Rachel's House

In three minutes I would begin what is known as "the long walk
down".

Two minutes and 59 seconds of freedom.

Followed by a sentence of fifteen years.

Or death in my case.

They call it 'life' and laugh and say, well him - 'he'll be out in
ten'.

But for me 'life' is in fact 'death'.

Make a lot of people happy that.

But I know. I will die in prison.

My arms are gripped either side as my sentence is announced.

'Easy tigers' I want to say.

Take it easy. I'm not nervous. Not distraught. Not suicidal.

I am in fact, prepared.

I am led into the holding cell.

Already, smells are becoming important.

I will remember this smell for a while, then it will be replaced by
other

smells, most representing cleanliness. Funny that - how we always
prepare for dirty deeds by scrubbing everything thoroughly.

Kill someone sir?

Must scrub this cell before we put you in it.

'Oh, sorry, it was two, a mother and a daughter, then we'll take you to
the

execution cell sir'.

Do you know they always use brand new needles when they execute by
injection?

Now where is the logic in that?

I mean, what are you going to catch?

My mind slides for a moment.

Then I recall how it is going to be. Habit. The key word.

Get used to looking forward to food. Varying menus. Exciting
puddings.

And get used to violence. Fuck, that has to be exciting.

It's always exciting in the films.

Everyone has their own idea of horror.

Most of us fear death because of uncertainty - it keeps us on our toes.
Stops us throwing ourselves in front of the tube on a Monday
morning.

So that kind of leads to the idea that there are good reasons why we
don't know what happens when we die. That someone is deliberately
keeping it from us.

Believe me, it sounds complicated but it isn't, it is a simple
fact.

We aren't allowed to know.

A tray is passed through the A4 gap in my cell.

Ah good, baked potato and beans. Tea looks a bit stewed though.

Hot but not hot enough to scald.

If we knew, we'd all be throwing ourselves off the nearest
bridge.

Everything has a starting point. A reason. Birth, death, road accident,
murder.

Yet sometimes it doesn't.

How many times is an incident reported where there is no
explanation?

No justification.

A disappearance. A killing. An assault.

And it is filed, under that heading.

"Unknown assailant"

"Accidental death"

"By persons unknown"

"Could give no reason..."

And we tut and turn over to the TV page.

Everything has a reason.

When I asked 'why?' they said because something was going to happen to
me.

They didn't say what but I guess it was linked to my death.

And this made me 'chosen'. In a way.

I could have pushed it I suppose but it kind of melted into the
background due to other events.

As I sipped my tea in this white box I wished I had pursued it further.
It would have given my being here more principle. But I wasn't
complaining. Anything but there.

I wonder if anyone would mind if I smoked?

Thinking back, there were a lot of stages at which I should have asked
'why?'.

But the mind overloads.

Why is replaced by other questions and those by others.

In the end it all congealed into a moan.

And whereas before, time had been something to fear - to respect, where
there had been appointments, getting to work on time and old age to
worry about - here, time would take on an extra dimension.
Contemplation, meditation, guilt - usually about how things went
wrong.

This was where I would begin.

Lights out soon.

Plenty of time for thinking. Years of thinking.

Lights out. Silence.

I should revel in this.

When they move me to my next home 'lights out' will take on a different
resonance.

My lock-up. My cell.

With all the other outcasts, hungry and waiting for me.

For me real fear is not the unknown it is the understanding of what
will happen. And I know that.

I am the reason.

Condensed reason.

There was a crossing point. When time paused.

I was crossing that road, the sun had glinted slightly, not in my eye
but against the bicycle leant against the lamp post. I recall a child's
laughter and then, as if innocence had pointed the way, I found myself
walking up the drive. Avoiding the stones strewn along the path and
then Rachel, waiting at the door. Smiling and all-knowing.

"Come in," she had said.

And I knew I didn't want to but also that this was not my choice. So I
took her hand and tried to ignore its coldness.

What did I expect?

Someone to take my details at reception?

To offer me a cup of tea?

What I didn't understand yet was that all these preconceptions no
longer existed. So there was nothing to expect.

Rachel smiled again.

There were many rooms. Too many to count.

"Why?" I asked for the last time.

"When you see, you still won't understand. But you won't ask 'why'
again."

I said nothing and followed Rachel towards the blue door and beyond. I
was overcome with an absolute apprehension. A terror that I could not
control and it lay within this room.

Yet, as I felt Rachel leave my side, alone with the fear - something
was here to explain and it nudged and spoke to me.

"These are the lost children."

"I see."

"No you don't, not yet. The fear is speaking for you, yet listen and be
patient."

He/she was right, I couldn't see a thing. Whatever was communicating
with me was here but I couldn't see it, yet its presence was
overwhelming.

Then I felt someone grip my hand. It was cold. And small and it did not
grip in a loving or trusting way, it was more, urgent.

"We have to look after them here. They arrive from all over."

The hand that gripped mine pulled me to one side and whispered,

"I didn't want to come but they made me."

The voice sounded miserable and on the verge of tears. I heard myself
ask,

"How long have you been here?"

"Nine years."

I felt the grip lessen as I became aware of other small figures moving
around my legs. I could only make out shadows, although for a second I
glimpsed a face - white, with eyes gripped shut.

"I'm scared," one said, a girl this time.

"I'm John."

It reminded me of school playground, only at night. Where children
cluster around the teacher - for safety. The air was very, very
cold.

There was a feint smell of perfume, slightly stale, as if someone had
passed by days ago. Rachel appeared to my right, just out of eye shot,
yet I knew she was there and turned my head towards the greenish light
surrounding the entrance to this room.

"You said the Lost Children?"

"These are the ones who disappear. Late at night, early in the morning,
after school - they arrive here."

"They are brought here?"

"When they have passed through the system - which is actually death -
they are brought here. They are here because their removal from life is
never fully acknowledged. Their protectors never know where they have
gone."

"A kind of limbo?" I interjected.

"Limbo implies a state of inaction that leads onto another state. Good
or bad. They never leave this room."

A figure scuttled between my legs. It wasn't playful, it was a dash
from something that had scared it.

"How many are there?"

"The figure increases every minute, every second. It isn't
pleasant."

"And we are brought up to believe in heaven and hell....."

Rachel placed a cold arm around my shoulder,

"That getting murdered, raped or tortured is as bad as it gets - that
in the 'after world' the bad get their comeuppance and the good will
sip sangria on a beach in paradise. Not that the innocent will suffer
for eternity."

She paused.

"It wasn't how it was supposed to be, but most systems turn bad in the
end."

She wiped a warm tear from my cheek.

"The grieving process never ends. Do we ever consider the reason for
this? After all there is no good reason why someone so young and
innocent is taken away. There is no 'getting over it'. There is no end
to the anguish."

I shifted over towards the wall. I needed something solid to lean
against.

"And that's the rationale for them being here."

One side of Rachel's face lit up as she turned towards the door.

"Well at least you've stopped asking 'why?'"

"And you are showing me this because I am part of another 'system'," I
spat.

"It's just a system. We try to categorize everything in life. Some
things just don't belong anywhere, that's all. Think of it a a
complicated computer program that cannot be actioned without this piece
of code that makes up this room."

"So there is a greater reason then?"

"And that was almost another 'why?' question."

Gasps and loud hushing rang around the room.

"Don't leave us." A small voice appeared by my side.

Rachel pulled me towards the door.

"It's the hope that upsets them."

A rush of air shot around my waist as if whoever was in front of me
knew that they had to get away from the entrance quick. I could make
out a moaning sound.

It sounded fearful and I couldn't work out if it was coming from within
me, or if it was around us, bouncing off the walls.

I followed after Rachel's departing shadow into the hallway. Glancing
back at the doorway I looked into what was now glass. Solid and
unpenetrating.

Rachel grew impatient.

"Time is no longer a luxury David. Let's move."

For a second I saw a different emotion in her face as the mask
dropped.

Was it hatred, or was it the knowledge of what this place was
about?

She paused before we entered the adjoining room. The frame of this
entrance was decorated with seemingly pointless detail. Wild animals,
beasts of some sort, entangled with human forms, climbing up and around
the top of the doorway. I reached out to touch the smooth metallic
surface, drawn by its intricacies.

Rachel grabbed my hand. The coldness penetrated me.

"I wouldn't."

Again the room was dimmed.

"No light." I cursed at verbalising the obvious.

"Senses don't need visual nourishment."

This time Rachel stayed by my side. Perhaps before, she wanted me to
experience sensory contact. Or she wanted them to experience me.

I closed my eyes, evolving to the circumstance.

Immediately the noises began, as if they waited my cue.

"Fucker!"

"I can't stand it any more."

"How can you say that you bitch!"

This was surround sound nature-style. The words swirled around my head,
in and out of my stomach, between the gaps in my teeth. Each word
holding an intensity, an emotion - each carrying its own message, its
holdall of reason.

Full of hatred, lost love, momentary madness. I understood it all at
once and yet knew that none of it made sense. I felt my fingers flicker
as whispers shot through my arms,

"I don't fucking well know OK?!"

"Get out!"

Then a quieter sound,

"I can't take any more."

It was my voice. But not from now, from here. It was from a night from
years before - I was angry, no, in love, and angry. She had done or
said something - I had felt such fury towards her or the action. Then
it had gone. We had made up as we usually did, a bottle of wine or two,
a spliff and we were both late for work the following morning. I could
smell her now.

Rachel touched my hand.

"This is how it works."

I looked into her eyes and beyond and knew that she had shared my
experience.

"It felt so real."

"Emotions make up our very being. They create and destroy, they burn
rightly for a second, for a month, sometimes for years. The point
being, that they die eventually, when we let them go, like balloons in
a strong wind."

"Waiting for someone else to grab hold of the passing string."

"Correct. Arguments waiting to be plucked from thin air."

"And in here?"

Rachel stepped forward and I opened my eyes. I could just about make
out her hands making a sweeping motion around her.

"All of these, are the ones that disappear, fly too high for anyone to
touch - they have too much energy. It used to make me laugh, how people
talked about how voices and feelings fly away into the stratosphere -
entirely metaphorical of course. But they didn't know how close they
were to the truth."

Something hit me from behind. This felt foreign. Not mine. This was a
feeling of despair. I held my head in my hands and felt sobs heaving up
from my chest. I was surrounded by death - of loved ones, of a future
life. I couldn't see forwards any more, only into the past. This was
crazy, it felt like I had a grip of something, a ledge, but that slowly
and deliberately my grip was lessening. And in all its madness this
felt like the right thing to do - that to live on was somehow wrong and
more than pointless.

Shit, that hurt.

A slap to the face is the greatest wake-up call of all.

It sobers and snaps you back to reality, as if your mind rewinds and
you can start again - now what was I really doing.

"Sorry. It takes that sometimes."

"I was going somewhere."

"Away from here that's for sure. We had better leave, you are stronger
than me after all and I can't manipulate every situation."

This time I was ahead of Rachel in leaving the room, rubbing my cheek,
checking behind me even though I knew there was just Rachel.

Once in the hallway we both looked back, although Rachel didn't appear
to be checking anything, she had the air of a tour guide. Me, I was
scared shitless.

It was the brightness that caught my eye. Utter sunshine, brighter than
I had ever seen before. It was the sun from the sharpest summers
afternoon, fresh and inviting. The sort that draws you into the garden
then leaves you to ponder in awe at nature's greatness.

At the end of the hallway stood a pine door that was half open. I could
see vague refection's of the green plants against the wood that moved
slightly in the fresh breeze. And what freshness it was, pure and cool
and it swept towards where we both waited. And the sun beckoned.

"I cannot stop you, " Rachel said,

"it is written after all."

She smiled and shook my hand. It seemed somehow warmer this time.

"Is that it?"

"Close the door behind you."

I felt myself ushered towards the sunlight, then suddenly the door
banged shut and I was standing in a street, a street of which I had no
recollection.

In the warmth of the sun I moved towards a throng of shoppers and
glancing around for street signs, I gradually recognised snippets of
scenery. I was in a street parallel to where I had began. And I was
very, very cold. And I didn't feel like I had been given a second
chance or anything, or that what I had experienced had not really
happened. It felt like a continuance.

Arriving at my front door, I must admit it felt good to be home.
Although in effect, I had not been away, it felt like I had been
somewhere else, with someone else - I felt guilt - but this disappeared
on sight of Angie and the kids in the garden.

This was normality. My life. It wasn't so bad. That's the perfection of
normality, it's always there when you want it.

I'll put it down to an out of body experience, or payback for those
bottles of wine at the weekend.

"Tea love?"

"You're home early.."

It always rains on Mondays. Iron-grey clouds and wind swirls of
wetness, the windscreen wipers not quite fast enough to wash away the
blurred image of the road ahead. Where had the sun gone?

Angie slowed down as we approached the traffic lights, Warren Road on
the left, Stanley Drive about a hundred yards after - then there would
be a bicycle leaning against a telegraph pole in the middle of the
grass verge.

"Stanley Drive is coming up."

Angie glanced across at me.

"Sorry?"

"Then drop me after the next road."
"Why?"

"Soon you'll stop asking 'why?'"

"Are you OK? Look these kids need to get to school before nine."
"Just drop me here. I'll be fine."
"What about work?"
"I'll phone in sick."
"Great. Why don't you tell them you've been drinking again."

And she slammed the door. And left me there.

This is as it appears in my statement.

Fate is in control. Isn't that what Rachel meant?

So I couldn't change what was going to happen. Who was in control of
fate though - and shouldn't their sanity be challenged?

People shouldn't be discriminated against because of the way they dress
but this is way beyond political correctness. He didn't look right, he
stuck out like a sex offender outside a school playground - which is
exactly where he was. Light blue anorak, holes in the elbows, fraying
where the hood joins the collar. His trousers were dark grey and
ill-fitting - you could see his socks and the heels of his shabby shoes
were shorn away on one side. He didn't stand still either, he was
making out he was with someone, a child, making out he was dropping
someone off, smiling, then looking away quickly, then back towards the
children gathered in a group before him, their parents leaving one by
one as they recognise safety in numbers - all the school friends
huddled in ones and twos, singing, pushing, laughing.

He looks more vulnerable now as the mothers and fathers disperse. He
has time slot to hit and it has to be precise. Not too soon to attract
a shout of surprise, a startled scream that would bring a grown-up
running. Yet not too late when teachers appear and children are called
to their lessons and another day is wasted. You only get one chance. He
moves in and I follow. He has spotted his prey and I watch his persona
evolve from that of a stranger to one of a friendly uncle, a new supply
teacher perhaps, lost on his first day. The facial transition is
frighteningly real, he does actually appear extremely friendly,
trustworthy.

There is a young boy in a green coat, zipped up to his chin, his hair
parted neatly to the left. He kicks a ball absentmindedly against a
wall, just slightly apart from the others. It's enough though and
anorak makes his move, tapping the boy slightly on he shoulder (no real
physical contact yet) then kicking the ball against the wall in an
exaggerated way, catching the return, flicking it into the air and
trapping it under his foot. Then he kicks the ball quite hard,
intending for the boy to head it back to him but it strikes him on the
ear, painfully and he turns to the man in surprise at what this
stranger is capable of. The boys face is white and his eyes are gripped
tightly shut.

Then I make my move. The knife freshly lifted from our kitchen drawer
this morning, still warm from the heat of the dishwasher. It made
perfect sense now, the house, the lost children, why I had been shown.
I took him from behind, not wanting any fuss - get the job done
quickly. A slice from left to right, deep and certain, I placed the
boy's discarded scarf around anorak's neck, not to stem the flow, more
to stifle any attention, any screaming. He didn't struggle much,
perhaps he was so poisoned inside he welcomed the release. I used that
in my statement as well, not because I thought it would help my case,
but because it sounded poetic. And now he lay on the floor, convulsing
in his throes of death and the boy ran - very unaware of his other
fate.

They saw me as insane. Not mad. Not bonkers enough to be sent to a
hospital. Just off my head at the time. A killer stalking an innocent
outside a school. An unknown innocent. Happened to be passing. No known
family. A sign of the times. Thank god no children were involved.

So here I lay, protected and clean. Well fed, some exercise, access to
books and in time, educational facilities. I have considered the
options that lay before me, when I acted; who I have sacrificed - my
wife and children, friends. I would still do the same. Am I mad?
Explain to me how reality works and I'll tell you. What is real to me
and them may not concern your existence and maybe, sometimes the paths
cross. For a reason. I think back to that house and wonder about the
small boy sometimes. Is he still there? Is the anorak there in his
place?

A light glimmers through my A4 slot and the door is pulled open, heavy
and silent, no loud bangs or clanking of keys. An electronic buzzer
sounds and I am asked to get to my feet. Handcuffs are attached and we
leave my home and enter the transitionary world of low expectations,
where conversations are non-existent and thought is all there is. The
van is parked close to the wrought gates and I experience a brief
shiver of the weather outside as we pass into the white cage. It is
cold and grim, and yet I realise that my life in here is preferable by
far to anything the outside world may offer, where soon, there will a
house like Rachel's on every street corner.