Thames

A city worker starts to experience strange premonitions from the future.

Thames

I received the first call on a Tuesday. It had been one of those mornings where nothing will hold still. Any time the phone did stop ringing Paul Gilbert had been there yapping on at us about the big conference in May. I did my best to ignore him but there was something about his voice that just drilled into your brain.

                  Patrick Brennan is confirmed, he said with an irritating tone of glee.

F**k Patrick Brennan up his smug arse. I was still way behind with the quarterly reports. They were meant to have been finished the previous week so understandably I didn’t have time for his small talk. As soon as I could get out for lunch I practically ran down the stairs. I bought a sandwich in the Pret across the street and was heading towards the river when my phone rang.

                  Don’t worry about Sandra. It said. Keep focused.

That was all. The voice started speaking as soon as I had said hello and pronounced each word at a steady pace, like a recording. It was a confident, precise male tenor �" with none of the fakery that you normally hear in a phone voice. More like a radio voice.

 As soon as it finished speaking there was a click as if disconnecting and then an echoing tone as If I was listening to the last cry of a distant star.

                  Hello, I said. Who is that?

I strained my ear against the receiver but there was no answer, only that spooky echo. A lorry must have driven past at that point as the sound was drowned out and, by the time I could hear again, the receiver was completely dead. I looked at the display in confusion. It read:

                  Call from: Unknown Number
                  12.17pm

My first thought was that it had been a wrong number, a crossed-line. I knew a Sandra from school but I hadn’t seen her in twenty years. She was the younger sister of a guy in my class at primary. I couldn’t see what connection she could have with anything. Her brother had gone to a different secondary school and I had lost touch with him. I hadn’t thought of either of them in twenty years.

For a second, I admit, I considered it might be Leigh, playing some kind of trick on me, but I quickly discounted that idea, we weren’t the sort of couple to play pranks on each other.  I put the phone back in my pocket and walked down the narrow passageway that led to the river front. I had chosen a Crayfish and rocket sandwich and started munching on it as I walked, pieces of filling falling out as I went.

 Around my work it was mainly converted dock buildings, from the time when London had been a sea faring nexus. A thin pavement ran along the top of the river walls supposedly part of the Thames path but few tourists made it along this section.

London Bridge and the South Bank were always busy but on this side there was no seating or sunshine. There was something dirty and seedy about these alleyways and passages that repelled even the nearby office workers, who you might have expected to sit here for lunch. Miraculously I was alone. Alone in the centre of London.

I leant against the metal rail that ran along the top of the river wall. Ten feet below me the river sloshed greedily against the brick. Brownish- green algae clung to the stone and created a sheen on the water nearby.

I was tempted to throw the wrapper from my sandwich into the river. To pollute it. Make the river that little bit filthier. Contaminate the water.  A pointless act I know but at that moment the ceaseless industry of the city around me was just too much. I was surrounded on all sides by a sea of productivity, goals, achievements and blind efficiency drives. The sound of progress was deafening and for that moment I wanted to do my bit to halt it. Stop the race. To call time out.

I wanted everyone to throw a hundred sandwich wrappers into the Thames and choke it up entirely. Choke up the lifeblood of the city and watch it grind to a halt. I enjoyed that, the thought of my imagined city crumbling and knowing it was my fault and not caring and doing it anyway. I stared hard at the reflection of the sun on the waves near HMS Belfast.

A cloud passed over and I finished my sandwich. The last remnants of fishy mayonnaise lingered in my mouth so I leant over the railing and spat into the river below, my globule of spit tumbling lazily towards the water and landing with a splot. I looked for a bin but there were none nearby so I folded the sandwich wrapper and stuffed it into my back pocket.

I took my phone out and traced the unlock pattern with my finger. The icon showed one missed call. For a moment I thought it might be Matt phoning about the party at the weekend.

I tapped the call history and scrolled up and down. Matt really should have phoned me. He was probably still in bed, the work shy loafer that he was. I went back to my unknown call and tapped it, knowing full well that it wouldn’t connect. The earpiece beeped twice and then returned to the call history screen. I phoned Matt instead.

The number you are trying to reach is temporarily unavailable.

Temporarily unavailable. That was the story of his life. The story of everybody’s life, if you took a long enough view. We’re only temporarily available after all, fleeting across the face of things, a rarity against the norm of static.

                  You’re a long time dead, as they say in Yorkshire.

That afternoon at work things had quietened down. Alex’s team were away running an event in Vauxhall so the office was saved their constant back-slapping. I got my head down for the most part and had forgotten about the phone call entirely when Joanna came over.

                  Have you got anything for Sandra?, she said.

I was startled. The name resonated around my skull. I looked up from my spreadsheet blankly.

                  Sandra?

                  Yes, the new intern. She’s starting next week. I know you got the memo.

Joanna rolled her eyes. She was a podgy woman in her mid-forties and had a way of looking permanently exasperated and amused at the same time. It was never clear exactly what role she filled but she knew every project that was happening and every team in the building. I shook my head confused.

                  She’s joining your team on Monday. We want to make sure she’s got plenty to do and enjoys the experience or she might ask for a wage!

I smiled weakly and nodded my head sagely.

                  Oh Sandra. Yes, I’ll send a list over once I’m finished with the quarterlies.

                  Of course, dear. Make sure it’s with me before 5.30.

Joanna winked and disappeared on her rounds. After she had gone I stared at the screen but was unable to make any sense of the rows and columns. Leigh always said I was too lenient with Joanna, that I ended up doing her job for her but the truth was I felt sorry for her. It wasn’t a big task, showing an intern around the office, but Joanna was permanently flustered, her age compounding matters as she suffered from hot flushes.  

Normally I woul have thought nothing of this and emailed across a list with few scrappy jobs but after my phone call at lunch I felt a terrible sense of foreboding. The voice on the phone and the terrible echoing sound that followed it seemed to me some kind of omen. Whoever this Sandra was she signified something terrible. The air suddenly became stifling.

Looking around the office nobody else seemed to have noticed. The place was a hive of activity, everyone focused on their screen. The air shimmered and I felt sure that I was about to pass out but then, as quickly as it arrived, the feeling disappeared. Shakily I stood up and walked to the water dispenser.

By the time I crossed the floor I felt much better and changed my mind, continuing round the corner to the kitchen to make a coffee instead. The strong earthy smell helped revive me and I convinced myself it was nothing. The call was certainly mysterious but nothing more. A cosmic coincidence. Comic coincidence even. After all the voice had specifically said not to worry about Sandra so if there was any connection it wasn’t worth stressing about.

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly and I made good headway on the reports. As I was leaving Joanna stopped me and asked for the tasks I had promised. I had been so engrossed in the spreadsheets that I forgot to send the files to her but I knew it could wait until the following day. Joanna made a mock annoyed face and waggled her finger and I blew her a kiss as I left.

It was drizzling as I left and the 25 minutes it took me to cycle home seemed to drag on forever. When I had begun commuting by bike, at the start of the year, it took me closer to 50 minutes but practice makes perfect and I had learnt a few tricks to deal with the rush hour London traffic. I had figured out the shortcuts that shaved valuable minutes of my route, I had stopped waiting for green traffic lights and had learnt how to switch from tarmac to pavement like a pro.

 

I had been pleased to note that my calf muscles were becoming much more defined and I could feel a spring in my step where before I had slouched about. Once the reports were done and I could count on my bonus I was planning to get a new Claud Butler light weight frame.

The drizzle, combined with the spray back from the rear tire meant I was thoroughly soggy by the time I got home. I hoisted the bike into its space behind the garden door and climbed up the stairs to the flat.

When I reached the door I fumbled my keys and as I stooped to pick them up I noticed a ball of fluff and hair on the carpet. I picked it up, rubbing it in my hand as I unlocked the door. Just as I was about to throw the hair ball into a corner I was overcome by a sudden compulsion to swallow it.

It’s hard to describe the sensation as it was so alien to me even then but some part of my body still retains the feeling. It was nothing to do with hunger more akin to a sexual urge. For a split second I wanted the ball of dust and fluff and hair inside me and I felt a rush of excitement that I should have it within my grasp, so close, so available. I felt my saliva glands starting to work at the prospect of ingesting it and, almost unconsciously, my arm moved towards my mouth.

I could almost taste the dusty accretions and imagine the rough texture as it slipped down my throat. The excitement surged for that split second before the rational part of my brain stepped in. This silent partner had watched aghast as my hand approached my mouth but had been unable to interject.

Now as the dust ball drew closer I felt a shiver of objectivity and looked at the grime in disgust. Again I was about to throw it away but the urge had not entirely subsided and I was afraid of losing the dust ball amongst the other everyday fluff and dust in the corners. Quite what made that accretion special I don’t know but the urge to swallow it was tied with a certain attachment. It was my fluff ball and I could do with it as I pleased. It was not something I wanted to lose.

Hesitantly I moved my hand back towards my face and took a  deep breath through my nose, imbibing the scent. It was musty and greasy, just as I had imagined. I was overtaken by the urge to swallow it whole but some part of me overcame my reptilian brain and instead I stuck out my tongue to lick it...

…it was disgusting. I threw the horrid gunk into the hall. The taste was repulsive, beyond what you can imagine. It tasted decayed and old, ancient, like a remnant of death itself. The taste made me want to gag and I ran into the kitchen to gulp down a glass of water.

Although I drank several tumblers full in rapid succession the taste would not go away. I stared out the kitchen blinds blankly. The whole sequence of events had taken no more than twenty to twenty-five seconds but I felt shaken. A terrible sense of fate enveloped me, I felt that my actions had been lived before, as if my life was some kind of second hand repeat.

As soon as the fluff had touched my tongue my urge had shattered but now a dark hangover remained that shadowed my thoughts. A flash of an image appeared in my thoughts. I could see myself, in the future.

I stood on top of a small hillock overlooking a city made up of abstract geoids and brightly coloured towers. It was early morning and the sun gleamed fiercely on the futuristic buildings. I was alone but I could sense the countless lives moving in the distance. I knew this city, this future version of me lived there but had never seen it from that angle before.

Something momentous had happened, I struggled to remember the details, an historic event, something earth-shattering. It was somehow my doing, I had evinced this change, but the specifics eluded my grasp. A faltering success.  Something great had happened but as I stood on that hill I also felt a crippling sense of loss. I had failed. I had sacrificed something, something close to me and gained something marvellous as a result but the thing I had lost, the thing I had lost…

I caught my breath. I was shaking. The memory dissipated like dawn vapours. I steadied myself on the kitchen worktop but could make no sense of my sudden vision-journey.  I had some glucose tablets, a promotion free with a recent amazon order. I cracked the packet open and dissolved them in a pint of water.

I had been planning to stay in that evening and take it easy, the previous few weeks had seen too much alcohol, but I couldn’t sit still any more. Instead I picked up the phone and dialled Matt’s number. He answered after the fourth ring and we arranged to meet for a pint. It was only as I was locking the front door, half an hour later, that my mind returned to my phone call earlier in the day. I don’t know why but I felt some connection between my vision and the mysterious voice. The recommendation, not to worry suddenly reassured me and I left the flat feeling much better.  That was the last Tuesday of the month. The following week Sandra arrived at my work.