Through Your Eyes Read online

  Through Your Eyes

  B.J.S.Bal

  Text copyright © 2014 B.J.S.Bal.

  All Rights Reserved.

  For Katy, Freya and Owen.

  Table of Contents

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  Yesterday is today's memory, but tomorrow is today's dream.

  Khalil Gibran

  And as I stand and look down into the chasm, I see stars. Real stars. They glitter golden and green. And I gaze into her eyes as I hold her in my arms.

  And her sightless eyes look back at me.

  It is now I realise that this all needs to end. A final solution?

  I should have gone back earlier, but there are some things I cannot control or alter anymore. To find the point at which it was all created, and end it before it can start.

  Just to get her back once more.

  And for her to see my eyes through hers.

  1

  I watched too many movies.

  Legs. Check.

  Arms. Check.

  Fingers. Toes. Check.

  Chest and abdomen. Check.

  Head...

  As I blinked some of the blood out of my eyes, I could see a sign in disrepair at the end of the passageway in purple neon that said 'ax s.'

  Something had obviously fallen off at some point.

  It was smelly here in the darkness. An odour of rotting oranges clinging to my nostrils, lingering until the taste was on my tongue and throat. A dog barked at the end of the alley, and I felt myself slowly becoming aware of my surroundings.

  Eyes, ears and nose functioning then. Check. Check. Check.

  My name is Sam Berner and I am twenty seven years old. I am a normal guy with a normal job and I do boring, normal things in my normal life. Even my name is boring, old Sam. Or Sammy. Definitely not Samuel. In my work place my name is 'Oi!' I am a normal guy and I pay my taxes. I have no criminal record and I live on my own in a flat in North East London. I am six feet tall and weigh 165 pounds. I run a lot. I am a lowly scientist and work in a London research laboratory called 'Novertium,' where I am a junior physicist. I say work; it's more like study - the study of microscopic particles. We talk 'quanta' and 'energy' and shaking up these particles, then moving them from one position to another. Not great opening lines in pubs. Unfortunately, at this precise moment, this hot shot physicist was shaking, no, quaking in his boots, and the only particles shaking around were those ones made of beer and anxiety churning in his guts.

  There was a flat above me, its light emanating from a window into the dark night. I was certain it was the same window I had just been ejected from, or maybe it was more of a defenestration? Either way, I had a very odd feeling about it. Perhaps some sort of familiarity, or maybe it was a moment of déjà vu? It was a memory of recognition, of this situation, of this place in the darkness, even a recollection of the stinking rubbish strewn around me. An odd sensation and memory of flying through the air, the cold night air hitting my face; painful yet invigorating. Or was it more like being projected and propelled through a window, and on to a pile of rubbish, the way a stereotypical bouncer would throw a person out of a nightclub? I had seen cartoon characters with comedy stars revolving around their heads after falling over or being knocked out; that was how I felt, as I had gone aerial through the window. Most strangely, I had the bizarre feeling of being watched, of unseen eyes observing me.

  Lying in the alleyway, glass all over the ground, lubricated by my vomit, and a large, painful lump beginning to appear on the back of my head got me thinking. Was the philandering worth it? Especially if it involved being 'caught red handed' or 'in the act' or 'on the job,' by a large gentleman, who I presume was 'burly, builder boyfriend.' I'm sure there was a joke in there somewhere, but any witticisms temporarily failed me.

  I suppose I should be grateful. Grateful that I had actually met a woman and been invited back to hers. This was a common enough occurrence for my friends, but an unusual event in my busy social diary. So maybe I should have been grateful despite the end result? To have actually made contact with a woman that wasn't my mother on a social basis, and going back to her pad. Sad as it was, I was kind of proud of myself for one of my first major social achievements.

  And I then I thought about it some more and reality started to crowd in on my dream world. Was this what trauma was about? I had never been in a fight at school or subsequently. I watched movies. That was my main thing. I must have seen a million punches thrown or random acts of violence on film, but to actually be on the receiving end was a little different. For starters, the feeling of someone hitting you was rather unpleasant, but it was the few moments before this occurred that were worse. It was the idea that this stranger was about to do you a bit of physical damage in the next few seconds that caused the greatest terror, or was it the fact that feeling terror surprised me?

  Her name was Gemma, well actually it wasn't, but she looked very similar to the actress Gemma Arterton. As mentioned, I watch a lot of movies. Although, I can't exactly remember her name, I had met her in a pub outside Liverpool Street train station. The unusual part of meeting her was that I hadn't noticed her until she was standing a foot away from me. She had noticed me. Yes, she had noticed me, something that had never happened before. She worked at a bank nearby and commuted from somewhere in Essex. It was all very vague and at least that is what I think she had told me, but I had drunk a few pints by then.

  And she didn't sound like an Essex girl but, oh, how she looked like Gemma. She had long brown hair and green eyes and wore dark, tight fitting trousers and a formal white blouse, with slightly old fashioned frills at the top. Prim, I had thought. But naughty.

  I stood up from the rubbish, and immediately sat down. Is this what was termed a vasovagal? I would like to say I got this information from a medical friend, but it was from watching too many poor quality American ER programmes. Or was I still drunk? My new boot cut jeans were wet and there was a large rip over my right knee. I was pretty sure that when I bought them this wasn't a fashion statement.

  So I got up again and this time managed to stay on my feet, staggering slowly down to the taxi hut. As I walked closer, there was complete silence, none of the usual pleasant activity you might expect at this time. There were no cars poised on the kerb, waiting for pissed up guys like me to walk along on a Saturday night, and get ripped off.

  The inside waiting area was locked up, but there was a little cubby hole where a middle aged, tubby Indian man sat, reading a copy of the metro. By the time I was within ten feet of him, he had closed the shutter. Now I would like to think this was because it was the middle of the night, and he had a family to go home to; he wasn't going to stay open forever. However, when he saw me coming, he swallowed hard and the colour drained from his chubby cheeks. He then immediately closed the shutter in my face.

  This could have indicated that I looked as bad as I felt, but I wasn’t great at reading people.

  Tubby, chubby, cabbie in his cute little cubby hole.

  Nice.

  I turned and looked around. My head was really throbbing now and was making me
feel sick with the pain. Where the hell was I?

  There was nothing else here. I looked behind at the dark alleyway and looked up at Gemma's room. All quiet. Maybe if he had gone, I could sneak back and be tended to by the lovely Gemma. Or get the crap beaten out of me again.

  What if she was in danger? What if he wasn't the boyfriend? Should I check she was alright? Should I call the police? I knew I was not a brave person, but could sometimes end up in 'situations' due to recklessness. Not bravery. Most likely total stupidity.

  I chose stupidity once again. I walked up the alleyway carefully, and stood in my original unscheduled landing zone, listening for something, anything. Not a sound. The light was on but I couldn't see any tell-tale signs of movement or life. There was a large rubbish bin that I could climb up on. Then I could simply shimmy along a stone ledge on the wall, and would just about be able to see through the window that I had already made friends with. What was I saying? Why was I even thinking about going back in?

  Silence is golden? But why was I so beholden with Gemma and her safety and security? Maybe he was gone now, I wondered, and gingerly got up on the bin without really thinking about what I was doing. I am normally quite fit but my knee was now bleeding and it hurt to bend it. Not like movie violence. As I stood upright on the bin, my legs started to tremble wildly, only this time not through pain or discomfort. By the time I had got on to the ledge, I could tell he must have gone because I heard absolutely nothing. I looked in and could see a crappy cat picture by some famous artist I didn't recognise, staring at me from the wall. I had once been given one of these by my mother and immediately hated it. However, I had to hang it up somewhere on display; otherwise she would have thought I didn't like it. It ended up in the downstairs toilet. Eventually, I hid it in the loft and only got it out when she came round. Hopefully, this accurately demonstrates exactly how brave a person I am.

  Now or never, I thought. With stealth. Like walking on rice paper. Almost ninja like, but one that is scared shitless. I climbed in through the window. This was the kitchen. It was tiny yet modern, and definitely big enough for me to have been previously carried through and chucked out through the window.

  And this really was beginning to feel like a movie cliché. I listened. Nothing. Walking quietly. Creaking. From my shoes? The sound of water pipes rattling or was it the boiler of someone's central heating? The sound and vibration of my heartbeat echoing away in my chest, and being aware of its deafening aftershocks in my mouth and eardrums.

  I looked out from the kitchen into the hallway. Darkness. Not a sound. At the end of the hallway was another light on the right; the bedroom of doom. Interesting time to start rhyming, I thought.

  This was the scene of my adventure with a beautiful girl who was called Gemma. Gemma with the long brown hair and green come to bed eyes. Gemma without the Essex accent, working temporarily for a large bank near Liverpool Street. Gemma, who, as I looked into the bedroom, was not lying on the bed, her sightless eyes not looking up to the ceiling, her red drenched sheets not clinging to her lifeless body.

  It was the burly, very ugly, builder man.

  And he was very dead.

  He had a new giant laceration down the right side of his face. His mouth was open, and his teeth were in pieces. His hat was lying on the floor.

  No sign of Miss Arterton.

  Total shock and confusion. What had just happened? Did I kill him? But how would I have done that and not remembered anything, and then get myself thrown out of a window? I nearly pissed myself there and then!

  I took several steps back and ran in a panic. This time I climbed madly though the window like a base jumper, and was in the alley way faster than the first time round, and definitely less painfully. As I stood up, my feeling of horror was temporarily suspended by a single bizarre and totally inappropriate thought in the circumstances. I could only wonder why I hadn't used her front door to make my escape this time. The only reason I could think of was that this way was much more like what they would do in the movies. A really pathetic reason when you consider I am a coward at heart, and yet in search of celluloid adventure, but that was me; a walking mass of contradictions.

  Triviality before reality.

  As I was standing, however, that reality started to creep into my mind, and I felt an all too familiar sensation in my stomach. My head suddenly felt very light and the neon of the taxi hut swirled around in my eyes. And this time it wasn't the pain in my head that made me sick as I emptied my guts through my nose and mouth on to the street.

  Class. Definitely, not in the script.

  The man returned to the passageway for a second time and this time appeared to vomit. He turned and ran down towards the taxi rank that was closed. He turned left up Strainsted Street and continued for half a mile. He was a good, strong runner. Had he realised at this stage that he would return here once more or possibly multiple times? Why was he running?

  Did he have any understanding of the device and how it worked?

  2

  I ran down the alley and turned up another. I was a strong runner, but the taste in my mouth and pain in my head slowed me down. I had to stop after five minutes to throw up again.

  What had just happened tonight? How had I got into this crazy situation? Could I remember more of what happened after the pub? These hazy memories felt like they were disappearing from my mind; the harder I thought about them, the more they seemed to escape me. A feeling of total elation during hors d'oeuvres in the evening, followed by a main course of elevation through a window at night, rounded off by bowel evacuation after the horror show in the flat. I really had to get out more to enjoy these great three course extravaganzas!

  I continued my running, trying to get away from that horrible sight, but no matter how far I got, I couldn't get the vision of the ugly man on the bed out of my head. Eventually my pace slowed as I reached a car dealership; it's neon frontage lighting up the sky, guiding me in like a moth on legs from the darkness. I had so many questions rushing through my head and my mind was spinning. I looked behind me, checking for an imaginary assailant perhaps chasing me down the road, but there was no one. The roads were empty, nobody walking down the street with their dog, no sign of revellers making their way home from a big night out. After a few minutes, I saw a car coming towards me with its lights on. I managed to flag it down - a minicab.

  It was dark so he couldn't see I was in a bad way. Actually, I couldn't see I was in a bad way. I managed to mutter my address and he just nodded without saying a word. The cab steamed down the Hoxtead road, and eventually went past the green fields of Stanfield Park. I was nearly home. I held off the urge to throw up again, but could smell the stench of my gut on my shirt. I opened the window and felt the cold air hit my face, and started to feel better, the nausea and smell of my shirt disappearing. As I looked out of the window, I realised that I was at the top of my street.

  I paid him and stepped outside the flats. My swanky pad, I used to think, but actually they were brick monstrosities that nobody in their right mind would want to live in. It was still dark, but the first signs of sunrise were visible on the horizon, and I could hear the odd bird chirruping. The smell. The aroma of rain coming from miles in the distant wind. My flat was downstairs. I let myself in, keys shaking in my hand, and sat in the kitchen with the lights out.

  Should I call the police? Would that not implicate me? But I didn't do anything other than fly through a window.

  And shag Gemma Arterton.

  I went to the fridge and opened a beer and took a couple of gulps from it. My gut was feeling more stable now, but I had to get a grip on the situation. I tried to go through all the events of the evening in my head, but the harder I squeezed, the less I remembered. It was like I had been given a drug that was insidiously removing all my memories of the evening; I couldn't understand why I was feeling like this. Perhaps this was what real shock was all about, the total loss of your senses one by one, and your mind eventually shutting down.
Maybe it was my defence mechanism, blocking out the strange and terrifying experiences of the last few hours? I knew very well that I wasn't exactly a brave person, and therefore my reaction now was in keeping with my usual self.

  As I sat at my kitchen table, dizziness and tiredness overcame me, my eyes started to droop, and I could feel the familiar and welcoming scent of narcosis approaching me. Before I knew it, I fell into a long and fitful sleep.

  I dreamt of the pub and its grand interior. One of the most incredibly vivid dreams I have ever had. I think it had been an old style music hall about a hundred years ago. It had massive mirrors, with a sweeping, carpeted staircase in the centre of a huge atrium. It was too big for a pub. There were paintings of gentlemen in red hunting regalia accompanied by very ugly dogs. It was full of people wearing suits, drinking champagne and rubbing shoulders with workmen, drinking countless Stella Artois. Old men sat in chairs staring blankly into the mirrors, worrying over half pints of bitter and whisky chasers. She only drank still water without ice.

  "So why do you come to this place?" she had asked me in a slightly surly way.

  "It's near to where I work," I had replied.

  I didn’t know where she was leading with this. When I looked at her she was smiling, and yet at the same time was blank. She stared at me and yet looked away. Was she implying it was too posh or too down market for somebody like me?

  Inscrutable but screwable, I had thought.

  "Pardon," she had replied.

  I repeated what I had said and she look at me crossly, eyebrows raised, green eyes squinting and slanting, and yet she was smiling. These were real expressions of contradiction. Or was it a contradictory expression? And I couldn't figure out what she was thinking.

  "Pardo," she said.

  "Pardon?" I replied.

  Was she speaking Spanish to a dog?