Walled up. Fiction by Ivan deMonbrison

Painting: White shade n°21

Walled up

– You know that you should never reveal anything about you, that is to THEM.

– This is what we should always all be able to do, whatever it might take.

– Just never stop hiding out from them, to finally become totally undetectable. And in order to do this, you need to live inside a wall, to disappear for good.

– Who knows, maybe that would work out? Yes, you must allude them at all costs, find the other path, the one that nobody ever takes, unaware of its very existence and of the mere possibility of even using it.

What struck him that day was especially the crazy people. There are way too many weirdos hanging out everywhere, at least in his eyes.

– But, perhaps it’s not the very ones that all think about in the first place who are really truly insane in the end?

In the street, but more precisely so in the subway, he can watch them as they walk, stagger, and even sometimes fall. Often slouching down the seat of the train, before suddenly standing up for no apparent reason, to just fall back again. He can see so many of them being always busy reading on small screens, a few others usually eating or chewing at something, and one or two sometimes staring at the later ones while merely hanging out here or there idless. Some are young and  of course in good shape. Some are sad crippled old men and women. Many got lost after coming from very far away to end up alone stranded here in this sort of navel of the world. It is the very same place where so many tourists keep flocking to from everywhere around the globe, by plane or by car, to admire the beautiful monuments scattered throughout the city, all well artificially preserved for this sole purpose. However, much more than the beautiful monuments, it is them, the madmen and madwomen, that he tends to notice the most, this with blinding veracity to his aging eyes. He thinks of a himself as being also crippled in some way,  dragging his lazy carcass among them with nobody usually paying any attention to him. He remembers that earlier in his youth, he always knew beforehand where his feet would usually lead him. But it’s over for good now. Sometimes, he just feels the need to hide his face with his hands in order to no longer see them, the others, these strange creatures crowding all the available space and so intimidating to him. From time to time he’s attempted, in recent years, to find shelter in some forlorn graveyard. Then he always gets to inevitably envy the deceased for their secluded spots. Spots so adequate somehow, that their silent graves could provide. At times, he would have liked to be able to drag them out of their holes and put his own body in their place. While going back and forth between the narrow alleys of a forsaken graveyard, one could see him usually deciphering mechanically the names of the dead engraved on the steles or crosses. Taking note of the dates of birth and death carved under them, he had the mania to count all their years of life lost,  deducing from it the years of death earned by them, somehow, at the same time. Yes, he too often came to envy their deaths… He would have liked, almost in spite of himself, to steal it out of them. When not doing so, walking on the sidewalk among the passers-by, he often fancies that it would be so good if he could hide out, like a ghost, inside the nearest available wall. So that he would probably then turn into some strange walled up passenger. He would be one of those who has nowhere else to escape. Who would rather than face the world all day long chose to be walled up, but still alive though, into some solid structure. Yes! it would be so good to stay stuck in there, between bricks or inside the concrete. Once hidden, he could watch them still at leisure,  slowly aging, travelling from birth to  death. He would also still though probably hear the background noise of the circulation of cars on the nearby highway. The one that’s not far from where he’s staying these days, as it  completely encircles the city like a ring, this ring being always coupled with another steel ring made by all the cars, themselves being thus constantly in motion.  He could also, at dawn, watch the huge trucks there, as they get busy bringing their food to all these starving human jaws. While, well hidden and buried under the ctity, thousands of invisible pipes bring or evacuate all the water that they need. All of this mechanism always seemed to be so precarious in his eyes, after all, that he  often thinks that it could very well vanish at any given time, some day, in a not too far future. He would like to be always able to scrutinize their mouths too, as they move up and down in order to speak, their noses inevitably topped by two protruding eyes,  absorbing, a bit like flaps would do it, the invisible urban air  of the  polluted megalopolis. He would have also preferred, rather than simply walking to somehow be able to crawl under the asphalt of the streets, all the way back to his home, to finally stay forever locked up inside it, thus just to have a chance to stay as far away as possible from the rest of the world. Therefore, he would maybe slowly with time turn into some weird  kind of inmate, that is of the obedient kind,  which never tries to get out of his, or her cell. So that  perhaps after staying for quite a while hiding inside any given wall, he would completely turn into the strangest kind of man that can be. A walled up passenger that is. The kind that keeps on living, always invisible to all those prying eyes, being, just like all the rest of us, to him, nothing else but a weird stillborn child, in the end.

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Ivan de Monbrison is a bipolar artist and writer from France born in 1969.