And was gone even before he died.
He sits up, putting his feet on the dusty hardwood floor of his childhood home. He scratches his fingers through his hair and is surprised to find how short it is, almost military short, way shorter than he’d ever had it in real life. He stands and brushes away the dust from the big mirror hanging over the settee.
He’s shocked by what he sees. He looks like a war refugee. Hair buzzed down to almost nothing, his face alarmingly thin, his eyes looking like he’s never slept in a safe place in his life.
This just gets better and better, he thinks.
He had come back into the house after peeling the bandages from his skin. By that point, the exhaustion was overwhelming, settling on him like a heavy anesthetic. It had been all he could do to get to the larger settee, shake the dust off the blanket draped along the back, pull it over himself, and fall into a sleep that felt more like being knocked out.
And he had dreamed. Or relived. Or whatever.
It tugs again at his chest as he stands there, so he wraps the blanket around himself like a beach towel and goes into the kitchen again, with a vague thought of trying to scrounge dinner. It takes him a moment to notice that the light from the back window has changed.
The sun is rising. Again. It’s another dawn outside.
He’s slept through almost an entire day and night. Then he wonders again about how time might pass here in hell.
If it did at all. If this just wasn’t the same day all over again.
After an easier time with the can opener – he’s feeling a little stronger for the rest – he opens a can of beans. They taste unspeakable, and he spits them out. He checks the cabinet for more soup.
There isn’t any. In fact, there isn’t much of anything, unless he starts eating mummified pasta. Not feeling very hopeful, he turns the knobs on the stovetop to see if he might be able to boil some water, but no gas comes through the elements, and there’s no electricity either when he tries to power up the dusty old microwave. None of the overhead lights come on when he flicks the switches, and the refrigerator has a faint smell even with the door tightly shut, so he doesn’t risk opening it.
For lack of anything else, he drinks from the taps again. Then he makes an annoyed grunt and gets a glass from the cabinet. He fills it with water that looks almost clear now and drinks it down.
Okay, then, he thinks, trying to keep the fear from rising again. What’s next? What’s next, what’s next, what’s next?
Clothes. Clothes are next. Yes.
He still can’t face going upstairs – he doesn’t want to see his old bedroom just yet, not the one he shared with Owen, not in this house – but he goes back to the main room, remembering a cubbyhole under the staircase. Behind the dining table, two small swing doors in the wall lead to a lifeless washer and dryer, silent as sleeping cattle in their stalls. He lets out a cry of delight when he finds a pair of gray sweatpants in the dryer. They’re baggy but they fit. There are no shirts to be found, and nothing at all in the washing machine except a smell of ancient mildew, but he finds a sports jacket hanging on a hook. It’s tight around his back and the sleeves barely reach past his elbows, but it covers him. He scrounges around on the dark shelves built into the cubby and finds one well-worn black dress shoe and one giant tennis shoe that don’t come close to matching but are at least for opposite feet and big enough to wear.
He goes to the mirror in the main room. He looks like a homeless clown, but he’s no longer naked.
All right, he thinks. Next thing.
Almost exactly at that thought, his stomach rumbles unpleasantly, and not with hunger. He finds himself rushing out back again to a corner of the tall grass for some far more disgusting bodily functions. He cramps painfully, more than what would come from chicken noodle soup and a mouthful of spoiled beans. It’s a huge gnawing hunger, so big it’s making him sick.
Waiting out the stomach cramps is bad enough, but he feels increasingly uneasy out here in the back, with the pile of bandages still coiled on the deck, the unreasonably tall grass, the barbed wire fencing up on the embankment.
The prison beyond.
As soon as he’s able, he gets back inside and manages a halfway-decent wash with some solidified dishwashing liquid and cold water from the tap. There’s nothing to dry himself with, so he just waits, wondering what to do now.
Here he is. In a dusty old house with no food left in it. With clothes that are a joke. Drinking water that’s probably poisoning him.
He doesn’t want to be outside, but he can’t stay stuck in here either.
What’s he supposed to do?
If only there was someone here to help him. Someone whose opinion he could ask. Someone he could share this weird burden with.
But there isn’t. There’s only him.
And he can see the empty kitchen cupboards.
He can’t stay here, not without food, not in these inadequate clothes.
He looks up at the ceiling, thinking for a moment that he could explore the rooms above.
But no. Not that. Not yet.
He stands there, silently, for a long, long while, as the rising sun farther fills the kitchen.
“Okay,” he finally says to himself. “Let’s go see what hell looks like.”
11
As he pulls open the front door, he notices that the switch that keeps it from locking is flipped. He’s been in the house all night with an unlocked door. Even though there’s no sign of anyone else here, this worries him. He can’t let it lock when he leaves, though, or he’ll never be able to get back inside. He steps out into the low sunshine, pulling it closed behind him, hoping it at least looks locked.
The street is the same as yesterday. Or whenever that was, probably yesterday. He waits and watches. Absolutely nothing changes, so he walks down the steps, down the path where he – Where he what? Woke up? Was reborn? Died? He hurries past the spot and reaches the small gate to the sidewalk. He stops there.
It’s still quiet. Still empty. Still a place stopped in time.
He tries to remember more of the neighborhood. To his right is the train station, where there was nothing much more than the station building itself. But to his left is the way to the High Street, where there used to be a supermarket. There had been clothes shops there, too, he thinks. Nothing fancy, but better than what he’s wearing.
Left it is, then.
Left.
He doesn’t move. Neither does the world.
It’s either go left or stay inside and starve, he thinks.
For a moment, the second choice seems the more tempting.