fiction by jeremy maddison

Bluebirds

George was in a room. He had arrived in this particular room the previous night, having travelled to Paris at the behest of a letter from Claudette. A woman he had met at school, but had not spoken to for some thirty years—although, he could hardly recall speaking to her at all. But in his diaries, he remembered writing that her eyes were like bluebirds painting the sky. An image he recalled every night for decades. In fact, the image was such a regular occurrence that when the letter arrived he was not surprised, and told his employer that it was a family matter and that he would likely be gone for several weeks. 

The hotel in Paris was Claudette’s suggestion. A grand place, built at the time of Louis XIV, and the room he was given felt opulent. There was a four-poster bed and paintings by people he suspected might be famous, as well as a view that may have been poetic, if the clouds covering Paris had chosen to part. But in the dead of night, four people had arrived and kidnapped him. Dragging him along corridors and then pushing him into this place, which was a place of imprisonment. He was naked. There was no light, no sound. It was almost as if he were in a void. Understandably he had tried to leave, but he found himself disoriented, and was unable to find the door. Banging into objects, falling over, and eventually, after hitting his head on something he couldn’t quite discern, he curled up into a ball, smarting from the pain. And it was at that moment that a ticking noise began. 

It was a sound that on any other night might have annoyed, but on this night intrigued. So, the next day, when the room’s only window finally allowed sunlight to seep in, he got to his feet, shivering and sore, and went to find the source.  

He couldn’t move, though. 

It was the walls that did it. Art, covering almost every bit of space. Art that seemed so familiar, he could feel it on his skin. Grotesques and arabesques—that was it. He’d read about them as a teenager—Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by Edgar Allen Poe. He’d done some research after reading that book. Absurdist pieces, popular at the time of Louis XIV. Creatures of myth and fantasy—fauns, nymphs, demons and gods—colliding with people in the bizarrest of ways—and now they were here.

He shook himself free, taking in the rest of the room. The window was at the far end, and in the center, a large wooden table, which could have housed about twenty but only had chairs for three. One of those chairs was lying on its side, as was an enormous earthenware vase. It was one of two vases, both filled with ferns and grasses, the upright one standing proudly on the right of the doorway, its contents spilling over the top in beautiful shades of reds and greens. He guessed that the one on the floor had originally stood on the left of that door, its contents combining with the other to form an arch—but now only one remained. 

He moved. Making his way around the toppled vase and trying the door—it was locked. So, he put his ear to it, listening intently, before banging and calling out. 

“Hello,” he said.

There was no response. 

The ticking noise, which had vanished at the sight of the walls, returned then, and after trying the door for a third time, he decided to continue his search.

At the far end of the room, close to the window, he found it. A clock, hanging from the wall with a small brass plaque underneath which explained that it was an original piece, specifically designed for this room. According to the plaque, the clock had hung there for approximately two hundred years, and the three bronze figurines, which so beautifully adorned it, represented honor, courage, and grace. The thing that interested him though was the clock's movement.  For the second hand skipped forwards and backwards every three beats to the minute, never allowing time to progress. He was mesmerized. So much so, that it took him a long time to realize that the judges were there. 

They were at the table. Three figures sitting in a row. Their backs to him, all of them dressed in formal gowns and wigs. Even more strange was the fact that the fallen chair and vase were now back in their original places. Both vases, he guessed, must have been about three feet wide and about four feet high—triple that with the ferns and grasses inside, but somehow the entire restoration had been done in complete silence. He felt the hairs on his neck rise as he considered this. Then, despite himself, he called to the judges, and when no one answered he made his way towards them, keeping close to the wall. However, they didn’t move. Even when he walked around the table and stood in front of them, naked and shouting, they just sat there, their eyes blank, staring at the table’s surface.

George didn’t know what to do. The night before had been bad enough: being pulled from his bed in that opulent room, engorged with love and the softness of dreams. Those beautiful blue eyes finally manifest in a Parisian hotel—for she was there then. 

He had met her in the hotel bistro, just after check-in. It was lunchtime when he arrived at the hotel, and her eyes were the first thing he saw. She was different, though. Her hair grey, and her eyes framed by time and experience. And as he stood in the doorway looking at her, he struggled to connect who she was with who she had been. But amidst the bustle of conversation, croissants and coffee, he found her again.

The middle judge looked up.

“Are you George Marseille?” 

“I am,” said George.

“I would have expected proper dress,” said the judge, “But never mind, you may begin.”

Then nothing.

“Sorry?” said George. 

He begged them to explain, to let him go, but they didn’t say a thing. So, just like the night before he tried to leave. He ran to the door, banging on it again, yelling, and then going to the window and doing the same, pounding the glass, hoping it would break, hoping someone would notice. However, the glass held—and as far as he could tell, no one, other than the judges, knew he was here. 

On the other side of the window was a marble ledge, narrow as most ledges are. He remembered looking up at the hotel on the day he had arrived, admiring the architecture, and possibly this very ledge. A series of cornices, separating each floor, with beautiful floral patterns, and gargoyles that appeared to snarl at the street below. But that was then. Now he was inside, and he pounded on the glass again, tried to find an opening, and when nothing came, he screamed, sinking to his knees, and hitting the walls. Then he turned to the judges, and screamed at them too, marching over to the table, yelling in their faces. There was no response, and so, he began circling the room. Shouting and swearing, kicking, and pounding the door, until eventually, exhausted, he returned to the window. 

Now he looked beyond the ledge. Surveying the upper stories of the buildings across the street. Buildings, whose windows offered the promise of life, but no life that he could see right now. Below him, people were moving, and he watched them too—however, they seemed so far away. And so, he turned to the trees, which swayed in the breeze. Each one appearing to dance with the buildings and the blue of a new day, with only a hint of the cloud cover that had blocked the moon the night before. He closed his eyes then, imagining the breeze on his skin, and allowing himself to sway, just like the trees.

He stayed like that for most of the day. But, as daylight faded, and the moon became visible again, the judges got to their feet and moved to the door, which opened for them. George, though, was too slow, and by the time he reached the door it was already closed. 

The next day was the same. A pattern that would repeat many times. The judges would arrive, ask their question, and George would plead: ask for answers, for clothes, for food, for release, but no one would respond. Every morning, a fresh bowl of water would appear by the door, and just like a dog he would drink from it. He had tried the door, beaten the door, gone to the window and watched the world pass, and then, when night fell, the judges would leave.

On his third night in the room, just after the judges left, he removed one of the ferns from its vase, and broke off the tip. He had decided to mark time, and so used that tip to scratch at the wall, just below the window. And, on the morning of the fourth scratch, he waited by the door, and when it opened he ran towards it, hoping to escape. But the judges were like a wall, and he bounced back, flying across the room, and landing with a thud, his body twisting. The judges didn’t even pause, and he watched them as they settled into their chairs.

“You may begin,” said the judge in the middle chair, and George’s eyes filled with tears.

On the day he had arrived in Paris, the city had been covered in the thickest of clouds, as storms raged across France. But now the clouds were beginning to part. So, each night, after the judges left, he would stand at the window and search for life—although his days were spent in a different fashion. For he had become fascinated with the grotesques and arabesques, those strange artworks on the walls. And so, during the day, he would wander the room, trying to decipher their meaning. And by the day of the fifth scratch he found himself having conversations with them. And then, on the sixth day, he slept—his dreams fretful and frantic.

The next day, the seventh one in this prison, the judges arrived and found him sitting at the table, wide awake. He was in the middle chair, a spectre of a man, with sores on his body and the stench of decay—but it wasn’t just George that smelt. The entire room had an odor of decomposition, a strange sweetness, that appeared to have found its way into the walls, mixing with the artworks. 

Normally the judges would have sat with their backs to George, side by side by side, in what appeared to be allocated chairs. But it was always the judge in the middle chair who asked the question. Now George was in that chair. The two judges, who would usually have sat on either side of that middle judge, took their seats, while the middle judge stayed exactly where it was, just behind George. In fact, it was standing so close that he could feel the warmth from its body. 

“You may begin,” said the middle judge, and George rose from the chair and punched his questioner, damaging his own hand and screaming in pain. But everything was pain. And so he sank to the floor, sobbing at the judge’s feet. 

The next day, he was still on the floor, his hand swollen and almost blue, waiting for the judges to arrive. The judges took their usual seats, and then the middle judge asked its question:

“You may begin,” it said, and so he did. 

He started at the beginning, and recited his tale from birth to now, and the judges listened. Then, when he was done, his life recounted, he walked past the judges and made his way to the clock. Which, despite the pain, he lifted from the wall, and watched, as dust fell like clouds around him. Then, he placed the clock on the floor, and sat down next to it, studying the intricacy of the three bronze figurines, so beautifully carved into it, whilst listening to the time it made. A time that moved forwards and backwards but always ended where it began, at six thirty-two a.m. It had been six thirty-two a.m. for his entire stay, and it dawned on him, as he was listening to the ticking, that this was the time he was born. 

“That is when you began,” his father had told him. He’d been about seven years old then, perhaps his birthday. And the next time the clock chimed, he got to his feet and threw it at the window, shattering the glass. 

For the first time, the judges, who had always sat with their backs to the clock, turned to face him. 

George was silent, his eyes fixed on the walls. He had studied these images for days, but never really understood them—now he realized they were him. His dreams, his fantasies, his fears, all trapped in this room. So, he made his way along the walls, studying them again, but differently this time, more closely. Circling the room with the judges watching. 

In one, he found a minotaur, sitting at the heart of a labyrinth. A bull-headed man, not fighting for release but hiding in the centre, surrounded by walls. The labyrinth itself was split into four quadrants of winding paths, that as he followed them appeared to have no noticeable exit. On the outside of these paths was a village—similar to the one George had grown up in—in fact, on closer inspection, he realized that it was the one he’d grown up in. The stone cottages, with their slate roofs. The river running underneath the bridge. A bridge that his father had called the bridge of fables. Recounting tales of villagers who had set off into the world, never to return. And then there was the church. A place where so many sought hope. Its presence casting shadows over the fields, where so many worked, and where he had played in his youth. 

In another, he saw what he could only presume was himself. Standing alone at the gates of a school, unable to leave, while absurdist creatures, with more arms and legs than God should have allowed, danced in front of him. There were obese creatures, creatures of many colors, and creatures shaking hands with demons, horned and vile—all of them with more teeth and glaring eyes than God should have allowed either. 

He was muttering under his breath as he went. Whispers of recognition, apology and regret. Claudette was in all of them: an angel, a nymph, a child, or a mother. Floating above his sleeping figure, beckoning him to stand tall—and there were opportunities too. Things he’d missed throughout his life. Opportunities he’d never taken, like gates opening, surrounded by creatures who had terrified him in his past. Apparitions of thought, manifest as people or circumstance. Demons who offered to guide him and release him—their Greek meaning now clear to him. For in Greece, demons were regarded as intermediaries between gods and humans, delivering inspiration and truth. But now the pathways and connections were visible. Because now he was awake—now he was finally willing to face them. 

George looked at the judges and smiled. He then walked to the window and climbed onto the ledge, where he could feel the wind howling. He bathed himself in it, breathing in life. Then he looked at the street, where he saw her. She was staring at him, her eyes as perfect as they had been on the day they first met. Whilst above him, bluebirds painted the sky, and he joined them—as time finally moved on.