The spices lay messily all over the kitchen floor, their jars thrown around on top of the colourful chaos. All the cupboard doors were flung open in the disarray. Somebody had been searching; looking for something. The cutlery was tipped thoughtlessly on to the gleaming white tiles, just adding to the mess. The whole kitchen was a wreck. Why? Well that’s the exact thought which J Alfred tried to process as he sunk to the floor in terror. As he carefully curled himself up into a tight foetal position, with his shaking pale hands clutching his knees to his chin, he tried to comfort himself again. But this time, he felt nothing; no hope, no comfort, nothing. His mind was a mess, and he just didn’t know how to cope. He couldn’t.
But this man’s overwhelming obsession for order and harmony didn’t just appear out of the blue. It was a result of his whole life, all 31 years of it, compressed into a compulsion he just didn’t know how to deal with anymore. He couldn’t ignore it, he couldn’t hide it, but he could just about contain it in the small kitchen of his house, hidden away in South London. But as he found out, trying to cage something which will inevitably be free doesn’t tend to work out well in the end.
J Alfred had grown up the hard way. His mother had a serious problem with alcohol which had spiralled out of control just before he was born. The man he no longer regarded as his father had left and his mother, in a sad but very cliche way, had drowned her sorrows in an ocean of alcohol and drifted away from the rest of society. She was scared and alone, the intoxicating substance was her only friend. But other than its power, she had no reason to continue drinking. Apart from the fact she was free. Free from a powerful man, society and the troubles of raising a child alone.
Unlike many others from this background, our protagonist escaped from it all as soon as he could. Moving into a small house bought from his savings; he was determined to keep his new life in perfect order. In particular, the kitchen. Its gleaming white surfaces and shining floor gave it a sense of perfection and precision from the moment he moved in. But his new found determination for perfection slowly matured into a compulsion. An obsessive compulsion.
And now? Its become so bad that his whole life is devoted to the kitchen. His entire being focused on obtaining absolute perfection in a single room. And the point? Well it keeps him happy...
The kitchen is perfect. The spices are lined along the top shelf in alphabetical order; all the way from Anise to Vanilla. Each plate has a specific place, according to its colour and shape. The excessively washed knives and forks are piled perfectly in the drawer, like small soldiers in a uniform row. Now, balance was restored in his mind. As long as this was perfect, nothing else in the world mattered. Safe and happy in his own small world, finally he had achieved perfection.
a short
story by
Emma Weir