Shrapnel Perpendicular

Shrapnel Perpendicular by Chris Green

‘Shrapnel perpendicular,’ the caller says and then hangs up. Shrapnel perpendicular? It sounds like a cryptic crossword clue. With the dull flat disconnected tone ringing in my ear, I continue to grip the receiver as if by registering my puzzlement, an explanation might be forthcoming.
I record all calls on the landline, even the ones I answer. In these days of scams and hoaxes, you can’t be too careful. The man’s voice has no trace of an accent. Neither does it have that echoic sound you get from a robot voice. Predictably, the number has been withheld.

I decide that it’s best not to worry about it. Perhaps it is part of some leftfield promotional campaign to launch a new product which will become apparent in due course. I get back to my painting of the Aurora Borealis. Lesley will be home soon, and I want to make it look like I’ve been productive while she’s been out. She reminded me this morning that I haven’t actually finished a painting for weeks, let alone sold one.

Turban sophistry. It’s a text on my mobile this time. Again, an apparently meaningless random pairing of words. Number withheld again. Troll? Prankster? But would a prankster target me? Someone bearing a grudge? I can’t think of anything I’ve done to upset anyone. I’ve led a very low profile life since I’ve been here.

Bewildering they may be, but the messages are hardly life-threatening. Determined not to allow a trivial matter to halt my artistic undertaking, I get back to the Aurora. I dab some bold green swirls onto the canvas. With oils, it is best to be decisive. The more layers of paint you can get into the painting, the better the result. That’s the beauty of oils. You can put some depth into the work. I am just mixing up some purple when I hear two emails ping on my laptop, one after the other. At first, I ignore them, but curiosity gets the better of me. The sender for both of them, I discover, is noreply@nowhere.com Neither of them has any subject. The messages, too, are becoming weirder. banana petroleum says the one and yarrow nucleon the other.

Strange is never good. I learnt that a long time ago. My mind is racing. Surely, it couldn’t be …….. No, the idea is absurd. But, there again….. To distract myself, I slip a Wagner CD into the Bose. Götterdämmerung- Twilight of the Gods. I turn the volume up so that I won’t be disturbed again, and continue my painting. I apply some viridian green straight from the tube and shape it with a palette knife, hacking at the canvas. I mix some with a little titanium white and cut that in. I step back to take a look. I do not hear Lesley come in.

‘I found this on the mat,’ she says. She is holding a postcard with the words, gazpacho termination written on it. ‘What is that all about?’

I mutter something about being as puzzled as she is. And I am. But, I am beginning to get a bad feeling that the message might relate to my past. I have not told Lesley too much about my past. I cannot.

‘I can’t hear you,’ she says. ‘Can’t you turn that awful racket down?’

For some time, I’ve been getting the impression that Lesley does not appreciate Wagner as much as I do. There again, I do not like Billie Ellish. Or Laura Marling. Relationships, though, like other covenants, are all about compromise. So, with Valhalla in flames and the Rhine overflowing its banks, I pause the opera. I give her a brief summary of the previous messages. As I do so, fresh emails ping on the laptop. noreply@nowhere.com No subject. sedation complaisance. leotard provincialism, flagpole nylium.

I try to shrug them off, but Lesley is having none of it. Perhaps she detects that beneath it all, I know something is wrong.

‘What about that chap you met a couple of weeks ago in the market?’ she says. ‘The geeky one with the snake called Gary who started talking to you about that number that’s too big to tell you how big it is?’

‘Graham’s number. It’s called Graham’s number.’

‘Yes. That’s the one. Might it be him?’

‘What, Norman? No, I think Norman is just an ageing trainspotter.’

‘How about the bloke who wrote Waiting for Doggo? The one who was telling us about Philip C. Dark, when we were sitting outside the cathedral. He was odd.’

‘Just a lonely old author, I think. I can’t imagine many people read his books. Pretty harmless, though. Anyway, whoever it is knows my number, my mobile number, our house number and my email.’

‘It might be someone we know well?’

‘There is that possibility,’ I say. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, though. There’s bound to be a reasonable explanation.’

The room goes quiet. I can sense Lesley weighing up who she might be suspicious of. Our friend, Hoagy Platt, possibly? He’s a bit of a joker. Might he do something like this, she might be wondering? Freda Mann, the poet or Dean Runner, perhaps? As long as it’s someone like that and it’s innocent fun, then it will be all right.

‘Let me have a look at the emails,’ Lesley says, finally. ‘Perhaps there’s something about these communications you haven’t spotted.’

I open up my gmail account for her.

‘Where are they?’ she says, scrolling up and down the page. ‘Where are these messages?’

To my alarm, there is no longer any sign of them. They are not even in Trash. They seem to have somehow been completely deleted. I take out my phone. The text message too is gone. The message on the answerphone is missing too. Is this good or is this bad? I’m hoping it’s good, but I need time to weigh up the situation.

If you have been in a relationship for any length of time, you will be familiar with that look you get when your partner feels that you have been trying to deceive her. You will be familiar too with the cold silence that follows, in most cases for the rest of the day. Sometimes the following day, too. But it’s an ill wind and all that. Without any of her interruptions and with no further unsolicited messages, I am able to make significant progress on my painting. Could this be the secret of great artists? Might Mrs Monet have thought that Claude was keeping things from her and given him the silent treatment? Did Picasso’s lovers keep sending him to Coventry?

Late the following day, Lesley’s son, Jack calls in. We are not sure if Jack is living with us or not. He appears from time to time to raid the fridge and then is gone again. He is off to a festival, this time, apparently.

‘Mum gone to bed, has she?’ he says, as he munches his way through a slice of pizza. ‘She not speaking to you again?’

Having no children of my own, I get on pretty well with Jack. I give him a summary of what has happened.

‘Probably some sort of password generator,’ he says. ‘Good idea! You and Mum are always forgetting passwords.’

I give Jack’s interesting explanation some thought but reject it. After all, the people that had offered you the password would also know it, which would immediately compromise its security.

To my relief, there are no more unexplained messages over the next few days. Lesley now thinks that I may have imagined the earlier ones. I begin to entertain the idea that she may be right. She suggests I ought to see someone to help me over my confusion, Dr Gauguin perhaps. But, as time passes, she backs down and things around the house return to normal. I even manage to finish my Aurora Borealis painting and decide to take it along to my local gallery.

You get used to the interior of a car. Its features become so familiar that as you drive it around from day to day, you hardly even notice them. But as I start the Nissan, it slowly dawns on me that something is different. At first, can’t put my finger on what it is. Then it hits me. A great big blow to the solar plexus. The readouts on the instrument panel have been replaced by the words warning weird in orange Helvetica script. It is difficult to see what this might have to do with the functioning of the car. It changes to supernova tarpaulin and genocide presbyopia. And There is no rational explanation for these muddled phrases appearing on the dashboard display. Someone is messing with my head. Someone with a shed load of technology and guile at their fingertips. Could my comrades returning to spirit me away? Surely, after all this time, they would have forgotten about me. But who else could be behind it? It’s not going to be anyone from around these parts. They still think that switching on the heating at home from your phone is a pretty smart idea. They can’t communicate person to person through random, everyday materials. It must be my people coming to take me back home. After all, wasn’t it a glitch in the Earth translation widget on the landing craft that left me stranded here in the first place?

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