Green Thumb

The village hall is closed, and Toby stands outside with Green Helen, holding some of the buffet food that they’ve been given to take home. Everyone has drifted off, including the gate-crasher who seemed strangely familiar. Now it’s just them. The buses finished hours before.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call a taxi?” asks Toby. “It’s no trouble.”

“It’s a waste of money,” says Helen.

Helen turned down the lifts they were offered, because Helen said that they could hitch. She’s the Queen of the Hitchers, who made it all the way to Turkey on her thumb and her wits, and is back in town for one night only, to attend her aunt’s 50th. There’s not enough time for Helen to see everyone, so Toby’s come with her to the party, leaving Annie and the kids for the night. Helen is going away again tomorrow, aiming for Sweden.

They set off walking along the road. Only a few cars come by. Each one illuminates Helen’s thumb, the nail painted the same bright green as her hair, the varnish shoplifted from Boots earlier that day. Toby stops himself from offering again to phone for a cab. He can’t let himself think about how a simple call would have them home by now.

The car that stops is a taxi. The driver is heading back over the Downs to Brighton. If he gets a fare, then they’ll have to hop out, but they can ride until then. Helen and Toby thank him as they set off, speeding home now.

Toby’s money feels hot in his pocket. He can afford to pay for this lift, but he knows Helen will be angry if he does. It feels like he is stealing the taxi ride, but Toby keeps quiet, like he has about his promotion, because he knows what Helen will say about that. Office life is hardly an adventure. She has travelled the truck stops and lay-bys of Europe, passing through them to amazing places and incredible people. He has no stories to offer.

Toby stares out the window. He’d had a tense conversation with Helen earlier, where she said he should think about doing something different: hitching might not be his thing, but nor is family and career. Toby told her the kids were what mattered, failing even to persuade himself.

The taxi drops them off at an all-night garage. Helen gives the driver some Rice Krispie cakes, which makes Toby feel somewhat better. Monday morning, Toby will be at work, and Helen will be somewhere in Europe. Five years ago, they were hanging out in the same metal clubs. They wasted Sunday afternoons rewatching movies. He wonders if she made time to see him because he has stayed the same, and she can chart how far she has come.

The flat is quiet when he arrives, Annie and the boys asleep. It’s late, but he stays downstairs for another drink. He pours some of the whiskey from the back of the food cupboard, the bottle a year or two old and still almost full. He thinks about what he might do if he walked out on his life but comes up with nothing. His thumb only unlocks the scanner at work.

Background

This story is another glimpse of Toby, who we last saw in The Office Fox. It is very loosely based on something that happened to me, a funny story that I’ve twisted into something bleak.

I feel awkward about admitting that this story distorts real events and real people, as if I’m telling an awful lie in public. I’ve taken all my excitement about someone else’s freedom, and used it to make a fictional character feel unhappy.

I always wrestle with my responsibilities in fictionalising the truth, even for a small audience. I’ve written some stories in the printed zines for the collection which I worry imply too much about me (and some stories have been set aside for when I have the courage to publish them). I like recasting my personal experiences as fiction, but I always feel conflicted about it.

The familiar guest at the party is the Devil, whose visits to family parties is detailed in A Slice of Heaven on Earth.

Recommendations

A new record from Simon Indelicate came out recently: The Mechanical Child. He describes it as “Ritual Magic” intended to “welcome the birth of new Artificial Intelligences and a narrative fable designed to assist in their alignment with our will”. The album tells a story using AI tools to supplement traditional instruments. It’s a response to the negativity around artificial intelligence.

The Indelicates have a history of working with the latest technology. They released a VR-video back in 2014 for The Generation That Nobody Remembered. They set up a crowdfunding project two years before kickstarter reached the UK. Simon is a genuine enthusiast for NFTs, going beyond the usual bullshit - recasting NFTs as tickets to an imaginary theme park to underwrite the release of the park’s soundtrack (check out this podcast interview for Simon’s take on NFTs).

I could write for ages about my favourite songs and albums, or my part in launching Juniverbrecher with a banishing ritual for the demons that caused Brexit. Seek out their albums: there’s a musical about David Koresh, and a concept album about the Internet becoming sentient and leaving earth. And keep your eyes open, as something is brewing: the seventh Indelicates album, Avenue QAnon.

And make sure to listen to the Mechanical Child.