Trollheart

“What?”

For a moment I remain disoriented, and the policeman's face hardens, as if to say We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Sir. Then realisation of a sort dawns. I frown, turn it into an apologetic smile. Something screams in my brain, but I ignore it. “Sorry, officer. I guess I was daydreaming. Didn't see the cordon.” In addition to the yellow and black tape, several wooden signs warn RESTRICTED AREA. AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY. The policeman's frown unknots, his lips quirk upwards slightly, but it is not what you would call a smile. His eyes, though I can't see them, say We won't have to make an example of this one. I can't tell whether he's disappointed or relieved.

I briefly consider asking him what this is all about, who is coming, but quickly decide against it. Not only do I realise I don't actually want to face the reality of the answer to that question, but I feel he will not give it to me. Although I can't see his eyes, or those of any of his colleagues, I somehow know that they're dead and blank now, unseeing, uncaring, possibly unknowing. These are, perhaps not automatons, but they are, I feel, being controlled, if even subtly. Their will is not their own, not any more, and they work, even if they don't realise it, for a higher power.

Cockroaches...

As I step back and the cordon is re-established, I notice several pairs of eyes fixing on me. From the bottom of the hill I can see a number of people gathered at the top, all staring down at me, and there is something very hard in the way they look at me. It's as if I've transgressed some unwritten rule, gone where I should not have. Trespasser, their stares say. Defiler. Blasphemer. Bad puppet!

Then, seeing the cops have things (in other words, me) under control, they turn away and like plants reversing their growth cycle, retreat, it seems to me, into the ground, getting shorter and shorter as they walk back down the other side of the hill, ankles becoming knees, knees turning into waists, waists to shoulders until finally what is left of them is just a collection of heads, bobbing angrily, and they too are soon lost from view as the crowd slouches back down the hill, on the other side, the “good” side, and back towards the town centre.

I suddenly ask myself a question. It’s a very good question, and I wonder, in that dim place from which it seems I have been forbidden (Restricted area, Sir!) why the hell I didn’t tell those cops about the suicide I just witnessed? Why didn’t they see it? They must have been nearby. They couldn’t have missed it. It was ....
It was …
It …
What was it?
What was what?
What the hell am I trying to remember? Something just happened, something … something important. Something significant. Something terrible.
What the hell was it?
Why can’t I remember?
What can’t I remember?
What ….?

My hands trembling, my head thumping, I realise I have still the packet of Major in my hand, and with an effort I control the shaking long enough to extract one and place it in my mouth. I barely register the fact that where the usual health warning is printed on the side of the packet it now says He is coming. I think at this point, I am coming to expect this. My silver Zippo, a present from my wife, dead now these nine years, flicks into action, a tiny tongue of fire kissing the end of the cigarette and I snap the lighter closed, pocketing it and inhaling a deep drag of the tobacco. Normally it can calm my nerves, but today it does nothing. I feel the thick smoke swirling around my mouth and in my nostrils, the cloying, choking scent pervading my being, feel it slide down my throat and into my lungs, adding to the thick deposits on the already calcified organs there, surely not long to go now? I feel the moisture on the tip of the cigarette where it touches my lips.

Moisture.

The tip is wet.

Well of course it is, I tell myself sharply: it’s raining! But this is a different kind of wet. Not the clear, clean moisture from the sky, not rainwater seeping into the paper tube and making it sag slightly. No.

This is something … else.

I glance down and a cold shock runs through me. Where my lips meet the cigarette paper it has turned a dirty brown, and I can feel the moistness on my lips, drooling down the shaft of the cigarette. When it reaches the white paper, it is stained red.

Blood.

I'm bleeding.

Or the cigarette is, I think irrationally.

Either way, it's enough to make me drop the Major Extra Tar and feel my lip. There is blood there, but no wound. I assume I have bit my lip in my anxiety just now, and the blood has leaked onto the cigarette. This is not so. My lip is, other than where it came into contact with the cigarette, dry. The cigarette has fallen on the rain-sodden ground; no point in picking it up now to check if somehow the bleeding came from there. Not that it could possibly have done so. With a dark feeling of foreboding and trepidation I fumble the packet back out of my pocket, thumb the lid open, take another prisoner from its cardboard cell, and this time critically examine it, turning the tube this way and that, staring at it, watching it with growing suspicion which turns to a feeling of foolishness as I realise what I'm doing. Laughing at myself in the way I suppose people do to convince themselves they're not mad – especially when they are – I tap the cigarette, light it and – nervously, it must be said – raise it to my lips, watching it intently, my eyes and my lips alert for any coppery taste, any sudden liquid leakage.

There is none. I inhale the fumes deeply, luxuriating in the cloud that wreaths my face, coughing slightly, and remove the cigarette in order to expel the smoke into the air.

The cigarette does not move.

I frown, inadvertently taking another puff which, doing so before I have managed to exhale, fills my lungs with too much smoke. I begin to choke. My lips will not part, as if they have been glued together by some mischievous devil. Grey plumes escape through my nostrils, but that is not enough to expel the growing cloud inside me. And as panic sets in, another inhalation adds to that cloud. My insides are heating up. I need to get this smoke out of me. You can't inhale and inhale and inhale. You have to exhale. I can breathe, yes, through my nose but my sinuses are filling up with smoke and my throat is clogged with the stuff. My lungs feel like they're burning, and my heart is now racing. My fingers are stuck to the cigarette, and it is stuck to my lips. Nothing will loosen it. Like a statue cast in panic, I begin to double up, staring around wildly for anything to remove this suddenly lethal tube from my mouth. I stagger back against the wall. A cop notices me, but barely throws a glance my way.

Shaking his head, his eyes snap Filthy habit! before he turns back to his work. I am alone. Nobody can hear me, nobody knows what's going on. My lips are literally sealed: I cannot scream, I cannot draw any attention to myself other than wildly waving my arms, but nobody is now looking in my direction and without sound to attract that, there is no way to alert any potential saviour, if anyone could save me. What are they going to do, I ask myself acidly? Prise my lips open with a car jack? No, I am on my own. No-one can help me. I need to do something, and I need to do it now. I always knew there was a good chance I would die from smoking, but I never expected it to happen this way. My best friend has turned on me and is trying to kill me.

The rain pours down upon me. I feel like I’m drowning and suffocating and burning all at once. My inner voice laughs cruelly: At least your headache has gone! It tells me. Yes, it’s gone alright. My brain can only cope with one distraction at a time, and I am in mortal terror now. If the headache is not actually gone, it has receded into a far corner of my brain, moved to a remote filing cabinet in a room marked UNIMPORTANT.

Suddenly, salvation. Out of the corner of my eye I spy the small stream that runs parallel to the town. The riverbank is only moments away. I stagger towards it (the cops, thinking I'm about to break through their border again, look up with eyes that, though I can't see them, say Don't even think about it! But I am skirting their cordon, heading for the small stream, and they lose interest in me). In another moment I am on my knees, plunging my head face first into the freezing water. It's a shock, but it works. The cigarette, softened by the water, cannot retain its integrity and deflates, droops and breaks contact with my lips, which, freed from whatever supernatural pressure the cigarette was exerting upon them, sigh open and fill my lungs with less than pure water. The Major Extra Tar falls into the water, floating away, pulled by the tide. I almost imagine it shaking a fist in impotent anger.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018