Paradoxical Undressing, Page 2

his fresh supply of vegetables. A task he had to do regardless of the weather. Oh yes, he still had to get his restaurant open, no doubt some inconsiderate people would expect a delivery come dinner time. Just because they were too nesh to brave their way to the stores, they expected him to traipse halfway across the town, and for what? A tip that didn’t even cover the wear and tear on his shoes! Couldn’t they chuck a pan of beans on the oven and stick some slices of bread in the toaster for heaven’s sake? Mr Chang stopped and looked at the white lump stumbling down the opposite side of the street. ‘There’s old Archroy,’ he thought. ‘Drunk again,’ he told himself matter-of-factly. ‘He’d better not be going to my restaurant. I don’t want him scaring off what few customers I might get.’ Mr Chang trotted over to Archroy, pushed a few coins into the freezing man’s palm and turned him around so that he was heading away from his restaurant. Mr Chang bustled off to the warmth of his kitchen.

  86ºF – Arrhythmic heartbeat

  Archroy could feel his heart jumping about discordantly like a scratched CD. He swore he could feel chunks of frozen blood being passed through his arteries. He could feel his body slowing as if he was living his life in a slow motion replay. He grabbed out in front of him for the nearest pole that was in his path.

  Suddenly the whole world changed for Archroy. With his arrhythmic heart only pumping less than two-thirds the normal amount of blood, along with the slowing of his metabolism and the lack of oxygen, Archroy’s brain kicked into hallucinatory overdrive.

  Archroy clung on tightly to the palm tree. ‘Ah,’ thought he, ‘that’s more like it. Bring on the dancing girls.’ Through his heavy eyelids, he could see topless women prancing provocatively down the street, teasing him by pulling at their g-strings in a suggestive manner. ‘Aye up!’ A sudden spark of excitement inside Archroy’s head perked up. ‘Phwoarr. The weather definitely can’t be all that bad.’

  85ºF – Paradoxical undressing

  Archroy staggered onto another lamppost whilst keeping the prancing girls in his view. He then looked up above him and through blurred vision, he could make out a glimmering light above him. Sun! he heard his brain mutter. Streetlamp; a cognisant mind would have stated. Archroy wiped at the wetness on his forehead that was surely sweat. Suddenly he felt hot under the blistering sun. Grateful at last for warmth, he removed his pyjama jacket, exposing his arms to the warm air. Still too hot, he removed his vest. Boiling, he removed his slippers and bed-socks and cursed as he felt the soft orange surface beneath him scorch the soles of his feet. ‘Bugger,’ complained he, hopping from one foot to another. Finally, he braced himself as he planted his feet firmly on the ground and gritted his teeth through the pain until the surface beneath him cooled. When his feet had become accustomed to the heat he pulled down his pyjama trousers and then, ignorant of any shame, whipped off his thermal kecks.

  The passing old Mrs Humpernickle was shocked to say the least. Seeing this man clutching to a lamppost wearing nothing but a balaclava on his head and a thermometer in his mouth. ‘Stark naked in this weather? What is the world coming too?’ She wondered to herself just how much more forward the prostitutes of this day and age were going to get? ‘They’ll be knocking on people’s doors before long!’ Mrs Humpernickle stopped and took a good long look at the man. ‘Well, he’s not going to make much of a profit with a balaclava over his head. Must be right pig-ugly,’ she surmised. Plus; having not seen one in so many years since her late husband’s erections had taken almost as long to be constructed as the Eiffel Tower, the old lady’s eyes wandered down to this strange man’s nether regions. ‘Phuh,’ she said to herself, spying the severely shrivelled member, ‘call that a todger?’ Pulling down her woolly hat she shook her head in disgust and hobbled on home.

  ‘You’re burning Archroy, feel the fire, feel the heat. You can feel the flames, they’re scorching you.’ Archroy could hear the auditory hallucinations behind his eyes, taunting him. Archroy slumped to his knees, trembling until his bones were rattling inside him. The snow beneath him dispersed outwards in little puffs of white. Archroy thought about curling up into a foetal position and lying on his bed of ‘sand’. His ‘sunburned’ body, however, refused to move.

  Instead, he dreamt of children pottering about him in their woolly hats and scarves and mittens, burying him in the sand that was all around him. Back in the real world, as more thick snow fell, Archroy was gradually becoming a snowman. The greatest snowman ever to have lived. At least, it would banish the scorching sun.

  60.8ºF – Lowest recorded core temperature in a surviving adult

  A stray dog trotted past, but not without stopping to relieve itself unceremoniously on the fresh snowman first.

  More and more children came to build him. One little child slammed a lump of snow right on his face, covering his eyes. They used Mr Chang’s money to construct him a new nose, eyes and a mouth. Archroy painfully knelt on under the blanket of snow, and on the surface, a wide smile adorned his alabaster face.

  60ºF – Skin temperature

  With the constriction of surface capillaries on his hands, the blood coursed away from the skin and delved deeper into his torso. Archroy’s blood fled from his fingers and toes in a valiant attempt to keep his vital organs warm for as long as it could.

  It did the best it possibly could.

  ***

  Thank you for reading my stories.

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  About the author:

  I began writing in my mid to late teens, sequestered away in my bedroom in rural south west England.

  The writing was borne out of a need to express myself and to communicate with the world, something I

  was not good at doing verbally. It became an outlet for me and my writing grew with me through the

  years.

  Other titles by Lee A Jackson

  A Soul of Stone

  A Cerberus Jaw

  Dreaming Falling Down

  S and M

  Delphine

  The Crawling

  Destination B