It’s hard to take karma seriously when one is hanging by a thread; suspended, upside down, by a seatbelt. A lifetime of good deeds means nothing when your wife and baby daughter are indistinguishable from the tortured mess of bloodied steel, crushed aluminium and calloused plastic. The lights were in his favor; he had done everything right. Mirror, signal and then crash. The car didn’t even have its headlights on, at this hour! He found it hard to breathe; hard to believe it had ever happened. Yet the world was now upside down and streaked with crimson pain as everything hurt; it was impossible to tell where it hurt more. He couldn’t move anything, just hang limply; the acrid petroleum sweetness burnt his nose and eyes. At first there was a sound of rushing; a mechanical sound of blood coursing through and out his body and then he saw two dots suspended in the darkness, just hanging there like him. In the distance but coming closer, fast. Too fast. It wasn’t blood he was hearing but combustible engine death. A stacked Russian roulette pistol with no way out except to join the two loves of his life.
At what stage do you take umbrage at randomness? In front, at the junction, another light that was getting ready to red-shift. She’d been the victim of every red light that Brighton had to offer. Every crap decision from every arse who ever thought today was the day for a Sunday drive.. ON A TUESDAY MORNING! All the bastard cyclists who made up their own rules, wore their own judge, jury and executioner by way of a helmet-mounted camera and wouldn’t let you forget it. All the pedestrians who ignored the traffic lights completely as if they had absolute right of way over everyone else. It wouldn’t normally be a problem; she was a patient woman, she had to be.
But her mother; hated though she might be… was still the woman that ‘raised her’; was in hospital and in pain, and needed her. Where was she? Stuck at the mercy of a thousand and one arseholes, bastards and cretins. She’d had enough; surely her mother deserved more.. Surely SHE deserved more than this karmic shit storm that contrived to keep her away. No more. Had she not been so single minded she might have been aware of the blue lights. All she saw was red. A crimson fret that obscured everything else except for the accelerator -she was going to beat the lights this time… and indeed she did. But the ambulance that crossed her path might have had a more important reason to be there; that is until she ploughed into it.
Watch out for the next step. Don’t take anything for granted. What do you get when you put the two together? He was a loner and had loved every minute up until now. He had just started a week's holiday and wanted to christen it by walking around Hartfield, the birthplace of Winnie The Pooh. (Part of the allure of being alone was not having to explain himself to anyone!)
He had found a walk published in an old issue of the Mid-Sussex Times and had been following it for some time. It had been raining heavily but he was determined not to let that stop him -he could be very determined when it counted. There was also the major benefit that he hadn’t seen another soul all morning! Everything felt really damp underfoot and his boot had stuck a few times but it added to the fun.. Kind of. He had a walking pole with him which he used to test the ground in front of him every so often. He looked at the newspaper clipping, which had gotten a little damp and harder to read and stopped.
Looking around he had trouble orientating himself. There was a shrinking feeling in his testicles which was more to do with his fear of getting lost than it did being damp and cold. By his reckoning there should have been a style… and fencing. But there was none of that and looking back he even had trouble discerning a path at all, let alone anything in front. It all looked a little too marshy. There was nothing to turn back to and rather than admit defeat he started walking forward at a quicker speed and forgot all about sounding out what was in front of him.
Suddenly there was no solid ground at all, just a foul smelling mire that swallowed him up to his waist before he had a chance to swear. The cold foul wetness shocked him and was ravenous. Before he had a chance to struggle he was deeper still. What was worse, he couldn’t move his legs or feet; he was stuck and getting sucked further in. He shouted out as loud as he could but his cries were swallowed by the wind and rain. What was worse was he realised that no one knew where he was. He wasn’t due back at work until the following week. He was completely lost and still sinking. All this because he wanted to regain a part of his childhood and play pooh sticks. Winnie was indeed a shit!
Monday’s child is full of grace; and she was so proud of her son. He was sleeping now; it had taken her a few hours of patient love and constant understanding. Cutting his first tooth, bless him. The room was cold; the furnishing bare and provincial but theirs. Hubby was working every hour God sent them and they wanted for little. They didn’t live extravagant lives but they didn’t want for nout.
They were provided for and knew that their hardships would be worth it; it had been foretold, hadn’t it? The meek? Well, what were they? She couldn’t stop gazing at his little lordship’s pudgy face; so peaceful now. Many parents would have lost patience or ignored the tantrum and grizzling but how could they? When did they lose empathy? Or did they forget how long they had nursed them in the womb -did they think that their responsibilities ended once they were born? She wondered why many bothered having children in the first place; they couldn’t all be accidents! She looked out the window to the sodden High Street below. She had to remember charity; she had no right to judge others, after all she had not lived their lives… not that she wanted to. She was more than content. Her husband doted on her just as much as he did when they first met, if not more so. He was besotted with their son; the little miracle!
She saw the petrol tanker on its weekly rounds and wished the driver well in this horrible weather. The roads were something awful this time of year but this driver didn’t seem to notice. He was either late or too cocksure of himself, for he was travelling far too fast for such a vehicle. She was transfixed by it all and it was only the sudden, horrific screech making the baby duet in sudden screeching disharmony that made her step away from the window. She was oblivious to the petrol tanker as it overturned; the back end rolling over, scraping across the curb until it crashed underneath her window, spilling five thousand gallons of petrol. Petrol vapors quickly got into the drains and exploded, sending flames belching forth and manhole covers ricocheting upwards. But she was never aware of any of that, save for the sound of a car backfiring, fractured glass and molten death that engulfed the room.
Turn the other cheek. Everyone is somebody else's brother. Did that make him Cain or Able? He had been given every opportunity to be a shit in his life. He had the talents, had the gifts and resisted them at every turn. He had resisted the Church because he wanted to find his own way and, quite frankly, felt that if one was going to turn to a work of fiction then the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy made far more sense. At least that was funny! He dabbled in the occult and spiritualism but realised that they simply traded in one lot of dogma for another -why did no one want to think for themselves?
Whilst in the Spiritualist society he had been told he had ‘great powers’ and could either be a medium or a healer. He was intrigued but after going to the first lesson he was disgusted when the first thing they talked about was how much to charge the punters for their services. He walked out, never to return soon after. He’d been walking his own path now for a few years and it had been a really lonely one until recently. That was until he met her. She was sublime: cheeky, intelligent, independent and she also dug him! WOW… (she was stunningly beautiful as well, which went a long way).
They had seen each other for coffee dates for the last three months; both of them wanted to take things slow to start with: she had been in damaging relationships and wanted this one to work. He was very taken back by this and felt exactly the same. Tonight was the night that he had been invited up to her flat. The first time he had been invited to see her on her own turf, so to speak, it seemed the heavens were aligning in his favor -if he believed in such a thing. It was hard not to though. Ok, he was no longer religious but there were other concepts, such as synchronicity, that did appeal to him. Meaningful coincidences… Thinking of a friend and they ring; that kind of thing.
And it was those thoughts that were occupying his thoughts as he walked the last few blocks to her place. He’d finally found a parking space and, besides which, the walk would give him time to get his confidence up. He was so wrapped up inside his own transcendental thoughts, looking at the ground in front of him, he hadn’t noticed the new friends that had suddenly walked up behind him. He was about two minutes away from her flat and looked ahead of him now. The man walked towards him briskly. He tried to avoid him but there were gentlemen either side of him so he couldn’t avoid a collision. Somehow it never happened; or at least not in the way he expected. The man to his right stepped aside and the other slammed into his shoulder as he walked past. “Arsehole.” were the only words he heard, but he felt something else.
There was nothing in his experience that he could equate to the sensation. It was pain, but sudden, in his gut. A lightening quick, sharp shock and he involuntarily put his hand to the throbbing agony that now spread wetly through his stomach and down his clothes. He had been stabbed. He collapsed, like a drunken marionette and held out his other arm to her flat which was just a few feet away now. They hadn’t even bothered to stop, not even to cross to the other side. They hadn’t even taken anything from him… but at least he knew which brother he was now.
Life is random. If things go well and we survive then someone is watching out for us, or it is good karma. No. Nor do we live under a bad sign, or live wicked lives if things ‘happen’ to us. We try to attribute meaning to these events so we can sleep at night. God must be good; yet how many different religions are there? Can they all be right? If so then surely we must all be going to hell (or are we there already?) How is it we deserve the good things that happen to us but not the bad? Live as if there was no causality save what we bring to the table -there is no cause and effect. Just be aware of where you are; be in the right now because there isn’t any other.
No comments:
Post a Comment