“THE FOUR HORSEMEN”

2: “And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down -- that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.” (Rev 12:7-9)

What is unusual is the fact that I live on the 87th floor of my apartment building. Somedays when I wake up I look out of the window and I can see clouds and helicopters below me. If I open the window - not that I would ever choose to do so - it is quiet as the countryside.

There’s a calm in it. The sound of the world below has been sucked away. I can see small objects, cars, people, shrunk to nothingness, moving as if in a video game. I can’t see any reason for their actions - like most people things happen without motive. Things just happen because they can.

In my hermetically sealed container, I feel like an astronaut. The whole world is out there, and I can see for miles. The problem is, I have to pass through a multitude of airlocks and lifts and corridors before I reach the rarified atmosphere of ground level. Down there it’s poison. Every breath of air is poisoned with pollution, exhaust fumes, and noise.

I almost feel as if if I go down there without being in some way protected that I will die from exposure.

Around my apartment, which occasionally I share with my significant other, who also has an apartment near by, lie a series of other mirrored towers and apartment blocks that reach above the cloudline. This is why from my living room I can see flowers at hundreds of feet in the air.

Occasionally, if insomnia strikes I look out of the window in the night - or, if it’s the summer, the morning - and I take my binoculars (or telescope for viewing the night stars, which above the cloudline are remarkably clear and pristine) and look into the other blocks of the apartment. I can see men watching TV, women exercising, people singing along to their favourite records. Sometimes I see someone looking back at me through binoculars.

It’s sleep that’s difficult. Sleeping at this height is unnatural. The wind screams round the building as the winter falls. It’s unnatural to live cooped up in this place like a chicken in a battery farm. We’re living all over each other. I dream of somewhere where it gets dark at night, where I can sit on grass and know that the perfect dark is not tainted by streetlights, where I live without fear of being woken by an airplane nose opening my front door.

Sometimes it wakes me in the night. Normally around 4am. Sometimes it’s the fear of a disaster. Sometimes it’s something else, something more elusive. The feeling that somewhere something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is, or why, or what I can do about it.

It’s the voice of some shard of my distant, no doubt guilty conscience. I figure it’s some part of my innocence screaming to get out, and the sound of children screaming keeps me awake at night.

So I’m touch with my inner child. Not a bad thing.

I collapse again later on, normally when darkness starts to lift. I’ve seen so many sunrises that the wonder of it no longer even touches me. I am 29 years old.

My next memory, every morning bar Sundays, is the alarm clock. I stumble to gain conscience. It sounds like my burglar alarm. Where is the fire? Shall I call the fire service? Police? Ambulance?

I contemplate being woken up by a man holding a gun to my head telling me to turn over so he can kill me before ransacking my home for consumer goods to sell on street corners and backrooms.

There must be something very wrong to be woken by an alarm, some emergency somewhere. I normally hide under the pillow, and take a semi-conscious limb and repeatedly hit the wooden cabinet until it strikes the “snooze” button. And seven minutes later the loop recommences.

Sometime the limb has been slept on. It is dead. Turning blue on the inside, I have to hope my other arm has strength to pick up the useless muscle and flap it at the off button.

Life is a routine. Every day is the same, except the number of it. June 13, June 14, June 15th… repeat until dead. Every day moulded and stamped in the production line called employment.

Routine. Order. Discipline. These are good things, virtues, I am taught by school, but they feel more like some kind of punishment for becoming an adult, some kind of punishment you can’t escape and am visited by every day for the next 35 years. Like a ghost that won’t ever be exorcised.

Another seven minutes of stolen fragments of unconscious, and I eventually get out of my bed. Soft heaven.

Whatever order or distractions, the bathroom sees me wash with soap, comb my hair, brush my teeth - but only after eating breakfast, so as to allow the active ingredients to do their work whilst I do my work - apply various moisturisers, deodorisers, and perfumes, before emptying myself of the nights produce. Soap is normally a vintage purchased enmasse from VAT-free foreign holidays, as is my Greek only deodorant, an essence of a fragrance called “Homme Boy” which indicates strength, yet softness.

A shit and / or piss later, and I’m ready to start the day. I serve breakfast (diet cornflakes and milk, toast, and coffee, black) hurriedly, every second watching the clock, the countdown until I need to appear like magic at my office. Breakfast devoured, I check my personal e-mail from one of my six accounts, before dressing in whatever suit I have ready today.

Having a suit pre-pressed, so the cut of the cloth is always precise. It’s an expensive luxury, but one that repays itself by being noticed by Senior Management in private industry I find. That, and a total willingness to do anything to earn more money.

I always have a pack of mints ready so as to appear fresh and clean, and eager to please. This is after breakfast, before leaving the house. The office has washrooms with vending machines that dispense toothpaste/brushes, and individually wrapped deodorant portions, but I have yet to sink to such levels.

I am dressed, shaved (I prefer to shave every evening, so as not to risk the groggy blunt end of unconsciousness to nick my flesh), and fed. I am ready to battle it out in business. Whatever you may say of the rat race, it doesn’t matter if you come first or second, you’re still a rat.

Ambition bites the nails of success apparently.

Leave the house and the still-sleeping body of my partner. Today she will look after herself in luxury, perform whatever tasks the house requires, shop for me, and ensure that all is in order. I am lucky the amount I earn is generous enough to allow her to have the illusion of freedom, even though she is my life-support machine, secretary, lover, and mother all in one. She works part time in the afternoons, largely to stave off boredom and to give her the illusion of independence. The rent at her apartment is about the only thing she pays, though she kids herself that having an income means that she could leave me if she really wanted. She doesn’t of course. Tonight though, she will be naked and I will treat her as my sexual playground.

It’s always a rush in the morning. Always racing to meet certain points of time before waiting. Today I walk briskly to the train station, performing a mental competition with the other commuters, working out if I came first again, which ones I beat since yesterday. Trying to find the shortest acceptable routes over roads, roadworks, car parking and traffic lights to reach the destination.

I am not a winner. That’s what the fortune cookie told me. Ergo facto, therfore, I am a loser. I am an insecure man trying to appear successful in an overdrawn world.

Train station. Race to an obscure part of the platform to secure a seat so that I may work on the way in. This reduces my chances of being late at work and increases my perceived per-hour productivity at work. It looks good, it feels good, and it pleases my partner. Achievements come in small steps. So small you don’t even know what you are doing. First you get your junior grades, then your senior grades, then maybe you have sex, drugs, addictions and arrests, after moving out of course, in pursuit of a degree, then a job, and then… slowly but surely you become like all the rest. Inevitably you think of buying a house.. well, it’s cheaper than renting, isn’t it? And the most rebellious thing in your life is your CD collection.

Waiting for the train I imagine her naked and on all fours. My eyes scan the other commuters and I mentally tick off those to whom I would fuck if I were single, desperate, and had no quality control. It’s more than you’d think. When the dick is hard, the mind is soft.

The train has seven stops and takes 34 minutes to reach the city. From there, Globex is thankfully only 238 yards walk. Good pedestrianisation of the walkways and a lack of congestion means I can do that in 3 and a half minutes, assuming I am not distracted by tourists, beggars, or naked flesh in the summertime. I love the summertime. All the pretty young things wear skirts and flimsy material and open toed shoes. There can be no greater glory God made than her skin.

You can tell a lot about someone by their fingers. This is one of the reasons that summer is the most beautiful season. I can look at a woman’s fingers - if they are immaculately groomed, bitten, or nicotine stained with years of tension - and immediately I learn something about what makes them tick. It’s a sign beyond the simple raw materials, that of hair, clothing, and stance that may be conditioned by employment or other outside factors. A womans fingers never lie. Raw bitten fingers show that underneath everything else, someone is worried about something.

Summer is good also for feet. I am able to look at open shoes and with merely a glance, I can see, and therefore judge, a lot more about their personality. If the finger and toenails are the same colour varnish, you can be fairly sure that underneath all things there is some insecurity. If they are different colours, or different coloured nails on each digit, we are dealing with someone who is either selfconsciously weird or just plain unco-ordinated.

On the other hand, just toenails on their own probably means a woman who isn’t really that bothered. It might be that they are using what’s left in the bathroom cabinet, or stolen a friends for a moment. It might be they got bored.. It might mean they like to show their sexuality quietly, to show that they have the power to lure, but discreetly, almost as if you wouldn’t know. A subtle seduction. Or it might be they know strangers are sat next to them and looking down. There are plenty of attractive young women here, like anywhere, if you know where to look. Sometime it’s purely in the face. Other times it might come purely from how their legs move when they walk into the room.

Normally I get a seat and put on walkman headphones, looking down and around as I go. Not to listen to music, no, so as to listen to conversations whilst others think I am listening to latest U2 or REM record. I read reports, make decisions, and verify these in the office. I am surrounded by drones of equal routine. I aspire to be the queen surrounded by my workers and drones in the hive, all working together for the greater cause. Beyond ego - a form of communism in motion.

I am able to clear the station in 52 seconds, though my personal best was 40 - that was when there was a bomb scare. That 12 seconds includes normally, being delayed slightly by inconsiderate walkers, old men and women who should be dead, and screaming idiot children.

Every morning I arrive, if I am on time, at 8-12am. I normally share the lift with Charlotte who works on the fourth floor and takes the same train as me. She is a 5ft 4in ginger-haired bombshell, though not particularly small, who looks as if she knows what to do with a assortment of battery powered toys, and is apparently a very nice girl. Brett who works under me went out with her once and they ended up in some nightclub the far side of town, both in work outfits, walking home in rain at 6am. Her eyes were dilated and so were his.

I think he rang in sick that day, but that’s really irrelevant. I don’t think she was in that day either.

Every morning it is like this. A production line. A conveyor belt of wage-slaves. I haven’t sold out. I bought in. I want this. I want the rewards. I want the house, the wife, the dog, a decent TV, and some comfort. But the rewards seem disproportionate to the investment I make. A minimum of 37 hours per week, and just to slightly raise my standards. I wonder about how evil the executives must be. Those who can improve the lot for all chose only to improve it for themselves.

Though I must admit, that begins to sound like a lie when I think about it.

So the lift arrives at my floor, and I enter the cocoon bubble of employment. Charlotte is, until tomorrow, a memory. And what is a memory but a moment that can never return?

All these memories will be wiped away in time. All these things will cease to exist, they will be erased, mere history. History is always always written by the victors, whoever they may be, and whatever your definition of victory is, to justify whatever atrocities were committed in their name. They say, right and good always wins, you always get a happy ending, but that isn’t always true. What you will find is that whoever wins will turn the facts into truth, and facts and truth, as we know, are very difficult. Facts are events that cannot be refuted. Truth is just a point of view and an opinion based on the facts and supposition. And what will the truth be? That good wins. That evil is defeated. We need happy endings - without them we admit the meaninglessness of effort and existence.

Of course, often those who win are evil, but twist and turn facts to make it appear that they are serving virtue and justice and righteousness through their actions. We all want a happy ending, and so whatever the victors do, will appear to be good defeating evil, right over wrong, because we, society demand it. If evil wins, then what that means is that it is profitable to be evil, and what good is good at that point?

At a certain point good and evil fade into history. Motives become meaningless, all that remains is dust and artefacts. All this will be gone. All history will record is a big hole in a cliff where maybe a statue of something once stood. If people can’t eat, if people can’t survive, pretty soon history will cease to exist.

He hasn’t eaten for days. His stomach feels like his throat has been cut. The mind rules the body. The body does not rule this mind.

He slept quietly under a rock outcrop waiting for the Great Event. It is in the air. Though there are no signs of its impending arrival, no atnosphere, no hint in the tranquil clouds, or what is to come in the following days, he can tell, in the minds of distant leaders, something is happening.

There is no hurry. For he has all the time in the world.

He’s no longer knows what day it is. Losing track of the days, though his deep seated intuition tells him it is sometime around March 11th, 12th maybe, it is difficult to be sure. Even in what could be called ‘civilisation’, surrounded by clocks, and papers, it is difficult to tell one day from another. They all look the same.

Ambition and desire are slowly crushed by monotony.

He sits crosslegged inside the perimeter. Occasionally, he walks to the village, barters his chips, purchases food, or clothing. He sits and waits.

One day, in the distance, a thin trail of dust rose from the distance. At the edge of the horizon, the roar of machines and spinning wheels. Trucks, painted green, with canvas tops, and men with machine guns inside.

Men with machine guns guarding dynamite, headed towards the figure that impassively stands within his vision. Within time, for it was time, the dust clouds grew. The vehicles stopped within inches of the figure, near the enormous feet that knew not what was happening, or if they did, could not act, could not walk, or run away. Because the feet had been removed, dynamited by the Taliban in some previous act.

Contractors had already come here. From deep within the country, arranged by the government, workmen had for days been drilling and impacting into the rock chemicals, wires, plungers. He knows what is coming next.

A hustle and bustle. Men running, walking, talking into walkie talkies, and mobile phones, some just staring at it, others trying not to get caught doing the same. Some here just for the money, doing the job they have to do, in order to survive, in order, just to stay alive. Others are here on a mission, following the commands of Allah or whatever his name is. Some here know what they are doing is in some way, deeply wrong, but you cannot defeat a stronger power. To even do something as banal as resist may be to indicate a desire to be tortured or killed as an infidel by the intolerant.

Several days of this baking tedium followed. Several days of those wandering in caverns, filling the priests cubby hole with crates of powder, ejecting the refugees who live in the rock, filling the room that lived deep inside the Buddha’s head. Several days of the sun setting and rising, of sleeping and waiting.

Several days, no doubt, of speculation in the media as to their fate. The old man scratched his beard and noted events in a small pocket book diary by him. Even though he was caucasian, the symbols were wrote with the pencil were of no recognisable script, no distinguishable language. No computer could unravel the code or understand the language, and the writer possessed the strength and stamina to never reveal the contents. Not that anyone would’ve believed him anyway.

For he had all the time in the world. He could speak any language, persuade any sceptic, reveal any truth. But power is wasted on those who over use it, in their hands, power just becomes a common tool, meaningless, devalued by repetition. He had power, but what was the point in demonstrating it? Like God, who never revealed his miracles because it would devalue the currency of his miracle when it appeared, he did not act. Besides, when he would act, nobody would forget it or doubt his existence for a second.

And wasn’t the existence of mere human life and all its creations enough to prove the existence of a God? Obviously not.

So when I left her, where did I go? A good question. There were a lot of things to put in order. A lot of things to put right. I spoke to my accountant on my cellphone from the back of the chauffer driven car. I arranged for my business interests to be taken care of, in the nicest sense of the word.

Whilst Helen was independently wealthy, and I heard it said that she often asked her young flings how it felt to have just fucked a million dollars, she could screw herself with the company.

51% of the company stock - the amount I owned, enough to give me final veto of the company should I ever need it - was placed in bonds. I instructed Paul that under no circumstances whatsoever unless by my personal communication in the flesh, should these bonds be sold, touched, or in any way affected.

I told him I was going away for some time.

I arranged and instructed for contracts to be made for the butler and house staff to remain locked into their contracts for a period of seven years and six months. The money I offered them was sufficiently tempting for them to agree to anything. At this early stage I resisted the temptation to ask for the firstborn. But in time, anything is possible.

I looked forward to walking down the Liffey in summer.

I spoke to various contacts in the world of big business, arranged my future self. Arranged a transfer of money through untrackable sources, 10k here, 20k there, all to be paid into the account of my new self.

A new passport is remarkably easy to find if you know where to look.

In all respects I was a new man. I was going to find out what this thing called life was all about. The company was safe, Helen - or anyone - could not take over the company in my absence. I arranged promotions and acting directorships, made phone calls, all night long, placed the necessary people in the necessary places to give my life’s work, my company, a relatively safe environment, a stable background, to be guided but never to be controlled, sold off, or reduced, whilst I went on a long overdue holiday.

All of us feel like walking out on everything at some point in lives. At some point when the malaise of the twentieth century, the haemorrage of information, responsibility and stress outweighs the rewards, and for one second, I’m sure we have all felt like standing up and proclaiming loudly to everyone “Fuck off, I’m going for a walk.”

When you feel like you can’t take any more, when even one more second would be such an insult to your dignity, when the rain just won’t stop, the phone calls never end, when the boss won’t just fuck off and let you breathe for one second, that’s when.

Unlike most, I was lucky, I was able to take that feeling and follow it. Dawn came in the car, I had not slept. I was lucky, in some much as I was not tired. I took it as a sign. Wherever I was going, whatever I was doing, whoever I was becoming, it need strength and stamina, and I was able to meet that challenge. I must try to lose the vestiges of management talk.

That was the past, that was somebody else, someone in these eyes, wearing these clothes, with this face, but someone else, a long long time ago. Someone who, when I look in the recognise has changed so much, but so slowly,m that I do not even recognise myself anymore. Who was I? Whoever I used to be didn’t really exist anymore, did he?

Outside the darkness bled daylight, until darkness became only shadow.

With the glass up in the back of the chauffer driven car, I was able to wait until we had driven until 9am. It was the time. On a deserted outskirt road of a small village, there was a Greasy Spoon café, a Last Exit for the Lost. I signalled to the driver.

I cleared my throat and spoke in a voice and a style that was no longer mine.

“Cecil, pull over here.”

He did so.

“Right Cecil, I’m getting out here and I’m going for a walk. When I get out I want you to turn the car around, find a nice motel, and sleep there. When you are no longer tired, ring my office, explain what has happened, and drive back.”

For the first time in a long time, I heard dissent.

“Sir?”

“Do it Cecil. You have been a good man to me over the past year. I have ensured that your employment is safe. Understand this is for the best.”

I handed him an envelope.

“Give this to anyone who may stand in your way. I may not be back for a while. I am taking a holiday. “

“Thank you sir, I hope you enjoy it.”

“Goodbye Cecil.”

“Goodbye Sir.”

I left the car and wiped my brow. The sun was baking and I was still wearing a suit. I wans’t quite sure exactly where I was. A Small bag over my shoulder contained all I needed. A bathroom kit, a change of clothes, an my new identity. I could see a used car lot about two hundred miles ahead.

I waved Cecil off. When he was out of sight, I walked over to the signs of life.