Writing Skin petits rêves de coma

little coma dreams

By Athanasius

By Kirsten

Antony was born in a grey house in the geographical middle of the city. The city’s first decade had seen an intense period of growth as the tiny port town exploded into an industrial wasteland. As the number of people and factories grew upon the preternaturally damp soil, the earth beneath the city became a mixture of toxic human and industrial waste. The factories grew larger and larger. The people, despite the condition of their environment, continued to consume, defecate and reproduce, the population thickening in the limited space afforded by the geography of the area. They delved into the earth, carving out basements and cellars into full house-sized rooms where scores of families lived together in squalor and filth; beneath the ever-present grey clouds from the factories the young grew pale and lamp-eyed, the old forgetting the look of real daylight. When the first roads were paved in stone the grey-skinned workers and their giant-eyed children moved farther out, and farther out from the center of the city, leaving behind them a muddy, blackened mess, caverns of space carved out below the factories, leaning shanty houses, the odd bank or black-bricked hotel standing in stone against other biodegradable muck, and one grey house.

Antony was born in that grey house. When he looked out of the south windows from the arms of his nurse on the third day after his birth he saw only the black towers of the refinery, the sawmill, and the chophouses stretching to the horizon, and in front of the alien mass of tangled metal and wire-thin pipes, two men carrying the body of his dead mother out into the street.

It was a grim sight to greet a child coming into the world, but from such beginnings, the nurse had been known to remark, there is no place to go except up. Unfortunately, conditions did not improve for Antony as he grew to adulthood, cursed with a string of debilitating illnesses and injuries he was left at home with the nurse while his father traveled the world on business. Antony’s father was a brilliant man. The loss of his beloved wife left him stewing in regret and resentment of the son that had survived. Antony, sensing this, stayed out of his father’s way when he returned, retreating to the attic of the house for hours at a time while his father stormed and raged at the servants below. At the age of seven his father, with an ill-placed swing at his son’s head, sent Antony flying over the banister on the second floor of the grey house. Antony landed with a deafening crack on the stair below, breaking his shoulder, his left arm, and four ribs.

As a result of complications from these injuries, Antony did not attend school until the fifth grade. His nurse, who was fairly unschooled herself, taught him to read and write as best she could. The nurse was intrigued and also repulsed by the child she had been charged with. She had not expected to stay in the grey house so long but felt so immensely sorry for the boy that she ended up convincing herself that there was probably nowhere sunnier that would have her anyway. She gradually sank into the regularity of housekeeping and stopped thinking altogether. As for Antony, he spent the majority of his time alone, not playing games or reading like other children, but sitting at the window in the attic in silence.

When Antony was finally deemed healthy enough to attend the local primary school he was eleven years old and knew virtually nothing apart from how to write some sentences and read several short words. As a result he was put into special classes and handled with great sensitivity by his teachers. None of the other children even looked at him during outside time, he was beneath even their taunting.