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Ant's Entry For Comp #2

Started by Ant, January 02, 2005, 07:02:48 PM

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Ant

Death Connection - By Antonia
(1,145 words)


Sometimes, it's impossible for people to recognise when death is waiting, but not always.

On ward C3, there was a large round clock. It was a loud-ticking clock that announced the arduous passing of time for people who had nothing to do but wait for death's unexpected arrival. Big, black hands waved a robotic farewell as they moved from one minute to the next. Jake noted the wheezing tick at six-o-clock.

From his bed, Jake could see out of the facing window. He could see a tree, thin and pathetic as it shivered against the November chill. There were rooftops in the distance. Once, he'd never realised how intricate rooftops could be. He picked up the binoculars, wincing at the pain and scanned one of the roofs, resting on a fawn-coloured tile that seemed out of sync with the rest. Someone hadn't done a proper job, he thought. He could see how the tile had been more or less squeezed in, a different size, plugged to fit. People did that these days, slotted in, made-do and sometimes they collaborated with fate.

Jake eased the binoculars back onto the bedside table, then hitched up the bed a little; tried to crane his neck to look at the nurse. She was re-arranging Joe's flowers and giggling like a schoolgirl. Joe looked to be around thirty. He was up in that ward because he'd overdosed on Panadol - the modern-day get-out clause. He seemed to have made a miraculous recovery and Jake wondered at the duality of the mind. Jake himself still possessed all of his marbles, well, give or take a silver ball bearing or two, the ones that ensured you had the means to navigate life on full throttle throughout the journey. He noted the unintentional pun and sighed.

Without the binoculars, Jake could see only a haze of white sky and the grey stone facade of rough edged terraces, huddled together. He could see a formation of birds, heard their cries as they flew across the sky in a v shape. He wondered when they would split and how many of them wouldn't make it this time around. It was all to do with timing, he whispered. There was too much time and yet, not nearly enough.

Gladys had been dead now for three hours. They had asked him questions about the squat and how they'd come to be there instead of in the house where they used to live all those years ago. Jake had remained silent and looked down at his hands, slim and long-fingered. Hands that had squeezed the last breath out of Gladys, because she'd asked him to. Sometimes there are no real answers and he derided, in his mind, the men who searched for them so diligently.

The nurse came over to Jake and plumped up his pillows. She was whistling a jingle from one of the advertisements on tv; something about cleaning deeper than the average bleach. He looked down at his hands again. They could do with a good scrub and he so hated the smell of death. His eyes closed, momentarily, as he tried to squeeze away the image of a plastic-faced wife, hands clawing the bed sheets as the pressure on her windpipe heightened. She'd struggled against death, just before the final moment, although her eyes had pleaded for him to continue. It must have been a knee-jerk reaction, thought Jake. And, he had felt like God; or was it the Devil? He'd looked down at the wasted body of a once beautiful woman and had seen a shell housing a faded spirit. 

They'd been known, locally, as the Bag Couple. It had seemed unusual for a couple to be wandering the streets, shacking up in any one of the terraced houses that happened to be empty at the time. He used to feel sorry for the local Bag Lady, who, it was rumoured, had hundreds of pounds stashed away in the cloth bag slung over her shoulder. He didn't feel sorry now, he just understood.

He'd often go up to the roof to be with the pigeons when the sound of his wife's breathing, like a rusty cog in a piece of machinery, became unbearable. At least there, the pigeons called in soothing tones to one another. And he'd sit with the birds - rake about a bit in between the tiles and hope that the house would fall down so that Gladys would suffocate under the rubble. But it never happened and they would wake up again the next day to repeat the events of the day before and the day before that.

Jake wondered if there was a medical term for the weak. He didn't mean weak in a physical sense, but weak in the way that coping with life in general became too hard to even contemplate. He'd often wondered what an eye transplant might do for him, to see the world though fresh eyes. He didn't imagine there might be a soul transplant facility, not yet.

When they lost the bungalow fifteen years ago it had been like an adventure in some ways. They were still together; they would get back on track in no time he'd said to Gladys. Then cold and hunger and a few years living on the streets had given them an edge, a taste for cheap alcohol and cheaper cigarettes. Eventually, there'd been nothing to look forward to, they'd grown older than the average couple of sixty. In their minds they were too old to continue; they'd lost the connection to life. Gladys had become clinically depressed and Jake, feeling the absence of the silver ball bearings, had indulged her depression. It was what one might call giving up.

Joe was out of bed and looking out of the window. Jake thought he might be watching for the girl friend that visited him every day. She'd come in the first time, looking round warily as though she was ready for the crazy people on the ward to slit a wrist or hang themselves from the bedpost. She had a connection to life, Jake thought.

Jake slipped his hand under the covers; he didn't want anyone else to catch the whiff of death.

They'd found him on the pavement, creased and cracked by the impact; he hadn't been able to afford the modern-day get-out clause. He knew he was busted up inside, his innards a mishmash of shrunken liver and bloody lungs - the broken bones just an after thought. Jake closed his eyes, imagined Gladys on the day they'd bought the bungalow. He would never be able to match that memory, was his last thought. Even before the trolley collected him and took him to the morgue, Jake's body was cold.

The clock, instigator of the final hour, made its connection and wheezed on seven-o-clock.

The End


Ed

 :(  Well, thanks for that, Ant - left me feeling thoroughly bloody miserable now :afro:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

SallyQ

Wow, there is so much pain and truth in that story Ant. It's also quite topical with the recent trial of the man who helped his sister to die. As always you've taken my breath away!

Sally

Geoff_N

An intriguing story, Ant. Not one I could bring myself to write yet I can appreciate its literary merit. Your projection of the man's depresseion projecting to nature is symbolic and convincing: the tree that "...shivered against the November chill." Excellent.  I wasn't expecting the pavement splat either, subtle twist.

Geoff

Ant


JoyceCarter

Very bleak atmosphere - well done, Antonia.

Ant