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Cadwell NOT Caldwell
Ogre
[4 minute read ]
Opinion 
Fiction
There is a great deal of peace when my neighbour has been absent from his home for a while. The air, instead of being bleak and thin and strangely suggesting it has astringent qualities when he is home, is silky smooth and full, like a soft cover that welcomes and refreshes after a long struggle. The birds don't call 'alarm!' so much and they relax with an expectation of comfort and safety. Plants grow straight and even different insects arrive; ones I have never seen before when he is at home.
He is due back today, with his carer, whom I think he regards as his girlfriend. Perhaps she does too by now. She is his first and only lover. It is not romantic, he did not wait for the right one; he waited for the only one that is immune to his ogre nature. He is no Shrek though, he is a monster with a headache that pervades our space with his brutal and confused nature. His spirit haplessly wanders through our homes and looms over us as we sleep.
'Who are you?' he questions our silent and still bodies. Our deep sleep is broken; he knows no boundaries and has no respect for our peace. We are troubled by his presence and our day will be marred by our poor rest.
During the days, when he and we are awake his aspect gives out strange energy that saps our own. He is a leech; a parasite and a seeker of power. Wherever there is energy or creativity; wherever there is discovery or explanation, interest or peace; he will somehow invisibly barge into that space and shatter the idea, the dream and the concept. His lumbering presence is like a boulder falling down a cliff into a still pond. It knows nothing of the delicacy and the unity; the depth and the breadth of unblemished nature.
The atmosphere will be as sandpaper against our skin, and our nerves will feel as though they have been caught in a machine; stretched painfully into some kind of fabricated shape that he tries to manipulate to suit his wooden dreams of what being alive might have been for him. He will never know it. He fails to understand simple things and years of mental isolation have been the only canvas on which, with broad brush-strokes he paints how he sees our world. The colours are weak and his black and red figure is painted larger than the image of the discoloured planet.
He is due back today. There will be a buzz in the air, silent but disruptive; completely inconducive to orderly thinking; to creativity and relaxing. Like infra-sound it will resonate in our homes and cause us to shift position to try to shake it off and escape it. Our hearts will skip beats and our chests will feel bloated. Our appetites will lesson and we will spend less time looking into each others eyes. With downcast heads we will, sapped of our energy by his draining presence, fumble and make clumsy mistakes as he draws us closer to being like him; clumsy and foolish.
He is not evil. He is a controlling psychopath. Failing to understand how social interaction works he seeks to overpower it; to own it and bring it into his domain; his bailiwick and scope. No amount of education, of patient teaching and instruction will change him. He simply won't take it in and hold it long enough to make sense of it. No amount of time in the village stocks will convince him of his separation from healthy society. He scorns and pillories anyone he doesn't know and tries to bully those he does. It is his unchanging warped nature.
He is due back today and the birds will fly further away. The cats will run faster past his garden and the dogs will bark longer and louder. The sun will penetrate the thinned air and burn the plants and people alike, and the nights will have an undetectable stench of putrefaction that no-one wants to breathe. He is due back today and we will shut our windows and secure the doors against his clumsy encumbrance. We will look behind us when there is nothing there, nervous of something that we cannot see; not convinced that he is there and not realising we secretly know that his influence fills our space. We would be uncomfortable in conversation with him, if he paused to speak, because we will detect his falsehood. His speech and actions are not natural; they come out of a manual he wrote for himself. If he stopped to speak he would be like a troll dashing out from under a bridge to demand payment or to steal our precious loves. Instead, he rushes past us to hide in his car; the shell of it a barrier to the world he does not understand. He drives aggressively away with no understanding of the damage he wreaks on his vehicle.
He is due back today and the world near us will lose some of its light. Plants will grow crooked and moths and butterflies will hatch with parts of their wings missing. Insects will invade homes and people will be bitten by their dogs. Children will fall off their bikes outside his home and their normally kind and patient mothers will scream and shout at passers-by from their doorsteps. There will be more delays, and more typos in emails and texts. Phone calls will be missed. Washing up will be unwashed and clothes will be musty. Carpets will get spills and car doors will be slammed. Long-loving couples will sleep with their backs to each other, buses will be late or not turn up at all, milk will curdle and go sour, and tap water will taste like it has been used too many times.
He is back. I am tense and stressed, my toast has burnt and the plate has fallen to the floor. I didn't hear the donkeys announce his arrival, but hear them now. Wiser than him, their braying loud now, and stridently clear, the donkeys call to the intractable and ignorant nature of their spirit-world familiar.