Day Eight to Day Fourteen (Time Passes)

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

Candle

Here's the image to take us from day eight to day fourteen, then. The candle. It's symbolism is simple. It is the sun, and the spirit of man. It is the light in the dark places we have to pass through. It's organic, like we are, and it burns until there is nothing left except waste, all the finer parts released into the air. Even a chimp with a typewriter could talk about the candle. I'm going to tell you about three of them specifically;

One is a Christian candle. They have their names, shapes, sizes, but I can't speak of them with either certainty or clarity. This one burns in front of a photograph of someone's son, as it once burnt every night, and now burns twice a year on the anniversary of his birth, in high summer, and again on the anniversary of his death, at Christmas. It's light is the light of memory. It is just one of thousands, but an important one.

The second is a secular, superstitious candle. It burnt for two weeks in the window of a small house, the curtains drawn, it's dim light illuminating nothing but the window. It, too, was a candle of hope that burnt until all hope was gone and then it was extinguished. I don't think anyone could say, consciously, why it was there. But it burnt each night from sunset to sunrise, and nobody in the house commented on it. It burnt for years after as well, but only it's spirit, illuminating the dark bedroom no longer shared.

The third candle looks plastic, dark blue, breaking the icing around it into crazy, cracked ice. Thin ice. There are seven others, but this candle burns cold. Even with the lights off, it gives no warmth and no illumination, unlike it's clustered brothers. Someone, somewhere, is celebrating a birthday tonight. To begin with the celebrations go well - even though there are dangerous words about it being "too close to Christmas." The family is together again. Hurrah!

* * *

Watch the countdown, like time-lapse photography. The sun falls heavily into the ocean, and drags itself - half asleep, complaining - out of it's bed over China each day. The door snaps open - tick, click, snap - the image is revealed, savoured for a moment, then forgotten. Or eaten. The sun tramps across the sky shedding light and joy and tired as hell. When it falls into the ocean it breathes a sigh of relief, but it is apprehensive because it knows it has to be up early in the morning.

We'll get the boring images out of the way while our hero sleeps. There's a lot going on in his head, right now, and not all of it was put there by people who love him. He's mired in sleep, caught fast in it, sunk beneath a drift of crisp sheets and heavy blankets. He sleeps the sleep of the just, and of the unjust.

He has a wallet, so the police can identify him. His friend is detained, released, detained again and released again. They need our hero to wake up, to confirm what happened, who attacked him. Needless to say, there are no witnesses to anything other than a normal night out for a couple of mates. The officers are a little excited, perhaps guiltily. The night turned unnaturally cold, the night our hero was found lying in an alley bloodied and battered and bruised. There is a knife-wound on his hand and for a moment they hope . . . but it is an old knife wound. Just a beating. There is some hope that it might have been over drugs, or guns, or illegal tobacco but it looks more and more likely every time they look that it was over a woman.

If there hadn't been the telephone call, our hero would have frozen to death and then it might have been murder but as it is . . . Nobody makes a career on Grevious Bodily Harm. Well, not a legal career, anyway.

Nurses bustle around his bed, barely standing still long enough for the camera to catch him. A blossom of flowers and cards unfolds on the bedside cabinets. The sun sends elasticated shadows up and down the wall. Now and again a figure will appear for a moment or two; they are a blur of head-twitches, nervous gestures, uncomfortable shifting. Never more than one at a time, and they do not stay long.

At night, he sleeps by night-light, like he did when he was small, and when he was medium, and which he stopped only when he came away from home and started spending time with people who didn't know him. Does it change your opinion if I tell you that something bad happened to him when he was younger, something so bad he has never recovered from it? That it weeps in him like a wound, however much he forces himself to forget it, buries it under mundaneity and the shallow excess of the young? It shouldn't change your opinion, not really. Each man is the sum of his experiences, and that's all there is to it. Is one bad event enough to forgive a lifetime of wasting, using, discarding?

It would be nice to tell you that a guardian angel rests above his bed, watching him and protecting him from harm with a sword of fire. But to tell you that would be a lie, and you've had enough of those from our hero. Instead, let me only remark that his sleep is untroubled and you can draw your own conclusions; he rests well in this hospital bed, in the sort of private room they reserve for those who might be dangerous.

On some level, at least, these doctors and nurses know that our hero could be dangerous. They are wiser than we give them credit for, perhaps.

(Later)

I woke up at 14:59 on Monday 15th of December. My dreams, at least, remain my own.

I was hurt, but not in pain. I was tired, but clear-headed. I was sick to death, but aware.

I was surprised (and maybe a little disappointed) to be alive. The Police spoke to me at length; they wanted me to accuse Gavin, wanted it to have been about something real rather than the pathetic stupidity it had really been about. I refused to finger him. I told them a farmyard tale of shell-suited hooligans. They asked why I still had my wallet, and I made up more lies.

Didn't I tell you? I'm good at lying