Oil Can

(results of my speed-writing exercise last night at the Clacton writer's group)

Arthur’s table had an oil can sitting upon it like a still life whose shadow on the wall looked rather like a recherché teapot that Arthur imagined to be bone china or soft tissue japan or tracing-paper meissen or blood ceramics, its slender spout a shimmering skin peeled from around a bubble containing a dream. He then altered the direction of the anglepoise light-source and a different shadow on a different wall made him think of an animal with its trunk or tentacle rising to fend off a predator. Again, Arthur twirled the anglepoise beam that carried thousands of flying mites in its shaft, the weather being so warm for Christmas. And now the shadow of the predator itself emerged with the oil can’s spout becoming part of the predator’s main body, inturning like a rivet, nail or screw, one too long as its end came out of its side. Arthur punched down with his finger upon the oil can plunger and saw spirts of fluid ease themselves in slow motion, like much larger flying mites with molten edges. He was experimenting with time, seeking travel into the future, but each manoeuvre needed to be unplanned so as to form an art installation or avant garde happening. And he unexpectedly switched off the anglepoise, so that no shadow was thrown, but creating one huge engulfing shadow instead. And the dream bubble was inside his head as he felt the trunk, the tentacle, the skewer touching the inner bone of the skull, tentatively testing for an exit, undecided whether to plunge in or stop stock still at the very point of plunging. The room’s dark, meanwhile, was not a plain smooth surface of black but a stitched or pixelated swarm of time as a substance, refined ready for lubricating Arthur’s path into the seamless future darkness. He felt a light touch on the back of his neck pushing him on.