Authors: Jamie Mollart
The Zoo
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Jamie Mollart
runs his own advertising company, and has won awards for marketing.
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Over the years he has been widely published in magazines, been a guest on some well respected podcasts and blogs, and Patrick Neate called him âquite a writer' on the Book Slam podcast. He is married and lives in Leicestershire with his wife and cat.
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Jamie Mollart
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First published in Great Britain
And the United States of America
Sandstone Press Ltd
Dochcarty Road
Dingwall
Ross-shire
IV15 9UG
Scotland.
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All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
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Copyright © Jamie Mollart 2015
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Editor: Moira Forsyth
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The moral right of Jamie Mollart to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.
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The publisher acknowledges support from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.
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ISBN: 978-1-910124-24-6
ISBNe: 978-1-910124-25-3
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Jacket design by Jason Anscomb
Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.
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For my family.
Acknowledgements
To my wife, Sam, for putting up with me in every sense of the word.
To my parents for instilling an unshakable love of the written word and making it impossible for me to leave the house without a book in my bag.
To Mr Braddick, my English teacher. Teachers don't get enough credit for the work they do and when they inspire someone that deserves even more credit.
To Peter Cox, for teaching me that while writing is an art it is also a commercial concern, for seeing something in me and for pushing me on when I was near giving up.
To Henderson Mullin for picking up the phone when he did, for believing in me and for opening some doors.
To Tim Clare for his advice and wisdom, for showing me that less is more and many other clever and useful things.
To Dom White for inspirational reading material and literary curries.
To my agent Leslie, for taking a risk when others wouldn't.
To my editor Moira, for just getting it.
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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
In the dark I can sense The Zoo.
I can't see it, but I know it is there. In the black it's blacker and I imagine the outlines of The Figurines and The Animals: all spikes and claws and weapons and sharp edges.
I can hear it too.
A buzzing. Like electricity in the air. A noise that lifts the hairs on your arms. As if it has to remind me at all times that it's there and active. I hear it over the noise of a shriek in the corridor outside my room; it may be laughter, or tears, I can't tell. Over the noise of bare feet slapping on the tiles. Over the click and whirr of the heating.
Over it all I can hear The Zoo.
It's the sound of blood in my veins and heartbeat in my ears and throat, of my fingers scratching on the coarse bedcover as I pull it over my head and the panic in my breathing.
When it becomes too much I force myself out of bed and try to confront it. But I stand impotent and wordless and it knows I am weak.
Time passes before I dredge up the words from my stomach. I question myself, I force my name out between bleeding gums.
It doesn't even sound like my name anymore. It's abstract and once removed.
âWhat do you want?' I scream and get only a fist banged on the wall from the room next door in reply.
The Zoo is mute and judgemental; it doesn't need to justify itself to me, never has. It's the wires behind the TV, hopelessly knotted. It's a foreign dialect, impossible to translate.
It's been here as long as I have. I've asked them to take it away from me three times, but each time I sank into a despair that was physical and begged for it, so they returned it. We are tied together.
I face it off and it doesn't blink.
Of late it comes in the day. Fearsome explosions of noise and aggression that cause the world to shake until I collapse on my knees and the teeth rattle in my head, my eyes cry blood and every sinew tenses until I think they are going to rip. This continues until I plead for death and then it is silent.
âWhat do you want?' I ask in the darkness.
In the strip light day I try to ignore it. Stay in the day room, pace the corridors.
Eventually though, I return to my room to get my cigarettes and it is there in its place. Glowering.
So I have to break it down. Reduce it to its core components. Only then can I begin to unravel it.
This is how it goes.
At the very top sits The Cowboy.
He is crafted from metal, although his base is plastic. This seems to be the wrong way round. The metal is heavier and yet it's the plastic that does the supporting. In the past this has bothered me and I have tried to understand why he would be crafted this way, when the opposite is more logical, but the train of thought leads nowhere so I've buried it.
I used to believe he was made of lead, but I've absent-mindedly chewed at his body many times and, despite the obvious difficulties associated with my present location, I'm in rare health.
The brim of his Stetson is wide and elliptical, casting a shadow across his immovable face. One cannot help but be impressed by the firm set of his jaw and the steely determination of his chiselled bone structure. He is a formidable opponent.
The Cowboy has two Colts he knows as The Equalisers cocooned in patterned holsters on his belt and, in his right hand, a Winchester rifle. This is the Gun that won the West and it is this weapon that places him on top. He holds it with a knowing pride. He is aware of the power it gives him over the rest of The Zoo and I can see him lying by a campfire, head balanced on rolled-up bedding, hat tipped over his eyes, but always watchful, the rifle resting on his chest, rising and falling with his breathing, a gloved hand brushing the trigger. It is an image of self-awareness and danger and an acceptance of the unknown and it pleases me.
He means many things. He is the pushing of boundaries, the suppression of cultures. Colonial. He is the wide plains and the romance of adventure. He is the wild frontier. He is the contrast between the beige of the desert and the stark black silhouette of clapboard buildings. But he is also line dancing, and fat Americans, Boss Hog and the Marlboro Man who died of cancer.
The Cowboy is about the relationship of man with his surroundings, dwarfed and yet somehow integral. The unbalanced, but symbiotic, equation of human being within a landscape. A shape in a doorway, black against the dusty foreground, mountains poised in the distance, the possibilities of white clouds in a dome of perfect blue.
He is Eastwood and Jesse James. The neon sign waving over a temple to gambling. He is Shane and, at the same time, the Milky Bar Kid.
He is at the top. He is the principal and takes his place as a leader of men with a stoic acceptance I respect. He knows this is his position, he expects it, but doesn't seek it, and this is why it is his.
It's a Friday afternoon. About three or four months ago I think, but time means less to me now than it did then, so this could be wildly inaccurate. We're in a Russian themed vodka bar, but they are running an Italian promotion. I'm sitting behind an uneven screen of Peronis. I look at the world through the green glass of the bottles and their gassy contents.
The bar is all black tiles and shine and chrome and glass and people drinking in the afternoon when they should be working.
It is as slick and shallow as spilled oil.
We've won a substantial pitch, so this counts as work and I am smug and drunk.
Outside, the sky hurls grey rain into the faces of the people who lean into it, heads pivoted sideways, the world slapping them on the cheek. Someone has spray-painted “What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself” onto the hoarding which skirts the scar of a building site. The letters are tall and tense, scrawled in haste.
âWe fucking rock,' says Baxter, his face rouged by drink, hoisting his bottle in a toast. The others clink it and beer spills onto the polished glass tabletop.
I shoot him a glare.
âYou fucking rock,' he corrects. I look at his jaw, which seems skew-whiff and clenched and I idly wonder whether he's had some coke and what I would do to him if he had.