This is based on (but is a reimagining of) the original tale of Simon William Smith!
Simon William Smith lived a life that was predictably ordinary. He was the Junior Under-Secretary at the Department of the Environment, a job which he had worked 20 years to attain. He was responsible for collating all the papers that passed through the Department, stapling those which needed stapling, paper clipping those which required paper clipping and occasionally removing staples and paperclips which had been erroneously added to papers.
He lived in a small, one-bedroomed apartment in the middle of the less-fashionable part of London. It was not run-down, however similarly it could not be described as high-class. It was functional, ordinary and uninteresting, much like its occupant.
However Simon William Smith was in possession of one thing which might serve to make him interesting. He was in possession of a secret. Not a secret of State, which he was privy to in his role in the Department of the Environment. This was a secret which was exclusively the possession of Simon. He had never breathed a word of it to anyone and he fully expected that he never would. It was not a dark secret, neither was it an exciting secret. It was a secret bereft of intrigue and a secret bereft of note. To look at Simon, you would not believe that he was in possession of this secret, yet he most certainly was.
Simon’s routine was like clockwork. Monday to Friday (his work days) he woke at 6.30, carried out a thoroughly ordinary morning routine (10 minutes on his exercise bike, followed by 10 minutes on his treadmill, a shower, breakfast and leaving his apartment at precisely 7.24 in order to catch the tube to his office. All accompanied by Radio 4’s ‘The Today Programme.’) On Saturday mornings he would walk to the nearby shopping precinct, where he would buy food for the following week, before heading to the Library, where he would withdraw a historical biography, which he would read on Saturday Afternoon and Sunday, returning it to the closed library’s ‘out-of-hours’ bin on Sunday Evening.
There was one thing which Simon did which was at odds with his otherwise uneventful schedule, which occurred every Friday night.
At 7.57pm, on a Friday evening, Simon would climb into his car (a Ford Mondeo which was habitually 2 models behind the current style) and drive out of London into the countryside, driving until he reached a car park which sat beside a darkened forest.
Simon would climb out of his car and walk slowly but purposefully to the boot of the car, remove a steering wheel lock and, after closing the boot and ensuring it was properly locked, return to the driver’s seat of the car, affix the lock, lock the door and walk steadily away from the car into the forest.
Simon knew the route by heart, he did the same thing every Friday and had done so for so long that he scarcely remembered a Friday when he had not. A side-effect of Simon’s lifestyle was that he had very few memories. Weeks, months and years blended together in his mind without substance. If someone asked him to recall a specific event from his life, which they would not – no one ever did – then he would be forced to merely shrug his shoulders, frown and say that he was unable to do so. There was one exception, but this related to Simon’s secret which, as we have established, he would never share with anyone.
Simon would walk through the darkened forest, twigs would snap underfoot at regular intervals and from time to time he would hear a creature in the darkness. The only randomness in Simon’s life occurred here; he would stoop at a random interval during his walk and pick up a smooth pebble, weigh it in his hand, nod in satisfaction and continue walking. The pebbles were always similar, as close to identical as Simon could manage, but they were all unique. The pebbles were his secret, his memories. Hundreds, upon hundreds of pebbles, their weights, shapes and textures emblazoned on his memory.
After a short while, Simon would reach a clearing in which there was a lake. Generally the lake would reflect the moon in its waters and cast an ethereal glow all around. Simon would stand watching, transfixed, and feeling the pebble in his hand. He would look up at the sky, clouds never gathered over this lake, there was always a view of the stars, a million million balls of fire, shining in the darkness. Simon would then tense his arm and skim the pebble across the water, watching as it bounced (always thrice) before disappearing beneath the surface, lost to him forever. He would watch as the ripples he had caused fanned across the lake, before finally dissipating, leaving the lake once again calm and still. He would then turn on his heel, and leave the lake behind.