Chapter 7 - Drifting time.

Has David finally broken after his ordeal, or will his life just reset? Read on to find out.

Chapter 7 " Drifting time.

Stumbling through a street with no one around, how long has it been since I last ate? Of course no one knows, I would say God knows but there is no chance I can believe him after he let my mother die. That thought, not even the full thought stabs a blade of sorrow into my heart, only the words ‘mother die’ is enough to bring me to tears. I do not want to eat, I want to wait until time allows me to be with my mother again, I turn to my left and see a café with cakes in the window, and I do not even have an appetite any more.

At first it was hard, not eating is easy, but then the hard part is the hunger pain, the thought that I could eat and it would all go away. No, I refused to eat and now the pain is gone I am just blissfully walking aimlessly. Waiting. Hoping. Dying.

I turn a corner to go down the street when I notice something lying in the road, the flash of my mother’s corpse lying there hits me and I stumble. I wipe away the tears and pick myself up.

“C’mon David, you can do this, keep going” I say to myself, but why? What am I looking for, answers, revenge, solitude? Again nobody knows, not me not God, but those thoughts can wait as I approach this ‘thing’ lying in the road. A fox, dead. I do not care for how it died but the answers come to me before I even have the idea to question the fox’s death, a huge bite mark on its neck, looks like the fox was bitten from behind, but by what?

“HELP MEEE!” I scream and cry, why does everything I do lead to more question, what about answers?

My thoughts are interrupted by a horrible sound, but the sound itself is not what makes it horrible, it is that the sound is coming from this supposedly dead fox. It’s crying! I look down to the fox to find it looking back at me with a tear in its eye, I look at its wound and then back at the fox, it must be in so much pain. Then without a second I suddenly have the idea that I should put it out of its misery, I pull my gun from my back and point the barrel at its head. Surprisingly the fox doesn’t look at the gun, but at me and just, blinks. The fox is so calm now, like it wants me to put it out of its misery, I close my eyes.

BANG.

Looking through a car with its door open, I see a blanket which is exactly what I was looking for, I make my way back to the fox around the corner. The walk toward the poor creature seemed like for ever but I finally got there and covered the fox with the blanket. I stand up and look at the fox, then the pool of blood forming at the back of it, I think I see something, I focus on the blood and see something written in it.

SAVE HER!

The shock of the message sends me stumbling backward and I fell onto the floor, I lie there for a few seconds ‘save her’, save who? I get back up and look at the pool of blood and there’s no writing, just red. Then suddenly my mind is focusing on one thing, one word, and one person. Bonnie.

 

Hours later I am walking fast, I realise why I am walking now, if I am going to die to be reunited with my mum, I want to walk to my death, in my own time. I find myself stumbling more and more as the hunger slowly eats away at my body and my spirit. Perhaps if I walk far enough I will start having illusions, I might see my mother in the distance and walk to her and hug her one last time before I can join her as one of the dead. Saving Bonnie is impossible, every second that has passed since I left the fox has been about her, been about how I have no idea where she is, whether she can be saved, or even if she is still alive. I stumbled to the ground but this time, I cannot get up, this time I just fall out of consciousness and into a world where my death will finally be served to me.

 

A cold wind brings me back from the waiting room of death and I look around, I still cannot get up, it is night time, I have no idea what actual time but the darkness makes it obvious that it is night. Then I spot him, the man who has been tracking me since I can remember on this hell ride, he is just standing there with a bag in his hand, the bag I forgot to take days ago. I hear something from down the street and I look toward it but see nothing, then I look back at the man and he is gone, like he was never there. Darkness takes me to death’s waiting room once again, but just before I am about to go I hear footsteps heading toward me like thunder and Bonnie’s face flashed before my eyes in my mind…

 

First thing I take in is speaking, all around me, hushed, loud, muffled, all sorts of speaking probably from different distances away and in different situations. But one voice hits me like something I had been looking for and had finally found. A voice only of concern for whoever it is directed to, someone seems to be worrying this man but I have no idea who is causing him to worry.

“I know you are in there stranger, I can see your eyes moving beneath your eyelids, gosh I hope I am not just talking to myself here, all you have done is stay unconscious for the past…” He pauses and I here footsteps cross the room, then a noise like, like paper being lifted and then left to gravity to drag it back to place. Then the footsteps, almost like in rewind, trace where they once were and stop where they started a moment ago. The voice continues,

“…the past week, only now have you shown signs of being alive, c’mon buddy, come back to us.” Nearer the end he becomes less concerned and more pleading for this person to wake up. Wow a whole week, whoever this guy is going to feel more rested than I have ever been when I wake up in the morning. Then suddenly I feel what is like a slap to the face but severely dimmed down a little, only hard enough to feel it but no harm. After about 5 light slaps to the side of my face, whoever was dong that has turned away, followed by a sigh of disappointment. Suddenly even though it was a few seconds after the final light slap some sort of energy sparks from within me. I feel my eye lids become more responsive and they open, slowly but surely, they open and I open my mouth to say something,

“Whoever’s been out for a week better wake their lazy a*s up?” I croaked, but the humorous tone was still noticeable.

“My God he is conscious, someone get the doctor assigned to him in here right NOW!” I hear a man shout, but I could not see his face, he must have looked at me and looked away in the time it took me to look up at him, so all I saw was the back of him. It seems he was just here as sort of a scout for any sign of me waking up while the actual doctor deals with other patients. I hear a door to the right of me swing open and I look toward him, I notice now how sluggish my movements are, but why?

“Hello there hurensohn.” He smiles, the so called ‘doctor’ speaks with a German accent and for some strange reason his voice seems familiar, but I do not recall to have a face to the voice. He has thin round glasses much like the ones seen on Harry Potter and he looks to be about 40 years old, with short grey hair and green eyes, the stress of his job probably gave him premature grey hair. Unlike the ‘scouting’ man, the German has a white doctor’s apron on, which covers the whole of his body that is visible to me. Back to my questioning thoughts, the way he put emphasis on the foreign word which I assume is German makes him seem even more familiar, I am about to question it when the ‘scouting’ guy I saw earlier who called for him speaks up,

“What does that mean?” He asks with a strange look of concern and confusion.

“Oh it is, uh, nothing to you, a little inside joke you see?” He turns to me and smiles again which creeps me out a little.

“You know this young boy, doctor?” The ‘scouting’ man asks, I must admit I am glad he is here, if I woke up to that creepy German doctor I would be having nightmares for a year. Wait a minute! Inside joke?

“No dummy an inside joke, how do I explain, inside me? Any way I am not here to talk to you dummy, please leave while I check…”

“I want him to stay, please” I feel if I had not said anything I would be accepting the invitation to having a years’ worth for nightmares about this creepy German doctor. He looks at me with a confused look, then turns to look at the ‘scout, only now do I take in his facial feature, like his light brown hair, spiked at the front and his blue eyes which gives me the hint that he is young, probably in his late twenties. He wears a red casual shirt and a pair of blue jeans, looking back at his face I realise he has long stubble around his mouth, probably for fashion. He whispers something into the doctor’s ear and the doctor then looks toward the floor, I can tell by looking at him that he is thinking something over.

“Fine!” The doctor randomly shouts. “You can stay giving your current role with this boy. So, boy, can you remember anything before you woke up here only a few moments ago?” I wonder what he means by that, why would there be a possibility that I do not remember anything from before I got here. I am about to explain how I remember what I had for breakfast but then my mind freezes, what did have for breakfast? Or lunch? Or dinner? What time is it? Where am I? Finally all these questions that were lying in wait until this moment pounce on my conscious and demand attention in the form of answers and thinking, but then I hear something.

“Come on boy I have better thing sot do with my time, memory status, now, now, now?” Each time he pronounces ‘now’ I can tell his patience slowly draining away.

“Um, no, no I do not remember anything, where am I?” I turn to the doctor and feel like he will be sympathetic toward my confusion, but he just stares blankly at me and stands up, pushing his chair back in the process.

“I am done here, he holds nothing of interest to me, a totally blank man, dumm Englisch meine zeit!” He retorts the last part in a foreign language I assume to be German while he hurriedly leaves the room, leaving just me and the ‘scout’ alone. Only now do I look around and am confused by something that I was thinking about before I woke up.

“Where’s the patient?” I ask the ‘scout’, he turns to be with a blank expression as if he is unsure of what I mean. “The patient who was has been unconscious for the past week?” His face now changes expression as if he now understand me.

“I am looking right at him silly” He gives me a look that makes me feel a little stupid, but wow have I really been gone for the past week?” I look into the distance of the room and the ‘scout’ noticed me doing it.

“I understand it is hard to take in at first, but in a few hours it won’t bother you too much, not much has change at all, oh and by the way, my name is Craig, I would ask for your name but by the Doctor’s observation I guess you do not remember, right?” He looks toward me with a smile as I look back up at him.

“Uh, yeah I actually do not remember my name.” To be honest the memory thing does not bother me too much, I have a sense that who I was before would have wanted to forget anyway, but his name, ‘Craig’ it stirs some familiarity within me.

 

I am in a wheel chair outside now being pushed by Craig, I still think of him as my personal scout for any signs of life from me, but I call him Craig when talking. When I tried to get up from the bed I was too weak to hold my body’s frame so ‘Scout’ decided I would be better off in a wheel chair and pushed around rather than walking. Something about this place I am in creeps me out, I am looking around and somehow the people creep me out but I cannot put a finger on why. Then I realise after looking at a couple of hundred people on my travels with Craig that every one’s facial expression are what creep me out…

…they are constantly pulling a really big smile.