Time out

Now, I havent proof read this, but I forgot that I wrote it. I would appreciate the feedback and let me know what you thing.


He sank into the leather chair. The cushions rose up around him, moulding itself to his body slowly, like a cocoon. His legs lay straight out from his body out onto the low rise coffee table and his arms rested on the chair. He rested his head against the back of the chair, long hair falling down the mottled black-brown leather. His legs fidgeted on the table, trying to kick off his shoes so he could wriggle his toes. Patiently, he rubbed the back of the left shoe with the sole of the right, like an impatient school child who can’t wait to get out of the uniform. As soon as it was done the release from frustration was exquisite. Both feet together, he wriggled them in unison, toes dancing.
Sitting up, he looked across the living room at the toppled bottles of pills and the empty bottle of Jack Daniels. It was hard to say if the light headedness he was feeling could be attributed to the pills or the empty bottle of Jack. Probably Jack.
His toes felt so free. He just enjoyed the sensation of his socks cradling his feet as he lifted them up and down from the low rise coffee table like impatient nails on a punctual desk. His impatience was playful. He knew time was playing with him now but he was determined to enjoy this little game. It would be his last. No one knew where he was or how to find him. It was perfect. Maybe when the smell of decaying flesh filled the hallway, the supervisor of the hotel might become concerned, let himself in with the skeleton key only to discover the only mortis in the building wasn’t on a lock, but sat in an arm chair, sharpening his scythe. Old man death, sat waiting for his next call out, but just savouring the delicious smell of rotting flesh, ripe on the bone. The bugs were an added wildlife distraction that would move effortless around in the air but never staying far away from his corpse but maybe making it close to the leather arm chair to see George “Grim”, with his front row seats of the decay-spectacle on the floor in front of him.
Or maybe the cleaner would come in and be completely oblivious to his body lying limp on the floor, lifeless and rotting. Perhaps she would clean around him, like some intricate piece of modern art that must not be touched or moved in any way. Maybe she would ignore the flies lingering around the mound of flesh, losing liquids on the floor. Maybe as she vacuumed the dust off the floor she would suck him into the industrial vacuum as well and no one would ever know where he was, inside a vacuum.
His light head became less light, filled with thoughts like these as it lolled heavily backward and forward from one side to the other. Grinning as he fell like a bowling pin, he connected heavily with the floor, head smashing against the wood. He wonders now if it’s even wood his head has just taken the great effort of smashing down against, but it probably is. Or isn’t. It doesn’t matter. It’s perfectly comfortable for the tiny pool of blood that’s gathering upon it.
The expensive hotel room with the leather chair in front of a small wooden table, probably bought from some retailer that caters for chains en masse, situated in front of the TV, abandoned in the middle of a room like an island in the Atlantic Ocean, seemed to be growing larger and larger. He can see the chair moving away from him. He even watches the chair legs grow human feet, with hair on the tops that join up to the thick black hair of a spider. Magically, with a pop, four roller skates appear on the chair legs and they skate back and forth, toward him and away from him like something in a bad Alfred-Hitchcock-Vertigo attack.
The room settles back to its original size and shape again, instantaneously. On the floor next to the table are sat a black pair of roller skates and a blue pair, larger in size but more simplistic in their design.
George “Grim” is in the chair and talking. ‘Have a ride.’
Standing, he puts on the blue pair of roller skates, which fit perfectly by some coincidence and begins a lap of the room. The wood or not-wood-floor allows a fantastic slip-slide event as he heads towards the bedroom door, cruising past it towards the bathroom door, rolling along toward the empty leather chair.
He grinds to a halt when he sees a hand on the floor. Its fingers are curling toward the palm, pointing the index finger out like a gun to shoot down honky cowboys who want to ride over a body like this, even a man with nice, simple blue roller skates. The arm is bare up to the upper muscles, which are adorned in a black shirt. The shoulders have brown hair hanging on them. The face belongs to a man who lies on the floor of a hotel room, blinking blindly, trying to see something and not seeing anything at all. Suddenly the floor seems to be lurching away from his feet, making his legs into stilts so the world feels miles below his feet, like a kid running along a neighbour’s wall. The kid knows that when he falls it’s going to hurt because his mummy said it would, but it looks like fun. Maybe the floor wont hurt so much when he lands this time as it comes smashing up towards him and he finds himself lying back on the floor again, staring at the floor that might be wood or might not be wood at all.
Fingers. Floor. Wood or not wood. Ice, not wood. Why else can’t he get a grip? They slide along the floor like little ice skaters. Maybe they shouldn’t have been roller skates on the table. He needs ice skates. Ice skates to skate in New York with his wife on their first anniversary. Winter and the Christmas spirit floats in the air with snow flakes that are staring to fall on the city. Everyone feels it and everyone feels happy. He holds her as they circle them and everyone feels happy. And then there was this beautiful room. This beautiful hotel room with a floor that neither he nor she could decide was really wood or not. And a chair that they wanted to steal for their new house that would be theirs when the lawyers exchanged papers. It would be theirs. George didn’t sit in that chair then. He fucked his beautiful wife in that chair and she groaned on top of him, and when he lay on that floor with her, he said they’d be together forever. She fucked another man within that year and fucked her husband over royally. Beautiful woman… Beautiful hotel room. Beautiful chair.
He staggers onto his feet, and sees a bright light dead ahead of him where the bathroom door should be. But the light isn’t where the door should be anymore. It’s where the whole room should be. It’s a perfect white light that bathes everything. He can’t see anything anymore, not even the floor that was or wasn’t wood, or the beautiful brown-black leather chair. He just sees beautiful bright light, and black. Black hooded man. He stands silent but only for a minute. He produces a board. Plain clipboard, chrome. A voice, one that sounds like his grandfather that he never met appears from beneath the hood and asks ‘Do you have a reservation?’
‘I believe I do.’ Twisted English now. Not exactly R.P. but it isn’t expected in such situations. Fucking Jack and his fucking friend, Daniel.
‘Name?’
‘My name?’
George says politely, ‘I’ll need your name to see if you have a reservation won’t I sir?’
Laughing. His wife is laughing somewhere. It’s high and jovial. She’s happy somewhere. Somewhere he isn’t. She’s happy without him.
The room bathed in white that has no features seems to spin, because he has a very dizzy head again.
‘My name…’ he slurs as he begins to fall.
‘…is Mortis.’
His head connects with the floor that might or might not be wood and all of a sudden there is no light in front of the bathroom door anymore. The leather chair is back where it belongs, as is the table and TV. The puddle of blood on the floor has grown but they use Coke to take it off the road in Texas. He thinks about this as the lights on the whole room seem to go out.
Jack and Coke.
He closes his eyes, but just before he passes out completely, he manages to mutter ‘My name was Curtis.’
‘Was?’ Grim looks puzzled as though he wasn’t entirely sure what was going on.
‘Well, I AM dead aren’t I?’
Raising a concealed hand, revealing his bony fingers, Grim clicks his bone-fingers together and the television from the hotel room appears in front of them both.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Shhhhh! This is my favourite part. It’s where the audience doesn’t know if the guy is going to live or die. It’s all hanging in the balance. Such a cliff-hanger.’ Pausing to observe the screen, and then turning back to Curtis, he asks, ‘What do you thinks going to happen?’
Turning to look at the screen, Curtis is looking at a bird’s eye view of himself. He’s lead on the floor of the hotel room he bucked himself into God knows how long ago. Looking carefully at the top right hand of the screen, you can just about make out the bottles of pills and the JD he used for a chaser.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Look, Curty, I’m George. There’s shit loads of Grim Reapers out there, so it’s not like I monopolise the omniscient thing. That’s reserved for someone you might end up meeting, depending on how things go.’
‘So, what happens now?’
‘Do you know what TARDIS stands for?’
Confused, Curtis asks, ‘The TARDIS from Doctor Who? Why do you want to know?’
‘As it happens, I already do, but I’m illustrating a point. Do you know what TARDIS stands for?’
‘Times are relative dimensions in space.’
‘Correct. Now Curty…’
‘Curtis.’
A deathly silence fell between them. George lowered his hood, revealing the face of a middle aged woman. She had blond hair, greying at the roots, with deep melancholic blue eyes, with creases of age at the side of her face.
‘Mum?’
‘Do I raise you to be rude, boy?’
Silence again.
‘Did I?’
‘No mother.’
‘Just messing with you.’ Pulling the hood back up, George’s voice became familiar again. Could it have been his grandfather’s voice?
‘Curtis, where do you think we are right now?’
‘I have no idea.’ This was weird. Being drilled on science fiction trivia by a man who was Death, looking like his mother… Trips are supposed to be smoother than this, and in those cases at least you have the drug pay off.
‘We are outside time. We are looking into it using this screen, but we are no longer in space or time. Time is constant here because we are outside its dimension. Understand?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good.’
‘But if time isn’t relevant here, and we are outside time here, doesn’t that make all times now?’
Pause. ‘And so what if it did?’
‘If all times are now, then doesn’t that mean that all this has already happened? Don’t you already know if I’m going to live or die?’
Longer pause this time. ‘I read your profile. Philosophy tutor at Lancaster University, UK for the last five years. Don’t try and trip me up on logic. I’ve been warned about you. I’m not omniscient, but I’m not stupid either. I know if you live or die, but you have to realise that part of your purpose in being here is to find that out.’
‘And what about the other purposes of my being here?’
‘Now, if I went and shared that little tit-bit with you, where’s the fun going to be for you?’ Glancing back at the screen, but realising he had something left to say and turning back, George breathed in again. ‘Think of this as one of those walks of self discovery. I know everything about you, including when you die. You will find out if your death is imminent or not something you need to be concerned about until you’re claiming a pension. You might also find some other things out, but it is not for me to discuss them with you. I’m a guide. I hasten to add this is not my normal job, but the boss made me do this one because he’s teaching you a lesson.’
‘Who is “he” then?’
If George has eyes, they would have burned straight into Curtis’s brain, straight through the other side and on forever. ‘God.’
‘You’re telling me that not only does God exist, but he has a legion of Grim Reapers collecting souls from earth and on this special occasion, he has decided that you, George, my guide and companion on this special little day trip into self discovery, should be the one to help me through this hour of need.’
Mulling this statement over in his mind for a moment, George breathed again and declared, ‘Yes.’
‘I’ve lost my mind.’
‘Well, it’s not a sane act to go around killing yourself.’
There was no quick come back to that. George, without the JD and pills on board was aware that what he had done was crazy. Still, it didn’t mean he regretted what he’d done. He looked at George was again staring at the screen.
As Curtis looked at his own life unfolding before his eyes, he saw a woman walk into the room. As he had predicted, the person to find him was the cleaning lady. That meant it was still morning not that long after Curtis had attempted to top himself. Screaming, the woman runs for the phone and begins to ring the front desk to get an ambulance.
‘Your luck is changing, Curty.’
‘Wasn’t it Einstein that said that God didn’t play dice?’
George chuckled to himself. ‘It was, but God isn’t playing dice here, you are. It’s a terrible thing to gamble away your own life.’
‘Keeps you in a job though doesn’t it?’
‘All men come to death at some time. It’s a part of your mortality and it’s unavoidable. It was just a matter of time. There are better ways to shuffle loose the mortal coil than a JD and pills cocktail.’
Sounding wounded, Curtis raised his voice, ‘I wasn’t aiming for extra points in the style column. I just wanted it to end.’
‘And what exactly was it you wanted to end? Life? Life doesn’t end. It goes on in so many different ways you can’t even begin to imagine. Didn’t you ever see the Lion King?’ From out of nowhere, as soon as the word “King” had left his mouth, Elton John appeared at a black piano. He was singing the chorus to Circle of Life.
‘That’s… surreal.’
‘Yes it is.’
An ambulance crew had appeared and were doing whatever it is they do over bodies. Curtis was watching his own life like he was in E.R. or Casualty. It was extremely bizarre to watch.
‘So, what do you prefer; normal skating or ice skating?’
Confused and slightly unsure of what he was being asked, Curtis looked at George and asked ‘What do you mean?’ From underneath his hood, George stared straight into Curtis’s eyes. Curtis wondered at this point if George actually had eyes. But if he didn’t have eyes, it really does beg the question how the guy could see at all?
‘Well, I’ve never been skating or rollerblading or anything, so I was just making conversation. What’s your preference?’
‘Oh. I guess it would be ice skating.’
A silence covered the white-light walls like thick emulsion paint.
‘Why?’ This reminded Curtis of one of the annoying little tricks he used to pull on his parents when he was growing up. He called it the ‘Why?’ game. Every sentence his parents uttered was answerable with this almighty and destroying question of why. It would be years before the power of that question could ever really resound as anything more than the repetitive echo of an annoying child asking over and over again, “why?”
‘It’s the feeling you get when your skate. The ice disappears and the only thing that matters is you and the ice. Your blades let you glide on the ice, like flying in the sky. The wind rushes against face and runs through your hair and you feel like you can do anything. You forget the world exists and you feel free. It’s like being a bird. Flying. That’s why.’
Silence again and Curtis and George began to stare at the screen again. He was being moved on a stretcher towards an ambulance that was waiting for him outside the hotel. A couple of life’s tourists were standing around near the entrance, in the hopes of seeing a mutilated body, or a rotting corpse; something they could tell their grand children about.
‘Fucking tourists.’
‘Why do you call them that?’
‘Don’t you know everything? Why don’t you tell me that, tell me why I like to ice skate instead of rollerblade, or rollerblade. Why don’t you tell me why I call them tourists?’
‘There isn’t any need to get angry.’ Curtis watched intently, staring at the screen as he watched himself being wheeled into the back of the ambulance. ‘I’m asking because I already know, and you have to know because it’s your life, but I’m just wondering if you’ve actually thought about it before.’
When Curtis has been younger, he’d heard this referred to as the ‘Cracking of the Eye,’ or at least that what all the art students called it. It was an active attempt to realise how they looked at the world and to actively change their perception in order to see the world in a different way and experience art in another way; their own way. In that instant, the irony of calling those people who watched Curtis being wheeled into the back of an ambulance dawned on him.
‘ I call them tourists because they coast through life, grasping on to the tail end of other peoples life’s and experiences, too afraid to let go of their own inhibitions and exhorb all the things that life can give, both good and bad. I call them that because they come and try to catch on to the experience once all the good stuff has gone. Someone has already been there and experienced it before. I call them tourists because all they ever do is watch.’ Curtis paused to take a breathe. His eyes were cracking wide open to something he’d never seen before.
‘But, if they’re tourists on the tail end of this hurricane that you call a life that’s spilling out into a life, aren’t you just playing tourist on your own life right now; sat watching it all unfold in front of you like a passer-by, waiting to see how it plays out, instead of making an active decision on how to deal with life.’
‘I’m here because I tried to kill myself. It’s not the same thing.’ Turning to look at George, Curtis hoped that he might see the face and eyes underneath the cloak and find out who this figure of Death was that was taunting him.
‘Tell me why not. Aren’t you just as checked out from existence as those people, in fact to a much greater extent? At least they're on the same plane of existence. You are a tourist of life at this moment, picking what to look at and what to experience, at your leisure, like this is some sort of holiday.’
‘This Limbo isn’t my choice. This is where I find myself.’
‘Bullshit. This is a result of the choices that you have made. You chose to kill yourself, and to make some sort of statement to your ex-wife, you chose to do it here, where you spent a weekend together. You decided to play tourist to the entire conception of life, not just a different way of life, but the whole thing in its perfect and deformed bizarreness.’
From underneath the hooded cloak, a hand appeared and two bone fingers clicked together. The white room dipped in its purity, and flooded into a grey colour that became fuzzed and unclear around the edges. He recognized this space and Curtis was almost positive that this ambulance was what he’d just been staring at with George on the screen in Limbo.
It was at the moment that he realised where he was, that Curtis realised that he wasn’t stood up anymore, and the world had turned at ninety degree rotation. Some strange form of vertigo or travel sickness appeared in Curtis’s stomach. There was an oxygen mask over his face, like someone was trying to suffocate him with Chloroform and at that moment he became to gag and rolled on to his side like he was going to vomit.
Immense pain was welling in his head and stomach. For some reason all this was happening in the same instant, and all he wanted to do was make the pain go away. Curtis felt the vomit move from his stomach up through his gullet, like he was about to be sick, when he heard the click of bone and bone, and again, he was stood next to George, watching his life unfold on the large screen before him. A paramedic was holding a vomit bowl for him as he began to heave into it.
‘You tried to take your own life because the pain was too much for you too cope with. A bottle of Jack Daniels and some pills didn’t even stop the pain, but you didn’t know it was going to feel like that, did you? They’re taking a day trip out of their lives because you and those people who were stood by the hotel entrance have more in common with you than you know.’
‘And what is that exactly?’ Feeling aware of the travel sickness and need to vomit, Curtis was gently massaging his stomach, waiting for some sort of eruption from his stomach.
‘All of you have something to learn. Those people are observing the tail end of a hurricane that you started, and like some meteorologists in an office somewhere, those people are going to learn something from you about the value of human life.’
‘What am I here to learn?’
‘You aren’t ready to understand that if you have to ask that question.’ Curtis turned his attention back to himself on the screen, where he was no longer vomiting, but lying passed out of the bed as the ambulance wound its way towards the hospital. ‘I’m bored of standing,’ said George in a strange declaration that seemed to startle Curtis as two exactly identical leather chairs appeared behind them. As Curtis realised that these chairs were exactly the same as those in his hotel room, Death had taken up his seat and laid down his scythe on the floor, making himself comfortable.
‘Is this an out of body experience?’ Curtis walked away from the chair that had appeared behind him and stood in front of George, blocking his view of the screen where Curtis’s life and death was unfolding.
‘Of sorts, yes.’
‘Oh, please stop with the cryptic bullshit.’
‘Cryptic bullshit? I’m all about the cryptic bullshit! It’s what I do best. I mean, for God sake, I’m your guide through Limbo, it doesn’t get much more cryptic than that now does it?’ Pause. ‘Does it?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Now, who’s being cryptic?’
Curt was almost positive that if George had a face underneath that hood, his lips would have spread into a wide smirk.
Feeling irritated having been tripped up in his own argument, Curt decided to take up the seat next to Death and make himself comfortable. He stretched out his legs and slouched into the chair, so his head was hanging over the low rise back. At that moment, the feeling of dejavu swept over him, and for some reason, reclinging in this position didn’t seem as comfortable as it did moments before. He pulled himself up into a seating position and crossed his right leg over his left.
‘Did you really want to die when you downed those pills?’ It sounded like a stupid question and the first thing Curt wanted to say was ‘Course I did or why else would I have done it,’ but the question wasn’t as simple as it appeared at first glance.
‘I don’t really know.’ The words seemed to trickle out in slow motion as Curt thought about each word as it formed and left his mouth. ‘I think I just wanted to stop feeling the way I did. I didn’t like the feeling of hostility and pain I felt all the time. I hated her for what she did to me. It all seemed like such a waste of time and energy and I couldn’t cope with feeling that way anymore. She broke my heart.’
‘Plenty of people get their hearts broken and carry on.’
‘I couldn’t breathe anymore. Each time I drew breath, my heart kicked in my chest. Everything was agony. Lying in bed, staying there all day, getting up, leaving the house, everything hurt. It was all I could think about all day long and it never stopped, even as time went by, it didn’t get better as I was informed it would and that I’d find someone else. It didn’t happen. I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore.’
Curt heard his own voice in reply coming from George. ‘Fucking tourist.’ Thinking about it before he spoke, with some witting retort about getting a postcard to commemorate the visit, something clicked, and all there was to say was,
‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’
‘So, as a tourist of life on planet Earth, would you allow our organisation to use your opinions in our brochure for the next year.’ George was now stood in a pinstripe suit, holding a clip board and Parker ballpoint pen, scribbling something on a piece of paper.
‘What are you talking about?’ Fidgeting with frustration in his chair, Curt realised that his inability to sit still maybe wasn’t because of how confused he was, but maybe because he was actually afraid of where this line of questioning was headed. ‘Am I going to die?’
‘I’m asking you,’ appearing in the hooded cloak again, returning to the familiar voice of someone Curt couldn’t quite place, ‘ If you think that being a tourist through your life is any way to live a life.’
‘It wasn’t my fault. She left me. She broke my heart. It wasn’t my choice.’ Tears were welling up in his chest like a well, moving slowly up through his throat, making his voice wobble as he spoke. His left eye began to stream.
‘Bullshit. You took a holiday from your life. You chose to stop feeling it through any and all means possible. You didn’t want to deal with the way your life was changing, so you didn’t. That was the choice you made and now this is where you find yourself. You responded to a set of given stimuli in a certain way and you are sat here, life hanging in the balance as a result.’ Breathing, George stopped, before continuing. ‘I’m not saying that what she did to you wasn’t awful and painful and I’m not belittling what she did, believe me I’m not, but I am saying that you had total control over the response you made: You could have gone to your family; you could have gone to your friends; You could have gone to a shrink or got professional help, but you didn’t. You chose to deal with it by ignoring it, and it hasn’t worked.’
Chest heaving, breathing like a little child when they’ve grazed a knee in a stutter of air, no one could deny that Curt was definitely living his experience now. A bony hand appeared in Curt’s blurred peripheral vision, offering him a handkerchief. As he used it to wipe his cheeks and eyes, he noticed that on the right hand bottom corner of the hanky where initials might have been, a black skull and cross bones had been emblazoned. Curt began to stroke it with his finger as he began to giggle, and then laugh uncontrollably.
‘What’s so funny?’
Between gasped breathes Curt explained. ‘I can’t even begin to tell you what is so funny about the Grim Reaper, bringer of death to the world being the proud owner of a handkerchief, and to crown the whole thing, its got a skull and cross bones!’
‘My mother gave it to me for a birthday present.’
Hysterics gathering pace, Curt creased in his seat, head between his legs. ‘The Grim Reaper has a mother!’
In a patronising tone, George lent forward and took the hanky away from Curt, but as he pulled on the right hand bottom corner that bore the skull and cross bones, Curt wouldn’t let go. He had clamped his fist tight around the handkerchief and while he laughed hysterically, tears were running down his face, making a pool at his feet. At some point during the hysterical laugh and crying, he had begun to rock slightly.
Instead of trying to recover his handkerchief, instead George moved his chair closer to Curt’s and began to gently rub his back. Unexpectedly, Curt threw his arms around George and began to cry.
‘Why are you crying Curt?’ Somewhere in between the heart wrenching sobs, Curt tried to talk, but deciding it wasn’t the right course of action, stopped and cried some more. Eventually the sobs began to slow to more like a pant that the exasperated despair previous. George repeated his question. ‘Why are you crying?’
Curt was staring at the screen transfixed by what he was being showed. He saw a pale white version of himself in a hospital bed, nurse’s corners in tact. At his left hand side was a drip of some sort, and on the right hand side was a respirator. He followed the lines of the tubes up to his mouth. He watched as the machine inflated and deflated his lungs rhythmically and artificially. Curt felt his own breathing and heart beat slow back into a normal rhythm.
‘I’ve lost so much.’
‘You have lost something, but I think if you’re honest you know that the rest you gave away.’ Silence. Curt looked into the hood where his eyes should have been once again. Faced with the horrifying truth, he knew.
‘I did most of this to myself didn’t I?’
‘Yes. I’m not heartless and saying everyone isn’t allowed to go absent without leave every now and again, but this is too far and now you need to make a choice about what it is that you want. You can mourn your life now and move on, or you can die.’
‘Is that my choice?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, you can choose to live and carry on just as you are. That is your decision, but it really begs the question why you would even bother to choose to go back and live that way.’
‘Can I go back to the way things were before?’
‘We can never go back. Life only ever goes on; forwards. It’s the way things are. You can move on and be happy again.’ Looking up at George like an expectant child, waiting for an answer, he continued. ‘You’re like a computer. Life is like data that is input into your system and you incorporate this data into yourself and it affects who you are. Not who you were, no matter what happens in the future; you’ll always be the same person then, but the data that you’ve been given now will allow you to decide who you will become.’
‘You make it sound so grand.’
‘It is grand. This might be the biggest decision you ever make. Your life has a knock on effect that spans the entire of human history. Every person is linked and interlocked.’
‘No man is an island?’
‘Exactly! Your checking out from Hotel-Life will have a ripple effect of life and so will your choice to stay checked in. It isn’t just your life that’s on the line anymore. Look.’
Looking at the widescreen television, which seemed to have moved towards them by a considerable distance, Curt saw a woman sat by his bed holding his hand.
‘She came for me?’
‘Yes Curt, she came for you. She never stopped loving you.’
‘She broke my heart.’
‘And you’re breaking hers. She still loves you.’
‘She never loved me. She told me that. She…’
‘People make mistakes, don’t they Curt?’
‘What happens next will depend on what decision you make. She might go on to marry another man, or spend the rest of her life with you, or you might still end up divorced. Every second you spend making that decision has a profound effect on the rest of your life and hers, and so many other peoples.’
‘I don’t want to die.’
In an instant, the white light disappeared and the dark red colour on the inside of his eye lid flashed in front of Curt’s eyes. He felt the sensation of being reunited with his body and it felt strange and comfortable at the same time. His hearing seemed dampened for some reason and his eyes felt heavy and difficult to open. As he struggled, he heard miles away someone say, ‘Look, his eyes are opening.’ Curt felt as a hand clutched at his and he realised it had been there for a long time. ‘Curt, can you hear me? Curt? Open your eyes for me Curt.’
‘I’m trying.’
Fluttering light flooded in and out, stinging his eyes. The insistent pleading became clearer in his head as his ears began to unclog. As his eyes opened fully for the first time, he rolled his head to his left hand side and the first thing he saw was the face of his wife.
‘Clare.’
As he spoke, he realised that he must have been extubated and his voice was gravely and hardly audible from the damage to his vocal cords. As he tried to remember what he has seen while he was unconscious began to fade to the bare minimum. He remembered the hotel room in bits and pieces, Elton John at a piano, roller skates and an over whelming feeling of comfort, pain and release. He also remembered the most comfortable seat that he had ever sat in.
He watched as Clare smiled at him in the most heartfelt smile he had ever seen.
‘I love you Clare.’
‘I love you too, but you need to rest now. I’m going to get a doctor or somebody.’
As she turned to leave, he squeezed her hand tightly and she turned back to him.
‘Kiss.’
She moved in close to the bed and kissed him gently on the lips. As she pulled away, he muttered gently in her ear, ‘Feels like coming home.’ Then he was asleep again.

WORD COUNT - 5948