Real

'After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."'
-Boswell

For a while at secondary school I took a philosophy class after school. I can't say it was the highlight of my week, rather as one of the two only girls in the class, and a year younger than everyone else I was rather taciturn. Despite all this I did manage to pick up some interesting concepts, such as the one illustrated above. The basic theory of Bishop Berkeley's is that nothing actually exists and the world is in fact imagined. But Johnson's point is that the world is physical and real, and the sensation of kicking the stone proves this to him. I have to say, I have come to no conclusion about either theory, I tend follow the belief that I might as well behave as if the world is real, because behaving otherwise will never get me anywhere. But fairly recently I was thinking about the ideas and I thought of a story where someone behaves according to the idea that their world is completely imagined by themselves and nothing is real, while another character attempts to show the point of living life. I hope you enjoy, if anyone fancies leaving some feedback I would adore it.

Real

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

She blinked her seaweed eyes. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is a shadow maker.’

I grinned and took her hand in mine, a hand which veins and scars made maps across. She once told me all the places she’d been were written on the back of her hands. She could run a finger south, towards the bony wrist, and remember the way a willow made the light dapple across the surface of a lake in Angouleme.

‘But you make shadows; trees make shadows, what makes it different?’ I replied.

‘It’s not. I’m not saying names are set.’ She grew animated as she spoke, ‘Think of it as fluid, to us right now it’s a shadow maker, but to someone sitting inside it might be called home, or shelter…’

‘You’re right.’

My eyes open and I take in the room. Light spills in through gossamer curtains, her choice, she liked to see the light or illumination as she called it. Light was too conceptual for her. Turning on my side I see the bedclothes, pulled awry by me during my sleep, where she should have laid. My fingers clasp around cold hard metal, in my hands she called it the soul splitter. I called it freedom.

Do you believe we’re actually living? Do you believe that everything you’re touching now is real, is actually pressing against you, the fabric of your clothes, the brush of eyelash on cheek? Do you believe in mortality? She did, she believed in it so hard she’d break a glass and cut the flesh on her forearm to prove to me she bled. She once showed me how she could go to hospital and made me watch how people reacted. I touched her arm, and didn’t feel a thing. If you stopped looking at these words would they still exist? If you stopped listening to your lover’s heartbeat would it still sound? I once told her she wasn’t real, while the heart monitor beeped beside us. She wouldn’t look at me.

She called the heart monitor a safety drum. When it stopped sounding it would lose the catch and make everyone come. She called the bed a dream maker. ‘I’ve only ever dreamt in a bed.’ She explained. I told her she’d dream if she slept on the floor. ‘No I won’t’ she said.

I take freedom and run its edge along my thumb, down a worn groove. Then my index finger, and then lightly round my wrist. Swapping hands, I repeat the movements on my left. I stop at the wrist and regard my freedom and its bloodied edge. I regard and wonder; would it be worth it, to press a little deeper?

I used to humour her a lot. When we lay in bed I told her she was flesh, blood, and bone, as solid as the stones in the graveyard. But in the evening, after dinner, I’d tell her how everything was constructed. I told her how I controlled the world, how it was all in my mind. She told me to fix it. Five weeks and a day later Libya rose against Gaddafi; ‘Look,’ I told her in the evening, ‘look what I have wreaked.’ She said I didn’t make her. She said she thought real, independent thoughts and felt emotion like I did. She said she could prove it to me.

She took the soul splitter and split herself open. Her eyes turned to marbles and rolled away; her lips turned to wax and melted down her face. I was left with a heap of red soaked meat.

I don’t know why I made myself hurt. I don’t know why I created an empty bed, why I couldn’t recreate her out of a spare rib. It’s been a year and two days and thirteen hours, and she still hasn’t sat up in her grave and pushed her key in the lock on the door.

So I choose the freedom to forget, and push it in deeper.