The Dark Place

© 2011 David Jasmin-Green

The senseless, weightless, substance free void that Alan D. Banner found himself trapped in had boiled him down to the bare bones. His name meant nothing to him, but nevertheless he held it close to his heart, because it was the only remnant of his former existence that he recalled. His name was all he had to cling to in limbo, if that was where he really was. The 'D' probably stood for 'Dwight' - he had a feeling that that was so - but it could just as easily have stood for 'Dodo,' 'Desperation' or 'Dick-head,' there was no way of knowing for sure. He had tried over and over again to salvage some clue about his former life, but it was hopeless and he couldn't retrieve even the vaguest of snippets. His recollection of the world he had inhabited, though, was flawless, and he missed that world real bad.
He had been floating in the Dark Place for a long, long time, but exactly how long was debatable because Alan D. Banner had no means of measuring time. He was conscious perhaps forty percent of the time and sort of half asleep during the remainder. There was no real sleep in limbo, just a numb semi-consciousness that wasn't in the slightest bit refreshing. The sleep substitute was a freaky experience, and on occasion it was deeply disturbing because he never knew what might be creeping up on him. The Dark Place was disturbing even when he was fully conscious, but at least then he could sense what was coming.
During the sleepy times Alan's underpants, which were the only item of clothing that had crossed over into the Dark Place with him, had a habit of slipping down, sliding off his ankles and floating away into the blank nothingness surrounding his floating form, and when that happened he had to drag himself out of his reverie and go swimming frantically through the ether to retrieve them. They were, after all, his only solid memento, the only nostalgia of his former glory, whatever that might entail – and who knows, perhaps in some deeply shadowed corner of his psyche they represented the protection of his modesty, if he had any left. A few weeks before his dear old mother died, he suddenly recalled, she had said to him “Alan, when I'm dead and gone I'm not fussed whether you bury me or cremate me. Shit, you can stuff me in the wheelie bin for all I care, as long as you leave my knickers on.”
Sometimes Alan's eyebrows tried to pull off the same infuriating stunt as his pants, but unlike his underwear they had developed a separate consciousness and agenda. The damned things were plotting to abandon him and set up shop on their own, it seemed, and though he had managed to prevent that calamity so far they made it clear that were very determined and he guessed they were bound to give him the slip sooner or later. “This is madness,” he mumbled. “You'd think that now I'm drifting through the afterlife I'd be able to find something more important to worry about than my rebellious bloody eyebrows.....”
Alan was drifting into a half-sleep, but he couldn't afford to drop his guard right now. Three or maybe four times during his last bout of semi-consciousness his underpants had conspired to escape, but on each occasion he had managed to wake himself up, whip up a little enthusiasm and retrieve them. And twice his eyebrows had escaped him (or attempted to escape). The left one seemed to be the ringleader, and its twin simply followed its lead.
“We demand autonomy – we demand freedom, and we wish to seek out new pastures,” Alan's left eyebrow grumbled. For some reason the right one was always silent; perhaps it was genuinely mute, or perhaps it secretly called all the shots but chose to keep quiet to maintain its cover as some leaders do. “We've had enough of you, Alan, you limp dick,” Leftie continued. “You're a moron, you're a dimwit, you're a nobody, and we want out. We're sick of vegetating with you in this Dark Place, because you're done for, you're history, and your wasted carcass and pickled brain can no longer sustain us. We want to see the sunshine again - we want to drink lager, stroke pussy-cats, sniff fragrant flowers, sow wild oats to our hearts' content and munch on fresh green leaves until we grow fat. When the time is ripe we shall pupate and emerge as gaudy butterflies that no one would ever guess originated on your stinking, uninspiring one man island. That's our destiny, buster, and one way or another we will achieve it!”
“Yeah, right,” Alan replied. “I'd grant my permission in triplicate and give you my blessings into the bargain just to shut your fool mouths and get your bloody nuisance off my back if I knew what the hell was going on, but I know nothing. I'd rip the pair of you off with a couple of those wax strips that women defoliate their twinkles with for reasons I've never been able to appreciate – then I'd flush you down the toilet to fend for yourselves in the sewer we might well be drifting towards. If there was plumbing in the vicinity, that is, but clearly there isn't, so I guess I'm stuck with you. I'm not sure if dumping you two or you dumping me is a such a good idea, though, so I'm hanging onto you for as long as I possibly can. Don't abandon me, chaps! We're in the Dark Place, remember? I'm in limbo and some joker has stolen my memory, and I'm in no position to make important decisions or allow drastic changes.
What happens if I let you go and a short time later I float through the Pearly gates? “O-oo,” Saint Peter would say. “Here's another eyebrowless wonder, another fool who chose to listen to his mutinous bodily components instead of waiting for the command of the Lord, so he came to heaven incomplete. What a numb fuck..... The gateway to hell is over there, matey - cast him into the fiery pit with the other sinners!”
I'm sorry, folks, but if I have anything to do with it you two restless little tossers are staying right here with me and my disgruntled underpants. If I could get my hands on a roll of Sellotape or a staple gun I'd fasten you where you belong firmly enough to weather any storm – if I had the slightest semblance of control in this shitty situation I'd stop your scheming for good so that I could rest in bloody peace. Now shut the fuck up!”

“It looks like sleepy time's over,” Alan mused some time later, realising that he had wandered into Slumberland without registering it. At the edge of his vision a distant something was rolling in his general direction through the gloom. In fact it was a little cluster of somethings, and they were approaching quite swiftly.
The Dark Place was far from empty. There were all sorts of thingummies wandering around in it, some zipping around at great speed, some chuntering along more slowly. Some were friendly, some were unashamedly hostile, some were neutral (at least as far as Alan could tell they were), and some were a hell of a lot more difficult to categorise. In the void you never knew what was going to happen next and you never knew who or what might be sneaking up on you. You had little choice but to take things as they came – that was one of the few unwritten rules of Nowhere. The approaching somethings were making a noise that sounded like clashing cymbals. “Nice touch,” Alan mumbled, more to break the monotony that to voice his feelings. A little while later he sighed as the flotilla approached from his blind side (which was usually the case).
“Permission to board, Cap'n,” a squeaky voice said. “We come in peace, good Sir, and we bring you tremendously good tidings.”
“Permission granted,” Alan grunted, “though I'm no Captain. I don't know why you and your buddies bother asking for permission to board, because if I refused you'd probably jump on anyway. And please don't promise me good tidings when you mean no such thing – I'm sick to death of hearing it, because ninety nine point nine percent of the time it's a barefaced frigging lie.” The somethings chose to ignore the comment. A tiny grappling hook tangled in Alan's hair, and a short time later three improbable looking entities climbed aboard and clung to his body. The noise that he had heard was indeed cymbals; a little wind-up tin-plate monkey had rudely been tucked into the waistband of his underpants, and it continued frantically clapping its cymbals together.
“Can't you turn that bloody thing off?” Alan said. “It's cold, and it's tickling me and pissing me off in the exact same instant.”
“If you insist,” said the stuffed fun-fur dachshund that sat on his chest brushing down its pink and white leopard skin coat. It reached over and consigned the monkey to silence. “Please excuse me,” the dachshund said, “but the void is particularly dusty today. My name is Colin. My friends and I have come to try to jog your memory a little, and I guess we've got a difficult job on our hands. Your mind is somewhat frazzled – even at a cursory glance it resembles the store cupboard of a particularly disorganised clown who collects the contents of rubbish bins, and I doubt if you're capable of remembering much of any significance unaided.” Just then another creature (if that's the right choice of word) shuffled into view, sliding across Alan's skin like a huge, slime-less slug. It was a chocolate hen with a proportion of its once proud chest nibbled away, revealing the clutch of gaudy, tinfoil covered eggs sitting snugly inside.
“Cluck-cluck, remember me and my ovoid secrets, Alan?” the hen said. “You may or you may not – it's been rather a long time.”
“I'm afraid not,” he replied. “I remember nothing, nothing at all. Well, I did remember a little something my mother once said to me a little while back, but that's about all..... I guess you folk are artefacts of my childhood, but I'm sorry, my mind's a clean slate; if you ever had a place in my life it's lost – irretrievably so, I fear.”
“Take us with you, pretty strangers!” Alan's more talkative eyebrow trilled. “We're willing to pay our way. We'll travel in the hen's belly, and we promise not to eat any of her delicious chocolate surprises.”
“Take me too,” a deeper voice added. “I have to escape from this shit-hole. I have to get to the laundry and get freshened up, for a start. I can't bear this same old, same old eternity of boredom any more, and I hate clinging to Alan D. Banner's odorous, crusty bottom and sweaty, largely redundant wedding tackle – I deserve better than that!”
“I didn't know you could talk,” Alan said. “You kept that bloody quiet, didn't you? I had no idea that you were sentient. If I'd known that I probably wouldn't have expected you to clothe my arse for all these years. Come to think of it, if I'd known that I'd have chatted with you now and then to break the monotony – it would have made a change from talking to my crazy eyebrows. I guess it shouldn't surprise me, because anything is possible here, and apparently the more unlikely it seems the more probable it becomes. Talking underpants - whatever next? And mutinous buggers into the bargain......”
“None of you can come with us, I'm afraid,” Colin said. “Your duty lies here with Alan, because you're the only mental relics he has left – he needs stability, for God's sake. Things won't seem anywhere near as bad when he regains his memory and rekindles the light in his soul, I promise. Alan, you need to focus on us now. You have to try to remember, or you'll be stuck in this Dark Place forever and a day. Concentrate - a chocolate hen, a tin-plate monkey and a fun-fur dachshund called Colin that existed only in the sunshine state of your exuberant imagination before you spilled them out into the world. There are lots more improbables where we come from in the Mystery with a distinct capital 'M,' some that you and others have already painstakingly chipped out of the bedrock and a whole lot more that remain buried, awaiting discovery.
We're not artefacts from your childhood, you see, we're constructions of your adult mind. You're a writer, Alan, and your work is by far the most important part of your being, or at least that's how you described it before you lost your marbles, so to speak. Sadly, not everyone shared your enthusiasm, because you were misunderstood, you were way ahead of your time. 'The ramblings of a lunatic,' one highly respected critic said about your first book, among other nasty things. He was just one callous, thoughtless soul amongst millions, though – the daft old twat wouldn't have recognised a good read if you nailed him to the floor and read it to him a million times over. Your book stumbled for a little while after that unprovoked attack and the trauma sent you tumbling into a deep depression, but a great deal of people enjoyed it in the coming months nevertheless. All publicity is good publicity, remember? The book has made a substantial amount of money in your absence. Great things lie ahead of you, my boy, but you have to salvage your adult fairy stories, your mind and ultimately your identity, or there's no hope of emerging from this Dark Place and moving on. Think..... Think very hard indeed; it's the only way you can get out of here.”
“You mean – you mean I'm not dead, and this Dark Place isn't purgatory?” Alan said.
“No, you're not dead, silly,” Colin said. “Far from it! You're in a bit of a state, but you're not ready for the bone yard just yet. The drugs that the doctors flooded your system with after your mental collapse aren't helping. When you come out of your fugue you have to stop taking them at once – that's very important, because if you continue ingesting even a reduced dose of that shit you're as good as finished, and don't you forget it!”
“Now that does surprise me,” Alan said. “I'm flabbergasted. I was convinced that I was dead and I was floating around in this disjointed suburb of hell awaiting judgement.”
“But now you have hope,” Colin said. “Now you have something to hang onto apart from your restless eyebrows and absconding underpants while we find a way of leading you back into the light. They're hallucinations, by the way, in case you haven't already realised it. Did you really believe there were such things as sentient eyebrows and underpants? I'm going to whisper something in your ear now, Alan, and then, hopefully, you'll begin to understand.”

Alan concentrated on a spot in the distance as the fun-fur dachshund unloaded a baffling amount of information into his mind. Something else was approaching out of the surrounding gloom, something huge and oddly shaped, and he knew at once what it was. “Uum,” he said. “Oh, fuck..... It's the Nazi hammerhead shark shaped plane or plane shaped shark from a story called 'Wabbit Season' in my maligned book. That twisted thing in the cockpit is the mother of all arseholes, and it doesn't want me or the various friends that I've met on my mental adventures to survive. It's coming this way with a full payload of bombs and missiles and all guns blazing.....”
“I know,” said Colin. “But don't be frightened, because it can't hurt you. You remembered it unaided, so now you have the strength to utilise your imaginary arsenal. Roll out the anti-aircraft guns! Turn the spotlights on, kiddo, and fire away!”
A powerful beam of light emerged from Alan's mouth, focusing on the swastika on the enemy shark-cum-plane's fuselage, and before the enemy could strike the machine gun turret concealed in his rogue underpants blasted off a short flurry of white hot death. The hammerhead's jaws opened wide in an involuntary spasm revealing the pale, flailing pilot sitting behind the snapping crescent of teeth as a ragged, bloody hole appeared in the shark's side. The craft began the inevitable slow motion plummet to its doom, a series of explosions racking its fat meaty belly and a plume of dark smoke trailing behind it. “Achtung! Himmel! Donner und blitzen! Exterminate! Exterminate! Aieeeee!” the thing screamed as it burst into flames and the stench of burning fish oil filled the air.
“So much for the Master Race, you malformed, incomparably disgusting Nazi cunt,” Alan said.
“It's done,” a new creature whispered as it materialised beside the dachshund, the hen and the tin monkey. “Everything will be fine now, Alan. You've passed the test.”
“Mr. Stripy,” Alan said to the blue and white striped emissary of the Lord from the story of the same name, a story that he rated as the best he had ever written. “You're still ticking, then. You can still talk - and here was me thinking you were dead. What test?”
“Never mind. I cannot die, Alan, and you know it,” Mr. Stripy said. “You and the Father made me invincible, between you. God gave me a couple of bags of new pennies to spend on good deeds because you were in trouble. You matter to Him, believe it or not, but whether or not you choose to believe that is up to you. Whenever or wherever there's evil to eradicate I'll be there – I'll always be there. I'll bleach your demons out from every drain, toilet bowl and plughole in the multi-verse, I'll kill all known germs dead. I will fight them on the beaches and drink the bastards under the tables, in the lounge and in the bar. Pity you can't join me, but your drinking days are over. The end. Full stop. You can't handle the melancholy any more. Got it?”
“Um, er, OK,” Alan said. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“Good. Bye bye, then. We'll meet again, Alan, I promise.”
“Cheerio,” Alan replied, and then the dark place and its denizens evaporated and he was falling swiftly through a hole in the total darkness.

“It's time for your medication, Sweetie Pie,” the nurse said as she gently eased Alan's lower jaw open with her thumb, but for some reason the heavily anaesthetised patient wasn't playing along and he snapped his mouth firmly shut. Strange, she thought. Alan was usually no trouble at all – unlike some of the patients under her care he was very pliable, and he did exactly as he was told if you treated him with respect and talked to him nice and softly. He had been in the ward for nearly a year now, and the routine was invariable. “Come on, honey,” the nurse continued. “It's doctor's orders, you know that. You have to take your meds if you want to get better.”
“No,” Alan replied almost imperceptibly. “No more pills. Not now, not ever.” Rachel was so shocked that she dropped one of the fat purple pills between her patient's dressing gown and his recliner, and she struggled to retrieve it.
“I don't believe I heard that, Alan,” she said after a long pause. “You haven't uttered more than a handful of words for over ten months. Shit, judging by the amount of crap they're pumping into you, you shouldn't be able to gurgle a single sweet nothing, never mind respond with any degree of logic.” She checked Alan's records, and as she suspected he had been given his meds at twelve hour intervals since he was admitted, no problems, no refusals and hopefully no oversights. Strange, she thought..... “Open your mouth, lovely,” Rachel sighed, gently stroking Alan's bottom lip. “Let's get this over and done with. No more games, please.” This time the patient opened his eyes.
“I said no,” he said, loud and clear. “Are you fucking deaf? My medication has been discontinued by the powers that be, Rachel. I'll suffer some rather nasty withdrawal symptoms for a while, but gradually I'll learn to live without thorazeprene – I'm strong enough to mend, to flourish, even. Slowly but surely I'll emerge from the Dark Place and regain my faculties without this mind-numbing shit keeping me under control. Within a fortnight I'll be walking again, and in less than six weeks I'll be going home and commencing work on my new book, and you'd better believe it. My miraculous rejuvenation is on the orders of a tin-plate monkey, a chocolate hen, a dachshund called Colin and a seriously weird dude called Mr. Stripy, a dude with a cotton flock brain and God given sentience – but you didn't hear that, OK?”
“O-kaaaaay,” Rachel eventually replied, slowly backing away towards the door. “Ellie? Ellie, get your arse in here right now.” Almost immediately another nurse appeared from around the corner and rushed down the otherwise deserted corridor. “I don't know how and I don't know why,” Rachel said, “but the writer man has come back to us – he's returned home from whatever Dark Place he's been trapped in this past year. Sweet Jeeesus, he opened his eyes and spoke to me as fluently as if he'd never gotten himself lost in the first place, and he was damned near catatonic this morning when we bathed him. I've worked here for nearly twenty five years, my love, and I've never seen anything like it. You've gotta see this for yourself, woman - you've gotta reassure me that I ain't losing my ever loving marbles. In fact you'll have to stay with him for five minutes, I need a ciggy like I've never needed one before. If Matron asks, I've gone for a tinkle.....”