The Willies

The Willies
Hamish MacDonald
Creative Commons Commons Deed
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 UK: Scotland
For more information on this license, please visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/scotland
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The Willies
MacDonald, Alistair Hamish
Printed and bound by the author.
ISBN - 1-59971-489-2
© 2006 Hamish MacDonald
The Willies
Hamish MacDonald

Chapter 1

Doing laundry always reminded Hugh of his mortality. One day he
would die, and probably while trying to fold a fitted sheet. Or doing
what he was doing now: tucking his socks together, making nice little
pucks out of them. There was something satisfying about getting them
square, with a little tongue hanging out, so that when he needed them
all he had to do was give a pull and a matched pair of socks would pop
open.
All those years of evolution culminating in tight sock-pucks, he thought.
He finished folding and hanging his clean clothes, then went to the
kitchen of his small apartment. He took a square glass from a cupboard
and held it under the tap. Water whirled through the filter and sloshed
into the glass. Everyone had a filter nowadays; drinking "city water"
straight wasn't a good idea.
He sat on the couch in his living room and looked around. There wasn't
much to see: bare, beige walls, no bookshelves, no magazines.
Moments like this were difficult, alone in the apartment with nothing to
do. But the alternative was worse, having little bits of junk information
stuck in his head -- a radio jingle, an ad from the subway, the whole
text of last week's TV guide.
Hugh never forgot anything. Everything he'd experienced or given his
attention to -- even things he would rather forget -- stayed in his head.
The mere thought of buying a radio started a song playing in his head,
one he'd heard once in a mall a year ago -- every word, every drum beat
and guitar chord. At least he could remember the end of the song and
cure himself. He sat, tapping his foot against his coffee-table, watching
the bonsai there wiggle.
When the song ended, he crossed the room to his patio door and went
outside. With the passing of winter, the sun was starting to work again,
warming the air slightly, though the sky still had the stark grey of
whites and darks washed together. He felt none of the enveloping
humid invitation of a summer Sunday.

Hugh rested his glass on the concrete ledge of his patio and took a
folding lawnchair from its spot against the wall. He pulled its
spring-loaded jaws apart and set it down on the grass -- an unlikely
square patch of it on the veranda that was also the roof of his
downstairs neighbour's place. The complex he rented an apartment in
looked like a child's blocks poured out sideways, except that the blocks
each overlapped in some way, forming a patio-roof combination here, a
stairwell between them there.
Sitting in his lawnchair, Hugh could look out at the harbour or
sideways at the Toronto skyline. He appreciated what the developers
had tried to do for the waterfront in the decades since the turn of the
century, like putting a giant bowl-shaped marine aquarium at the base
of his building's east side -- albeit a half-finished aquarium. Its tanks sat
dry: who could find a spare whale these days?
He stood up and leaned on the cement ledge, looking out at the lake.
His drink slipped from his fingers and landed with a clunk on the ledge.
Hugh gasped, reacting too slowly to have caught the glass had it fallen.
He picked it up carefully and placed it on the grass before returning to
his spot, leaning out to see what his glass might have hit.
This was Sunday, time off. He took a deep breath and tried to relax.
The breathing felt nice, but he couldn't help wondering what he was
breathing in from the city below. He tried to still his thoughts. Nothing
to do. Nothing to busy himself with. Nothing but him.
This was not the desired effect. Instead of feeling peaceful, he was
unnerved, as if he'd spent the whole week sleepwalking and this was
his first waking moment. His own company was too raw a thing to
experience, too alien, like the sound of a word repeated twenty times
until it became nonsense. My name is Hugh Willard. I work at a law
firm. It all sounded completely foreign to him.
He took another deep breath and sighed out loud to snap himself out of
this thought-whirlpool. Sundays weren't peaceful at all. They were the
most dangerous day of the week. He would gladly turn them over, let
someone else live them