Love

What possible explanation could there be, he asked himself irritably, for the incessant creaking of doors in a windless room? This trivial annoyance amplified by deathly silence and interspersed with the constant, out of sync ticking of more clocks than he was aware he possessed, was more than he was willing to endure that day. It was enough to drive him out of the flat and into the increasingly unfamiliar realm of the outdoors. In doing so, he was met with a spectrum of grey that inspired in him a longing to be at sea, casting his net into the vast, unquestioning leagues of the balmy deep, with no-one’s burdens to bear but his own. He had often dreamed he were a mariner, drinking tea on the hull of his modest vessel surrounded by sea mist, with only the cormorant’s call and the howl of the wind in his ears. He yearned for a similar such feeling of total, beautiful tranquility in waking life, but thus far had had little luck. The inane minutia of other people’s worries and concerns flooded his consciousness daily and try as he might to rid himself of them he had all but resigned himself to acknowledging that the flow would never stop. He had tried in earnest and with every fibre of his being to find within himself one iota of concern for what were undoubtedly very pressing issues for those who confided in him, before ultimately drawing the simple conclusion that he just did not care enough. A stitched together likeness of a person would do a better job of feigning interest than he did.

   He felt reassured by the slow moving blankets of dark grey cloud as he walked through the village he called home, taking in nothing that he had not seen ten thousand times before. The clouds were an almost exact projection of what he felt inside and as such, he joined them in floating, directionless, to nowhere in particular. Tired, unfocused and uninspired by the trivialities of a town that eats its young, his only emotion is a bland indifference to it all. In this sleepy fishing village with no fish, hope came to die, dragging those who missed the scant few boats out of there with it. Passing the local, a man sings for no one and stale carcasses don’t turn two blind eyes, instead continuing to put the world to right in ale sodden rasps.  

   In his youth he would silently scorn industrialist man, whose hand decimated acres of forest by the pouring of concrete and tar, eradicating the earths natural beauty and suffocating it. Tolkien-esque images of what majestic sights may once may have existed where now lay only hideous brick and mortar constructs consumed his thoughts, and he very often found that he could not remember how he had come to arrive at a place, or even his reason for being there at all. Remembering these thoughts impelled him to turn his back on the village and head across the field towards the woods. Crossing under the railway bridge by the river at the foot of the field, the sound of birds drew his gaze upwards towards the rust ravaged pipes that ran along the underside of it. As a child, he and his friends would crawl along these pipes as a shortcut to the other side of the river, an endeavor fraught with peril which he knew, when completed, would earn him the respect of his crew. When the pipes vibrated, you knew a train was coming, and if you didn’t hurry across, there was a good chance you would be shaken off into the river below. He harbored a vague recollection of the intensity of being the only one left to cross, halfway along the pipes, and the ominous beginnings of vibrations creeping through his bones. Though the pipes had absorbed the full heat of an August sun, he gripped them so tightly that the flakes of rust cut into his hands. The salt of his sweat burnt his eyes and blurred his vision, rust cut into his flesh and he was almost certain his skin had fused to the pipes. The fear of being shaken off made him gasp for air, which he concealed artfully, and he could feel his pulse in every inch of himself. He had never felt so alive. On nights after days like these he would lie awake, exhausted and scabbed, willing dawn to come sooner so that he could go outside and live again.

   Shortly after passing under the bridge, the path carved out by decades of dog walkers splits in two, one leading back up to field, the other into the dense thicket of the woods. Not through any sense of adventure, but simply because he was drawn to do so by some magnetism from the universe, he beat his way through overhanging branches in roughly the same direction as the river ran. Finding the struggle of progressing through this part of the landscape unusually therapeutic, forty minutes and an unknown distance passed, and he began sensing a strange feeling of familiarity with his immediate surroundings. It was only when he emerged into a small clearing on the bank of the river that he realized why. The closest thing to emotion he had felt in who knows how long welled up inside of him, as the memory of one evening spent here approaching a decade ago now seized his very being and forced him, whether he liked it or not, to relive that moment in it’s entirety.

   Throughout the evening, he hadn’t dared allow himself to think that she was thinking of him the way he was thinking of her. Against the backdrop of a garden party, with the last faltering rays of a midsummer sun resting on her flawless cheekbones, she lit up the sky like a Klimt painting. Only the briefest glimpse of her sent uncontrollable waves of endorphins flooding from his brain, making his whole body ache for her. Cascades of hair that looked every bit as alive as the beautiful, articulate mouth it framed danced like soft winds through a meadow. Running her fingers through her curls in slow motion, she revealed a neck like fresh snow, peppered with barely visible constellations of love spots. He was at once aware of every single one of them, and the distances between them, and would have happily traded every piece of information he had ever learnt for that. It became unbearable for him to look away from her, the prospect of ever having to do so, unthinkable. Unable to conceal his longing gaze with incomprehensible comments to those surrounding him who had long since become just blurry background noise, in the most fleeting glance she took his soul and devastated his entire existence up until that point. Her eyes were undiscovered nebula, the likes of which during ancient times, kings would have waged great wars and lost empires for. His war lay in finding anywhere else in the whole world to rest his line of sight. It was impossible. She had caught him in her eyes and now he would never escape.

   Under the guise of getting a fresh drink, he went inside to the kitchen to compose himself. He had no idea what his next move was going to be, only that if he didn’t get it right, he would regret it for the rest of his life. Through the kitchen window he assessed the scene as subtly as he could, not wanting to give anything away to anyone. She had moved from where she had been sat with her friends and was nowhere to be seen. He would just walk back out and sit a little closer and talk a little louder so that maybe she would say something to him.

   “Hi.”

   The most delicate sound he had ever heard came from behind him. He felt the same burn of terror as when a freight train galloped over the bridge above him mere inches above his head, but in a very different way. He felt the noxious mix of uncertainty, surrendering himself to the whim of whatever cosmic strings had held him up until that moment, and inertia, the knowledge that whatever happened next, his life would never be the same. It was like looking back over his shoulder and seeing a wave bigger than any he had ridden before, that he could paddle into and try to ride, or be dragged along drowning. Instead, turning round he was encountered with the single most awe-inspiring sight he would ever see. Shorter than he had imagined, she looked up at him with a smile of amusement and adventure. A bottle of red wine in one hand, and two champagne flutes in the other, she stepped into him and stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.

   “Let’s go somewhere else.”

   “Ok.”