We were never meant for this. Bleeding, dying. There’s no art or grace in being smashed apart. We’re too fragile. Each strike breaks a bone. Each blow splits the skin. Blood puddles and splashes. Are we alive or dead? There’s more meat here than man. The roars went on forever and the world collapsed around us in screams and fire. Finally the afternoon faded away, and smoke was replaced by a bitter mist that ran down the walls and mixed our blood into the sodden carpet.
Evening brought quiet and stillness for a time, we could breathe again. I say we. Fourteen of us had sought shelter together in the hollow ruin of the end terrace house. Old number 54. When we ran in through the garden – a series of craters and blown mud – there was no trace of the elderly couple who used to live there. We stumbled into the back of their house, through the hole that joined windows and door into a wide grin. We heaped their furniture up to the wall and crawled between the gaps.
We held hands, closed our eyes and waited for the end. Fingers clenched tighter with the heavy blows, as our barricade shifted, as the screams drew nearer, as the explosions rattled our teeth. And then my friends’ grip weakened. The world became nothing but a constant sound that filled my body and all of my thoughts.
My mind came back to me, filled with pain. Everything was calm again, except for the constant drip and drip of the rain. I let go of Alice’s hand, and Ryan’s. Their fingers fell away from mine like twigs from a tree. The others were just a bloody pulp, ground down under wood and brick. I had more of them in my hair and clothes than they did on themselves. It was just me now, but I couldn’t yet say so. I pretended to myself that they were still alive. We talked about autumn, and nonsense and inconsequential things: our favourite books, possible uses for the tiny pocket on the right calf of my trouser leg, lasagna… I realised I didn’t know anything about Ryan, so we didn’t have much to talk about. Soon I had to stop talking because my chest hurt where something heavy had fallen on me. It was getting dark, and it wasn’t so reassuring to pretend my friends were still alive when they were just dripping shadows in the night.
When I was quiet, apart from the catch in my breath I realised I wasn’t completely alone. Improbable as it seemed, Buttons the kitten who Alice had found in a shed yesterday, was still with me. She mewled softly in the metal box Alice had stuffed her into. Bent and warped, and now smelling of upset cat, Alice had protected it. I pulled the box out of her shredded limbs. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to bend the lid enough to pull her out, the poor shaking thing. She was wet with blood and her own fear.
I stroked her ears and cuddled her tightly. I felt a wash of pity and sympathy for the tiny creature. She had even less idea what was happening than I did. It was ridiculous; surrounded by death she gave me hope where I ought to have had none. There was nowhere to wash her, except in our friends blood so I unzippped my jacket and gently pushed her inside. Cat memories are so short. In a few minutes she stopped shaking and started to purr. I fell asleep too.
0 thoughts on “We Have A Problem With Books”
I’m with you on all counts.
This is an amazing post and one that I feel I could have written, minus the humor, readability, and references to A levels. Interestingly, we also have very similar reading tastes and opinions. While I haven’t read everything that you have, I agree with all you said about those I did read. The only place we diverge is that I live in an apartment and had I not decided long ago to get rid of some books when the sheer volume of them reached a critical mass I would surely be dead, crushed under a huge pile of heavy tomes. Although I do miss certain editions I once had, overall it has worked out pretty well for me.
A couple of notes. The Doctor Who book was likely Planet of the Spiders (a less inspired title I can not imagine) and while you’re right about the later Hitchhiker books, the sequence at Milliways in the 2nd book is my favorite part of the “trilogy.”
And lastly, I also still have my copy of the Hardy Boys Survival manual and once tried to make a survival kit like they describe in the book. However, I much prefer an earlier Hardy Boys spinoff, The Hardy Boys Detective Manual, in hardcover, which came out a few years earlier, and had so many great detecting tips. all sadly useless now in the internet era.
We clearly are the finest of people! I have recently declined the opportunity to take all the books I left at my Dad’s house when I left home. It was difficult, but partly from not having seen them for years I managed to get it down from 400 or so to a mere hundredish. I don’t know where I’m going to put them…
Ah yes, that sounds exactly as terrifying a title as I recall. I seem to remember that the cover of Planet of The Spiders was too horrible for me to even want to touch. You make a good point about Milliways. It’s possible I’m conflating several of the THGGTTG books into one.
Ah! I had no idea they did more manuals. I don’t know where I got the Survival Manual, but I suspect it was a marvellous second hand bookshop in Burton on Trent that had a charming Dachshund named Carl who would bark until stroked.