A Leap of Faith

CW: violence, trauma, implied suicide

A Leap of Faith

Today is April 31. I’ve awarded myself an extra Leap Year. My supplies – the canned goods and bottles of water won’t last until February 29 next year, even if I wanted them to. I used to count what was left, everything piled in neat stacks and rows. Now I estimate, knowing the error of margin won’t be a can of beans. Well, it might be. Tonight, I will feast on the remaining tin of crabmeat and won’t squint or wonder at the expiry date.

Food has invaded my dreams. For a long time, the nightmares were of the outside, the flames, explosions, the new rabid creatures, worse still, the hybrids. Now it was French toast, pizza, bananas – things that had never seen a can. Peeling the banana just before jerking awake. Dreams too of our favourite Tapas restaurant; the street food on the trip to Vietnam; the fresh fish caught in Killyleagh. At least present-day chewing helps block out the hum outside, ever present since that last massive bang.

I don’t go outside any more. Not since way before that bang, not since they got her. She’d joked about my anxiety, my negativity. Telling me there would be more and different food out there. That even air that once was fresh was good for me. Even among the debris and desolation she bounded about like a child on a Sunday School picnic.

“Call me Martha,” she shouted.

“That’s not your name.”

“I know. But you can be a Vandella.”

“Ah – you’re ‘Dancing in the Streets’.”

“Try and keep up,” she laughed. “And of course you know I’m royalty.”

“I do, my Dancing Queen.”

She flitted in an out of abandoned buildings, while I merely watched from a distance. “Here’s a big puddle,” she said, splashing. “I’ll be Debbie Reynolds and you can be Gene Kelly.”

Her skirt and legs were soon covered by the water, the red water. Why red?, I wondered …

Then came some strange sounds, a mix of growls and bowels, as shapes emerged, the hybrids we had heard about but never seen. Hunchbacked pigs, standing upright, with faces and beards of men. Huge lizards, with faces of slavering dogs. Human bodies, with twin heads, of giant flies and pug dogs.

“Come back!” I screamed.

“It’ll be ok – I’m sure they’re friendly.”

The shapes huddled round her, alternating between defiling her and taunting me, as they tore her body apart and guzzled.

“Juicy thighs!” mocked one.

“Tasty tits!” giggled another.

“Reminds me of my human Thanksgiving,” chortled a third. “I always had the leg.”

A perverse part of me was congratulating myself for not moving. The truth was I was too afraid to try and help, too traumatised to run away. Looking down at my damp crotch I realised I must have added to the red puddle. Gazing at the grotesque creatures I waited for the inevitable. My turn.

But no. Presumably well fed they preferred to taunt me.

“Slim pickings!” cackled one.

“More bone than meat!” hissed another.

“Way to go Weightwatchers,” smirked one, waving his three arms.

They sloped off, laughing, slapping each other on the back (some of them having more than one back). I didn’t move forward. I just stared at the rejected clumps of her body. A body and soul which less than ten minutes previously had been singing and swinging to classic songs from the 1970s and 1980s. I ran, or rather stumbled, back to our place. Of course, now it was just my place. I knew now that I would never leave it, less from fear of them but more from how I hadn’t protected or helped her. Not trying to do something was far worse than doing nothing. I realised too that if the roles had been reversed we would have at least died together.

There is no understating the word “loneliness.” Years ago, I used to think that if sent to a jail (quite a stretch – pun possibly intended - for a self-perceived “model citizen”), I would do all I could to end up in solitary confinement, permanently if possible. Away from the gangs, the bullies, the sodomists. Being on my own had a different reality. Boredom. Frustration. Hallucination even. I tried splitting my character to have conversations, such as “good cop/bad cop.” The bad cop always won.

Soon I’d read every book we owned and then I re-read, and re-read. Plagued by boredom, and in the absence of any board games or jigsaws I had the idea of ripping out every page of every book, putting them back in order and stacking the pages in bundles.. I almost enjoyed – despite struggling as to what that word had ever meant – removing the pages with precision using a Stanley knife. This knife, along with a blunt kitchen one, being the only weapons of defence I’d deemed ok to defend us.

Worse still. I’d nothing left to write on. Every sheet of paper had been used, each wall, all the floors. I scribbled random thoughts, memories, oft forgotten names, on my hands and arms, with scant progress to becoming ambidextrous. When these short-term notebooks were filled I sacrificed some bottled water to let me start again.

So yes, February is much too far away. Tonight is my faux Leap Year banquet. Sardines and baked beans as a starter. As it’s a special occasion the beans are Heinz, not the supermarket own brand variety. It’s a portion big enough to share, if there was someone to share with. For a main, the crabmeat is accompanied by canned green beans and asparagus. Dessert is the last tin of custard mixed with peaches in syrup. All washed down with the last remnants of sediment-filled sherry, the bottle dusty from a Christmas so long ago.

I stare at the three matches left in the box. Time for the bundles of the books to be furnished into a pyre. The exercise in tearing out then reassembling the pages had altered my opinions of authors. I now adored Tolstoy for the depth of his works, in terms of pages at least. Steinbeck, a favourite from my teens, now seemed too concise, too skimpy. Sweeping the book stacks into a pyramid I mentally applaud Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities” – chunky and appropriate.

I strike the first match which flickers and fades. The second flares and fans the pile of book pages. I remember what it’s like to be warm as the flames rise around me. I will let the flames take me and not move now, other than raising my glass in a Leap Year toast. Remembering her birthday of February 29 and her teasing of me being thirty-two while she was only eight. She would be glad that I had discovered an April 31 ….