Scarlet Runner

My name is Thomas Miller.

When I wake up, everything will be alright.

When he opened his eyes the pale sunlight burnt away his memory.

Blinking away the tears that the early morning sucked out of him he saw the trees come into focus, saw the frozen crew-cut grass below him. He was so cold.

He tried to move, but the numbness that pinned his shoulders snaked down his chest and down his legs. He felt the sharp tang of panic seep back with his senses. Looking up he saw a dark familiar face staring back, its eyes black and inscrutable. The shock caused him to bolt, but a rigid arm encircled him, held him tight. A cold black arm wrought from some sleek metal.

He knew where he was now.

He was in the park.

He was wrapped in the arms of the angel on top of the War memorial in the park. It was a bad dream, and the most vivid he had ever had; he was bloody freezing.

‘I used to pray to you,’ he told the vacant face above him. And not so long ago it seemed, though the years had sprinted by so cruelly since then. ‘Pray for me now.’

He had staggered here one rainy, hopeless night, his belly full of beer and his heart full of fear. Miriam was at home, her belly full of something else entirely, knitting, or writing those interminable letters to her sister (she could write all day but she rarely spoke), or watching some daft show on the telly. But all the while she would be thinking of what was growing inside her and if she’d get to keep it this time. Perhaps she didn’t speak in case she startled the little life within her.

He had to get out of the house, the silence was strangling him. He wanted to scream and shout, to rage at God, ‘Give me a child!’. Just one. The drink helped to dampen his disgust at all those the Good Lord had seen fit to bless with a family, people he wouldn’t leave a dog with. The ones who pushed prams and looked as if they had been cursed. It was His mysterious way no doubt.

Lurching from the bar he had taken a shortcut through the park, stopping by the angel who towered above the unread names of men slaughtered in foreign fields. He had no conception of what God looked like, or if that vast immeasurable space even had a face, but the angel seemed close enough. It was a conduit to the Almighty.

‘Dear Lord,’ he said, sinking before the statue, the sodden grass staining the knees of his trousers brown. The next morning, he found a brittle leaf stuck there like a dead star, and he put it in a box of keepsakes along with a faded picture of his mother and a pebble he had found on his honeymoon. ‘Dear Lord, bless us with a child.’

His tears washed his sin away, he really believed that. Two months later Tanya made it all the way out of the womb, clambering over the ghosts of so many unnamed brothers and sisters. The day she was born he had returned here to say thank you. But what was he doing here now?

This had to be a dream.

He could feel the cold air scrape the inside of his nose but he could not reach his hand up to scratch it. The day tasted fresh, but hollow, in the hour of its birth. Beneath him the webs were visible in the hedgerows, trapping only dew. The pond reflected back a sterile world colder than even this one. The sky was a slate, but there was no lesson there, only a solitary crow like a rent in the horizon.

He had never dreamt like this before; dreamt of cramp and cold and damp. He had always thought of sleep as a magic carpet, a free ride across the imagination, so why had his mind brought him here to an empty trash strewn park?

He tried to wriggle free but the statue’s arm chafed him, tore at his skin. He was shivering now. He realized he was only wearing pajamas, his wrinkled grey flesh peeking through between the buttons. The smell of funeral flowers drifted down from the angel’s wings and he felt bile rise in his throat.

No, he had never dreamt in such detail before.

He could hear the early morning sound check of countless squeaky wheel birds. His backside was numb and his legs fizzed with pins and needles; he felt like a bottle of Coke that had been shaken too long and too hard. It was quiet enough to hear the rustle of a crisp bag as it blew against the names of the forgotten dead below. A passing mongrel gave it a cursory sniff then flinched as it saw him. It bared its teeth then skulked into the bushes.

This was no dream.

He tried again to free himself but he was wedged tight in the depiction of the divine. The angel of death held him in her cold embrace and would not let him go. His mind spluttered, slipped a few gears, grinding in panic, until he forced himself to breathe deeply.

It would not be long before someone found him. The park always got busy, filling up with truants and lovers and people loading plastic bags with dog shit. Someone would find him soon. He began shouting, but his voice sounded so thin and lonely that he frightened himself and he soon stopped, telling himself he was merely saving his voice.

Maybe it was one of those hidden camera shows. Maybe his Tanya had set him up. He didn’t watch much television nowadays, the programs bore as much semblance to reality as his current situation, but his daughter was always glued to it. They could do all kinds of things on those shows nowadays, something as elaborate as this would not be beyond them. Though how you could call sticking a half dressed pensioner on top of a statue in the middle of winter entertainment was anyone’s guess.

He scanned the park looking for the cameras, wondering how he should react. He might be old as Adam but he didn’t want to come across as a bad sport. All he could see was a barren vista, and the electric jerk of squirrel tails conducting the wind in the naked branches. The same wind that blows the tumbleweeds through my brain he thought, and scatters the dust in my heart.

Maybe he was going insane. Tanya often told him he was doting. No, it was a dream, it had to be. Dreams were all he had left now Miriam was gone and Tanya married. Was it any wonder they had grown so real. Life was just a series of memories after all, and dreams were every bit as real as the fool’s floorshow of memory. Yet what did we do to them but kill them, then lie to ourselves by pretending they didn’t matter, that they were only dreams. He was tired of lying to himself.

He heard voices.

Craning as neck as far as he could he saw bouncing shapes on the dull horizon, growing bigger by the second. Two figures running, two keep fit nuts jogging toward immortality. He began shouting again, his voice a rasp that colored the air, but they ran by ignoring him, an old man perched beneath an angel’s wings. People’s lives always sped by so quickly, and with so little thought of others’.

Gradually, as the weak sun licked the earth, the park began to fill with small clusters of parents and prams, little specks of humanity mummified in heavy clothes, their footsteps sharp on the frozen ground. None of them paid him any heed, too caught up in their own thoughts, or too embarrassed by his predicament to make eye contact.

He started to cry in spite of himself. He felt so soft, as soft as a carrot in a tin of soup, ‘Dear Lord help me or take me, just don’t leave me here like this.’

There was a flash of color on the edge of sight, coming ever closer, moving at a tremendous rate, bounding toward him. A shape the color of deep pulsing heart blood, a raw scarlet spot on the earth.

Against his back he felt the statue’s heart begin to pound as the scarlet runner stopped below him. It was just a child, just a boy, but the boy’s eyes were stripped of innocence, if they had ever known it, and were choked with sadness.

‘It’s time to go back,’ whispered the angel in his ear.

He desperately wanted to speak with the boy but he found he had nothing to say to him, the distance between them was too great. He smelt the overwhelming smell of flowers once more as the statue’s arms moved outward, releasing him.

‘It’s time to go back.’

The scarlet runner turned his back and ran into a future he would never know. He felt his eyes well up again and the solid blended into dusk, into tears.

When they cleared he found himself in a wheelchair outside the hospital, a pair of arms wrapped around him to ward off the cold. Twisting his head round he saw his daughter’s face watching him intently. He could feel her heartbeat against his shoulder.

‘You’re shivering dad,’ she said. ‘Let me get you a blanket.’

‘No,’ he said. Although the rose pall of her perfume nearly gagged him he needed her close. ‘Just hold me love. Pray for me pet, the way I prayed for you.’

She stared at him as if mesmerized by his twitching face, as if she stared into a kaleidoscope. She was on the verge of painful tears, the kind that cut your face. Ah Christ, it was a painful process this leaving. If only he could take her by the hand and lead her across the yawning chasm that separated them.

‘I’m all out of life pet,’ he told her. ‘I’m at the end of myself.’

‘Don’t talk like that daddy. You know what the doctor said, there are other treatments, there is the chemo…’

She stopped as if she’d suddenly run out of options, or her faith in her ability to keep up the charade. His insides felt spoiled, his body a half open fridge, its contents slush. He didn’t need a doctor’s cold assessment. Silent doctors live in wishing wells - drop a coin in and they’ll whisper back, ‘it’s treatable’ - but he wasn’t listening anymore, he was spent and he knew it.

‘It’s time to go back,’ said Tanya, turning him round and wheeling him through the large revolving doors into the hospital foyer. The doors never stopped; the world’s worst fairground ride.

‘You look tired dad. You fell asleep there for a while. I’ll lead you back then say goodbye; let you get your rest.’

He saw his reflection in the smoky glass and his ill health caught him unawares. His glassy eyes looked too slippery to remain in their sockets. His teeth were too large and chipped and yellow as a spinster’s crockery. He saw how the people that walked past seemed too embarrassed to make eye contact. He didn’t recognize the wizened stranger that stared back at him. He felt himself choke on the acid wash of past glories, gone forever, forgotten.

He started to cry in spite of himself, ‘Tanya.’ He had something important to tell her, if he could only find the breath.

A small boy, dressed in vivid red, stopped in front of his chair, blocking his way. Even stationery the boy seemed to bristle with life. This was a more fitting mirror he thought. He wanted to speak to the boy, tell him not to look so sad, but there was no way he could make his voice heard over the years that separated them.

‘There you are!’ A young woman grabbed the child by the arm, an apology replacing the worry on her face. ’Honestly, you’d need eyes in the back of your head sometimes. He’s getting a real handful.’

‘They grow quick as toenails,’ smiled Tanya. It was something her mother used to say and he felt the mist blur up again.

Dear Lord, he thought, help me or take me, just don’t leave me here like this.

‘Tanya,’ he whispered as the boy was led away, a scarlet smudge, a burst blood vessel passing out of sight like the memory of childhood. His daughter leaned closer to hear his dry rasp.

‘Tanya, all my life I never enjoyed the moment because I was always waiting for the next one. Do you understand pet, do you?’

‘It’s time to go back.’

She trundled him into a badly lit elevator. As the doors closed on the barren world before him his mind was filled with a single thought.

My name is Thomas Miller.

When I wake up, everything will be alright.