Sunday 11 March 2012

Marchstick Man Makes a Miraculous Return


It’s been a long time. You may have been wondering where Matchstick Man has been; maybe you thought he was lost forever? So did he. Let me tell you all about it.

Now Matchstick Man, well, sometimes he has these moments. Mainly he’s a laid back kind of stick, but there are times when life just gets on top of him. One day, a long time ago, Matchstick Man was having one of those kinds of days. It all started when he woke up late, as these things tend to do.Outside it was a blustery autumn day; the sky was crowded with lazy, grey clouds that were sure to hang around all day, leaking. Matchstick Man dragged himself out of bed. His head felt fuzzy with half-remembered dreams and there was a slightly sickly feeling lingering around the dimple of his stomach. He looked at the clock - 10:18am – and groaned. He was late. He’d promised to help his friend, Russ, to bring in the carrot harvest. It was an important time of year on the farm, and Matchstick Man hated to let his friend down. They’d have been at it for hours already, but there was still time to help if he hurried.

He shook the dreams from his head and started to get dressed. Only now did he realise that Matchstick Mum had tidied his room. ‘If you don’t do it, then I’ll have to,’ she’d said and true to her word (as she always was) she’d squirreled everything neatly away: his books were straight on their shelves, his pictures of Paperclip lined up like little doggy soldiers on the dresser, and his sock neatly matched up in the drawer. Matching socks. Matchstick Man never wore matching socks (for reasons which will become apparent later), but there they were neatly, tidily matched up all lined up like prisoners on death row in his drawer. He sighed. With a feeling of mouldering dread he picked out a pair of soft red socks and slipped them on, put on his shoes and stomped out of the room.
Downstairs a note from Matchstick Mum was waiting for him.This is what it said.

Matchstick Man sighed again; more jobs to do. He looked over to Paperclip’s bed in the corner of the kitchen and it was true, Paperclip was looking a bit dull. Matchstick Man hadn’t been spending much time with him lately and hadn’t noticed. The dog looked at him with a cloudy eye; Matchstick man went over to his bed and gently stroked the sad looking dog’s head, noticing how a thin film of grime came off on his hand as he did so. ‘Not feeling yourself pooch?’ he said. ‘Me either. How about a walk? It might do you good.’

But no, Paperclip didn’t feel like getting up, didn’t feel like walking, he just lay in his bed making a quiet little rustling noise, almost a whimper. ‘I’m sorry,’ Matchstick Man whispered. ‘I’ve not been very attentive recently have I? How about I get you all polished up and maybe we can go out for a walk after that?’ Paperclip sniffed and raised a cloudy eye hopefully. ‘Okay,’ Matchstick Man said as he walked over to the polish cupboard, opened the door and then: ‘oh!’ Of course the cupboard was bare: no cloth, no polish. ‘That’s right, Matchstick Mum said we needed some more. I’d best get some. So,’ he said to Paperclip who had nuzzled his nose back under his blanket, ‘I need to take my library books back so I can do that, then pick up your polish, then I’ll come home, polish you up and we can go out and help Russ in the fields. How about it?’ Paperclip’s nose resurfaced from beneath the blanket. ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Matchstick Man said.

As I said before, outside it was a windy, rainy, miserable autumn day. Matchstick Man (without an umbrella – he wasn’t risking that again) walked as quickly as he could towards town chanting to himself: ‘Library, polish, fields. Library, polish, fields.’ A gentle song to remind him what to do. Alongside his own chant was another, beginning quietly, so quietly he hardly noticed it at first, but then growing louder until he couldn’t ignore it.

‘Hey Match,’ it went. ‘Hey Match, it’s Mr Match with the matching socks.’ The moldering feeling returned. Matchstick Man turned to find his steps being dogged by three small, irritating children: Dip, Dumb and Ugly. The neighbourhood ‘scallywags’ as people politely called them (tiny terrorists, as Matchstick Man liked to think of them). In their mistuned voices they started to sing:

‘ Match the match.

Match the match.

Match the match...  

On and on it went, tuneless, pointless. Matchstick Man felt his temperature rising. How he hated to be called Match. He found himself silently cursing Matchstick Mum and the stupid matching socks.
Fortunately for Match...I mean Matchstick Man his journey was almost at an end as he found himself standing outside the library. He walked in, safe in the knowledge that Dip, Dumb and Ugly would not dare to go inside on account of the fact that they might learn something or, and perhaps more pertinently, that Miss Tree, the strange and unknowable librarian, would promptly toss their wooden bottoms back out on to the street.

Outside of earshot of the chanting children, waiting in line at the counter did nothing to improve Matchstick Man’s mood. For standing at the front of the queue was Sticker, and as we all know Sticker is almost impossible to get rid of once he’s got himself stuck into something. And right now he was stuck in a long and involved conversation with Miss Tree about themes of modernisation v traditionalism in Under the Greenwood Tree. Matchstick Man tapped his feet in frustration, but once Sticker was stuck on a subject it took a minor miracle to move him on. Fortunately Miss Tree is a woman of strange and peculiar talents and after five minutes, during which Sticker launched into a protracted soliloquy involving an organ, a string quartet and a vicar, a sharp ‘Next’ from Miss Tree brought Matchstick Man to the front of the queue.

‘I’d like to return my books,’ Matchstick Man said politely (in truth, he was a little scared of Miss Tree).

‘Of course, just put them on the counter,’ Miss Tree replied. Matchstick Man lifted his hands to the counter and...oh no...oh yes...he’d forgotten the books. His face burnt, deep red. ‘Yes,’ Miss Tree said. ‘Just on the counter, right here.’

‘Oh, um,’ Matchstick Man jibbered. ‘Um, I’ll be right back.’

He ran out of the library, straight into the waiting chant: ‘Match the match. Match the match. Match the match...’ The children, like a scratched and broken record, chanted on and on. Matchstick Man ran away, ran down the high street, face flaming, ran until he reached the veterinary surgery. ‘Please, please,’ he begged quietly.‘Please let something go right today.’ He walked inside. Behind the counter was Needle Stick, the sharpest woman in town. Matchstick Man’s mood plummeted.

'Can I help you,’ she said.     

‘Yes, yes. I need some polish for my dog.’

‘Type?’

‘He’s a paperclip.’

‘Stupid boy. What type of polish?’

‘Um, metal?’

‘Obviously.’ She gave him a piercing look. ‘Is the dog rusty?’

‘No, just kind of grimy.’

‘Ah, you need Grime n’ shine. We don’t have any. I can order some for you. Should be here by Tuesday.’

‘Tuesday?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘But, but I need it now.’

‘Well I can’t magic it out of thin air now can I?’ Needle Stick said sharply. ‘Do you want it or not.’

‘Yes, I want it.’

‘Tuesday it is then. Goodbye.’

Needle Stick turned away leaving Matchstick Man mouthing like a goldfish at the back of her spiky head. After a moments useless gesticulating he turned and marched out of the shop.

It was the last strike, he couldn’t take any more. He felt as though his head was about to ignite, his body burning in a fiery rush of rage. He had to cool down. He started walking, just walking. He walked past the library, past the chanting taunts of the children that haunted him, ‘Match the match, match the match...’ He walked out of town until the sound of their voices was just a memory. He walked into the countryside, past Russ Stick’s farm where the labourers bent and straightened, bent and straightened, pulling the carrots out of the ground. Hedidn’t stop. He walked through the forest, past fallen leaves, brown and crispy. He felt like throwing himself into a great pile of dead leaves, letting his anger out in its full destructive force, letting it burn, taking the forest with him. But he couldn’t do that, so he kept on walking. He kept walking even though he didn’t know where he was going, where his feet were taking him.

Then it grew dark. Not the darkness of an approaching storm, nor the darkness of night. A different kind of darkness. Darkness that closes around you, enveloping you. Darkness from which it is impossible to escape. Matchstick Man stopped walking. He looked up. All around him were tall buildings, tall as the sky, great concrete monstrosities that caged him. Glass windows reflected the grey, dead emptiness of it, a kaleidoscopic vision of endlessly repeating towers. And there was a chilling absence of sound. Not even the wind blew here, no whistling through the gaps between the buildings, no movement of air, just stillness, silence, absence. Matchstick Man turned. He turned again. He was surrounded.

He knew this place. He had heard about it, been warned aboutit though he never thought he would find himself here, trapped. Writer’s Block. A mythical place in which characters could become completely lost. Better to be Erased than trapped here like this. Living and not living. Matchstick Man sank to the floor. He sank to the floor and cried. Everything around him oppressed him: the buildings, the endless grey sky, the unnatural silence. The blank uniformity of it all stripped the anger from him, leaving him blind, cold,empty. He didn’t even try to escape. He just crawled into a space under a doorway and lay there.

How long he lay there, well, we may never know. It was longenough that Matchstick Man became a mere splinter of his old self, a small, ghostly impression on the page. Long enough for roots to start growing out of his chin. Long enough for his head to become damp and sparkless. And all the time he laythere he didn’t see another soul. Few characters could survive in that dark, depressing place.

Now, Matchstick Man has more character than most so perhaps that’s how he came, one day, to hear a sound. A snuffling, kind of rustling sound, almost a whimper. And he sat up, because in all the time he’d been trapped in Writer’s Block there had never been such a sound, or any sound to speak of.  And the sound was coming closer, and closer, and closer. And then, just out of the corner of his eye, he caught a sudden gleam of light. A marvellous, metallic reflection. And there, running towards him like a shard of shattering light was Paperclip. Paperclip:bright as a laser beam. Paperclip: curvilinear knight in shining armour,bounding, barking, a beacon in the darkness. Paperclip. Matchstick Man opened his arms for Paperclip to leap into and suddenly there were no buildings, no grey, drab nothingness, just a Matchstick Man and his dog caught in a dazzling beam of light, rejoicing, returning to life.       


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