Her Mad Song by C J Halbard

Author:C J Halbard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780473552312
Publisher: C J Halbard
Published: 2021-01-04T16:00:00+00:00

The Itch

The man woke to a screaming tension and rushes of anxiety like he hadn’t felt since the worst days in Seattle. He lay on the caravan floor breathing stale air. Trying to get the knot in his chest to unwind just a little. It was one of those things that, when it wasn’t there, you forgot just how crushing it was. So you could do the basic functions of life without constantly dreading its return. But then on mornings like this when the thing in his chest was writhing, constricting, squeezing him in its vice, it felt as though the world was simply a loop in time, a circle with no solution or exit.

He had been complicit in terrible things and nothing he ever did was going to let them go. He was an imposter on this anaretic planet, something inhabiting the form of a human being but with none of its genuine interior.

A buzzing rose, an infinite swarm of bees outside the greenhouse window that was Tempest Bay—

His chest constricted to what felt like the size of a coin, he was immobile—

But something inside of him coiled back. Breathed hot emergency oxygen into his limbs and mind. Like water in the desert bubbling up from some deep hidden aquifer beneath. It wasn’t much but it was enough and at exactly the right time.

That stubborn spark had kept him alive all these years, had dragged him like a blind mole though tunnels and constrictions and labyrinths of all kinds, an animal that was relentlessly cruelly focused on the simple fact of universal forward motion. Move. Breathe. Eat. Live.

He remembered the functioning of his eyes and opened them.

The soft orange light of the caravan. Muggy with the sleep of three people but warm and morning soft. He loved the 1974 Concord. Loved every aspect of its rickety ceiling and worn fixtures and tiny bed and narrow chintzy optimism. He had never loved any vehicle or object like this before.

No one was here. He gathered his legs and gave himself a moment. His head had been bathed in sweat and left a stain on the old duvet cover beneath. He’d figure out a way to wash it today.

He was grateful, for a moment, that they’d all taken refuge here last night. He could see where Hedy had perched next to Lucia. Three human beings in their own version of a cave, together.

He pulled on his shirt—another thing that needed washing—and emerged into the clifftop light. Later again than he’d thought it was. Clearly his sleep patterns were irregular but he had the strongest feeling for a moment that the actual length of the days and nights was beginning to swing. More like tides than earth rotations.

As his anxiety receded, as the wind up off the beach blew a swirling crosswind over the tower, he was surprised to feel something else moving through him. A restless itch, long forgotten. Something he thought he’d lost.

Lucia and Hedy were both by the memory garden.

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