THE CABINET COMPENDIUM
A STORY BOOK : 0 123 45678 9
Originally imagined in North Wales by Nigel Stone
The right of Nigel Stone to be the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with 1963, 2020, and all points between.
All the characters in this story are characters in this story, and exist in the author’s imagination, on the page, and will shortly be in your mind as well.
CHAPTER 137
In Which An Author Uses A Chapter Heading
The filing cabinet stands in the corner of my room. Its dented grey metal looks out of place next to the time-worn hardwood chest of drawers. The cabinet has three compartments and comes complete with plenty of empty filing folders, the kind you can slide backwards and forwards on tracks. They have a plastic clip at the top into which you can slip small pieces of card and label your paperwork. The drawers double as my writing station. I bought the cabinet two days ago whilst shopping for stocking fillers at a local jumble sale, but I now know that my purchasing it might have been a mistake. I’m moving to a new house soon and so the cabinet becomes more baggage for me to shift. I decide to make the most of owning it, despite the impending upheaval. My plan is to categorise fragments of my past.
I also want to examine the scrapbook I found tucked into the back folder of the bottom cabinet drawer, and I’m concerned about the name printed on that folder’s label. The cabinet was supposed to be empty when I took ownership, but if I spend too long pondering over this puzzle the precarious pile of paperwork on the floor will be as high and confused and scatter-brained as it was when I woke up this morning. I put the scrapbook and the name on the label on the back hob to simmer and set about the task in hand, promising myself I will return to this conundrum later. I then slide the small pieces of card out of the folder clips and turn them around, writing neat new labels on the clear side. I then slip the cards back into their clips.
I place my birth certificate into the file I’ve christened ‘PERSONAL’. This certificate is the oldest thing I own. If it is true that our bodies regenerate every seven years, then my hair, muscle, skin, bone, blood, nerves, everything that is a part of the physical “I” has been around for less time than that neatly and repeatedly creased piece of paper, or at least in this particular combination. I have done no research on the subject and am relying entirely on what could be a false memory of an article I might or might not have stumbled across online at some point.
Into the file I have titled ‘IDEAS’ I put the handwritten plots and “what ifs…?” I have thought up as a writer, the seeds I hope to someday sow and grow into stories. Here are the two pre-teen boys who build a makeshift telephone from a length of string and two tin cans, only to hear insidious whispers from menacing voices whenever they put the cans to their ears and pull the string tight. Here is the elderly woman who creates hand puppets from lost and discarded odd socks. Here is the community busy body slipping into madness when fate intervenes in the latest local scandal. Here is the Dystopian tale of a corporate hell. Here is the Team Building game with a fatal twist. And here is the young man stoned on life for the first time in years.
I need two files for the scripts I’ve had to learn as an actor. I call them ‘SCRIPT 1’ and ‘SCRIPT 2’. The reason I can’t fit them all into one file is because the scripts are bigger and thicker than the notebooks I write my own ideas in, and not because I have performed in a great many plays and films. The scripts contain every character’s lines, not just my own, plus all of the stage or camera directions. The words “INT”, “EXT”, “FADE IN”, “FADE OUT”, “ENTER”, and “EXIT” litter the pages, editing scenes into shape before they’re made real. I spot a trend in those words I have highlighted, the dialogue I have had to learn, the speeches other people have placed in my mouth. I tend to play more unsavoury characters than I do likable folk. This doesn’t bother me. It is what it is. It is all about how I look, how I am perceived before I am observed.
The pile of paperwork grows smaller. If I were a character in a film this passage of time could be illustrated using a montage of shots with incidental music and no dialogue. There would be moving images of me sliding pieces of card out of the files and writing on them. Some of the shots would be so close up that all you can see is the nib of the pen and the letters disappearing as I write. There would be occasional cutaways to the pile of paperwork markedly increasing in height, interspersed with random footage of a clock, its hands pointing to different seconds of the day. There would be views of the sun zig-zagging across the sky as seen through a window, and shadows reaching out over the carpeted floor, stretching, sweeping, and pointing along with the hands of the clock.
I return to the matter of the name on the card and the scrapbook when I’m done for the day. The questions remain. Why is my name written on that label? Who wrote it? Is it intended to represent me or does it refer to someone else called Nigel Stone? And what of the scrapbook? The man who sold the cabinet to me swore he’d purchased an empty cabinet and sold me the same. He claimed to have no knowledge of its provenance. Did he know more about the previous owner than he was letting on? Had they kept a file on me for some reason? Was this his scrapbook? Could it be a coincidence, nothing more? I supposed one way to find answers would be to look inside the scrapbook.
I picked it up and flicked through the pages. I spotted a tiny picture in the bottom right hand corner of each right hand page. The first image was a stick figure lying down on its back. The position of the figure changed ever so slightly with each passing page, creating the illusion of movement if you thumbed and flicked through the scrapbook fast enough. I watched the figure stand and wave to me with one hand. It then shrank, continuing to get smaller until the last page where all I could see was a dot so small it might as well not have existed at all. There were pieces of paper glued and taped into the scrapbook sugar paper. This made sense. That is how a scrapbook would normally be used. The glued-in paper had text, mostly typed, some handwritten. There were a number of different handwriting styles. I returned to the front page and started to read out loud to the late afternoon light.
“The writer looks out at the world from his isolation. He is lost in a forest of his own thoughts, stumbling through the maybe paths, looking for a way out. He finds it hidden within the keys of the keyboard.”
I consider the words. They could be referring to me. I am a writer. A lot of space has been used for so little information. I turn the page and find much the same thing.
“He is fifty six years old and feels every one of them. He sits at a recently tidied desk, frustrated because his wireless keyboard isn’t connecting. He gives up and starts to write…”
A second reference to somebody writing, someone the same age as me too. There are also three dots attached to the end of the word “write”, suggesting there was more to say that remains unsaid, the voice trails off, maybe it’s interrupted, or there’s a change of scene. The dots are similar to the “FADE OUT” directions in screenplays, and now I’m wondering about unwritten messages, unspoken words, meaningful silences.
I decide to read a page at random despite the late hour and my complaining eyes falling in and out of focus through fatigue and overuse. I flick the pages and watch the stick figure move until it is halfway between existing and disappearing. I stop flicking. I recognise the font but haven’t seen indentations and smudges like these in a long time. I read the text to the dying day.
“JOB SEARCH TRAINING DIARY – DAY THREE
I wasn’t the first to arrive, or the last. The room was half full or half empty, depending upon how you look at these things. I took the same seat I’d been sitting in for the past two days. This place hadn’t been set aside for me. There was no conscious thought leading me there either. It was simply where I’d ended up sitting during my time here, just because. There is a brown envelope on the table in front of me. Every other seat has a similar envelope. Written on them all is the same instruction, do not open the envelope until instructed to do so by the facilitator.
On Monday I discovered that I am the ideas person and the peacemaker in a team. Yesterday I learnt that I learn using repetitive actions; by doing a task over and over, rather than reading or listening to instructions. These things were taught to me via the use of tests. Today I am going to find out just how lucky I am to be alive but I don’t know this yet.
We are now all present and the day starts in earnest with another test. We are told to open our envelope and inside each one is a description of an individual. My envelope contains the following information. It tells me that I am a straight, fertile, white male, aged 21, and that I have recently qualified as a doctor. This is not all true. I am a straight white male, yes, but I am in my fifties, and I have had the snip. I am also squeamish about all things biological. The test says otherwise and I am to adopt the persona of this imaginary doctor.
Even the person facilitating the course has an envelope but I suspect that the test is weighed in their favour. Their envelope informs us that they are a killer and to reinforce this they take a pistol and a box of ammunition out of their briefcase. They then load the weapon.
Our group is informed that we must choose six out the twenty four of us sitting in this room and those six will be shot by the facilitator. I argue easily enough that as a virile, straight doctor I will of course be indispensable. Janet, who wants to set up her own beauty parlour in real life isn’t so lucky. She is told she has to be a blind, eighty four year old man and we all agree, even Janet, that she will not be missed. She is the first to be shot.
I leave the course with my fifteen fellow survivors at the end of the day, filled with a sense of relief that the chair I am sitting on in that room belongs to me for the duration of the course, and I thank whatever it was made me sit in that particular chair, even if it is chance and nothing more.”
I slap the scrapbook shut. This narrative is almost identical to an idea I had for a stage-play only three months ago, a contemporary political riff off of ‘Twelve Angry Men’. I look at the offending page again and it is while I’m trying to figure out how anyone was able to steal my idea that I see how faded the paper taped into the scrapbook is. There’s a hint of nicotine yellow that ages the page and therefore the text upon it considerably. Even the tape used to attach the paper to the scrapbook page has lost its gloss and some of its tackiness. Then there is the fact a typewriter has been used. This page has to be older than my idea. I turn the anger inwards. I know I didn’t steal the concept but I berate myself for my lack of originality. I need some fresh air and so…
…I stay in or I go out. I turn left when I exit and turn right when I leave, I don’t buy a newspaper and sit in the park, and I read about what’s going on in the world, I have no money for bread and I feed the ducks, I put on my sunglasses and shelter from the storm under the canopy of a tree, I stop off along the way home to purchase a snack from the shop and devour it on my way home, hungry for something to eat, I rue another wasted day and give myself a pat on the back for getting so much done, I go to bed and lie awake as I dream, I sit and watch daytime TV while eating biscuits dunked to destruction in endless cups of cheap coffee, the poems I’ve written inspire me to be more determined than ever, I stain the ceiling with sunlight and spliff smoke, I try to count in time with the microwave as the ready meal turns, peeling a banana from the wrong end like monkeys do, I vegetate and plot a mind map, medicate and meditate, experience lucid dreams and listen to the muse whisper in my ear. The planets continue to perform a song and dance routine on the celestial stage. The scrapbook remains on the coffee table and I move it out of the way while I pour the boiled water into my mug, resting the book on the tips of two potted cacti I’ve placed on the kitchen windowsill to capture the sun. I see the scrapbook on the arm of my chair out of the corner of my eye, waiting for me. All this coffee results in any number of bathroom calls. I know it’s not hygienic to keep books in the toilet but there are moments when you would rather stay in there and sit and hide away from the world, and so it is a good idea to have something to do with your alone-time other than brood on the woes of the world. The scrapbook is just the sort of book that belongs in the toilet, something you can dip into without having to worry about continuity. One such book was written specifically to be browsed through when sat on the loo. I slip the scrapbook between that book and a collection of old-fashioned British postcards, wondering whether I should take the unexpected contents out of the filing cabinet and find out what’s inside it. I sit back down and pick up the scrapbook, allowing another cup of coffee to reach ambient temperature.
The page I stop at has what might be a bucket list stuck onto it, a list of wished intentions. None of the items on the list have been ticked off. I could consider this list in a number of ways. I could think about the wishes I share with the author, tick off the things that I’ve already done or I could try to picture the creator of the list. I could, if I could be bothered, try to calculate how much it might cost someone to fulfil all of the dreams written down. What is the price attached to riding a horse through the surf, for example? I figure out why this wouldn’t work. I rode a horse through the surf and it cost me the price of a flight to Santorini to stay with friends who lived close to the beach there and who owned a number of horses, but perhaps whoever wrote this list doesn’t know anyone who lives on a Greek island with access to a horse and the coastline. The cost for someone else would be totally different than it was for me. It could be cheaper or it could be more expensive. I pick up a ballpoint pen, the sort of pen that has four different coloured nibs, one black, one green, one blue, and a red one. I choose the black ink and place a cross next to the activities on the list that I have already carried out myself.
Watch Shakespeare at The Globe X
Ride a horse through the surf X
Do a parachute jump X
Perform on stage X
The list is short but I think I still deserve a pat on the back for achieving so much. I decide that the scrapbook is good for my mental health right now and put it aside. I weigh up the pros and cons of telling my support worker about it when she visits tomorrow and then I must fall asleep because I wake up in the morning.
To Be Continued.
nigelstoneblog 