grave

I’d just had a piece in jam and had some left over around my mouth. I’d yawned and asked mum to turn the sun back on, but she wouldn’t. She wrestled with me carrying me into the bathroom and rubbing my face and mouth vigorously with the big yellow sponge. I didn’t want to go to bed and started to cry, but mid cry I’d seen it.

There was a window above the front door, little more than a post-box of light, but with enough yellow street lighting to map out the hall. It seemed made of blackness, which seemed to block out the light, but somehow didn’t. I wasn’t sure if it was standing on the wall outside looking in, or hovering. I angled my head towards it looking at it curiously. I’m not sure if it had eyes, but it could certainly see me.

Mum whacked me playfully on the bum.

‘Bed,’ she said, scaring my face with her motherly mewing kisses, so that I had to push her violently off me.

It watched us. Waiting. I walked slowly up the hall,dragging my feet, sneaking in beside my big sister's warm back in her bed. She kicked me on the leg. Lying there I knew it couldn’t get inside our house. But it wanted to. It was waiting. Waiting to come into our house. Watching and waiting to be invited inside me.

Later, I saw it in other people, gawping insolently at me. It was daring me to be young enough and foolish enough to take a chance.

I’d an achey background pain. I had to sit down, although sitting down made me feel like an old fogey. I could actually do things that had been bugging me like hoover, or clean the windows. I'd even smiled at the sunny day and the neighbours, gone up a ladder and cleaned out the gutters with a bucket and trowel. I was kidding myself that I was younger and fitter and still had it, could still be normal and do things that normal people did.

The pain didn’t go away. It came up suddenly and stabbed me in the ankle and brought me crashing down like a bull elephant. It was an old adversary, but a new pain. It had a tendency to crucify both my hands and feet, or maybe one or the other, taunting me. It could bend me suddenly like a sapling in a gale force wind and age me hundreds of years like an oak, so that I had to move my whole body like a wardrobe, to take baby steps. Every breath felt like my last. I’d take half a breath, but would like to pant like a dog. Half a breath is half a breath too much. I choked on fresh air, even though I know that's impossible. My ribs start shuttling up and down like one of those old looms with my ribs acting as ratchets, jumping from one pain level to another, till my bodies on full screaming tilt like a loop the loop, playground ride. Even the intercostals spaces between ribs felt as if they have come alive and are being stripped liked broiled chicken from newly carved bone. Pain grows up and around my muscles, like sluggish snaking ivy, working its way up or down. There is no reason to it.

Of course, I blame myself. I like to think that if I hadn’t…I wouldn’t have. I like to be reassured, to think, that some part of the universe still wants me to be here. Instinctively, I retreat to the foetal position. But I can't lie down and I can't sit and my fingers and toes, act like a recalcitrant child who won't do what you tell them.

I’d a gun. I always had a gun. My swollen fingers fumble and drop it on the newly cleaned carpet. I couldn’t bend, had to bump myself bottom down from couch to floor and try to imitate someone crawling. There’s a glass lying on its side underneath the legs of the couch, lost in no go land. The spilt whisky smells clean and pure and makes my throat ache for its mellow amber release.

I know its there. Although I don’t believe in it. It’s there. Waiting. I can’t see it now. I’m not sure if it’s got a shape or form. I heard the inaudible half click.