Blin

Blin finishes the carton of Pulpy Juice and licks the stray bits from his lips. He drops the empty carton in the bin, then washes his face at the sink. Before leaving the house, he checks his pockets to make sure he has his keys and two plums. 

The blackthorn trees murmur in the neighbouring gardens. Scraps of cloud hang in the deep blue sky. The approach of a dirty grey mass in the distance promises rain. Blin feels good in himself. He can’t explain this onrush of positivity. Sometimes it happens that way.

Blin lives in a medium-sized town on the Atlantic coast. Not a particularly nice or friendly town. There’s nothing remarkable about it—it’s very much an unprepossessing place. It’s also not a town Blin would choose to live in if Blin had a choice—which, of course, he should have. 

He heads for the seafront, stopping to examine the display in a pharmacy window. A hill of blue and yellow tablets sits on a bed of red crenulated paper. The banner overhead reads: Let us take you to the summit. 

At the Births kiosk, he asks for the latest figures. The official inside consults a computer screen, scrolling down a table of data.

“As of two o’clock,” he tells Blin, “there have been sixteen births in the last twenty-four hours. A cumulative figure of ninety-three in the past week and four thousand two hundred and ten in the last year.”

“A good number,” Blin remarks. “You don’t do deaths?”

“No, only births. You’ll have to enquire at the other kiosk.” 

Babies are important in this unremarkable town. Pushing them out like billy-o, Blin often thinks. The continuation of the line, keeping the show on the road—isn’t that what it’s all about? 

Blin waits at a junction for the traffic light to turn red, counting the seconds in his head. Eight, nine, ten… He runs across the road as the light goes yellow, and the car engines surrounding him growl. It’s a game he likes to play when he’s feeling good. 

As he passes the convent, four nuns exit the adjoining abattoir. Their hands are red, the white of their habits blood-stained. One of the nuns rushes towards him when she sees him staring.

“What are you looking at?” she snaps. “Watch it, or you’ll be next.” She makes chewing motions and sounds with her hands. “Om nom nom.”

Blin walks away, picking up his pace as he goes, and his walk-run eventually becomes a full-on run. 

He slows down once he reaches the safety of the rope shop on the next street. 

“That was a close call,” he says to himself.

He feels his pockets, worried he’d dropped the plums in his rush to escape the bloody nun. But no, they were still there: one in each pocket. 

A man with ruddy jowls waves at him just as Blin looks up and glances out from the side of his eye.

“Hey you,” the man calls. “Turn around and face me. I can’t see your badge.”

Blin turns and puffs out his chest.

“Your badge,” the man tells him, “must be clearly visible at all times.”

Blin undoes the clasp and positions the badge higher on his lapel.

“What’s your colour?”

“Blue,” answers Blin.

“A bluey, I thought as much. Off with you now.”

Blin continues walking, not feeling as good in himself as he had before. A visit to Happy Faces should cheer him up. He walks past the Vinegar Shop and the Aphid Shop. A security guard in a brown uniform stops him at the entrance to Happy Faces. Blin hands over some coins.

“Okay, that’ll get you five minutes.” The guard steps aside. “Remember, no touching.”

When he enters, Blin opts for the room on the left where a priest kneels at a prie-dieu.

“How are you, my son?”

This is not what Blin needs, and he knows that it will not make him feel good in himself again. He hurries on to the next room, where he finds a Marilyn Monroe lookalike caked in makeup, her blonde wig askew.

“Boop-boop-be-boop.” 

Blin watches as she simpers over ill-fitting dentures.

He has no time to waste though, and Blin doesn’t linger at the smiley displays he has seen many times before: the happy schoolgirl, the nurse, the astronaut. He comes to a granny on a rocking-chair, knitting and humming to herself. It is a new display—an excellent granny, grey hair in a bun, round glasses, long shimmering blue dress, and bleached white apron. 

“Hello there, dearie,” she says.

Now this! This is a proper happy face! One that makes Blin feel good in himself again. Such a kind granny and so reassuring. 

As Blin reaches to touch the granny’s bun, he’s knocked to the floor. Looking up, he sees the guard from outside standing over him. The guard starts kicking Blin.

“What did I tell you?” Another kick comes from the guard, and one more follows for good measure. “No touching.”

Blin is thrown out the door of Happy Faces and lands on the pavement. He drags himself to his feet, his knee stinging, his ribs on fire. Angry faces glare at him when he looks around.

“A disgrace,” says one woman, a tea cosy hat plopped on her head. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Blin limps over to a public bench and eases himself onto the seat. He leans back and lets his eyes glide over the buildings across the street. A sliver of the Atlantic is visible through a gap between the Aglet Shop and Aquari-Yummies. Blin definitely doesn’t feel good in himself. He feels sore in himself. Maybe he should have a plum, but he decides to leave the plums for later. He calculates how much money he has left, but it is not enough for a visit to Aquari-Yummies to nosh on live guppies and goldfish. 

An old guy with a stick hobbles over and sits next to Blin. The oldie starts coughing and snorting and hawking, releasing a meaty discharge of mucus that splats on the ground. He looks over at Blin.

“How’re you doin’, Bluey?”

“Alright.”

“Feelin’ good in yourself?”

“Not particularly.”

They sit for a long time in silence. Blin examines the tapering shadow cast by the walking stick. Finally, the oldie speaks again.

“I haven’t felt good in myself for eighty years. And I remember nothin’ of my first three years, but I doubt I felt good even then.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Blin. “Earlier today, I was feeling good in myself.”

“Were you now?” The old guy shakes his head and laughs. “It didn’t last long, though, did it?”

“No, it didn’t.”

“Best thing you can do,” The oldie taps the ground with his stick. “Take yourself over to Nelly Silke’s Contentment Shop. She’ll sort you out.”

This is a new shop to Blin, but shops open and close all the time in this town.

“Where’s that shop?” he asks curiously. 

“Over there.” The oldie waves his stick somewhere to the left of Blin. “Next to the second-hand pram and nappy place.” 

“And will she be able to help me?”

“You never know. She comes highly recommended. They say she’s a very contented woman.” The oldie shrugs then adds. “What do you have to lose?”

Blin thanks him and makes his way gingerly across the street. 

Nelly Silke waits behind a counter. She is a big woman with hair cut like a schoolboy and eyes bulging from a bad goitre.

“How can I help you?” she asks. 

Blin puts money on the counter in front of her. It’s not all that he has, though, for he’s wise enough to keep some aside. His day hasn’t ended yet, after all. 

“I’m not feeling good in myself.”

Nelly Silke counts the money and says, “That’ll get you three statements.”

“Will that work?”

“I’ve never had any complaints.”

Blin leans on the counter, taking the weight off his sore knee.

“First statement,” says Nelly Silke. “It’s not as bad as all that. It could get a lot worse.”

Blin waits, expecting more.

“Second statement. Accentuate the positive; the sun is shining, and it isn’t raining.”

“Do people pay for this?” Blin asks.

Nelly Silke stares at him through her googly eyes.

“Third statement. You’re still young, and you still have your health. Wouldn’t it be worse to be a snail without its shell, having nothing to live for other than sliming around and having people look at you in disgust?”

Because the part concerning the snail was phrased as a question, Blin believes the talk about being young and healthy is Nelly Silke’s third statement.

“You’ve never had any complaints? None?”

“Never, not a single one,” says the content Nelly Silke.

When Blin leaves the shop, it starts raining. He shelters under the awning of a pharmacy nearby. There are many pharmacies in this town. The window display this time of the year shows a sea of blue pills and a sandy patch with a tropical island tree represented by brown and green pills. A flag in the sand reads: Let us take you to paradise. 

Blin watches as the fat raindrops spatter to the ground from the sky, then looks up and spots the oldie with the walking stick, shuffling along the other side of the road. Should he go over and tell the old guy that Nelly Silke did nothing to make him feel good in himself? Blin decides that it’s not worth the effort—there’s no point in getting drenched in the rain. In any case, it might even be a different oldie and not the same one from before. There are so many of them in this town, and they all look the same to Blin. This particular oldie on the other side of the road heads into a bookmaker. Second only to pharmacies, there is an abundance of bookies in this town. People like to bet. Winning is a bonus, and losing confirms that not everything is certain.

The rain ceases abruptly, leaving just as quickly as it started. Blin continues on his way, not stopping until he reaches the Deaths kiosk. The official inside looks very much like the one in the Births kiosk.

“What are the numbers today?” Blin asks. 

The official turns to his computer and presses the refresh button.

“As of ten minutes past five,” he says, “there have been nine deaths in the last twenty-four hours. A cumulative figure of seventy in the past week and four thousand one hundred and eighty-eight in the last year.”

“More births than deaths recently,” Blin observes. “But it evens up in the long run.”

“That tends to be how it works,” the official replies.

Blin moves along. A band practices in XY Park for an upcoming parade. People like to march and display their determination in this town. The drummers pound their goatskin Lambeg drums, and Blin blows out his cheeks in time to the music.

Bum-te-de-bum-bum-bum.  

He makes his way along the coast, passing by rows and rows of parked cars. A favourite pastime of the people in this town is to drive to the seafront, stay in the car and read a newspaper or listen to the radio, and smoke a cigarette or eat a sandwich. Some even contemplate the white-capped Atlantic in the horizon.

But Blin doesn’t stop to contemplate the white-capped Atlantic. He goes on, moving towards the diving tower. A romp of nuns from the convent abattoir run along the beach, stretching out a net filled with crusts of bread that they use to catch seagulls. Motorboats zoom by, pulling skiers in their wake. Blin is not a strong swimmer and finds the water too cold. It makes him slightly sad to hear the excited whoops as, one by one, divers somersault into the freezing ocean. 

The light shimmers on the water as it laps at the basalt rocks lining the promenade. Blin sits on a rock and gazes at faraway grassy headlands. He puts his hand in his pocket and feels a squidgy mess. His fingers are coated in sticky pulp. He turns the pocket inside out and dumps the remains of a squished plum onto the ground. It must have happened when he received that kicking from the guard at Happy Faces. Slowly and very carefully, he slides his hand into the other pocket and sighs with relief when he feels the reassuring solidity of the second plum. He holds it up in the sunlight like an offering to the heavens, delighted by its purple roundness. He imagines its plummy sweetness. This gives him another onrush of positivity, and Blin suddenly feels good in himself. 

All of a sudden, a seagull fleeing the nuns swoops down and grabs the plum in its beak. Wings flapping, it wheels away, but not before its sharp claws rip a long tear in the sleeve of Blin’s coat, cutting his arm and drawing blood in the process.

“Ouch,” cries Blin. 

Tears of pain and defeat fill his eyes. He leans forward on his rock and slowly fades into himself, slipping momentarily from his circumstances. 

Twilight soon ensues, leaving the distant headlands canted against an afterglow of sun. 

The divers stop diving, the skiers stop skiing, and the nuns return to the abattoir with their catch. Blin lingers in the growing darkness, a cool breeze easing the sting of his cut. 

It’s time to return home. He stands and walks back home but stops on the way at Last Orders Ice Cream, handing over his remaining coins.

“A raspberry ripple, please.”

The plump man who serves him points at the tear in his coat.

“You need to get that looked at. Was it a seagull?”

“It was.”

“Savage buggers,” the ice cream man says. “Here, you’ve given me too much.” 

He hands back one coin to Blin.

Blin takes his time enjoying his raspberry ripple, slowly spooning it into his mouth. Others come into the shop, and he listens to the banter of the after-hours ice cream crowd.

“Just got in under the wire. Pull us a cone there.” 

“Make mine a ninety-nine. What are you having?”

“A choc ice, if you’re buying. But it’ll have to be quick, I’ve got to get back to the ball and chain.”

Blin licks his bowl clean, then gets up to leave. On the way out, he drops his last coin into a charity box. It bears a generic head silhouette and the words: Please give generously and feel better about yourself.

It is the end of Blin’s day. It was not such a bad day, all things considered. There was only a single kicking and two attacks: one from a nun and one from a seagull. Blin also didn’t get to eat his plums, but it could have been a lot worse as Nelly Silke had told him. 

On his way home, Blin strolls past the bookies and pharmacies, the Aphid Shop and the Vinegar Shop, Aquari-Yummies and Happy Faces. 

Maybe not feeling good in himself, but not feeling so bad either. 

Mark Keane has taught for many years in universities in North America and the UK. Recent short stories have appeared in The Sunlight Press, The Interpreter’s House, Foofaraw, Inlandia, Paris Lit Up, Prosetrics, Twin Bird Review, For Page & Screen, Shooter, untethered, and Night Picnic. He lives in Edinburgh (Scotland).