Bleak Road

Bleak Road







Even after ten years of self-medicating I somehow still managed to convince myself that I didn’t have any demons. Now that the skies are full of them, swooping and diving and tearing screaming people into the blackness to do who-knows-what to them, I guess I can finally admit that I do.

Ten years of hopelessness. Ten years of being wedged firmly behind the glass neck of a bottle. Ten years without my daughter, plucked from the road like a strawberry ripe for harvesting. Don’t you be staying out past ten! I’d yelled after her teenage angst, a bottle of whiskey sloshing in my hand, a cigarette staining the air from the other. Three years without her mother and I was resorting to typical parenting, the kind that didn't go down well with a typical adolescent.

I hate you! she’d screamed as she tore off into the streets only to be caught by the shoulders and carried off by the winged silhouette as black as the night itself.

Could I have taken her loss any easier had her final words to me been less harsh? I doubt it, but I’ll never know for sure. That sucking-a-lemon face will stay with me for the rest of my life. But would I be any different had the last words to leave her mouth been I love you instead? The guilt might not have been so bad, but I would have eroded all the same, just in a different way.

Miriam. How I yearn for your return. I only wish I had overcome my agoraphobia and thrown myself from the house after you. Seeing you hiss and spit like an angry frying pan would have been worth having you alive, rebel or not, if I could just have you back with me as it should have been.

Lovely Miriam. As alluring and delicate as a carpet of petals. As stunning as her mother had been in the peak of her elegance before the cancer deteriorated her. All those decades of beauty lost in a matter of months. Even as she rasped white-tongued to me without any trace of coherence, I still looked at her as the same girl who had left a delicate but permanent fingerprint on my heart. Amanda, her name had been, the woman of my life. Her last words had been ‘I love you’. Her last coherent ones, anyway.

Like me, Miriam had changed into something else with the death of her mother. We had broken in two, my little petal and I, and descended in separate directions like a sinking ship with no less resulting destruction. My quiet girl, the one who once had sat in the warm orange of the television with her head on my shoulder, the one who had never come home after it had gotten dark without phoning, the one who had cried when she had gotten pink nail polish on her white dress, had flipped sides. In happier days, she had been the epitome of a nerd, though a pretty one at that. The thick, stereotypical glasses, the massive woollen jumpers, the stacks of romantic videotapes - they all disappeared in what seemed to be overnight.

Her room, which had once smelled of incense sticks and fruity perfume, began to change into some kind of underground techno club. The reek of cigarettes and stale alcohol became apparent, then obtrusive. The noise, intolerable. Teenagers let themselves in and out of my house, ignoring the door to the left where I moped and heading up the stairs on their right to the party. The only thing that was missing was an entrance fee. I was being walked all over, and doing nothing about it. Occasionally I’d feel a single bubble of anger rise up, forming and manifesting and twisting and stinging, only to dissolve well before it had the chance to erupt. It was just another emotion that I’d lost touch with along with happiness, empathy and love.

But still, the girl had lost her mother. I told myself I wouldn’t be that dad.

I did anyway, though I tolerated a lot before I caved in.

I had become a recluse with the death of my wife, boycotting my friends, unplugging my phone and quitting my job at the Comedy Club down the road. Not that I could have kept it, the state I was in; my humour and my wife had went together. I never left the house, I never stepped into sunlight. My life had become morose.

Ten years from the day my daughter had been taken from me, I reached out with a frail and shaking hand, opened my front door, and stepped into the November chill, determined to beat my demons.

The town was desolate, as it had been for ten years of nights before. The once-busy roads were stone dead, not pulsing with young energy and roaring with engines as they had once been. The air was void of all sound and happiness. Tendrils of mist rose from the floor and snaked over tenements as though trying to crumble them down into the carpet of fog where they had come from. A dog vaguely barked twice in the distance, perhaps two miles away, and then it was gone. Picked off into the air with a yelp, I imagine.

There was always a strange smell to the air these days. Not unpleasant, but not pleasant either. Merely suggestive of something not-quite-right. Burnt wood, maybe, although it had been a long time since I’d ventured outside to sample such an aroma. My judgement may have been off.

I took a lungful of icy air and almost choked; fresh air wasn’t so fresh anymore, almost acidic actually. My feet noisily traced my path as they slapped against the sparkling concrete with crisp clops. I could almost hear Miriam’s plastic chunk of a bike trundling down the length of the street. Now all I could see was one recess, centred by a jagged imprint of a claw where a winged one had kicked his foot off the ground with great force as it passed at high speed, putting down its mark and then ascending once again into the blinking tar.

To my left, down a forgotten and debased street, lay the school where Miriam had spent seven years of her life. It’s once welcoming gates now lay broken open like a gaping mouth, revealing a deep pocket of darkness behind splintered iron teeth. Garbage and a river of thick, disgusting grime rolled from it like old saliva. Foul wind rasped like the orgasm of an old hag, and rotten breath rolled over my face. I fought to not throw up, and lost. The contents of my meagre lunch spilled over the floor and the knees of my faded jeans. Trembling in pain, I looked up at the old ruin spitefully and was surprised to find myself claimed by a memory of a past long gone.

Miriam’s five-year-old voice had trembled with an equilibrium of excitement and anxiety. Before her, ecstatic children splashed out like water, and behind them, the school’s bright walls beckoned her in. Still, my daughter looked unsure. She held onto my jacket cautiously, her eyes shifting from passing child to passing child.

On you go, I encouraged, beaming with pride. Amanda clasped my hand tightly, her face also swallowed up by her grin. She nodded in approval to my unconvinced daughter, who in turn regarded her mother with suspicion.

Will you stay here in case I don’t like it? Miriam enquired, one eyebrow raised comically. Of course we will, Petal. Amanda answered, giving her daughter a confirming kiss on the cheek as though to seal the deal. Promise.

Little Miriam looked at each of us for a moment, studied our face as though searching for some tinge of deceit, before breaking into a smile, hugging us both tightly, and rushing off to join the growing river of children. I turned to my wife, my beautiful wife, and felt warm tears begin to spill over my face. It was possibly the happiest day of my life.

The memory faded, the odour of vomit returned. It was a familiar smell, one I had become accustomed to, one I could still taste the dregs of on my old clothes even before I left my house. The old school breathed over me again, this time cold but gentle. I turned my head from it and fought back what felt as though it might have been tears. Slapping myself, I brushed at the paste on my knees with a single stroke and took to my trembling feet. I walked on, the derelict sending me off with a final farewell sigh.

As I staggered forward, I found myself wondering the time, for the watch that hung around my wrist had been dead for countless years. It had been night for what felt like decades now, the clouds letting but the most subtle tinge of moonlight through, and most flora wilting and dying long ago. I wondered when my watch had last told the truth, the last time it had ticked with life. Perhaps it had expired the same time I did.

I rounded into the street where I had seen my daughter for the final time before she was snatched from me. The twenty-four hour shop was no longer there; first becoming a morning and afternoon store with the coming of the winged ones, before finally caving in under the poisonous atmosphere and boarding its windows with old wood. Down the centre of the block, severed neatly in two by an old stone road, lay the alleyway where Miriam’s bracelet had been found scuffed and mudded, the one I had given her for her tenth birthday. The one she had told me she had thrown away.

I remember that day as though it were yesterday, opening my door to a grey day, to the disappointed face of Constable Smith, the shaking heads of the bystanders, the malicious mumbling. I didn’t need to be told, I knew what had happened, knew that my daughter had been taken from me, though I denied myself the truth at the time. The officer and the crowd lead me to the muddy spot where Miriam’s tracks ended - one of the only times I left the house in the ten year gap after her death - and pointed to the misshapen and filthy thing that had once been a beautiful and well-appreciated present for my daughter. Behind me, the mob glared as though I had taken my own daughter‘s life in cold blood before them. I fell to my knees, hopelessness and horror consuming me like a rapid cancer, and wept.

As I passed the old shop, I thought for a moment I could hear Miriam’s voice, fragile and excited at the sight of so many sweets. I showered her in them, back then, though I made sure she countered this with religious tooth brushing. I didn’t want anything to damage my little girl, no external evils or poisons. I wouldn’t let anything get to her, I had told myself, unaware of how spectacularly I'd fail.

I turned down the stone road into the shadowed filling between the two buildings. An old generator by my side wheezed as I passed it, like an old man rasping away in his last few minutes. It choked out a wisp of black unhealthy smoke and began to rattle as though someone was inside shaking it, desperately trying to get out. I had no idea how it was still powered on; no-one lived or even ventured into these buildings these days, they had all either fled or been taken. Only deep-eyed squatters and drug addicts braved any of its four walls, most of them either being dragged off by the shadows themselves, or being left to rot because their hearts were already as black as their fingertips.

My legs not quite what they used to be, I lost my footing, staggered a little, and sloshed through a puddle. My right shoe filled with ice-cold water. I ignored the horrid sensation, for I was here. The spot where they had found the bracelet. Miriam’s bracelet. I raised two weary arms and held them above my head.

Hey! My voice came out hoarse and forgotten. Hey! Come get me! Take me away! The air was still vacant, so much that my pathetic attempt at an outburst left my ears ringing.

There was no sign of the demons yet. I lifted one of the many bin lids and a rotten stick, battered them together, and began hollering into the blackness again like a madman. The wood and metal clattered together into the night, sending out shrill beacons.

The already weakened stick snapped in two in a flurry of wet splinters and landed with a splut in an old, yellowed puddle. The machine behind me - far behind me, it seemed - gave a choke, as though trying to stifle laughter, then died completely, leaving just me and the night. I tossed the half-stick I still held to the floor and was going to fetch another when my ears picked up on something approaching from above.

It sounded like an air conditioner swirling around a humid room, like helicopter blades in slow motion, but I knew what it really was. It was the sound of fate approaching, the sound of heavy wings, beating down at the air, bearing down on me curiously. Hungrily. I must have been the only man in this whole God-forsaken town to have ever dared to raise his voice past dark, to summon their own abduction, to seal their fate. Whether this was something to regret, I would soon find out..

I had never seen one of the winged ones before, only a shadow of one melting into the night. I had heard its noise though, the whoomph of its wings, the sound of the air below them being defeated, although back then they had been heading away from me, not towards.

And there it was, as huge and predatory as a lion, as black and foul as oil. It cut into the slit of sky between the two halves of the building and perched for a moment on the lip of one, watching me intently like a stone gargoyle. I could see two white marble eyes scanning over me; the sad old man, white-haired and dressed in a filthy trench coat with shoes that were held together solely by a miracle. The only one in my life, it seemed, apart from the birth of my daughter of course. I sensed pity from the thing. Unwanted pity. I raised two tired arms again and cried out in dismay. Did you judge her before you took her? Did you watch her from a distance? No! Then why taunt me! Why scan me over! Take me now!

The thing shifted. Two heavy wings pounded the air once more. The demon gracefully leant forward, dropped from its perch, and sailed to the floor fearlessly as though taking a short dive into water. As the thing neared the ground, it arced beautifully and I was suddenly in its warm arms, swept up, my frail body pressed tightly against its torso as though I were the one thing it had desired its entire life. I was vaguely aware of the old sloshing bottle of whisky in my pocket slipping from its once safe place and smashing on the ground below with a musical tinkle.

The wind yelped at my ears and whipped at my face as the thing flew off with me in its grasp, but that was the only thing violent about this flight. I could have slept in the thing’s arms. In fact, I wanted to. Only sheer curiosity and wonder kept me from doing so. For the first time in thirteen years, since before the death of both my wife and my daughter, I felt positive emotions forming inside my frail frame: happiness, excitement, hope.

I braced myself, the corners of my mouth rising instead of falling for the first time in what felt like decades.

Hang on, Miriam. I thought.

I’m coming.