A shin is a device for finding furniture in the dark.
Colin Bowles.
The Dream
The man sleeping rough behind the bins in the alley stirred and smiled through the pain as the dream kicked in. The dream like the pain had begun about three weeks ago as a small thing. The one, simply himself as a young child, laughing as he built sandcastles on the beach with his dad and the other, as a small niggling pain deep in his chest.
The man is, or was in the past, when he used to have a name, called Greg. Gregory James Lawson to give him his full title, was, until a year ago, a successful estate agent. A family man with a beautiful wife and two grown up sons, he had been happy and contented then. True, the house had felt a little emptier when the boys left home. But with no family to bring up and a business that now virtually ran itself, he and his wife Val had more time to spend in each others company.
Other couples faced with living so closely together would have gotten on each other's nerves. Not Greg and Val, they revelled in each others company, so much so, that it became like a second honeymoon. They took long and frequent holidays and ate out more often. Mostly in small country inns, where they gazed into each others eyes over a pleasant evening meal, before driving home to a night of slow leisurely love.
It was on the way home from one such meal that their idyllic world came to an abrupt and horrifying end. They had dined on a starter of garlic prawns, followed by a main course of monkfish with seasonal vegetables, accompanied by a bottle of house white between them. Since he was driving Greg only drank one glass, and it was a happy slightly squiffy Val that sat next to him as he began to drive home that night. Home was only twenty minutes away but they did not make it, the four-wheel drive with the bull bars, came around the bend on the wrong side of the road and ploughed head on into them.
The driver and the passenger in the other vehicle were killed outright, as was Val; Greg however escaped with only a few scrapes and bruises. Physically unharmed, but mentally scarred, he spent the period between the crash and the funeral in a daze. He withdrew completely into himself and spoke only when spoken too.
After the funeral, while the boys stayed with him, he seemed to come out of it and by the time they flew home, he appeared to be almost back to his old self. But appearances can be deceptive and while they knew he was drinking a bit, they had no idea just how heavily.
*
The downward slope is steep and slippery and Greg slid down it at speed. Within five months the business was gone, the house along with it, and he was out on the street. Not that he noticed; he was so far gone that the memories, once so sharp, were blurring into dark smudges, as he sank into oblivion.
Then one night the first dream came, like a motion picture in his head and with it came the pain. It was the same dream each night, only from a small beginning it grew - as did the stabbing in his chest - encompassing his life frame by frame. Until finally as he looked down on the broken body of his wife, the pain grew so great, that the film snapped and he was no more.
Copyright © Fred Watson 2007
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