“It’s alright” I had reassured her, “I will go”
She assailed me with praise and led me to the door.
“Be quick though, they will be here soon”
I had got in the car and accelerated into the night, and I didn’t even say goodbye. The moon rose high above, illuminating the empty roads before me. If I had turned on my radio at this point, I would have ended up floating face down, body broken, with thousands of other victims.
I had not slept properly for 2 days and now I was going to pay for it. My eyes ever so slightly drifted shut, and the car collided with an oncoming truck.
That had been 2 days ago, and I had awoken yesterday with bruises covering every inch of my body. I didn’t even dare open my eyes, in case I had to face the possibility I had lost them. I just lay there, hours on end in pain until I ran the days events through my mind, I could not remember my own name. I could smell a kind of rotting meat nearby, as if someone had died and just been left to decompose. I could also hear a steady drip sound, like when you leave the shower on. My curiosity now had overcome my fear and I, with great effort, opened my eyes. I saw black. I turned over and saw more black. Then, just to make sure, I turned over again and saw, guess what, even more black. I reluctantly raised my hands up to my eyes, in case they were hanging out or damaged in some gory way. My fingers brushed bandages, and I let out a sigh.
I sat up and took in my surroundings. I was currently lying in an X ray booth that was completely shut off, apart from a small vent that allowed me to breath. I found the source of the smell almost instantly. What I saw then will never leave me. A man, obviously a doctor, had somehow managed 2 climb inside the booth next to me. Unfortunately, he was no longer alive. Jagged marks on his neck and the small penknife in his hand plainly showed how he had died, but I wondered why a man would go to the trouble of climbing inside here and committing suicide. Then I looked up, through the glass, shrouded round my inanimate body. The room was completely flooded and held in the water’s unforgiving grip, were three people, three dead people with inflated skin and mortified gazes that pierced the soul. I understood why the man had ended his life; he had gone mad with waking to see his friends and workmates, cursing him in death that he still lived, bitter even in their fatality. The last thing I wanted was to turn out like him.
I kicked repeatedly at the glass, and it shattered allowing the muddy water to flood inside. I swam through the liquefied corridors, looking for an exit. I glided towards the nearest window. What I saw before me was an impossibility. The flood had gone, which meant the hospital, which I knew for certain it was, was completely water tight. I was at least 100 feet up. My heart started to quicken, I was running out of air.
The key part of any animals psyche is survival, and when threatened, will do anything to survive.
The glass burst outwards and water discharged from the building, raining down upon the empty street and several bodies with it. Each one landed with a sickening crack, leaving a scarlet crater at their landing. Standing at the window, I saw what was left of the city’s greatness, dominant towers that had fought through the cataclysm till the aftermath. This once proud city lay broken and defeated.
“Hey look, a survivor!” shouted a powerful voice from below, “Come down here son!” he yelled again.
A content smile rose onto my face and I slipped once more into my peaceful dream state, my only salvation from reality.
I awoke with a man that looked strangely like a saint, bathed in a heavenly glow, looking over me.
“Somebody turn that bloody light off, were goin ta go blind afore we drown!” exclaimed a man in the shadows
“I think he’s coming round” said one of the “saints” with excitement.
“Who are you?” I attempted to say, but it slurred out as “hooaaryoou”
“Say what?” said the shadowed man
I rose, and regretted it instantaneously. I lost balance and stubbed my big toe on an almost strategically placed drawing pin.
“FUmphmphmph” I attempted but the saint had clamped a large calloused hand over my cussing mouth.
“I will have no language like that in the house of God!” the saint yelled with feeling.
“I’m dead?” I screeched.
“No boy, you are in London in a church” said a third man.
“How the hell did I survive that fall!” I shouted openly.
“You landed on me you bug…I wasn’t going to say it!” said the shadow man.
I decided I should now get everyone’s opinion on the disaster before I went into a lapse of schizophrenia and started asking myself. It ended with me hitting the third man squarely in the jaw.
“Don’t say it’s for the best ever again ok!?” I bellowed with rage, “My wife is gone, how is that for the best, go on tell me with your cheery face and your ‘bright side’, go on I dare you!”
“Calm down, you can’t change the past, the guilty have been taken, the innocent still live. If you truly believe that your wife was innocent, then maybe there is a possibility she is still alive” the saint said.
He had said all he needed to say.
I am still searching for my wife, endlessly I move from town to town, just in case there is the smallest possibility someone, somewhere would know where she is.
Punishment for our sins 7th
