I
Middle-Man
“There are two moons,
The one that everyone knows
Is a reflection in a bucket wearing clothes
Cause we see reflections.
The second moon is actually the moon.” - Phil Elverum
He didn’t ever think about why he drove, for at this moment driving was as crucial to life as water or sleep, so unhindered by thought he thrust foot into pedal and thus pedal into floor, propelling himself in his extended metal and rubber body further north as if they together were a migrating Canada Goose. The churning of his engine echoed the churning of the world around him, wicked and loud, converting the fossilised life of days past into selfish actions and wasted movement on the path to universal parity. As fast as the new ground ahead of him was trampled below his revolving feet, that ground was left forgotten as he left behind miles of tarmac in his wake. This was his lone-wolf fantasy, and he was ‘Fate’s Middle-Man.’ As the sun set and left reddish streaks of clouds, he departed from his hometown.
Middle-Man was in good shape, his tall and skinny body was wrought into rugged muscles as a product of his avid enjoyment of long-distance running. Never satisfied with inertness, he would take to streets and treadmills as if it were in his nature to be always moving, wolfish in gait and in his desire to cover as much ground as he could. This, in part, is why the choice to begin his journey wasn’t ever a choice. It was born of necessity. Middle-Man had seldom been content in his previous situation, living with the unending prejudice of his own mental make-up. He was an misanthrope born into a world brimming with people, and his efforts to tolerate or even ignore those around him had all been in vain. So where could he go to be alone? He chose the Scottish Highlands. Embarking from his home in Bournemouth, he planned to travel only at night. Every minute of every waking hour for two weeks had been spent in preparation for Middle-Man’s pilgrimage, working overtime at his job to earn enough money for fuel, camping gear (including a camping knife, a thermos, a tent and a sleeping bag) and any other amenities that he deemed necessary for living a life off the grid. He laboriously learned how to feed and shelter himself in the harsh Scottish wilderness with every spare moment that he found himself in possession of. So as not to spend any unnecessary funds, he ripped the back seats out of his hatchback and took immaculate care in servicing it’s engine by himself. To his mind, all eventualities on his journey had been prepared for. Wearing all black and grey, his feet uncomfortably fitting into brand new hiking boots, it was a calm, late-summer night when he set off.
This first night he didn’t get far. All eventualities had indeed not been prepared for, as his car (which he had donned the ‘Middlemobile’) had blown a tyre just north of Shaftesbury. Enraged and disappointed with himself and with his vehicle’s failing, and by the fact that he did not have a spare to hand, he conceded to call an emergency mechanic, a human just like him, but in his estimation a complete alien. The mechanic changed his tyre quickly and to Middle-Man’s relief did not try to strike up much conversation, just a disgruntled “alright mate” followed by a pregnant, awkward silence as he changed the Middlemobile’s tyre. It seemed he wanted to ‘chat’ no more than Middle-Man. Although the tyre had been replaced swiftly, Middle-Man had waited by the roadside much longer than he would have hoped to. From the moment the tyre had burst to the time it was replaced 5 hours had passed, and the distant sun had already started to herald its arrival in the low eastern sky. Middle-Man started up his car’s engine, and the Middlemobile seemed to blush as it pulled away, shamefully restarting the journey.
Driving on the near-deserted roads of the early morning felt like gliding on Alaskan river ice, each second inching closer to the Scottish terminus and further from the oppressive regime of everyday southern living. Middle-Man drove as if he had committed a crime, hastily making up for his lost time spent on the hard shoulder, and once again in his motor now resembled a wraith atop the A-roads of the Cotswolds. His car was fitted with an outdated Bluetooth stereo system to which he connected his outdated phone (he called it the ‘Middle-Mobile’) and let the music of his near-outdated playlists fill the cab. Nothing that was new held any value to him, it had not faced the test of time and therefore was not worthy of his endorsement.
He stopped again in the morning amongst the Malvern hills north of Gloucester and set up his camp for the day in a wooded area off the beaten path, where he slept for eight hours. The sounds of cars and motorbikes were still audible in the distance, but Middle-Man was able to ignore them for the most part as he listened to the birds and the rustling of leaves. Robins and dunnocks flittered from bush to shrub to tree, oblivious to any world other than their wooded playground. Middle-Man drank from his argent thermos and took some joy in watching its surface glisten in the few early evening sun rays that managed to tangle their way through the leaf canopy above. The deciduous oak and elm trees rose high above his tented dwelling for the day, the dark green of its surface obscured further by the abundance of foliage around it and the pattern of the sunlight that shone through. Perhaps this was why Middle-Man was more confused than irritated when a hapless passer-by stumbled upon this campsite that he had thought to be so well hidden. It was 5 o’clock in the afternoon and he had been awake for a couple of hours. He was waiting for the sun to set and eating a meagre breakfast when he heard the unmistakeable footsteps of another person, an intruder in his solitary domain. The intruder showed himself and greeted him, and Middle-Man was frozen by fear and rage, barely managing to reciprocate this greeting without bursting; this was the second person he’d had to interact with in twenty-four hours, the second transgression made on his liberty to be completely unaccompanied during each stage of this fateful journey.
Possessing sunken, mahogany brown eyes, the type of eyes that Middle-Man thought one should not trust; eyes where one attempts to peer into the beholder’s soul and divines the absence of it; eyes that were empty placeholders for the hollow sockets that housed them, the intruder was a stout man in his early forties, with gelled black hair and stubble on his cheeks that might have resembled sandpaper if rubbed. He was dressed in a cheap polo shirt and khaki shorts, both articles of clothing clearly one or two sizes too small, and the dark spots of perspiration beneath his armpits intimated that he had toiled in some proportion to reach this part of the woods. Middle-Man had seen his fair share of men of this ilk, the all-confident and imperious middle-class man of the countryside; the thought of having a conversation with this vile man was sickening.
The intruder then asked him why he was camping this deep in the woods, to which Middle-Man reluctantly replied, “Just camping, is that alright?”
“But why camp this far from everything?” pressed the intruder, “nobody comes near this neck of the woods anyway.”
The second half of his sentence seemed to mock Middle-Man’s attempt at solitude and he half-spoke, half-barked at the intruder, “Apparently nobody but you.”
The reply came after a startled pause, “I didn’t mean to touch a nerve mate, just curious ’s all.”
Middle-Man collected himself for a second and said in a calm, stoic tone, “Maybe you shouldn’t be.”
“I’d say I have a right to be, seeing as you’re on my land,” the intruder quipped, “so please, just clue me in, why are you camping here? Why are you camping alone?”
After another pause, Middle-Man said, “I’m on a road trip.” Maybe if he tried being more amiable the intruder would leave him alone? “I’m on my way to Scotland, always wanted to see the Highlands.”
“Well, there you go! Sounds lovely mate,” Middle-Man silently prayed that the sentence would end there and that he could awkwardly say farewell, but the intruder continued, “wouldn’t it have been nicer to do a road trip with some friends though?”
It was almost a minute before Middle-Man spoke.
“None of my friends felt like coming.”
The lie appeared to tithe the intruder who jovially gave Middle-Man his blessing and goodbye.
“Okay then. You’re alright to camp on my land for today, just don’t start any fires. Have a good one in Scotland fella’.”
With a smile on his weaselly face the intruder turned and started to walk away; and walk away he might have been capable of doing, had not Middle-Man let out a cry and, thermos in hand, struck him with all of his force. The blow landed squarely on the back of the intruder’s head, and he was sent flying to the leaf covered ground, meeting the dry leaves with a dull and heavy crunch. There were no thoughts in Middle-Man’s mind, no raging inner scream, no envious cry, or anything that could be considered an emotion at all for that matter; he was a spectator, watching the most terrible scene he had ever witnessed, watching the blows of the thermos rain down like brutal hailstones on the crown of the poor man’s skull. And then it was over, as quickly and ferociously as it had started. There had been no cry from the intruder, no helpless yelp of the dying soul sent hurtling into whatever may come next that the living may not know. All that could be heard was thud after thud turning to squelch after squelch as Middle-Man unceremoniously let loose a salvo. The man’s head was pulverised. The once silvery thermos that had been Middle-Man’s to admire in the light was now a rent, crimson-caked hunk of worthless metal and plastic, and on top of that a murder weapon. Middle-Man had never dreamed he would be holding a murder weapon, let alone that he would be the perpetrator of such a murder, the deliverer of another’s demise. It was true, other human life did not hold value to him, but was he now so brazen as to take away that which wasn’t his to take? And now, after killing this so-called intruder, Middle-Man was aware of the irony in the fact that the intruder would never have the ability leave this temporary camp site of his own volition, the one thing Middle-Man had desired since the short conversation between the two had arisen.
Middle-Man sat motionless by the body for a while. The relenting ball of fire in the sky had dropped behind the hills, its light still illuminating the tree-ridden final setting of the intruder’s life, but dimming by the second. He didn’t know what to do with himself, nor whether he truly controlled his body and his actions anymore. In addition, the veil of sanctity of human life that Middle-Man had once wanted to lift had well and truly been lifted, and in its stead was left the horrible truth of materialism that he now didn’t want to accept. He found in himself that he was all too human, and after a grizzly outburst of violence towards his fellow man, in this moment he felt more connected to his own race than ever; a living, breathing, killing paradox that was both worthless and worth all the world at once. But now, as ever, he had no choice. There was surely no way he could live among his kind, and his highland pilgrimage became ever more imperative. The tent was dismantled perfunctorily, his belongings packed and made ready to be returned to the Middlemobile, all but the thermos. The thermos was an uncomfortable reminder of his transgression, and further was no longer usable. Thoughts of repercussions had flashed through his mind, but they were met with the selfish ideations of the criminal who didn’t wish for justice, and who wished to continue a wretched, immoral life, so in a confused manner Middle-Man did not worry about his abandonment of the murder weapon by the corpse for the authorities to discover. He did, however, destroy his phone by repeatedly beating it with a heavy oak branch, and like the lifeless intruder leaving it without epitaph, the Middle-Mobile destined to the same movelessness as him.
With a blank expression, Middle-Man loaded up the car and started the engine, his mind now suffused with pensive thought. This night he would cover more ground. Visions of the man’s bloody, mangled scalp plagued his travel early in the night, one of these visions manifesting itself when he looked at his reflection in the rear-view mirror and saw that his was the bloodied face of the poor intruder. The contradiction of his existence now distressed him more than he thought any person had in his lifetime. Without the Middle-Mobile to connect to his car’s Bluetooth, he was resigned to either listening to the radio or driving in silence. Of these he chose silence. His journey took him up the M5 towards Birmingham, after which he would pass Stoke-on-Trent on the M6, continuing on this road for its full duration until he was in Scotland. It was a long distance to drive but Middle-Man held no reservations in getting far from the south of the landmass that he drove on, with the added motivation of leaving behind the man that he had unrightfully killed. The roads were clear, as he had expected and craved for them to be, save for the odd night-traveller such as himself.
Seeing another individual driving caused him to wonder ever more. Borne of the same flesh and bones as his own, Middle-Man now reasoned that it was their minds that separated them from him, and that the fleshy, bony bodies that united them to him were not of his concern. Theirs were the minds that had tormented him in the past, minds that would continue to torment him in the future, their minds were all the same; his was the outlier, the one of one, the mind of a man who was unlike other men. Upon drawing this conclusion, Middle-Man felt better about what he had done to the intruder, and perhaps even that the intruder had deserved it. They were, in fact, not the same kind. And while their bodies resembled each other’s they could not have been more different where it mattered most. With this epiphany he drove on almost brightly, and the visions of the dead man he left behind became less frequent. There was a new glint in Middle-Man’s eye. He was a killer, but why should that trouble him? As other men might deem rats as pests and kill them as such, so too may he kill men. They were pests to him all the same.
With renewed focus, Middle-Man’s driving was smooth as ever, and if he in his vehicle had resembled a wraith before, he was now the breath of such a wraith. He ran into slight traffic through Birmingham, but once on the M6 it was almost too easy going, too tranquil, he had all of the time in the world with which to continue the twisted thinking and reasoning in his ‘unique’ mind. The night sky was clear as he drove past Stoke-on-Trent, betwixt Manchester and Liverpool, up past Preston, then through Lancaster, all before he reached a stretch of the motorway close to Lake Windermere. Middle-Man used his ability to think and reason to choose to take a detour here, as he had heard of Lake Windermere but had never seen it for himself. The absurdity of the man who goes sightseeing hours after committing a murder was lost on Middle-Man, who from shock or psychopathy had not reasoned that it was abnormal in the slightest. Venturing to find a quiet point from which to gaze at the lake proved to be fairly simple, and he found such a point on the South-Western side of the lake, away from the M6.
It was four o’clock in the morning when he got out of the Middlemobile and walked to the pale, rocky bank of the lake. The sun had not risen, but its familiar salmon-pink light stained the sky enough to lighten the atmosphere. Drenched in fog, the air above the lake looked eerily like white smoke, which lingered ghost-like and obfuscated the chilly water beneath, the dark liquid contained in a deep recess of a valley that filled Middle-Man’s mind as much as that water filled the lake. There were minimal thoughts of the murder now in the hours that had passed overnight, just of the beauty of the lake and surrounding area. Middle-Man was completely living in the moment, and once again earned the name he had bestowed mentally upon himself as he sat squarely in the middle of the infinitesimally small intersection of two eternities of time, the past and future. In this present moment that he continued to exist in, he noticed more about the lake, such as the towering white masts of boats in the distance that rose above the fog. The rolling hills that enclosed the valley housing the lake were dark and imposing in the early morning light, and the materialistic side of Middle-Man noted his own size among such giants as these. An unfathomable connectedness washed over him as the gentle water washed over the rocks of the shore, not a connectedness concerning life, but a connectedness to that which was not alive. These hills held more longevity than he could ever hope to hold, yet were just as immortal as the matter that he was literally made of. He stood and watched the lake for around twenty minutes in total. When he noticed the sky growing lighter at its glacial pace, he reclaimed his seat in the Middlemobile, and he continued on the roads. Once he had refuelled there was no stopping him. The M6 would carry him all the way to Scotland, and once across the border he would find somewhere to camp for the day before finishing his journey and taking his place in the wilderness.
There is no desire so great as that which consumes the man on the path to finding his purpose. Middle-Man sought purpose in a solitary life in the wild, and to catalyse his desire the speed at which he was in transit to the Scottish border seemed in his mind to wax slower and slower the closer he came. Once he had passed Carlisle every instant seemed to last a lifetime. He was further north than he had ever been in his ephemeral, short life, and the imperative freedom that lay in the country of Scotland was agonisingly falling within his grasp. The border loomed nearer, he crossed the river Esk. Middle-Man was now sweating with anticipation. His foot depressed the accelerator further. And as though crossing from one life to the next, he was over the river Sark, and he was finally in Scotland.
