Chance Encounters...

This week at Black Company we created stories inspired by the idea of chance encounters...I've tried to capture them...you'll need a cup of tea and half an hour or so...

Heartfelt

I’m sat by Sally’s bedside fixated on her breathing.  It’s regular now and gratifyingly easy… albeit aided by the tubes that are attached to her face and body…I can’t help but be repulsed by the sites where man made plastic meets human flesh and I’m embarrassed by my squeamishness. 

I’m trying to come to terms, or at least catch up, with what’s happened today.  This morning everything was as it should be…we’d spent too long over breakfast planning our weekend…a trip to the market, a bbq, maybe invite some friends…maybe keep ourselves to ourselves and relish each others company…so she was late as she left the house…grabbing her keys as she hurried to work.

I’d listened to the slam of the door and the engine of her car start…the latter is not a certainty of our day…I added visiting a garage to our weekend plans…replacing her car to something roadworthy was a task that was well overdue.  Slowly, still warmed by the echoes of her presence I cleared away the breakfast debris from the table and started to think about what I needed to achieve in my day…

The phone call came about half an hour later…as the semi familiar voice of an acquaintance from town spoke to me from the scene, I felt my chest contract…I felt my vision tunnel and blur…I grabbed my keys and drove automaton like to the hospital…

Since then I’d literally been on a rollercoaster, unable to think more than a moment ahead, too frightened to contemplate an uncertain future.   Listening to police, to doctors, to the internal voices of my own fears…but now all was quiet, the car crash that had left her unconscious wasn’t going to take her from me and in fact might have allowed me to keep her for longer…

Her eyes flutter…there is panic in them…I gently shhhh her as she hoarsely call my name…”Eddie…”

“Shhhhhhh…it’s ok…there was an accident….but it’s going to be fine….Sally it’s fine…”

Thankfully the doctor cuts in, “Sally, you have been in surgery, while we were attending to your injuries we found a problem with your heart.   It’s been there since you were born, it could have been triggered at any point and it could have been fatal.  It could have caused a heart attack at any moment, but we’ve fixed it, there’s nothing to worry about now.”

I pick up the conversation, she needs me to tell her this, “Sally it’s going to be fine, you’re going to be fine.”

She looks distressed…again she talks to me, her voice so uncharacteristically weak… “I don’t like it Eddie, Eddie I want to go home”

“Soon,” I reassure her and she sinks back onto the hospital pillows exhausted by her momentary exertion and the room is still and quiet once more.   I’m left alone again with only my thoughts as company… Unable to escape from the catastrophic idea that something so precious can be lost in just a heartbeat…

The Toss of a Coin

The young man is sat on the unforgiving hospital seat lost in his own world.  His hands are clasped; his bowed head is trying to process the fact that he is, for the moment, a father.  His heart is trying to come to terms with the fact that he might lose both his wife and his brand new daughter.  Only time will tell what is to become of him and the family he had hoped for.

He is suddenly surprised by the presence of two men. There is one sat on either side of him.  He has no memory of them approaching, no memory of them sitting down beside him but nonetheless they are there…he is struck by the polarity of them but even that only partially infiltrates half his brain.  Never has he had to process so many thoughts and feelings and his response is a kind of inertia born from being entirely over-whelmed.

The man in black is talking…he seems to be telling some sort of story.  “Life and Death show up to the same event, ” he is saying, “Their charge: To take control of the life, or death, of a female, a human female.”

The man in white takes over, “They arrive at the hospital to find an unanticipated choice open to them.  For the woman in the room they have been sent to has just been delivered of a female child…and so they are left with a conundrum…which human female do they claim?   Who do they choose?”

The young man listens, he is too spent, too exhausted to respond or remove himself but is captured by the men’s story…he awaits the next installment.

“The easy option would be to take one and leave the other but neither are in the mood to compromise and so they come to an agreement.  They will flip a coin…the winner would claim both lives…both mother and daughter would be taken by the winner, by the chance victory.” Continued the man in black.

White continued, “Happy with the arrangement the men search for a coin, a resource available to neither…in the same moment they realise that neither were in a position to flip the coin, both having so much at stake.

“And so they search for someone to help,” said Black, “Someone who has what they need and someone with something invested in the outcome but who wouldn’t be able to make a decision.”

The young man looked from side to side…he had a sense that there was an expectation being placed upon him but his head and heart were to full to decipher exactly what was needed from him…

“Do you have a coin?”  asked Black

“Yes.” He answered as he fished a pound coin from his pocket

“Can you flip it?” asked White

“Yes,” he answered and threw the coin high in the air…only as it span did he realise what he had done…

Not Again

This story takes place on a grey morning and at a station attached to public transport, which makes everything more grey…

The girl of the story is waif-like; vulnerable…probably in her early twenties but almost childlike.  She sits on the bench looking to a future that for the first time she believes she might have a chance of…she allows herself to wallow in anticipation, any minute now Joe will be back and then they can start their journey together…she sits back and smiles to herself savouring unfamiliar hope.

Her dreamlike state is interrupted as someone joins her, he sits at the other end of the bench unburdens himself of his bags and checks his phone, their eyes meet and he smiles.  It is a simple interaction.   The newcomer’s smile asks for nothing, it’s just an instinctive, human response.  Something about him jars though, tugs at her mind…they have met before but she can’t remember where.  She tries to find the memory but it is elusive.

The familiar stranger leans a little towards her, he is about the same age as her, she is drawn to his gentleness, his humility, to his open, honest face.  He asks, “Have I seen you before or am I just…” He gestures to his head as if questioning his sanity and looks relieved when she nods and smiles, she pauses unsure how to continue when she is interrupted. 

A bottle of lucozade is put onto her lap and she feels Joe kiss the top of her head, “They didn’t have anything else you liked, so…” She giggles and realises this is something she has only done since he came into her life.  She looks up at him, the other man forgotten as she follows Joe’s journey to sit next to her and relishes in the feeling of sinking against him. 

It’s a shock when he suddenly tenses; she is instantly alert.  He is looking at the man on the other end of the bench with eyes she hasn’t seen before.  His hand is now on her leg in a gesture that indicates possession.  There’s undiluted hatred in his voice when he asks his one word question “Again?” Turning to the other man, she’s shocked by his sudden absolute sadness, his posture now bowed and troubled, “Joe?” she asks her companion but he doesn’t respond just continues to stare at the source of his anger.

With a slow sigh the newcomer gets up and picks up his bags to walk away.  Again she turns to Joe a thousand questions in her eyes but his only answer is a brittle shake of the head. 

She sits back on the bench cursing herself for believing that anything could be perfect.

Searching

I am sketching something that had floated in my mind in the early hours of this morning.  My stall is set up and it’s too early for any customers.  I enjoy this part of the day when I can draw what I want to draw instead of the demanding expectant faces of London tourists.  Later in the day if it’s quiet I fret at the lack of custom and so cannot be creative but at this time in the cool air of the city morning it’s almost like I have permission to indulge in something artistically fulfilling.  I’m hoping I can finish it before my first customer pitches up to have their portrait painted.

There’s already something disturbing my sense of serenity though and I look up to locate the source.  Two men, young, possibly students, are arguing…I watch them as they fervently debate something obviously important to them, so important they have forgotten they are in public and have no idea they are being observed.

“We can’t just go,” repeats the taller one, his voice is the most urgent…he is tall and slim and fuelled by anxiety.

“And we can’t just put our lives on hold indefinitely,” retorts the slightly smaller man his tone is definitive, “We have to go home sometime, with or without him.”

I revise my first assumption they aren’t students.  Neither belong here even temporarily, they are strangers to the city and struggling to cope in alien surroundings.

The tall one is countering, “He’s your best friend Will and he’s my brother.  I won’t leave him.”

“If he wanted to be found we’d have found him.”

“It’s never as simple as that.”

“Okay,” The one called Will submits, “We’ll stay, one more day.  We should go to the police station and check in with them again.”

I quickly avert my eyes as they engage with their surroundings and cast about for someone to help them.  They approach me, the taller one drawn in to my pictures I have displayed on the stall as Will talks to me. “Can you tell me the way to the nearest police station?”  I give directions as best as I can but the tall one interrupts bluntly, he’s pointing to a picture I did yesterday.  It’s of a man’s face, a man haunted by something he can’t escape.  “This picture, you painted it?”  I nod, “The person you’ve painted, they were here?”

“Yesterday” I answer

“Will, look at this.”

Their eyes fixate on the picture and then both sets are on me.  “This is important,” Will says, “We’re looking for this man, he’s my friend and his brother.  He left home a week ago and someone sighted him on a coach heading here.  We need to find him, something must be wrong, he’s never done anything like this before.  We want to help him.”

The brother cuts in, “Is there anything you can tell us, anything that might lead us to him?”

I consider for a moment before answering, “He sat with me for most of the afternoon, I remember thinking how sad he was…he said very little but when I asked what brought him here he told me he was trying find something to live for, that he had nobody in the world, that he was utterly lost…then he was quiet for a long time until he left, without his picture.” 

My audience is shaken, this wasn’t what they were expecting, “Did he say where he was staying?”  Asks the brother, “No,” I reply, their shoulders drop in disappointment.  They start to turn as I remember something, “Wait, he said something about St Paul’s.  That although he didn’t believe, he was spending time there in the hope of finding faith.” 

They are moving away towards the Cathedral before they have finished thanking me and are gone in an instant, weaving their way through the gathering mass of humanity that populate the streets of London day in day out.   The faces of the crowds change but the cumulative needs and wants remain the same.  I find myself wondering how my enquirers day will end…in happiness or tragedy…it seems to me it could easily go either way.  More insistent is the deeper thought, of how someone so loved can think themselves so alone…it’s a thought that will haunt me for some time to come…

Anything Could Happen.

Five hours into the flight and the passenger next to Sadie asks the attendant for another…she quietly tallies his total as at least 6 whiskies and she couldn’t be certain but she thinks the first couple had been doubles.  Somehow she doesn’t think he’s the type for whom this is a normal situation – he is neither unkempt or laddish enough…something is definitely bothering him…in the time that it has taken her to follow this thought process he’s noticed the attention she’s been paying him…she smiles apologetically worried she might have created an awkwardness which would almost certainly become unbearable in the remaining two hours until they get to America.

“You’d think by this time I would have settled.” He says by way of an explanation

“Is there something bothering you?” She returns

“Just flying, I hate it…always have”

“I just look at the flight attendants, if they look Ok I can relax.”

“Doesn’t work for me…I’m too freaked out by the certainty that anything can happen,” he takes in her bemused reaction which seems to fuel further explanation, “My friend Andy went on holiday and never came back, nobody could tell me what happened.  I never saw him again.  Now you can’t tell me in a world where that happens you can afford to feel secure.” 

Sadie isn’t sure she believes him but she also doesn’t think he is someone who would lie.  She listens carefully as he continues to try and solve the puzzle he has presented her with, “That sense of loss is still crystal clear, I was in hospital at the time, I had to have a kidney transplant and I couldn’t work out why he didn’t visit. This friend who only weeks before had offered to donate his kidney to me, didn’t even bother to see how I was ”

Suddenly she was thrown back in time eight years to a hospital in Manchester.  Her arm had been badly broken from a bicycle accident and she had spent the night under observation.  That night doped up on morphine to kill the pain she had half awoken to some kind of crisis in the bed next to her.  She asks the question almost before she knows she’s going to, “Which hospital were you in?”

 “St Michaels, in Manchester.” She almost gasps at his reply, “It was eight years ago, you’d think I would have been able to move on by now.” He looks down for a moment weighed down by so much sadness and then stands up, “Excuse me.”

As he walks down the aisle, unsteady on his feet Sadie closes her eyes recapturing the scene from her youth.  She’d been awoken by the sound of monitors in overdrive and lots of pairs of feet moving fast.  Nothing had clarity as a result of the side effects of what she had been given to null the pain.  There had been a flurry of activity, lots of unfamiliar sounds and words she didn’t understand and then everything had gone silent apart from the sound of a woman crying.  Submitting to the drugs she’d started to drift back to sleep but not before she heard an urgent whisper, “We can never tell Chris the truth, this was supposed to be Andy’s gift to him…we can never tell him what happened.”

In the morning the bed next to her was empty and in the complexities of getting home she had forgotten about the half heard events of the night but obviously it had stayed in her memory waiting for this trigger. 

Now it had come to the surface she felt like it was too big to hold in but how could she start such a conversation.  There was no reason why the two stories were even related.  She tries to calm herself as her fellow passenger makes his way back up the plane, he pauses before he sits down, “Look I’m sorry, giving you my life story…can I start again.”  She smiles weakly as he continues, “My name’s Chris, it’s nice to meet you.”  He sits down awaiting her reply but at that moment Sally can’t bring herself to speak.

In a moment…

George checked his watch again and registered his sense of injustice that it was only one minute since he’d looked at it the first time…it felt like 10minutes.  He hated waiting, a lot, and he hated waiting more when there wasn’t a good reason for having to wait.  The barista chatting up the pretty girl at the front of the queue did not constitute a good enough reason.

He sighed, his impatience audible and craned to see if there had been any progress.  The fact that three customers still remained between him and his double espresso tightened his already taut temper.

After another minute had slowly ticked by with no movement George couldn’t contain his irritation any longer.  “Excuse me, could you hurry it up please.”  The person in front of him turned and smiled condescendingly but apart from that his outburst had no impact.

It was only then that he realised that someone had been watching hime the whole time and that the spectator of his discomfort was laughing at him.  He turned his full attention on her expecting her to be at least a little abashed but instead she just looked at him and waved.

“Glad to provide you with some entertainment,” he muttered

“You need to chill out,” she replied

This was more than he was prepared to accept from anyone, let alone a complete stranger, “I will chill out when the adolescent that is supposed to be serving me coffee gets a grip on his priorities”

“But he’s having a moment…”

“A what?”

“A moment…a space in time when all that matters is that girl in front of him, where the rest of the world doesn’t exist…let them have it, it’ll be over all too soon as it is.”

George considered her words, “You mean they’re falling in love?” he was skeptical but not dismissive.  “Maybe,” she replied, “Maybe it’s just a passing fancy, but either way seems a shame to bring it to a early conclusion.” At this point George was only half listening to her words as somehow in the brief time he had been talking to her he had become mesmerised by the dark brown of her eyes and the way her pale but perfect lips moved as she spoke…his heartbeat had slowed and he no longer felt the need to rail at the injustice of the world.

She smiled at him one last time and started to make her way towards the door at exactly the same point as the man behind him tapped him on the shoulder to alert him to the fact that it was his turn.  George made his order and as the barista, who turned out to be perfectly polite and capable, prepared it for him he was struck with the strangest of thoughts…

The thought was this: That he, George Thompson, a man who prided himself on being practical and unsentimental had just had a moment.  Not only that but also that he had thoroughly enjoyed it.

Close Call

So intent was Kate on alighting the crowded tube that she didn’t immediately realise that the crack she heard on the floor was her phone hitting the deck.  The man who had knocked it out of her hand immediately apologised profusely and was helping her pick up the pieces of it while she was still entirely dazed.  In fact she so dazed that she herself nearly went flying to the floor as a rude woman in a hurry pushed past her to get on the tube.  All of that happened in approximately 45 seconds and when they were over the man and Kate were stood on the platform as the train drove off without them.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again.

“It’s fine,” Kate replied recovering, “There’ll be another one along in a couple of minutes.”

“I just didn’t see you there.”

“Unlike that woman who saw me and just didn’t care.  Don’t worry about it, I shouldn’t have had my phone out, I wouldn’t normally but now they have Wifi down here I was checking my messages…”

She now remembered what had distracted her…a message from her best friend who had cryptically said, “I just thought about you and was worried, let me know you’re ok as soon as you can.”  Kate made a mental note to text back as soon as she was on her way again. 

People were gathering again for the next tube but there was no sign of it…according to the flashing display another should have arrived.  Kate glanced at the man who had started all of this and he smiled awkwardly back, it occurred to Kate that she was more than ready for this whole incident to be a thing of the past and railed inwardly at the lack of the next train. 

Considering her options she was about to forget the whole thing and go up to the surface to walk when she felt a hand on her shoulder.  It was the same man who had bumped into her, he was getting her attention to listen to the overhead announcement, as she listened it repeated the message.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, there has been a fatal collision between this and the next station, please be patient while we deal with the accident.”

Kate would have fallen if the man hadn’t held her until she regained her balance. They looked at each other with no words to say before they parted company knowing they could never forget each other.

Home Truths

Anna was livid, she had turned to her friend in her moment of need and quite frankly she had been let down.  Granted she had rung Rachel at the very last minute, granted she should have thought that maybe she might have plans and granted she had been a bit on the demanding side recently but still, what was the point of having a best friend if they didn’t drop anything when you needed them.

As Aaron had stormed out of her flat after yet another row her automatic response had been to ring Rachel.  Coffee, cake and chats were her sure fire way of feeling better about herself after a fight with her boyfriend and Rachel was always glad to oblige.  Consequently she had been shocked and dismayed when Rachel had hesitated before responding to her demand.  She had other plans apparently, plans that she was not in a position to cancel or even postpone…frustrated didn’t even begin to describe Anna’s mood.

The upshot of it was that Kate had been forced to come to a coffee shop she didn’t know well…and which she had found out since her arrival didn’t sell any of the cake she liked.  On top of that she was going to have to share Rachel with someone called Pip. 

Ten minutes later there was an awkward pause in conversation as the three women having dispensed with greetings and ordering looked at their coffee cups.  It was awkward because Anna was making it so and she didn’t care.  She didn’t like Pip, in fairness she hadn’t really intended to give herself the chance to like her, but Pip’s happy smile and confident demeanour had made it easy to hate her from the outset. 

Suddenly Pip looked straight at her, “I have to ask,” she began, ”Did you used to live in Walworth?” confused, Anna confirmed that she did.  “I knew it!” declared her new acquaintance, “You’re Anna Cleveland!  We went to school together, to junior school and then you moved and we lost touch, of all the coincidences.”

Anna was uncharacteristically lost for words, or actions, or thoughts or the ability to respond as she was thrust back into the world of her idyllic primary school life before exams and makeup and boys and diets had transformed her into the dissatisfied, demanding, bitter woman she had become.  “Oh my God,” she breathed, “Philippa, it’s really you!”  She looked in awe at her once best friend.

“Yes, it really is, it took me a while to recognise you, you look awful,” There was something refreshing about her candidness and then she said what Rachel should have said some time ago, but what perhaps only a childhood friend can get away with, ”What’s going on Anna?  Because whatever it is, you need to sort it out…”