Johnny wasn’t like the other kids: he seemed to know things inexplicably, things about you that you wouldn’t want your parents, or brothers, or friends to know. He was privy to the wildest desires and darkest concealments of men, and the children – his peers – could sense his intrusion.

‘And if you stare into the sun,’ Johnny would tell them, ‘You can see rainbows.’

The parents of the other children began to complain about Johnny. They called for his expulsion, blockading themselves from his damning intuition. But to the other children, Johnny offered truths at terrible prices; a seeing, a visibility that was at once terrifying and completely satisfying, revelation, exposure, all wrapped up in the piercing, intrusive gaze of the weird boy.

His messianic confidence inspired some and repulsed others. Slowly, Johnny built a following, lost disciples who hoped his incorruptible visions would help them understand the things about themselves that had been pushed deep down. But the band that opposed him worked with the animalistic drive of those who have much to lose, and their plot against Johnny reflected the severity of the tragedies that faced them.

They knew that to take him down, he who knew every spark of their wildest thoughts, an utmost spontaneity was required. So they dwelled in inertia, purposefully avoiding conspiracy as the supposed time drew near, striking only when Johnny couldn’t know it was coming, because neither did they.

Johnny Plebus was killed in the early hours of an overcast Thursday. Nobody saw it coming, including his attacker. His murder was in the paper for a few days, but beyond the initial shock only his widowed disciples grieved. The classroom felt paradoxically empty, voided, and at the same time returned to a purity and a completeness that the boy’s perceptions had stolen.

Now, Johnny Plebus lies in a sleep from which he will not wake. He looks peaceful. He can no longer balance blades on his fingers, and any attempt to do so topples the knife instantly. His mind, which had heard everything of its surroundings, without exception, now transmits only static. We all felt the interference go out, a lid whisked off its suffocating box. We think freely again.

We did not speak of this openly. There was an understanding, distributed among us without being passed from one to the other. We went back to our lives and our lives received us without comment, and if sometimes in the middle of an ordinary thing — eating, driving, standing in a queue — we felt the sudden, vertiginous sensation of being known, we told ourselves it was memory, and memory fades, and we were patient with ourselves about it.

The widowed disciples were less patient. They congregated for a while in the places Johnny had frequented — the corner of the playing field where he’d held court, the particular bench, the stairwell with the bad light — and you could see them from a distance, this loose and mournful assembly, talking with the purposeful intensity of people trying to reconstruct something. They compared notes. They pooled what he’d told them, what he’d seen, what he’d known without being told. They were trying to build him back from his outputs, like trying to rekindle fire from the shapes of its ash.

It didn’t work. Of course, it couldn’t. What Johnny had given each of them was specific, aimed, the particular truth of a particular person, and it didn’t formulise. What was revelatory to one was meaningless to another. They sat with each other’s secrets like men who had been handed maps of countries they’d never visited, and gradually the congregation thinned, and the bench went back to being just a bench.

There was a boy named Marcus who had been neither disciple nor conspirator. He had existed at the edge of both, drawn in by the pull of Johnny’s vision, repelled by the cost of it, and had finally settled into a watchful neutrality that he’d convinced himself was a kind of wisdom. After Johnny died Marcus found he could not sleep without the light on. He couldn’t have explained this if he were asked, and he didn’t try. He simply left the light on and told himself it was a habit he’d acquired and would presently lose.

He didn’t lose it.

I know Marcus well enough to say this: he was not a guilty man. He had done nothing. His hands were clean in every sense that the law would recognise and most that conscience did. But Johnny had looked at him once, really looked, in the way he looked at people, and Marcus had felt it — the full inventory of himself, filed somewhere he couldn’t access — and whatever Johnny had found in there, Marcus never learned, and now never would. He’d been left with the knowledge of his own contents, that they existed, without the contents themselves, a locked room in his own house.

Johnny’s mother had kept the blades. This was reported by someone who’d been to the house, a neighbour, not a gossip but a practical woman who’d gone to offer food and had found the mother at the kitchen table with them laid out in front of her, the various knives and letter-openers and penknives her son had collected, arranged without a visible system.

The neighbour had not known what to do with this information and had given it to someone else to carry, and it had passed around the town in this way, everyone handing it forward, nobody wanting to keep a hold of it for too long.

She was not a strange woman, the mother. She had been baffled by her son as most parents of extraordinary children are baffled —outpaced, constantly arriving somewhere he’d already left, just left. She had loved him in the straightforward way, which is perhaps the purest way, of loving something you didn’t understand. And now she sat with his blades and whatever she was doing with them she was doing privately, and the neighbour who’d seen it had felt, standing in the doorway of that kitchen, the same thing Marcus felt with the light on at night — the sense of something just beyond what she was permitted to know.

We think freely again. We said this to each other in the weeks after, and we meant it, and it was true, and yet.

There are thoughts I have now that I would not have had before Johnny, thoughts about what I want and what I’m afraid of and what I have done in rooms where I believed I was unobserved. I don’t know if Johnny gave me these thoughts or simply showed me that they were already there. I don’t know if the distinction matters. What I know is that the thoughts remain, having outlived their source, and I sit with them in the ordinary light of ordinary days and they are mine now, irrevocably, and there is no one left to tell me what they mean.

A human poltergeist.

He resolved to use his powers for good. As he went about his day he would stare at objects and demand them to do as he wished. As they rarely did he concluded not that his powers were imaginary but that the world of objects was rotten and insubordinate.

It would be his duty to restore order and authority to the inanimate world.

He began to punish his possessions. He bore holes in his chairs, which made it uncomfortable for he himself to sit, but it was for a greater good. He scored tables and cracked glass.

Occasionally he would rust metal.

When these attempts failed to increase obedience he grew tired and irate and resolved to abandon the world of objects whatsoever. He disposed of his worldly possessions and took his leave of civilisation, setting up camp in the depths of the forest.

There he foraged for food and sustained himself naturally. He did not brush his teeth.

He found ways to make meals and replenish his body. For entertainment, he would craft miniatures of the objects that had betrayed him is his previous life, and light them on fire or drown them in the river.

Eventually he began to question his own powers, those by which he had altered the path of his life. He retreated into his woodland, suddenly aware of his unfamiliar surroundings. He was penniless and hungry and owned nothing.

There seemed nothing left to do but to capitulate to mother nature.

In a flailing final effort he commanded the stick beside him to move. He did not actually believe that it would work but he sought desperately for proof that he had not lived in vain. The stick rolled, almost imperceptibly, but it did.

He saw it.

He was vindicated.

And as he died he clutched to his chest the knowledge that he had lived with purpose and meaning. He was still its master, he who had removed himself from the world of objects.

This story appears in Down in the Dirt’s 244th volume, Between Time, which can be purchased here. A link to view the online copy of the magazine, where you can find another two stories of mine, is here. Thank you for reading storefronts and subways!

faster now,

and each one looks like it’s going to catch up with the one ahead, or get caught up with by the one behind,

faster now,

and collide in a great big crash of spectacle and projectile,

faster now.

Of course this will never happen.

The blades still, on account of going even faster,

giving up with the chase and yet now at this speed even closer than before,

and who can even say where one blade is and the other, still not caught up with the rest but mistaken for such.

Cold from the spaces between, cut up and served by the one blade chasing itself in circles bound never to touch,

but always to blur,

reversing now, slowing to individuality, and cold disappears

as the spaces grow overwhelming,

shoving the blades aside,

separating them out, fingers fashioned from one complete speeding revolving body.

Still blades, waiting, far from touching or being mistaken for doing so.

Starlike, stretched out and humiliated,

drawn and quartered and ready.

‘The doorbell rang, or maybe the telephone? Or… no, there was a knock at the door. I remember it clearly now. Yes, a knock at the door and I got up to go see who it was.’

In truth, he didn’t remember this day any more clearly than he had five minutes ago. The details of this bygone adventure had long since vanished from memory, but he could smell the boredom, the stifled yawns, and the glances at the wristwatch. He couldn’t let this go on, compound, or else the man would leave, and if the man left, he’d have to return to Indoors, embarrassed, defeated, despairing.

Indoors called out to him, heckled his lengthy narration, beckoned him back into custom. He was determined to escape, to soar brilliantly above the normalcy of life at home, life as a nobody. He felt sure that he too should be a movie star, a rock idol, a beloved figure. In fact, he’d been cheated out of this life, the stardom he was promised from birth.

His great insight, his precautionary prophecy, was that the era of the celebrity was dying. The mainstream beast, the familiar, parasocial faces of TV and Hollywood, were being disposed of in favour of a new God — the internet personality. He tried to shake this grasping urge, tried desperately to be contented with his place among the bees, tried to find purpose in the mundanity, but he knew in his heart he was destined to rule others. Only Indoors managed to quell his desires; Indoors kept him docile, consumptive, inert. Indoors stripped him of his dreams of grandiosity, of cars and houses and adoring fans.

So Indoors became his enemy, and like many of his great idols he retreated to the outdoors. In the cloisters of his ranch in the badlands, the distant plot with no internet, he would perform. Monologues, mostly. He would stand at the edge of the property where the dust met the scrub and deliver his material to the open air — speeches, soliloquies, acceptance addresses for awards not yet given. He thanked people by name. He paused for laughter. He waited for the clamour to die down before continuing. The cattle on the neighbouring property regarded him without feeling.

He had made it. He was well on his way to the stardom and celebrity that he was owed, had been owed for so long. He had waited his turn, and now it was his chance to step forwards, into the light.

On the porch, his friend checked his watch.

A postcard from his daughter fluttered in through the letterbox. The letterbox clattered, the unmistakeable sound of metal hitting metal. He got up to go see who it was.

this is a story I wrote for Slash Magazine. A link to the website is here: https://www.theslashmedia.com/offline-stardom/

as such, i am often confronted with the herculean task of condensing all my worldly belongings, my trophies of hard-fought battles and emblems of victory, my life-giving essentials and my joy-making indulgences, into a portable travel case.

suitcase-packing is a lost art, eaten and spit out by the modern world, like letter writing or smoking on airplanes. the catatonic traveller, unable to distinguish between necessity and clutter, can simply purchase a new suitcase, large as a fridge, allowing him to take all his wildest dreams down to Butlins. i see this as giving up. in my needlessly humble opinion, the suitcase befits the traveller. i am beyond clarification.

as any grocery shopper or constructioneer knows, the heaviest items go in first. once the foundations have been laid strong, the lighter dalliances can be strewn across the case; shavers, chargers, underwear, reproductive inhibitors, books. once all this, and more, has been settled, one may find the closing of the case difficult; this is to be expected and is a sign of good health. if you are fat enough, you may find sitting on the case effectively brings the zippers close enough together to be shut, in which instance i point at you and laugh scornfully, asking then to inspect your bag for high-calorie snacks because i am not just fearless but funny too.

if, like me, you see the body as a temple, we resort to more dynamic approaches. a few ill-thought recommendations need to be deconstructed before we settle on a solution; i now go through them in turn.

i. the leap

you may be inclined to leverage your bodyweight into more force than it’s worth by jumping and landing on your suitcase, bringing the zippers momentarily closer, pivoting in mid-air or upon landing to be able to draw them shut while the force of the impact is maintained. while naturally the first port of call, and effective if done first try, this method yields considerable injury to the leaper and risks permanent damage to the shell of the suitcase, which is often a plasticky composite (mine is near-pure adamantine, capable of withstanding gunshots, bomb-explosions (even from within), and is waterproof, but yours won’t be). attempt once, but know when to cut your losses and move on.

ii. the partner

if you happen to be packing in company, enlist the help of a friend or partner in bringing your shared bodyweight together to force the zippers close. undoubtedly, this is the safest and most resourceful method, but there are two major unlikelihoods that prevent this from being my final recommendation.

first, if you are reading this guide, then you are thinking about travelling to the aforementioned dark places. thinking, i say, because unlike me you haven’t the balls to set off on such an expedition. keep wandering around town, fatty! i may be getting my targets confused. once you have faced death all human countenance becomes Life.

in any case, if you are even thinking about travelling to the dark places, merely aware of their existence, then the modern facade of companionship is probably not for you. in which case, you may have trouble soliciting a partner to assist you in this method. fear not, better is coming.

the second unlikelihood is more grave. let us assume that you have found a comrade, a friend, willing to tackle this problem with you — but, let us also assume that the suitcase is only 1 person wide. what are we to do? how might we tesselate our bodyweight to even produce the force required for this method to be effective? trying to share the suitcase seems impractical, because with one leg each dangling off, our combined force adds up to that of one whole individual, negating our efforts. sitting atop one another seems like the obvious solution, but this one is just unacceptable. i won’t elaborate. you can’t make me. i can’t hear you.

this method, as we have seen, is irrecoverable.

iii. the one-handed pushup

you say: ‘but, but, b-b-but I can’t do a one-handed pushup’. I say, ‘then you are reading the wrong travel guide, worm’. I do not point you to better-suited resources. I do not invite competition.

we have arrived at my personal method and unwavering recommendation. when faced with this lid-closing conundrum, i like to plant my feet about a body’s length away from the suitcase, rest one hand on the Persian rug underfoot, and the other on the shell of the suitcase. a beat passes. another. suddenly, i press hard, the horseshoe tricep flares like an engine roaring into life, and the suitcase, perhaps impressed, perhaps shocked into submission, but in both cases defeated, has no choice but to bring those zips parallel, for my closing convenience.

this method works best with a partner present, not for any physical assistance, but for the dual benefit that having this method observed comes with; a closing of the suitcase, always the primary goal, but the birth of a new disciple, a loyal fan, a wowed spectator also.

if you can’t generate the power from one arm, through muscular force or sheer willpower, to bring the zippers together, then i can’t help you. perhaps you can travel with your suitcase open, holding it from the outside seam, like a waiter delivering cold glasses of wine on a tray. and men, lesser and stronger men alike, will look at you and say, he hasn’t the triceps to shut that darned thing, and you will know they are right. that’s what makes it hurt.