look. Blimey. It's crazy."

I'd never been in my neighbors' apartment. 

 "Come on in," he urged.

 The layout was identical, but it was curious how different it was from my place: crimson flock wallpaper with gilt crown motifs and embossed curliques. The place was a sea of thread, but I could make out the vast pink Louis XIV sofa and the 8 foot four-poster bed. White threads covered their gigantic baroque television and obscured the tapestries so their unicorns and frock coated aristocrats could only just be seen peeping through.  A white veil smothered the chandeliers: they cast a ghostly light.

A well-upholstered woman -presumably Neville's wife- from whose earlobes dangled  sizable golden sphynxes, rubies and pearls appeared from the kitchen.  Her eyes were red.

"Hi" she sobbed. "Have you seen? Dreadful. Dreadful. I call it."

"It's not ideal." I said, trying to strike a sympathetic, note.

"It's a crying shame" said Neville.

"Those tapestries were brand new. So was the four poster bed," moaned his wife. "Brand new!"

I pulled off one thread which clung to the gold fringe on a rococo lampshade. "It does seem to  come off easily enough."

But they were too aggrieved to hear.

"How long have we lived here? Fifteen years. Nothing like this before. Whole neighborhood's going to the dogs. It's what happens when they let anyone in. Know what I mean?" sighed Neville.

"I'm not sure if it's fair to hold immigrants responsible, for this," I replied.

"I don't know," lamented his wife. "When you retire, Neville,  we're definitely moving to Portugal".

"You know..." An obvious thought had occurred to me, "I have an industrial cleaner." In fact, I have six in my lab at V.E.M., waiting to be dissected. But I had managed to filch one "for more detailed study in a domestic context, as I had explained to my boss when  trundling it out V.E.M.

Neville and I managed to get the mechanical elephant, down. The wife, whose name was Jacqueline, continued her weeping.. But it sucked well  and  Neville cheered up, exclaiming, "Yeee Haaa!", as he swung the hose around,  and the cleaner's huge transparent tub filled white, and gilt cupids, Napoleonic wardrobes and a full size painting of Wellington on a rearing horse at Waterloo were liberated.

It didn't take long.  Neville was laughing and trying to catch his breath at the same time, becoming exhilarated and exhausted. After hoovering the whole apartment, he collapsed on the purple velvet Empire style divan in what resembled a post coital condition, a sweaty beached whale, albeit a happy one. Meanwhile, Jacqueline appeared in rubber gloves and a duster.

"Oooof. That's one vacuum cleaner you got." After a moment to further recover his breath, he asked, "did you get rid of your threads?"

"Well, there was only one thread. It led outside."

"Outside? Like out the door?" asked Jacqueline, who had finally picked up.

Neville was now in a great mood. "We've got to get to the bottom of this. Where outside?"

Bits of the thread were still remaining in the street. Due to his corpulence, Neville was unable to walk many paces without stops but we traced it again to the chestnut tree. 

The woman in the raincoat was still there. 

"It's been here all morning. I've been watching it." She pointed. At first we could see just foliage or branches, though we could hear the sound of cackling laughter. 

"There!" whispered the lady:  high above from behind the trunk, a giant eight legged beast peeked.

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Illustration: Door, acrylic on card, 9 x 6.5 cm, c. 2001

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Read to Albuquerque Cyberscribes 7 June, 2021, Edinburgh Creative Writers 8 June, 2021, Astoria Group 8 August, 2021

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