DREICH

The oceanic climate of Scotland typically determined that it would be persistently wet throughout much of the year. Lately, however, there had been some unexpected fluctuations in the jet stream, providing a brief respite from the consistent moisture in the air. The teasing possibility of a dry and crisp autumn in Greenock created the meteorological equivalent of Brigadoon, that rarely seen phenomena which only appears for a single day every one hundred years.

And just like that mythical Scottish village, this illusion of dryness was not to last, as it was violently dashed by a sudden and aggressive onslaught of stormy weather.

Arran could hear the heavy rain outside his window, like the sound of relentless applause.

As he read through the last of the comments on his recently ended live stream, he wondered if all his daily polemic and philosophical speculation wasn’t simply in vain: a futile exercise in attempting to make sense of the modern world and share it with others.

Generally commentating on the increasing madness of his home country of Scotland and the United Kingdom at large, he had managed to build a significant audience of sympathetic and loyal viewers over the past few years. But with that ever increasing subscriber base, he now found he had become an unwitting leader for an exponentially increasing group of “lost boys”.

But unlike Peter Pan, he had no ability to fly or keep them sheltered in Neverland, though in his own little backwater of the internet, he wondered if it had become a sort of faraway place that could keep these disillusioned men from feeling completely destitute and  abandoned in the cultural wastelands of the 21st century. The danger to his paranoid mind was that he might be held responsible for any one of these strangers should they cite him as an influence or inspiration in carrying out some terrible act.

The paradox ultimately for the YouTuber was that he much preferred being a loner, far more than belonging to any tribe. After feeling so singularly atomised for so long the accelerated growth of this group of loyal followers brought an uneasy sense of power for Arran. He intuitively felt this increasing responsibility would bring with it terrible consequences. But, unable to resist the allure of expounding on his thoughts in front of camera, he found he simply couldn’t help his trajectory as an accidental philosopher/commentator. It was like the truth (at least the truth as he saw it) couldn’t help but pour out of his young mind.

As his screen fatigued eyes became heavy, he dropped his mobile phone to the floor and fell asleep in his clothes, the wind and rain battering his bedroom window to such an extent that it felt like the house was in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean during high winds.

His dreams were unsettled that night, full of anxiety-inducing scenarios that appeared to compete with one another for top spot. His current scenario had him digging a hole in his back garden with his bare hands like a feral animal, desperate to find shelter from some encroaching, supernatural threat.

Waking up in his room at 4 o clock in the morning, disorientated with all the lights still on, the storm had finally abated but his mind was a tempest.

Treading lightly down the creaking staircase to the kitchen, Arran was conscious not to wake his father (a notoriously light sleeper) just across the hallway from him.

In the darkness of the downstairs hallway, framed photographs of past family memories were illuminated like ghosts by the torchlight from Arran’s mobile phone.

A picture of his mother was hung dead centre amongst them all, back in her young and innocent days, before the rot of a broken marriage had set in. Arran hated seeing her there each and every day, like a painful memory he was forced not to forget.

As the blue gas flame licked the base of the old steam kettle, Arran found he could meditate his pre-dawn anxiety away just by simply focusing on the slowly emerging crescendo of its whistle.

Pouring the steaming hot water into a mug, he waited for the tea to steep.

Looking around at the tiny kitchen that he had spent his whole life in, he suddenly remembered watching his mother making pancakes whilst singing along to the radio one morning many decades ago and feeling completely at peace, one of the rare occasions when she wasn’t arguing with his father. He could even remember the song she was singing along to.

Moon On The Rain by Fairground Attraction, a folk-pop piece of whimsy still had the ability to break Arran’s heart every time he heard it, which wasn’t often as he now associated it with the past, a place he desperately wanted to return to, but knew he never could.

“Jazz in a basement bar, the moon's on the rain

Drunk too much, spent too much, penniless again

Oh sweetheart where are you tonight

I remember when we used to walk by the Thames

The lights on the embankment like jewels on chains

I'll never forget what you said at the start

You said I'll put a string of lights 'round your heart”

As the song faded from his mind, he returned to finish off his cup of tea and with the final swirling clink of the spoon he suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness, an existential foreboding that everything he was trying to hold onto was slipping through his fingers like water.

As he returned to his room, it suddenly dawned on him how small it seemed. It was as if, like Lewis Carroll's Alice, he had now grown too big in a room too small for him.

Listening to some classical music on the radio at a low volume, he drank his tea in the darkness, hoping to calm down his mind sufficiently so that he could return to sleep.

And as the gentle Chopin piano, like musical tears, soothed his troubled mind, Arran managed to finally succumb to sleep.

It was around eight thirty later that morning when Arran’s father left for work, his cheery whistle drifting above the brisk Scottish hoolie outside.

Emerging from his deep sleep, Arran woke up to the sound of a storm, except this time it was in the musical form of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides overture. It took him a moment or two to distinguish the sound of the downstairs doorbell amidst the dramatic music as it reached its dramatic crescendo.

Reluctant to go down and open the door, he ignored it and wrapped a pillow over his face to drown out the sound.

But as the low-battery sounding chimes of the bell became more persistent, he realised whoever it was wasn’t going away.

As he got out of his bed, he went to his window to see if he could whoever it might be down below, but to his annoyance, they were not visible.

And then they stopped and Arran felt a tangible sense of relief. Prone to anxiety, he had become fearful of unannounced arrivals at the house, especially as they were so seldom now that both he and his father had become like hermits together.

Inching with trepidation down the staircase to the lower hallway, Arran observed the frosted glass of the front door with intense focus in order to detect any sign of human activity outside.

In the hallway, he edged closer to the front door, holding his breath for fear that he might inadvertently announce his presence.

Satisfied after a minute or two that no-one was outside, he turned to head back upstairs to his room.

As he placed his foot on the third carpeted step, he froze as the door bell sounded in flat tones.

He now had no choice but to turn and face the figure standing behind the door whose shadow had diminished the light in the lower hallway by half.

Arran’s stomach felt tight as he remembered his troubled dream earlier that morning.

Opening the door a cautious few inches, Arran was suddenly faced with a microphone thrust into his face.

“Are you the Lowlander?”

“What?”

“Arran Morrison?”

“Aye. What of it?”

“We just wanted to verify your identity as we’ve been investigating your online channel in relation to hate speech for a while now.”

“Get the fuck out of here man!”

And just as Arran went to close the door on the weasilly reporter, he noticed a second figure standing a few metres behind him, snapping away with a camera.

Finally closing the door on the reporter, Arran, ran upstairs to his room, his heart thumping at such a rate, he feared it might burst out of his chest.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He was perspiring heavily and his breathing had become rapid and shallow.

“It’s all fucking over, it’s all fucking over.”

He looked out of his bedroom window, wet with condensation and could see the two man team speed off in a car away from the house.

Checking the time on his watch, Arran tried to think but his mind was a mess and he oscillated between outright suicidal preparation to countries in the world he could run away to and live in exile.

Suddenly, the grimness of the weather and the sheer bleakness of his future collided into one dread filled conclusion.

He would now bring shame upon his family and would be ostracised at every turn. His life wouldn’t be worth living. And then, like an accelerated search through his own internal database of memories, he remembered just how much content he had produced the past few years and how incriminating it would be in light of their investigation into him.

He had a day before his father returned from work to make a decision.

The saturated melancholic sound of Tchaikovsky on the radio seemed to match his dark day almost too well.

Arran was lost in his own home, and he couldn’t think how his fate would play out from here. The only comfort were the warm tears that streamed down his face in abundance and reminded him that he was still alive.

It was getting on for five and the weather had worsened with more heavy, lashing rain and howls of gusty winds.

Sat in the darkness of the living room where he had spent nearly all of his entire life (with the exception of a few failed years at University) he felt totally empty. It was as if there was nothing left inside him to compel him to move his body or encourage his mind to think.

In the gloom, surrounded by the tatty worn out furniture, he gazed upon the comedy box sets of shows him and his dad loved to watch together. Reginald Perrin, Rising Damp and Red Dwarf. How he longed to be watching them all again with his father beside him, enjoying more innocent times, before his life had become so vulnerable to, what for him was the unbearable reality of adult life.

The realisation that his home could no longer be a home to him forced him to recognise he had been cocooned for far too long here. He had taken his chance with the world outside his family home and it seemed to say you’re not welcome here, so he retreated back into it, like a womb.

But since his parents break-up and his mother’s disappearance, everything had felt ghostly and haunted.

Suddenly, he felt an almost comical urge to make a cup of tea, but that thought was quickly countered with the sober recognition that he would probably be sick if he tried to drink it.

He stood up and closed his eyes as if to absorb the atmospheric vibrations of home before he left it forever.

His final gesture before departing was to place his father’s favourite record by Tom Paxton on the Marantz turntable and left it playing just so the house didn’t feel empty when he left.

He hated the thought of it left in silence.

He listened to the song for a bit, so as to give him a sort of musical dutch courage before finally closing the door on his life as he knew it.

You've got reason a plenty for goin’

This I know, this I know

For the weeds have been steadily growin’

Please don't go, please don't go

Are you going away with no word of farewell

Will there be not a trace left behind

Well, I could've loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind

You know that was the last thing on my mind

When Arran’s father return not long after, he noticed there was no lights on in the house, with only the orange glow of the turntable providing a respite from the pitch black darkness.

Turning the lights on in the living room, he saw the turntable still spinning.

He lifted the tonearm off the record and returned it to its rest, noticing the Tom Paxton cover close by.

He had played that same record devoutly for weeks after his wife left him and he was surprised to see it out without his intention to play it.

“Arran?”

He called out again, but louder this time.

“Arran?!”

The silence in the house felt deafening and he sensed for the first time in a long while that he had lost someone close to him.