SHENSTON IAN 88 - Old Silhillians Association

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Cluedo "Give it me!" he growled, moving menacingly towards me; "I want it back." Looking around, he picked up the candle stick from the table and gripped it meaningfully with clenched fists. his eyes burned with the genetic hate of a million years, bloodshot with an illogical, calculated frenzy. Suddenly he seemed a good bit taller and stronger, and my fear welled up inside me — first as a slithering, clammy snake up my spine and last as an Indian war-drumming in my temples. My perspiration glistened in the sinister light. From a picture — a frozen instant — one might describe his nose as comic or cute but now it snorted like a bull's, spilling droplets of venomous vapour into the air. It was his mouth, however, that terrified me most. It had all the appearance of a circus clown, with glistening teeth and red lip, yet the maddened leer was a comedy of the grotesque. I half imagined a lizard's tongue would flick out at me, cutting my smooth, defenceless skin. Disfigured like a cubist image of Satan, his face was etched forever on my retina and every cell screamed at the touch. Still I clutched tightly at the prize, with whitened knuckles. I had my principles to think of and I had to be brave: if I lost this time, I would be a slave forever. "No, you can't have it. . . what you did was wrong!" I couldn't think of anything more eloquent, but my words were useless anyway. "Give. Give. Give me, give;" the words echoed around my dizzy head. "I want it, want it, want. Give it me now, I want it back. Give it me now or I'll. . .or I'll. . ." Time stood still, choking with anticipation, and the hairs on the back of my neck seemed to be pulling me away; telling me to run. "I'll kill you!" I felt sick and suddenly it was all happening to someone else. Even my senses had deserted my condemned carcase. So it was to be. . . I would be a martyr to my cause. The impact was a distant door slam, between one world and the next. Blood trickled down the age lines of the forehead, matting the hair and painting the kitchen floor the colour of poppies. The grip was still tight in death but not for eager fingers. It still contained the odd shard of tell-tale glass even now, but Tommy's best conker would survive and it was a sixer now. Mummy had been a bad little girl. . . Story D. Viney. I was trapped in an unreal world, confused in its ways and guided misconceptions. Wrung out by years of deservedly catastrophic war. Mindless like the thousands. Moulded to the shape of 'Them'. Left in cages, enclosed behind iron keys which unlocked the doors of time and fraternity. They had broken me. Snapped me like a frayed rope, stretching and twisting me till I said "no more" and was one with them. They had removed my tongue for being human. Now I was not. I started across the 'crete-scape', at the dead tower block, lying dormant and inactive in the endless sleep, at the river which curled its way through our time searching for its haven, and us, searching for ours. There was nothing left whole, no-one was anyone. Now I wanted to be someone. They had won this earth and us for themselves, but no person would take pride in us or our nobodies. I returned to my task, snapping the pencils of creation. Burning the wood in the hole at the end of the cut-wire grate, black like all else, tarred by the unceasing onslaught of the crazy magnetic smoke, wrapping up our lives with its blanket of darkness, dulling our sun with the ultimate night of terror and hope. They were married now; night and day. Night with his son, the moon, and day with her daughter, the sun. The sun only came out for a while, so shy and timid, and, seeing this world, hid in shame. The moon would then sometimes come out and show us our World, but not hide, for he liked the deadness. I wished to create, now all was devasted. Was I the only one who would remember? I remembered. I had not words to speak but I could write, but what with, or what on? Anyway, who would read them? They didn't guard the cells anymore, they didn't need to. However, as I sat I pondered awhile. "To go out there was death itself, nothing lived out there!". There used to be a man whom they called a doctor, but he just removed unwanted, dead or decaying limbs or teeth. There was no need for him any more! Nature could not cope with this world, it was also dying. I needed to get out. My exasperations were growing, my brain no longer had any connection. It needed a link, a voice. My hands were its saviour but what could they do? I sat for a while, what else could I do? Staring at nothing. Then from the sky, the mud and filth of the war came. No one knew about the rain except me. Only I can picture the pure white grenades; white in the sense of pure and fresh, hurtling earthwards. I knew my cellmates didn't knoW of them, they sat fOr ever pacified. Forever. I was near the edge now, for I was regaining more and more sensation and feeling. I needed some selfish expression to free me from my inextricable position. Maybe I had the last civilised , human, feeling, reaching, loving brain left? I did not doubt for an instant that they had a brain, but theirs, I guessed, would be bruised, conditioned, idealistic in the wrong sense, the brain of an evil, caused, I know and fear, by the diminishing supply or lack of oxygen. There were no plants or trees left, soon I would die, I hoped. I gazed out of the room; outside at the poisonous gases and starved flames, at the dead mud and sea of floating debris, at the polystyrene, dirtied by the thick scum. Bacteria did not care to live down there. Maddened now, I set about my crazy task. I used the pencils to cut into my flesh, carving the words, "Be free, no . . ." but I stopped, or lost consciousness. I knew the words but didn't finish the word "war"! When I awoke I saw the glazed eyes of the cell mates, they just drank the liquid and ate the tablets. They had no spirit! I returned to an enormous pain in my leg and left my stupid scoring for a while, no one would ever read it anyway. Another idea came from nowhere, nearly as stupid and insane as the last. I was surely mad. I set about constructing a small box, no more than the size of my hand, long and misleading with different compartments. The iron grate sufficed. I spent days just bending the resistant wires. When the initial outer shell was almost complete I covered it with tubing which came from our latrine, melting it in the heat of the fire but it was not hot enough so I, in some weird contortion, led the oxygen supply down to the mouth of the fire. It glowed fierce and soon I had covered nearly half of my box. Many thoughtless moments later I finished and crushed up some of my tablets into one of the compartments. In another I placed a small leather bag made from a dead rat that previously had cohabited with us until his source of food, next cell along, had been taken away to make room for another work person. I think he died from heart disease. Who cares? Now all that remained was to find a rib. I classed my next action as a deed for mankind. My other cellmate was in no way put out by the loss of his friend. I threw his body outside. It sunk slowly into the putrid mud. With a drop or two of blood I placed the rib into the box and punctured the leather bag filled with oxygen. I sealed up my box.
I walked down the stairs, not even dust dared tread on the earth now. I knew to send God back his creation was virtually impossible but oxygen when unavailable causes men to think like crazed mad dogs. I entered the waste chute and was carried along to my destination. From my cell the power plant looked a mile away but in the fast flowing human waste tunnel I arrived but a few seconds later. My idea was in some way to block up the exhaust tower and in the time I thought the waste gases would build up and a huge explosion would blow the rib back to God in heaven. I was indeed a sick man. I stood and watched the plant turn up the waste and create energy, then I knew the time had come. I waited for a while, then climbed up to the top of the exhaust tower, about the width of a large bin. I covered the grid and burnt my hands. The stench was incredible. I clutched my box. How was I to block the tower? I could fill the hole. Death was now so close, then from the hole came a blast of hot gases and my box was taken up into the air and then it began to fall. I watched transfixed and saw my box blown about in the convection currents, then it sank into the pools below. Suddenly the liquids flew apart and the box flew apart, the heat expanded the living air and then the flames leapt up greedily eating the oxygen, then fell down dead. My hope was gone. Now nothing was left. I turned from the violence of the exhaust and looked out across the world as I saw it, the pollution, death, uncleanliness of it all, I turned again and flung myself to death. On the way down I died and from me came my last few thoughts. I knew the world would kill itself soon, everyone would be dead soon. I had just speeded up my part of the total death of everything. They and us and me had destroyed the world God created, now we, all, have decreated. "In the beginning when God created the Universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the power of God." Genesis Chapter 4, verse 1. Now the power of God was no more, nothing was no more. I looked up, and from a point somewhere came a great flash and blinding white light and a heavenly figure appeared. I trembled in fear, was I not dead? A voice spoke and said, "Nothing was no more but now you are here". I stood and replied, "God?". Victor N.J. Cowley It was a cold, bright, Spring afternoon. Lewis sat down stiffly on the ground and felt the customary fear tingling throughout him; he was weary of its nagging, and his thoughts were dulled by the closed routine they followed. His fear of the. race was strong, certainly, but far stronger was his fear of Elliot. He knew how easily failure could be concealed by excuses, and deceit itself excused; but that day, in direct competition, there could be no equivocation; there was only winning, the supremacy of one man over another. When he thought of the race he only thought of Elliot's victory, and that sickened him until he closed his eyes and his head throbbed miserably with dread of his defeat. What of the past? Elliot was now, the present; what had gone before was shadowy and irrelevant. His arrival had shocked Lewis out of his complacency and assumptions of abstract superiority; and the rivalry that had sprung up, upspoken, between them, had become a door Lewis dare not open for fear of the truth; it was dangerous, not healthy. The sweaty, everyday comparisons, he came to realise, were ephemeral verdicts, for there was no judgement to be made; there would simply be a time of 'is', when no one would ever again doubt, and that would be decided not by paper writings, or mark schemes, but by physical facts; the strength of the body and the quickness of the mind. To find himself wanting would create a gap in himself that Lewis dared not contemplate — it was a space that might suck in all nf himself. Since he had arrived, the force of Elliot's personality and the quiet momentum of his achievements had become apparent; not that he was not at all arrogant or proud. He had drawn friends to him quickly, popular with all, yet Lewis was convinced that he was confident of his own superiority in the most effacing of ways, relying on himself only, never on others, even as he joked and laughed with his friends. Between Lewis and Elliot there was not the least acknowledgement; it was inconceivable to Lewis that there could be any friendship between them, and he made no attempt to join in when Elliot was with his friends, retreating from any more comparison than was necessary, shielding his brittle self confidence. Their first real contact was accompanied by a feeling of which Lewis had read but not experienced. He came to know him through his behaviour with others, his dark hair, shuffling walk and open smile as familiar as those of a close friend; but it was not till four months after his arrival, on a cold January morning, that they first spoke. It was the first day of term, and in the buoyant sparkle of the moment, and the jarring of familiar and forgotten images, when Lewis and Elliot found themselves face to face, it seemed natural to talk like old friends picking up a conversation, speaking in high, excited tones of the day, for Elliot was a genial man, if he sensed the strangeness he gave no sign. Lewis was struck by the shock of seeing the face he had watched from other angles finally looking at him, and he examined it as for the first time — the pale skin with its brush of freckles, the grooves in his short hair, and the wrinkles of his eyes all alien, like a stranger. When they had parted, Lewis felt that the barrier between them had been broken, and there would be no more awkwardness between them — but they did not speak again, and he felt the sharp sense that he had merely played a part in Elliot's richness ilbefore returning to anonymity. But their eyes now met from time to time, and it was here that Lewis found the real recognition of the strange rivalry between them; Elliot leaning back in his chair to catch his eye with a smile of acknowledgement for a good mark, a smile with no malict but an awesome selfconfidence. Such were Lewis's thoughts as he shivered in the cool breeze, every moment bringing the starting time closer. So it had gone on; the endless comparisons in Lewis's isolation, the constant self doubt; and all the time Elliot loomed larger, and Lewis's hate with it, until it had become a struggle on all levels; and thus the race had become 'that time', when the matter would be closed. The minor shows of strength no longer concerned Lewis; it was the confrontation of spirits he sought, spirits that rose above petty circumstance. That the race was a purely physical test meant nothing; victory would be complete, it would be decisive. He had been alone; now, as the moment approached, the other competitors began to drift together, bending, stretching, running, perhaps stealing a glance at each other, or at the track. As he stood up, Elliot passed him, joking with a friend, and Lewis ignored him in part. Elliot was silent, but it was not a silence born of anxiety; Lewis conjectured that he never considered losing, not in an arrogant way, but trusting simply in himself; and he marvelled that he showed no weakness not even now. And. . . and . . . he shook, he shook, his whole body shaking, as the nauseous fear swept through him, his thoughts shattered and gone, and the dread unmanned him as he covered his face with his hands. (The starter calls!) It seemed he was disembodied, his body moving unbidden, rising to its place; his unreal flesh forming a caricature of a couch. . . !!GO!! the roars of the crowd in his ears! the hurling of his body by his pounding legs! the dragging for breath in his throat! the dasperate, desperate search for speed! His heart surges — the horizon bobs — there is only his body, straining and pumping.
Page 1 and 2: SHENSTON IAN 88
Page 3 and 4: valete Mr. D.H. Tomlin . .yet I liv
Page 5 and 6: years when no obvious successor eme
Page 7 and 8: with whom he came into contact: pup
Page 9 and 10: appreciation for the years of outst
Page 11 and 12: the houses FETHERSTON Upper School
Page 13 and 14: noticeable being the Oxford success
Page 15 and 16: SCHOOL HOUSE The School House has h
Page 17 and 18: RUGBY Played Won Drawn Lost For Aga
Page 19 and 20: Mr. D.G. Bentley; the pocket money
Page 21 and 22: themselves and the staff who contin
Page 23 and 24: GIRLS' GAMES Once again, there has
Page 25 and 26: The new syllabus for proficiency ha
Page 27 and 28: pathway is described more fully in
Page 29 and 30: and look at the so-called thoughts
Page 31 and 32: the Junior school Rugby Overall it
Page 33 and 34: Expeditions Days J1 and J2 enjoyed
Page 35 and 36: CHARITY WEEK The Junior School made
Page 37 and 38: The Fairground The fairground's a g
Page 39 and 40: The Choral Society has performed tw
Page 41 and 42: was undoubtedly dominated by the pe
Page 43 and 44: societies MOUNTAIN CLUB The Club ha
Page 45: THE DEBATING SOCIETY Liveliness, wi

SHENSTON IAN 88 - Old Silhillians Association

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