Now

I don’t see him anymore, not in the flesh, there’s just a cutout of him now. Him and everyone else in the city. Everyone except me. I used to pass real George on my cycle to work. Him and his real dog trotting along in matching outfits. A different one every day; tartan waistcoats, leather jackets, berets. Now they’re stuck in checked linen suits.

At first I was excited by George’s cutout. Next time I saw him, I thought to myself, I’ll have the perfect excuse to start a conversation. I can ask him about his 2-D likeness, who made it and why, and after that it won’t seem weird to compliment his wardrobe, to try and guess his dog’s name. George would’ve said Harold after Harold Lloyd. George would’ve become the person I discussed the silent film High and Dizzy with, a friend as obsessed by its depiction of sleepwalking and city life as I am. He would have, if he hadn’t disappeared.

George’s cutout is rough to the touch except for a patch on his cheek, an area I’ve worn smooth with kisses.

I get depressed sitting at home on my own. So, I still go in to work; ring my bell enthusiastically as I weave a path between replicas of people once on their way somewhere, still hopeful one of them will flinch. If it’s a breezy day I’ll get off my bike and listen to the low and undulating hum the wind makes whirling round the flattened population. A living sound with the energy of distant motorbikes, or a swarm of bees. The kind of noise that wakes you from dreaming.

There’s a scene in High and Dizzy where a sleepwalking woman climbs from the window of her high-rise apartment and totters along a narrow stone ledge. The fabric of her dress billows like she’s stood on a cliff edge. Way below her things carry on as normal. At least we assume they do, we’re not shown people staring upwards, eyes wide with horror, hands over gasping mouths.

Some days, I leave my work unfinished, go up onto the roof of the office block and sit on the building’s edge, my legs dangling. I imagine hearing a sound like people inflating party balloons with long, drawn-out breaths, a sign the cutouts are plumping, drawing-in lungfuls of sweet, fresh air. Catching sight of my swinging feet they shout up, ‘Stay where you are!’ Not because they think I’m going to jump, but because they understand what I want and they want it too; to watch the sun set together, to get drunk on homemade gin and tales of our best friend George, like how he taught his dog Harold to bark so it sounded like he was saying hello, and how that’s the way he got to know us all.

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Anika Carpenter lives and works in Brighton, UK. Her stories have been published by Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, Goosebury Pie, 100 Word Story and others, and have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Bath Flash Fiction Award. You can find her via her website www.anikacarpenter.com or on BlueSky @stillsquirrel.bsky.social