![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lobelia said jump and and I said how high? I didn't really, I wrote origfic. Very, very quickly.
The Box
It was a cold day. That was normal; it was February. It wasn't quite normal to be sitting on a park bench on such a cold day in February. At 11.30 on a Wednesday morning. That's something the old, conventional Chris would probably never have done. What reason would he have had? But then, the old Chris wasn't really around any more. Something had happened to him.
"Think outside the box," Jerome had always said, sitting with one leg thrown casually over the corner of the desk, blue-capped, fibre-tipped marker waving in circles at the white-board. And Chris had tried. He really had. But every time he thought, yes, this time he'd done it, he'd freed himself from the constraints of conventional thinking, he'd finally got outside the box ... there was a blank wall in front of him, or a corner, another bit of the inside of the box to prove him wrong.
The trouble was, really, that Chris had never quite understood what the phrase meant. He knew it had something to do with being original. With being sharp and brilliant and having people look at you with a bright glint of envy in their eyes. But not too original. If you were too original you could 'come a cropper', Jerome warned them. So, the secret was to think outside the box, but not too far outside it. You still had to be able to see the box from where you were sitting, doing your thinking. You still had to be near enough to the box to be able to run back to it if things got scary.
Chris thought that 'thinking outside the box' was a little bit like believing in God. Jerome reminded him sometimes of the pastor in the little grey-brick chapel he'd attended twice every Sunday throughout his childhood. Inside of its four blank whitewashed walls, he'd grown and stretched and strained his way from cherub-cheeked poppet to uncomfortable, out-of-proportion teenager, and beyond.
"I want you to feel shame," the pastor had said, and Chris had shifted uncomfortably on the hard pew, and felt as though the pastor's clear blue eyes were meant for him, and him alone. "Remember that God's love is unconditional and undeserved, and be thankful for that. I would like to see every single one of you weep for the blackness of your sins. For we are all of us born in sin, and it is a terrible thing. A shameful thing. Only God's mercy, only the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ can save us. Let us give thanks."
And Chris was thankful, or at least he tried to be. He sang the hymns as loud as anyone, and sometimes they made him feel wonderful, full of joy and the knowledge of God's love. But only until they were over. Then he felt nothing but the shame, and he could never quite see what was so good about that. Later, he'd be lying in the warm fug under his Habitat duvet with the red and grey hound's-tooth pattern, and he'd feel a black gas-cloud of guilt coming over him, enveloping him in its billowing mass. He would try to pray. Dear Lord Jesus, I believe in You. Please save me. I really want to believe in You. I really do. He was careful to capitalise all the 'Y's. Then he'd wait for the silence and the emptiness in the middle of him to be filled with something new.
Had it worked? How were you supposed to know? He didn't feel any different, but maybe that was his fault. Maybe he hadn't done it right, after all. Maybe the words were wrong, or he'd said them the wrong way. Maybe he should get out of bed, and kneel down on the carpet, in the cold, with his hands folded together. Maybe he was just too bad, too far gone, too disgusting even for Jesus.
Chris hadn't been to church in a good long while. He didn't often try to talk to Jesus any more, either. It was just another relationship that hadn't worked out. And anyway, after a while, work took up too much of his time, and there wasn't any room in his life for secret before-bed Bible-reading and angsting over original sin. So he was quite surprised when, sitting round the boardroom table one afternoon with his colleagues, listening to the squeak of Jerome's pen on the white-board, and letting the sound of Jerome's rich voice jolt and slide around him like electric honey, he suddenly got an answer.
Sorry for the delay, went a voice in his head. There's been a bit of a backlog.
Chris was careful not to say anything. He was very, very quiet. He didn't move either, just to be on the safe side.
This is, er ... Christopher David Campbell, am I correct?
"Uh ... yes!" said Chris.
"Glad to hear you're on board, Chris," said Jerome, and flashed him his thousand watt smile. Chris smiled weakly back.
Well, Christopher, said the voice. We at Heaven would like to thank you for contacting us. We have registered your concerns, and please believe that we are working very hard to make your life better. I'm afraid Jesus won't be able to reply personally, as He is very busy at the moment. Please feel free to put any further questions you may have to the head of your local church. Thank you once again for your interest, Christopher. There was a very small popping sound inside Chris's head -- and then nothing.
"Wait! Don't go!" Chris clutched at his head wildly, trying to find his way in, trying to get at whatever had been in there and now was not. A terrible emptiness buzzed around his ears.
"Everything okay, Chris?" Jeremy had stopped in the middle of his motivational flowchart, his marker poised to draw a nice big circle around 'OUR AIMS & OBJECTIVES!!!' Chris stared at him.
"No! No, it's gone! Don't you see? It's fucking gone and I waited for it, for, for something ... for years, and it didn't come, and now it's gone, and I ... there's so many things I wanted to ... and I still don't understand!"
He sobbed jerkily into silence. He stopped clawing at his hair. He looked around the table. Melanie was looking at him, one finger twisting absently around a blonde ringlet, pulling it out and then letting it go again, boing! Like a spring. Jonathan was looking at him, his coffee cup held forgotten, almost at his lips, the steam curling up in front of his face and dispersing in the dry office air. Clive was looking at him. Jerome was looking at him.
"I..." said Chris.
Jerome had had a funny expression on his face that afternoon. It wasn't one thing, but a mixture of things. Sometimes, Chris liked to fantasise that he could see a touch of admiration in there, even of awe. But most days he could only remember the disappointment, the distaste, and the slight hint of fear. When Jerome looked at him like that, with his leg still swinging in that fun-loving way over the edge of the desk, and his collar open and casually tie-less at the neck, and his shiny strawberry-blond hair flopping charmingly over his forehead, Chris knew it was over. He was outside the box, all right. Way too fucking far outside. He'd shot right up and out over the walls of the box, and then he'd turned round and smashed the box up and stamped the pieces into the ground.
"Chris," said Jerome gently, "I think perhaps you ought to take the afternoon off."
It was really far too cold too be sitting in the park today. Chris could see his breath coming in clouds and drifting off into nothingness over the still-bare flowerbeds. He didn't always come to the park. Sometimes he sat in the library, but he'd got sick of it lately. It always seemed to be full of kids fighting over the Internet terminals and trying to download porn and ring-tones. Anyway, it would be lunchtime soon.
He wondered what he would do this afternoon. He could go into the museum, maybe. Have another look at the mummified cat. He liked the mummified cat, because it had such a stupid expression on its face. It looked like an Ancient Egyptian cartoon character. He wondered whether the cat had got to some kind of afterlife, and whether he would look as silly as that after he was dead. On the one hand, he rather liked the idea, but then again, it was sort of undignified.
Since the day in the boardroom, he'd had no more messages from Heaven, and he'd never tried to get in contact with Jesus again. There didn't seem much point, really. The doctors said stress. Maybe they were right. He didn't start going to church again, either, but sometimes, on a Sunday, he'd hang around outside the chapel after the service was over, watching the people trickle out into the sunshine in their best dresses and suits, smiling and clutching their Bibles in their crisp-gloved hands. Was any of it real, he wondered? Was anything? These people would go home now, and eat their nice dinners, and later they would lie side by side in the dark under freshly laundered bedclothes, and then, surely, they would be alone. Would they pray to Jesus? Would Jesus reply? Chris looked at their bright faces twinkling in the sun, and wondered what it was that he'd missed.
His feet were numb, so he got up off the bench, and shook them around a bit. He looked at his watch. 11.40 am. First, he'd go and feed the ducks. He always brought some bits of bread in a bag, so he could feed the ducks. You had to be careful, though; there was a skill involved in feeding the ducks. You had to make sure the little ones got enough, because the greedy Canada geese would always try to jump in first and grab it all. Those Canada geese were the worst. Then, when he'd done that, he'd head over to Violet's Café, and have some lunch. A baked potato today, he thought. With tuna and cheese. That was quite an exciting thought. He didn't usually have both. But hell, why not? Just occasionally, you have to think outside the box.
The Box
It was a cold day. That was normal; it was February. It wasn't quite normal to be sitting on a park bench on such a cold day in February. At 11.30 on a Wednesday morning. That's something the old, conventional Chris would probably never have done. What reason would he have had? But then, the old Chris wasn't really around any more. Something had happened to him.
"Think outside the box," Jerome had always said, sitting with one leg thrown casually over the corner of the desk, blue-capped, fibre-tipped marker waving in circles at the white-board. And Chris had tried. He really had. But every time he thought, yes, this time he'd done it, he'd freed himself from the constraints of conventional thinking, he'd finally got outside the box ... there was a blank wall in front of him, or a corner, another bit of the inside of the box to prove him wrong.
The trouble was, really, that Chris had never quite understood what the phrase meant. He knew it had something to do with being original. With being sharp and brilliant and having people look at you with a bright glint of envy in their eyes. But not too original. If you were too original you could 'come a cropper', Jerome warned them. So, the secret was to think outside the box, but not too far outside it. You still had to be able to see the box from where you were sitting, doing your thinking. You still had to be near enough to the box to be able to run back to it if things got scary.
Chris thought that 'thinking outside the box' was a little bit like believing in God. Jerome reminded him sometimes of the pastor in the little grey-brick chapel he'd attended twice every Sunday throughout his childhood. Inside of its four blank whitewashed walls, he'd grown and stretched and strained his way from cherub-cheeked poppet to uncomfortable, out-of-proportion teenager, and beyond.
"I want you to feel shame," the pastor had said, and Chris had shifted uncomfortably on the hard pew, and felt as though the pastor's clear blue eyes were meant for him, and him alone. "Remember that God's love is unconditional and undeserved, and be thankful for that. I would like to see every single one of you weep for the blackness of your sins. For we are all of us born in sin, and it is a terrible thing. A shameful thing. Only God's mercy, only the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ can save us. Let us give thanks."
And Chris was thankful, or at least he tried to be. He sang the hymns as loud as anyone, and sometimes they made him feel wonderful, full of joy and the knowledge of God's love. But only until they were over. Then he felt nothing but the shame, and he could never quite see what was so good about that. Later, he'd be lying in the warm fug under his Habitat duvet with the red and grey hound's-tooth pattern, and he'd feel a black gas-cloud of guilt coming over him, enveloping him in its billowing mass. He would try to pray. Dear Lord Jesus, I believe in You. Please save me. I really want to believe in You. I really do. He was careful to capitalise all the 'Y's. Then he'd wait for the silence and the emptiness in the middle of him to be filled with something new.
Had it worked? How were you supposed to know? He didn't feel any different, but maybe that was his fault. Maybe he hadn't done it right, after all. Maybe the words were wrong, or he'd said them the wrong way. Maybe he should get out of bed, and kneel down on the carpet, in the cold, with his hands folded together. Maybe he was just too bad, too far gone, too disgusting even for Jesus.
Chris hadn't been to church in a good long while. He didn't often try to talk to Jesus any more, either. It was just another relationship that hadn't worked out. And anyway, after a while, work took up too much of his time, and there wasn't any room in his life for secret before-bed Bible-reading and angsting over original sin. So he was quite surprised when, sitting round the boardroom table one afternoon with his colleagues, listening to the squeak of Jerome's pen on the white-board, and letting the sound of Jerome's rich voice jolt and slide around him like electric honey, he suddenly got an answer.
Sorry for the delay, went a voice in his head. There's been a bit of a backlog.
Chris was careful not to say anything. He was very, very quiet. He didn't move either, just to be on the safe side.
This is, er ... Christopher David Campbell, am I correct?
"Uh ... yes!" said Chris.
"Glad to hear you're on board, Chris," said Jerome, and flashed him his thousand watt smile. Chris smiled weakly back.
Well, Christopher, said the voice. We at Heaven would like to thank you for contacting us. We have registered your concerns, and please believe that we are working very hard to make your life better. I'm afraid Jesus won't be able to reply personally, as He is very busy at the moment. Please feel free to put any further questions you may have to the head of your local church. Thank you once again for your interest, Christopher. There was a very small popping sound inside Chris's head -- and then nothing.
"Wait! Don't go!" Chris clutched at his head wildly, trying to find his way in, trying to get at whatever had been in there and now was not. A terrible emptiness buzzed around his ears.
"Everything okay, Chris?" Jeremy had stopped in the middle of his motivational flowchart, his marker poised to draw a nice big circle around 'OUR AIMS & OBJECTIVES!!!' Chris stared at him.
"No! No, it's gone! Don't you see? It's fucking gone and I waited for it, for, for something ... for years, and it didn't come, and now it's gone, and I ... there's so many things I wanted to ... and I still don't understand!"
He sobbed jerkily into silence. He stopped clawing at his hair. He looked around the table. Melanie was looking at him, one finger twisting absently around a blonde ringlet, pulling it out and then letting it go again, boing! Like a spring. Jonathan was looking at him, his coffee cup held forgotten, almost at his lips, the steam curling up in front of his face and dispersing in the dry office air. Clive was looking at him. Jerome was looking at him.
"I..." said Chris.
Jerome had had a funny expression on his face that afternoon. It wasn't one thing, but a mixture of things. Sometimes, Chris liked to fantasise that he could see a touch of admiration in there, even of awe. But most days he could only remember the disappointment, the distaste, and the slight hint of fear. When Jerome looked at him like that, with his leg still swinging in that fun-loving way over the edge of the desk, and his collar open and casually tie-less at the neck, and his shiny strawberry-blond hair flopping charmingly over his forehead, Chris knew it was over. He was outside the box, all right. Way too fucking far outside. He'd shot right up and out over the walls of the box, and then he'd turned round and smashed the box up and stamped the pieces into the ground.
"Chris," said Jerome gently, "I think perhaps you ought to take the afternoon off."
It was really far too cold too be sitting in the park today. Chris could see his breath coming in clouds and drifting off into nothingness over the still-bare flowerbeds. He didn't always come to the park. Sometimes he sat in the library, but he'd got sick of it lately. It always seemed to be full of kids fighting over the Internet terminals and trying to download porn and ring-tones. Anyway, it would be lunchtime soon.
He wondered what he would do this afternoon. He could go into the museum, maybe. Have another look at the mummified cat. He liked the mummified cat, because it had such a stupid expression on its face. It looked like an Ancient Egyptian cartoon character. He wondered whether the cat had got to some kind of afterlife, and whether he would look as silly as that after he was dead. On the one hand, he rather liked the idea, but then again, it was sort of undignified.
Since the day in the boardroom, he'd had no more messages from Heaven, and he'd never tried to get in contact with Jesus again. There didn't seem much point, really. The doctors said stress. Maybe they were right. He didn't start going to church again, either, but sometimes, on a Sunday, he'd hang around outside the chapel after the service was over, watching the people trickle out into the sunshine in their best dresses and suits, smiling and clutching their Bibles in their crisp-gloved hands. Was any of it real, he wondered? Was anything? These people would go home now, and eat their nice dinners, and later they would lie side by side in the dark under freshly laundered bedclothes, and then, surely, they would be alone. Would they pray to Jesus? Would Jesus reply? Chris looked at their bright faces twinkling in the sun, and wondered what it was that he'd missed.
His feet were numb, so he got up off the bench, and shook them around a bit. He looked at his watch. 11.40 am. First, he'd go and feed the ducks. He always brought some bits of bread in a bag, so he could feed the ducks. You had to be careful, though; there was a skill involved in feeding the ducks. You had to make sure the little ones got enough, because the greedy Canada geese would always try to jump in first and grab it all. Those Canada geese were the worst. Then, when he'd done that, he'd head over to Violet's Café, and have some lunch. A baked potato today, he thought. With tuna and cheese. That was quite an exciting thought. He didn't usually have both. But hell, why not? Just occasionally, you have to think outside the box.
There are 21 comments on this entry.