East, West, Home’s Best

CW: Death/Graphic Injuries/Thanatophobia

Paul Prewett was dead. He knew he was destined for a bit of a shake up at least when that car had crept sluggishly out the junction in front of him, but I suppose when all is said and done, he never quite expected this. When he’d slipped out of the other side of the thing, he was shocked to say the least. The fact he’d tipped his hat to the crossmember and emerged without so much as a burn or scratch seemed quite unbelievable. Which it was.

Upon standing, Paul could immediately sense a shift in his surroundings. The street was the same but different, the sign on the corner still rusting and paint chipping off in large flakes so the lettering now read ‘Elizabeth’s ay’. They’d already sent council men round twice to scrub off a ‘G’ that had been painted in the empty spot. Paul was proud to admit he’d snickered both times. But standing in front of it now, a gossamer haze covering the ground as far as the eye could see and whirling around his feet each time he shifted on them, he couldn’t find the humour.

And over his shoulder when he’d finally got the bearings to check, he found the car was gone. His bike was still there; frame buckled and warped, metal twisting over itself in agony, fuel tank dented, and shimmering, iridescent petrol dripping from a gash along its side. Paul brushed a hand over his jeans and felt they were wet with the same ichor and peppered with sticky crumbs of bitumen that jumped to his hand, that were imbedded too around the gaping mouths of the pipes gasping from the blazing stomach of the dying beast.

Paul brought his other hand to his head. In an instant his fingers had turned a bright, livid crimson like the petal of a poppy flower. So he pulled them through his jet black hair and recoiled slowly at the feeling of his locks being absolutely sodden like he’d just stepped from the shower and then further at the thick globules of clotted blood clinging like fatted slugs to his fingers. He didn’t know what was worse: knowing his head was haemorrhaging or knowing he should, by all accounts, be unconscious by now. And see, that was when he’d realised that there may be something more to all this. The fact that he was leaking like a single-holed sieve and yet was standing here alone in the empty road instead of staring up at the ceiling of an ambulance; standing beside the corpse of his bike with the surreal feeling of warm liquid seeping down the back of his head and over the nape of his neck and yet feeling no pain. No sickness. No tiredness. He supposed it was quite an easy conclusion to make at the end of the day: He had to be dead.

So why was he here? He hadn’t spent the first fifteen years of his life going to church every weekend, Sunday school during the holidays on top, to end up right back on Elizabeth’s Way. Unless, he really was in Heaven but his Heaven was spectating the world going by from the back row.

Paul scanned the vicinity with his hands on his hips and a grimace of utter bamboozlement on his face. After a while he suddenly chirped to himself, “East, West, home’s best,” and looked back in the direction he’d been coming from. Firstly, he tried to revive the bike but it was long gone. So, he set off at a leisurely walk instead in the opposite direction along the road he’d been following; a B road that interconnected tens of estates all along its coiling length. And pretty he soon noticed a chill whistling around his arm, brushing a hand over his jacket only to realise that the ground had shredded the back of his fleeced sleeve in its thousands of tiny teeth and that beneath it his arm was severely bloodied. Half it had been consumed by the road, the remaining pink tissue mottled with weeping, broken vessels. But it didn’t hurt at all. He twisted his arm and held it in front of him, his two large front teeth slowly becoming more visible as his lip curled away in awaiting awe of his gnarly new scar. Paul tilted his head and frowned pensively into the middle distance. Could you get a scar after you died? Or would it just bleed perpetually, forcing him to bear the image of his demise like the stories you’d hear of headless horseman forever riding their phantom steed throughout the night to find their severed head, or victims of unjust hangings speaking through cracked, wheezing windpipes and clawing at thick, purple bruises that wrapped around their necks until their spirit was set free. How would his soul be set free, he wondered? If the stupid dunce who’d pulled out was given a proper sentence at court, perhaps that would do? And if that was the case, he supposed he’d be stuck here forever.

All things considered, he was taking this better than he thought he’d have and had to admit a certain proudness of his stoicism. Likely though, it was the lingering effects of hemorrhagic shock rather than a hardy personality which he knew he usually lacked. And if that was the case, if he stayed in the state that he died forever, then that blasé, unaffected feeling would stick forever too.

Rounding the corner of Begonia Place, he searched and found the deep plum purple door of his house in an instant, the flower boxes clinging to the ground floor windows like tears on their lids and still overflowing with shrivelled, dead vines. Thank God it was still there. Why it wouldn’t have been when everything around remained the same, but alas he was overcome with relief regardless. Remained the same but different. Imperceptibly different beyond his fleeting looks, his cursory glances to an environment he’d grown too comfortable in.

Only now, here on the corner of the street and lingering by the hedge of the house at the mouth of the cul-de-sac, did he realise that if his parents and Michael knew about what had happened to him, they’d be shattered by grief. And he didn’t know, all things considered, if he’d be ready to see that. He’d seen Mum cry when Gran had died and he never wanted to see that again. He didn’t know if he’d even have the power to send them a sign either. If Mum was to be believed, he could send her a jay’s feather, like her mother sent her butterflies, to bring her some comfort…Yeah…She’d know it was him if a saxe feather found its way onto her windowsill…if he was able to pop ‘Blue Jay Way’ on the platter just to be doubly sure…Now all he had to do was catch one. If he even could. And he very much doubted his corvid catching abilities.

Dad wouldn’t cry. He wasn’t that kind of man. But he’d have a supportive hand on Mum’s shoulder all the same, muttering a mantra over and over again to her deaf ear in his gruff, Northern drawl, “Stay strong, Mabel. Come on now, no use cryin’. It’s not gonna bring ‘im back.”

And God, Michael. What an earth would Mike do? Paul hoped he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life crying. He did enough of that already. Paul would if it were the other way round. He’d cry until the sun went down, pause to take a breath, repeat steps one and two until it came right back up again. But he’d also rib him something fierce and he honestly hoped Mike would do the same for him; something that would make his Dad snicker. He could just hear his dopey voice, “What car did that bloke wrap around him again?…A Mini Moke, was it? Don’t know what all t’fuss is about, I’d say Pauly did him a favour.” And the thought of that alone filled him with enough bittersweet anticipation that a weak smile came to his lips and the hope that blossomed in his chest carried him steadily to the front door. He never thought a person could be so glad to see their sibling’s face as he was just waiting to see Mike’s ugly mug.

The house upon his entry was the same but different. The Yale lock thunked like a cannon shot, practically shaking the paper from the walls. The same wallpaper that matched the carpet, sofa and armchairs in brown and orange floral print. It had been like that for as long as he remembered and was just the same as he’d left it no more than a half hour ago. The television was off but still there, enclosed in its honey-brown wooden cabinet and the shelves that lined the walls still carried Gran’s collection of china cats, dogs, horses and the odd hedgehog or pig. But his eye was sharp enough, after all he’d looked at them every day of his life for the last twenty-two years, to see that all of the photos (bar the one of Gran and Grandad on their wedding day) were gone. The awful one of him from junior school with the horrific ersatz Beatle haircut his mum had earnestly attempted to replicate, but which made him look more like Cilla Black, was absent, thank God. So was the one of his brother from the same year when he’d actually been allowed to go to the barber’s, what with being the older brother, and came back with perfectly neatened sideburns that he’d newly earned the ability to grow earlier in the year and layered shaggy hair that made him look like a spottier, scrawnier version of Mick Jagger. Nonetheless as cool as anything in twelve-year-old Paul’s eyes. And in the space beside the one of his grandparent’s wedding day, the space usually occupied by the same subject of Mum and Dad, instead was an image of a man and woman he’d never seen before. Sepia film and clearly taken long, long ago judging by their clothes.

“Mum?” Paul traced the ground floor, his footsteps creaking eerily on the woodworm weakened planks beneath the foggy carpets. He stared through the damp-spotted glass overlooking the kitchen sink and squinted to see if she was worrying her vegetable garden again. And she was. But not kneeling in the fog of the pale garden. Mabel dug the soil and trimmed the stems of a garden beyond his able perception.

He knew Mike was still on leave until Sunday. He’d probably still be asleep knowing him, so Paul made a purposeful effort to jump up each step as he ascended the stairs, holding each rail with straightened arms and slamming both feet down like a bucking horse in hopes of shattering the otherworldly barrier and drawing him from his room. If even just to watch on in inane amusement to see how he reacted. Maybe that was the sense of humour that came naturally to you once you shuffled into this eternal plane. A final, heavy thud settled him on the landing where he waited, frozen in juvenile anticipation. And waited. And waited. A pointless errand that had drawn him away from where his brother truly resided. From the room right below his feet where Michael idly watched from the sofa as scenes painted themselves across the telly’s glass.

Irked by Mike’s pig ignorance, Paul swung his bedroom door wide open. Something was wrong. The wall; all the cutouts he’d taken from Mayfair and Penthouse and taped shoddily to his walls in a massive and rather impressive collage (concerning his multi-year dedication to his craft rather than the subject matter) had vanished. Gone and leaving the bare, magnolia paint beneath. The bed had been translated from a cobble of metal rods to an ornate and handcrafted oak frame that clearly bore the love of its creator. Paul felt a void open up in his stomach and the eager grin of his brother’s arrival fell from his face as he hurried back down the stairs, slinked through the narrow hall and threw open the front door. Taking a few tentative steps backwards, he looked the front of the house over in a purposely slow-witted manner like he was waiting for something glaringly obvious to slap him across the mouth. Seventeen Begonia Place. Plum front door. Two stories. Flower boxes on the ground floor windows. It was his house alright.

Coming back in with a slam of the door, he returned to the lounge and plonked himself heavily onto the sofa, fingers on his temples. The only way Mum and Mike both wouldn’t be here was if they’d found out about his demise and travelled to wherever his body now lay.

He checked his watch. Face cracked, hands paralysed at nine-thirty-one. He sighed as he removed it and then locked it in a judgemental stare as if it had betrayed him. Regardless of where his body had ended up, Dad would be back eventually for work in the morning. Not even the death of his son would be a good enough reason for those autocrat bastards to give him a day off. So Paul supposed he’d just have to wash the remains of today away and wait for the lock to holler his father’s return.

Despite everything, being confronted by the sight of his mangled and warped corpse not even an hour after he’d been split from it seemed all too much to bear just now. And it’d be nice in the meantime to get an answer regarding this gaping, oozing crater on his forearm and its ability to reform into the familiar image of his limb or not.

Paul woke with a start in utter darkness. He could barely remember how he’d got here. He couldn’t remember if what he’d had a shower yet or if he’d negligently slept the day away. He couldn’t think if he’d already showered ten times over or if the frames clicking through his mind were merely distorted and jumbled visions of days gone by. Flickering and bubbling at the vignetted edges as they melted under his scrutiny. Perhaps futile visions conjured up in a desperate, dying mind were susceptible to buckling under the weight of the acquiescence of reality.

“Please God, just be in hospital,” he begged. If he’d already accepted the reality of his death, he’d have no problem accepting the reality that instead, he was caught between sleeping and waking and that he’d just have to wait until he decided to open his eyes.

Paul waited. And waited. And waited. Waited for the details to come creeping from the shadows. His gaze fell into pits where voids of darkness gathered beyond the discernible light-catching corners and edges of things jutting out at conflicting angles, but almost immediately parted on the television’s glass. Shimmering ever so slightly, catching a reflection from somewhere and twinkling brighter than the matte black infinity of everything around. The shelves soon followed, tentatively revealing themselves to him as if he’d scold their appearance, and then the cats, and the dogs, the horses, hedgehogs and pigs, the picture frames and edges of the armchairs at his left and right which broke them apart from the surrounding flowers growing more and more tangled across the floors and the walls. He assumed this wasn’t the first time…probably.

After the day of the accident, the Monday, when he had showered and found his arm did indeed return to its usual self, he’d reposed downstairs to assist himself with itemising out everything he could think he’d have to check, change and adapt to now he was truly gone. He’d slipped into unconsciousness on his first sentry too and woken to find the house still silent and bare. Every night since, he’d waited for his family’s return. But the lock never turned.

He’d trekked to the hospital on the Tuesday afternoon, hoping (after he’d impatiently come to terms with the thought) to find Mum, Dad and Mike surrounding his lifeless body on the stark white sheets of an ICU bed, ogling monitors mimicking his feeble heartbeat or simulated breaths. But he wasn’t there. And neither were they.

Upon his return, he’d spent the evening desperately scrawling messages across every mirror in the house, going over and over them every morning, every night. He’d knocked things from the shelves, slammed the front door over and over again until he’d nearly smashed it from its hinges, jumped up and down, up and down the stairs, but nothing allowed him to glimpse them for even a second.

Whether, on the other side, they could see all of this, he didn’t know. Regardless, he continued to stumble about the lifeless husk that remained of his house like a blind man without his cane, rearranging everything that wasn’t nailed down, feeling around for any hint of a living soul but grasping nothing. Not even the taste of a memory. Perhaps if he’d brought something more with him than what remained in his mind, a tape in his jacket pocket of their voices, talking about the most mundane of things, a photo in his wallet of them all taken in the dullest of places…If he could merely glimpse a scrap of a joke Mike had never told, the dulcet hum of a tune Mum had never sung, the rustle of a newspaper Dad had never read. It had taken something as cruel as this to make him understand that death, like life, was nothing more than an endless string of ‘what if’s’, whatever side you were on. Because, the thing they don’t tell you is that as much as a father and mother have lost their son, a sibling his brother and friends a good companion, you loose them all when you die.