1: 6.00 AM
The moon, the cold and quiet thing, the silent watcher. I can empathise with Mr Moon quite perfectly, how it must fascinate and laugh from afar. It sits in the sky and peers over the mortals as they pointlessly scurry on and on with their daily lives, Detached and yet oh-so curious.
John begins to stir. Human beings are quite fascinating as they wake from slumber, The way his eyelids slowly prise themselves open amid a flurry of sticky dust. It’s like watching him be born again, For that brief moment in time there is a great unknowing, perhaps an anticipation of what is to come? I guess I will never know. I have watched this exact pattern for the best part of three years. John doesn’t realise but today is a very special day, To John it is just a normal monotonous Monday morning. GenerallyI don’t take such special notice of every move he makes, I’ve seen it all before, but like I said, today is a very special day.
He lumbers into the bathroom like an elephant, Staggering from side to side, Bouncing his hand along the wall to steady himself. He was drinking again last night, no surprise. Sarah, his wife, lies motionlessly on her side, the duvet pulled up high, hiding what was once an exquisite and voluptuous figure. She’s actually awake but she pretends not to be, she’s done this a thousand times, he never notices.
The ritual morning wash begins, I admire as he runs tired fingers through his dark, lightly curled hair. He hasn’t noticed yet but there is a tinge of grey is emerging at his roots, he wouldn’t care.
The reflection in a lightly clouded mirror of a still handsome face lightly weathered by time. Dark eyes hidden behind upturned oval bags, neatly curved lips masked by an early morning grimace.
The avoidance continues at breakfast. They both sit, solemnly staring into their respective bowls of Oatmeal. He’s in his neatly ironed business suit she’s in her exhausted Sainsbury’s fleece. They don’t look at each other as they sit motionlessly around a table that’s far too big for just the two of them. A third chair sits empty between them, providing the informal divide that clearly need between them.
He tells her that she need not bother with dinner, she inquires as to why for the third time in a week he feels the need to not come home. He lies, He says he is helping a friends move into their new flat. She insists he comes home, that tomorrow is a very special day, He snaps and he tells her he is running late for work.
I wonder if he ever notices the exhaustion in her voice, the seemingly endless finality in every word she speaks.
2: 9.00 AM
Watching humans work is something I will never understand. He spends most of the day heartedly reading one document after another, only breaking the pattern for an occasional flick of the wrist and dash of ink on a page. The occasional buzz of irritation that etches across his face, as one of his hapless customers phones in to complain. Rinse, repeat it’s the same over and over, I just watch, live to work or work to live? Another aspect of humanity that’s alien to me. The fading title printed on the door of the glass cubical- his office reads “Loan Manager” but to be honest, I don’t think even he knows what it means.
I witness as Mrs Cooper, one of his regulars stomps out of his office, frustration and defeat distracting from her usual craggy appearance. Single mother of three, juggling several jobs, a history of being bullied and abused. He sees no reason to help her, for the third time he has refused to extend her loan. She told him she would lose her house that her children would have to sleep on the streets. He told her “tough” that it could be worse.
His jelly-bellied colleague James asks if he would like to go down the pub and have a brew after work, to celebrate all the money they are making. But like John’s wife, He knows better, this is the seventh attempt in a month. He won’t try again.
3: 5.45 PM
For three years he’s been very cautious with roads, he always checks twice to his left and twice to his right, a light nod and if you look close the tiniest of breaths is taken. He hasn’t driven in three years neither, nor does he cycle, he just walks. His time to reflect, on what I don’t know, maybe the entire bottle of scotch he had so hastily consumed the night before or perhaps the elderly man whose rebate he so readily denied.
She waits for him, Standing framed in the doorway of what he may feel is a heaven I see no heaven I see a battered, crusted old council house. The sound of screaming single mothers and the clatter of knackered old feet rings in the air. He knows this place well. She puffs on a cigarette; I can almost feel her intake the putrid air. One could have called her an attractive woman…once. Thick, lightly curled peroxide hair draped over a garish ruby red dress. Wide pale eyes stained by an abundance of purple and blue, pouty lips shielding yellowing, chipped teeth. The skin of a smoker and the stare of a shark, she eyes him up hungrily.
Her name is Gloria.
They embrace.
I never take joy from watching humans mate. It’s not in my nature. As I watch all I see is two slabs of meat being smashed together, one white and pink blob grinding against another. There’s a distinct intensity between them, but it’s not passion, not love, it’s pure and primal animalistic lust. Just an outburst, all the rage brewing, waiting to explode. He releases it here, with her, a woman who can look in his eyes.
It’s over quickly.
A moment of clarity a moment of fulfilment…never. They speak briefly, They argue, He declares his guilt and he tells her it will be the last time. She just smiles, she knows better.
4: 7.45 PM
The moment is approaching; a literal lifetime of watching is nearing an end. The road is ever busy. He stops at the pavement, he glances at his mobile phone. Six missed calls from his wife, guilt consumes him and he steps forward, onto the road.
He didn’t look….he always looks.
The car ploughs into his body at sixty-three miles per hour. Legs crumple under the weight of one metric ton of steel and rubber. Momentarily his body mirrors that of a crucified Jesus, his back spread against the bonnet of the car, outstretched arms hanging gormlessly at each side. His head thuds against the windscreen spraying claret coloured blood into the air. His body is violently, relentlessly pushed into the concrete with such velocity that his knees drive upwards into his stomach.
The car screeches to stop.
His body rolls for what seems like an eternity before settling, slumped against a curb, a pool of blood gathering at his head.
I stoop over a bruised and broken body; to the world he is dead.
To me, to me alone, he is very much alive.
…And time stops, frozen, the world stops spinning.
The young mother consoling her screaming child, the guilt-ridden killer, the young man frantically dialling nine-nine-nine, static, frozen in time, a Childs tears hanging in the air- as if in a painting.
And for the first time, he can see me.
He asks me who I am. I lean forward, merely a blur in his eyes and I tell him “I am your death”. Amidst a bloodied tongue he asks me why I am here, I say that I’m taking him away, somewhere different, somewhere safe. The wave of realisation washes over him, the relief, the acceptance, the fragility of it all.
I reach for his breast-pocket; I know what he wants to see. A photograph crumpled and sprinkled with blood, his most sacred of things. The reflection of a life once lost of a past that cannot be re-written. A picture-perfect of happier time, A loving husband cradling the shoulder of a happy and loving wife her smile as bright as day. Upon her lap a child, a boy, with dark, lightly curled hair and the eyes of his father.
I ask him if he ever loved her.
“Always”
I stroke his brow and he says he is ready, I ask him If at last, he would like to see his son.
And for the first time, in a long time, He smiles.
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