I COULDN’T SCREAM!

No matter how hard I tried, I COULDN’T SCREAM! The witch had grasped me from behind, one hand on my stomach, the other hand not around my throat but on my shoulder; it was sheer indescribable terror that had paralysed my vocal chords and robbed me of my voice.  And how I needed that voice!

The fetid hag had caught me in the alley that ran behind the church hall and the church at the top of the street where I lived.  All that stood between me and the sanctity of the church was a six feet concrete wall.  Six feet?  It might as well have been six miles! 

The alleyway on my side of the wall was not supposed to be used as a right of way; not even paved or tarmacked, it was meant for the sole use of the householders to access their garages and back gardens.  My only fear that evening, and to be fair it really was the tiniest of fears, was that one of the owners would catch me using their property as a shortcut; let’s face it, that was part of the fun.  It also shaved at least twenty yards from my regular, parentally enforced walk to the newsagents to buy twenty “Sovereign” brand cigarettes for my father.  No plain packaging, no images of rotting lungs or allusions to second-hand smoke or potential impotency, no hiding the cigarette display behind a sliding door, no “you’re under sixteen, scram”.  I was seven years old and I had fags to buy.

As I said, my only fear had been of getting caught in a minor trespass; if only my fear had instead been of being trapped at last by the local witch I would undoubtedly have foregone that shortest of shortcuts.  I say ‘at last’ because she had almost caught me before when I had fallen into her lair; a pit at the intersection of two corridors at my infant school.  Only once before had she left her hole, indeed her presence was tolerated solely because she never had left it.  On this instance she had sought to attack myself, some classmates and our teacher, Mrs Johnson, as we cowered overnight in our classroom.  Having repelled her assault, I should have been safe.

Any illusion of safety now comprehensively brushed aside, the witch tightened her hold.  I could feel the talons of her left hand pressing into my stomach.  What is more I could genuinely feel my internal organs shying away from her touch, forcibly rearranging themselves as if I were a Victorian lady obliged by convention to wear a prohibitively tight corset or a pregnant mother being bullied by her growing baby to remodel her insides.

The hand upon my shoulder also tightened its grip.  I could feel its talons piercing my clothes, piercing the flesh beneath.  I could feel escaping blood oozing down my back; to my seven-year-old sense of shame I could also feel urine running down my legs; to my seven-year-old sense of horror I could feel the contents of my bowels emptying into my underpants.

As my terror increased I could see people passing the end of the alley; if they would but turn their heads they must surely see me. If I could but scream they must surely hear me; I tried to scream, I couldn’t scream….

I have never been so glad of a cliché; it was a cliché that saved my life.  Like countless Hollywood heroes and heroines, seemingly trapped beyond aid, with nowhere to go but into torment and death, I did the one thing that could save me: I woke up, safe, but undeniably a little less sound, in my own bed.  For forty-five years I have never forgotten the feeling of all-encompassing dread and fear I felt in that nightmare; I suspect I never will.