The Visit - Revision #1 - January 19, 2008 8:21:46 PM UTC

If it looks like a dog,
smells like a dog
and runs like a dog...

It's a dog.

One saturday night I was stupid enough to be walking past the Night club at 3.a.m. The sign over the now dark and empty doorway glowed out the word "Damascus" in curly neon letters. Too late, I noticed the three dodgy-looking thugs walking towards me. Oh shit, I thought, can't turn round now! Better just walk straight and look purposeful, maybe they'll pick on someone more vulnerable.

But it was not to be. Just as I came level with them, one, a burly git with dark greasy hair, said "what the fuck're you lookin' at?" Well, there was no point in running, so I stopped and turned back to them. "Well, I'm looking at /you/ now", I said, wondering how to get out of the inevitable.

I'm not sure what happened next; the space between us seemed to go hazy for a moment. I noticed for the first time that I was standing by the giant vertical ventilation duct of the nightclub. I could hear humming and through the slats I could see the big transformers and other gubbins of the air conditioning. I put it down to the warm air still issuing from the now-closed premesis.

Then all three of them were crowding in to me. I said 'I suppose now you will beat me up and leave me bleeding on the street, just for looking at you."
"Ohhhhh, no, mate! We got summink much worse than that for yer!" said greasy hair, who seemed now to be a lot bigger and more menacing. I could see his teeth.

Another spoke, this one quite skinny with a Brixton accent. "yeah, see how you judge people before you even know anything about them? You walk around in your insulated personal universe, with your pompous private evaluator constantly informing you of how things are. He determined that we were a group of thugs, but oh, how wrong he was! Had he been a more reliable witness you would have run like satan himself had manifested in front of you."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. /What/ did he say...?

"By the time we're finished with you," said the other one, "you'll wish we /had/ beaten you up!"

I turned my gaze to this third one. He looked almost normal, like someone you'd see in a computer class in a college, or sitting in a not-too-trendy wine bar. But something about his pale skin, or maybe something in his eyes screamed 'Nutter!'

Paleskin chuckled nastily. My head was getting fuzzy and a strange feeling was beginning to permeate my body to the extent that my attention was being diverted even from the grave situation I was in. A numbness was coming over me, and a strange lack of definition of where my body ended and the outside began.
"I... er..." couldn't think of anything to say.

"Indeed... /'I'!/" said Brixton. "That constitutes the preponderance of your thoughts. /You/ think, /you/ look around and /you/ decide all the people around you are stupid. They are less than you, they understand less than you, and in their stupidity they get in the way of /you/ doing what what matters to you. You feel insulted that they are not even worthy opponents, just random zombies with no self-direction blundering into you. You'd like to kick them, knock them aside out of your way. Even kill the more persistent ones. After all, your purpose is more important than theirs. They don't even have a purpose mostly."

"I don't..." I began... "Oh no" interrupted Paleskin, "you don't even admit it to yourself, because you are superior. To admit that you hate them all and would kill half of them if you could get away with it might give them more importance than they deserve. You'd also have to admit to yourself that the universe doesn't revolve around you, because if it did, you wouldn't be having these problems with all the zombies."

"But I don't think that!" I said. Paleskin's voice went almost to a whipser: "Yes you do, everyone does. Everything in the universe is alone. Everything looks for its own best advantage. Sometimes that involves co-operating with others, but if necessary, you will even kill those others the moment it becomes more in your own interest to do so than not to do so."

"That's bullshit," I said, "if that were true then people would be going around killing each other all the time!"

"Well, they are, aren't they?" Greasy hair's turn now; my head was spinning. "Murders, wars, slow mass poisoning by businesses for more money... no bullshit, it's what always happens."

"But not to everyone, and what about love?"
Yes! I could see this would stop them. But they just laughed. Brixton brought his face right up to mine. I could smell something like cinnamon on his breath. "It's because you don't know what love is that you confuse it with personal relationships between individuals and within groups. You expect all sorts of things /from/ love, and /because/ you love. How fucked up is that? You're right to expect a lot from love, but you all look in the wrong place for it, and for the wrong things. And then when you don't get them you blame each other."

"What do you expect from gravity?" said Nutter.

"But when people love each other it's... like... they /care/ about each other. The do things for each other they wouldn't do for anyone else." Why didn't this sound as strong now to me than it did in those pub conversations? Brixton moved back a bit and I could see the other two again now. Nutter looked a bit angry, perhaps because I hadn't answered his question.

"Some people hate niggers, or jews." He said, "Some are more dishonest about it and believe they don't hate. They make a conscious effort to think positive thoughts about their enemies. This is denial. Lust can be controlled by thinking pious thoughts, or deliberately shutting it out, or thinking of something ugly, but if you have to make an effort to think a certain way, then you have already failed; you lusted! Likewise the thing you call hate, which is absolutely /not/ hate, anymore than the thing you call love is love."

"This is pointless!" Greasy stepped forward and took Nutters place in my face. "We'll just /show/ him." He brought his eyes right up so close I couldn't focus. His eyes seemed to blur together into a single eye in the middle of his forehead, which then burst over me in a huge wave of goo. There was so much of this slimy fluid that I felt myself being washed away, down and down, falling through blackness.

I landed with a sickly splash. Immediately I was greeted by a chorus of groans, and felt myself being pushed and pulled from all sides by slippery hands. In the darkness I panicked and tried to push back and pull away at the same time, going under into the goo. I floundered for a moment, not understanding, then felt a foot on my shoulder and another on my head, pushing down. I panicked and hit out hard. I kicked with both feet and felt a crunching under one of them, then flailed with my arms and made the surface.

Eventually I felt an edge, like a wall in front of me. It was made of the goo but seemed a lot firmer. I could dig my hands in and pull myself up a bit, but then slipped back again. Hands were pulling behind me, trying to get to the wall, and I had to struggle to keep my place. Occasionally one would get a good grip and start climbing onto my shoulder, at the same time pushing me down. It was obvious that my companions had the same idea as I did: to climb the wall. The goo was too thick to stay still, it was necessary to grab onto either the wall or my companions just to stay afloat.

To my horror I could see that that this was me, and everyone else. Our pure and simple selves, souls laid bare. Treading on each other to get to where we wanted to go. This was no metaphor.

I felt a hand briefly on my left shoulder, then quickly the weight went over to the left more, obviously using another person's shoulder too. This was followed by a foot, which pushed down hard, making me lose grip on the wall. I went down grabbing the leg above me as I did. I crooked my leg, dug it into the wall and grabbed the shoulder next to me. He went down first and I used his body to get the purchase I needed to vault myself over the one above me. I then grabbed the wall with one hand and lurched upwards, noticing for the first time that I was growling and snarling ferociously, and despite the horror of the situation, enjoying this upward part of my journey.

On the way up I stamped down hard on the wall-hugger on my right too, which gave me a further upward boost, enough for a second hand-hold, even higher. I pulled up hard with both hands, expecting at any minute to lose grip again and slide back down the wall. But then I felt a hand on my neck, pulling /up/!. Oh, glory be to God! I prayed. Yes I was definitely moving up now, and there was a voice. An Angel! Rescue. It was all a mistake! I was getting out! The voice was saying something... "...on... ..the night...

I was puking now. Not just from the goo but from the sheer horridness of what I had seen. Me! stomping on people, hitting out, pushing them into the goo, not caring, loathing them, not just wanting to get out, but wanting to push them down too. And them, all the same. All wanting to tread on me. All /willing/ to kill me or do whatever they need to get where they want to go.

"Come on" the owner of the voice was saying. "up you get you lowly piece of shit!" I couldn't use my legs, and a shape formed in the darkness, an edge which grew into a pair of black shoes surrounded by vomit. "Night in the cells for you you bastard, but you can clean my shoes first!" said the voice.