Dmitry Borshch, Fencing on the Gallows Tree, drawing (2009).
DAVE WAS sitting, alone, on a stage, in a metal armchair, clutching the rests gently, staring straight ahead, smiling into the middle distance, almost relaxed. He was wearing something like a grey, all-in-one pilot’s suit. Not sweating, apparently, he was silent and motionless while people watched. The Final Performance had begun.
NOISE FILLED the room. The teacher, Mrs Powell, entered to no effect. The noise persisted, so the Teacher straightened up, frowned and stuck out her chin, declaring:
“Alright… Everyone…” But there was still no change. The children babbled and writhed and didn’t seem to notice. “Alright, you lot, calm down…” the Teacher said, raising her tone. A ripple spread across the room. Some of the class began settling. The Teacher folded her arms. The calming process sped up, then came to rest. A single child, a boy, was left standing, smiling into the middle distance.
“David…?” She offered him to sit, which he did, still smiling, unembarrassed. The Teacher’s frown relaxed, no longer concerned. The Boy stared at her, directly, still… smiling… “Thank…” the Teacher began. Something seemed to catch in her throat. Her eyes darted around the room. “I… need… you… all…” Face frozen, talking was a sudden struggle. Mute panic settled across both her and the rest of the class. The Boy, David, just smiled. “Pay… pay… pay…” She struggled. She fought. The room was otherwise silent, motionless. The Teacher then walked stiffly toward her desk at the front, legs like matchsticks, repeating… “pay a… pay at…” She sat. The pauses grew. “At… atten-tion… attention… pay attention…” She had finally got it out, before falling into a firm silence with a faint grimace painted across her face. The room remained silent and motionless as everyone paid full and complete attention for the rest of the class.
The Teacher, Mrs Powell, and the rest of the class were the first audience. Dave, the Boredom Artist, as he came to be known, sold his particular brand of Enforced Serenity for (good) money. People would pay to sit and watch him say and do absolutely nothing for minutes on end, while they did just the same, beside consciousness. It was always time-limited though, always, until the Final Show.
THE BOREDOM Artist was set to retire. He would give one more performance. London’s Festival Hall was sold out as a result. Last chance to see. One-thousand seven-hundred and ten people, people who liked and appreciated what he did, would go with Dave to a place he had never gone before, though midnight, past the hour-mark. A clock behind them counted down.
The special occasion was brought to the world by Sylvia Wyman Artists, named for the second person to truly experience his Exquisite Monotony. Having, somehow, managed to make his way into the company building, onto the Director’s diary, shyly, he approached through the office door, dressed as a bicycle courier for… some reason:
“Who are you and what… do you… want?”
This.story originally appeared in Locust Review 13 (Winter 2025/2026)
He sat in front of her, motionless and silent, for around twenty-five minutes.
“It was strange,” Sylvia said to her husband, film-director, Baron Sheldon Montagu, later that evening, at a wrap-party, in a restaurant on the Kings Road. “I mean…” A cold note descended but she struggled hard, blinking, grasping for what she meant.
“What do you mean…?” the Baron asked, frowning, distracted. He was impatient to speak to an American distributor who was in town just for that evening. He cradled a glass of red wine in his hand and glanced around the room.
“He just… sat there…” said Sylvia, “and did… nothing… and… I could… see an abandoned city…”
“See a what…?” This got Sheldon’s attention.
“It was something between London and…” Sylvia spoke softly. “Edinburgh… and Sydney and…” the room seemed to quiet itself. “Lots of places… a fusion… and it was calm… still…” This was important. “There was an absence of… humanity and of… below thought and… word… It was… powerful…” A trace-like pause. “He told me afterwards he can do this… at will and… he wants to… There must be some way of bringing him to… the stage…?”
“The stage…?” her Husband frowned again, concentrating again.
“The limelight…” Sylvia seemed to refocus as well. “Public attention… I have his number. I’m sure I can get him to show you, to explain… it’s… particular, he’s very… particular.”
THE DOORBELL rang. Dave turned up at their home, a terrace in Emperor’s Gate that they had rented for the duration of the shoot. Sheldon answered the door in his dressing gown. He had been sleeping-in for some reason, unclear to him at that exact moment, beside thought. His Wife sent him, specifically. “Go, go, answer the door!” She was insistent. The concierge was busy elsewhere and their cleaner wasn’t due until tomorrow (for the final packing) and, of course, someone had to do it. Though he was expecting Dave, somehow Sheldon was also taken aback.
“My goodness, you’re…” shorter by almost a foot, young, pale, with a skull-like face, sunken eyes, low down on the steps, looking up, impassive, dressed like a parking attendant, in a pristine uniform, several sizes too big, “on time…”
“Exactly on time” Dave said, flatly, smiling. His mouth barely seemed to move.
“Uh…” Sheldon checked his phone. “Indeed, you are…” he said, bashful. “Have you… come… far…?” Time slowed. Baron Montagu took a deep breath in. He looked up. The sky outside and above ebbed, flowed, pulsed and eventually darkened. He clutched his phone to his chest. The sky was filled with ancient stars. Beyond the steps, below thought, the street was now a chilly, primaeval forest. The trees loomed across the pair in black outline, shadows in starlight. Baron Montagu looked back down at Dave, still standing, still impassive. Time took hold again. Breathe out. The sky brightened, back to daylight. The street-scene returned. Dave, still smiling, ever-so-slyly nodded, turned and walked away, across the road, leaving Baron Sheldon Montagu shivering, still clutching his phone.
THIS WAS what people came to expect from the Boredom Artist. Despite her wider commitments running the company, Sylvia took special care to set Dave up, booking community theatres and small stages, a dozen or so dates, letting local newspapers, radio and TV stations know about the strange, new, revelatory act coming their way.
Before the tour was over he was already becoming famous, more dates were added, weeks and then months went by, culminating in the Final Event. Online clips of bewildering, transfixing silences gripped first tens, then hundreds of thousands of people every day, growing every day. They crept onto the internet, to be shared, at a greater and greater velocity. People commenting under the footage swore they too were feeling the numinous effects, even second hand, after the fact. They said they saw moonscapes, cold deserts, beaches of black sand, rivers of lava, footprints in the snow. Others attested you had to actually be there.
Any of the people gathered in the Festival Hall, including the TV reporters who, if they could have spoken, might have agreed. Silence reigned however.
The footage was being broadcast live on YouTube and, once again, the comment section was abuzz. The doors to the theatre were heavily guarded. Not everyone liked or appreciated what Dave did. Some people were incredulous, who was he, where was he from, how did he even become a thing?
Sylvia, his promoter, usually fielded these questions, just as she did the night before the Final Performance, for newsteams present, while wearing what seemed to be court robes and a white wig:
“He’s a London Boy, born and bred…” she explained to a BBC reporter, “made good… a special talent…” slowly but clearly. “He approached us to begin, which is… not the usual… but I was won over… he can be very persuasive…”
“He doesn’t say much though, does he?” the reporter needled Sylvia a little. There was antagonism between them. The reporter, Veronica Shacklewell, had been a prominent sceptic.
“He doesn’t need to,” Sylvia responded, calm. It wasn’t even Shacklewell’s proper brief. She was an arts correspondent, not her beat, though she was also a public atheist and member of a secular society. Sylvia suspected that was her true motive.
“Let’s ask him, shall we?” Veronica said, cutting to Dave, who was present this time but silent, for almost three minutes, “I see…” she said, nodding, seeming to finally understand. “Thank you, Dave.” None of the footage was broadcast however, which, when it was leaked, just added to the furore.
Comments poured in under the Final Broadcast, Dave was the G.O.A.T., the Boredom Artist was a con, Dave was a prophet, the Boredom Artist was a conspiracy to promote 5G/cultural Marxism/cryptocurrency, Dave was ripping the veil of capitalist realism, the Boredom Artist was a Dead Cat to distract the ongoing lorry build-up in Kent that wasn’t actually happening.
The one thing people agreed on, his origin story was a puzzle. No one could find Mrs Powell or anyone else present at the First Performance. Some said this was crucial, others said it didn’t matter. He did have parents. Their sole contribution to the debate however was:
“We love him very much and are very glad to have raised him and hope he does well in his new job,” a quote delivered down the phone, in unison, to Ms Shacklewell.
“Why are you doing this?” was always the follow-up question, always the question but, after a bewildering cut back to Sylvia, she explained:
“You shall see… tomorrow night.”
THE CLOCK behind Dave counted down. A silent wave crashed through the room. Time took hold again. Everyone felt it, a cold note. Dave’s face peeled quietly, from a vacant smile, into a grimace, through, into a snarl. He bowed his head, got down off his chair, onto all fours, below thought, balancing on his knuckles. One-thousand seven-hundred and ten people did the same. Dave raised his skull-face. Fangs lowered, beside consciousness. He barked three simian grunts:
“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
The audience barked back in unison.
“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
A sublime atavism.
A canopy opened above them, overhead, the ancient stars returned and, with that, the Final Performance was over.