The Escape

At the age of twelve I am chasing the spinning, glimmering rim of a frisbee at the
edge of Sheridan Park and then boom I am fourteen and learning to command
my resistant body to allow me to scratch my itching nose.
The months that followed consisted of relearning to walk, teetering as if on stilts.
Speech returned with the daylight but I tried to read to find that it was beyond me,
and the laborious process had to start again, only slower this time, and without
pleasure for years to come. The words came and went and rarely stayed around to
play like they had done before. Thank !od for "hristianity is all I can say, when I
hear how my parents refused to have me switched off during the near yearanda
half of my slumber.
#ater in life I would watch endless hours of complete stillness on the $T that could be
found, trying to work out what the whole e%perience must have been like for me,
while my mother sat in the corner and read silently through the si%tysi% fractions of
goodness that dictated that I must live. I have no memories of that time. It was like I
did not e%ist. I &ust stayed in the room and slept. 'aybe I was catching up, or
perhaps readying myself for what was to come( The tapes offer no clues other than
that I stayed really rather still for a very long time, and then I woke up, following some
seismic e%plosions on a screed of graph paper that is now framed and displayed in
my father)s study for all time.
*Proof of !od)s e%istence,+ is what he calls the masterpiece and who am I to argue(
I was barely even there,
After the accident I feared sleep and resisted it as much as possible. I thought I may
nod off, never again to reemerge, only to be proved wrong with each passing
morning. To start with I would manage maybe twenty minutes of rest before waking
with a cry and transfi%ing the clock, the lamp, the door- my anchors. It was a warm
spring and I would ditch my top and rest down again. I learned to take a fresh towel
to bed after the first night, to make the e%perience more bearable. .hen I finally got
the hang of it I found I could sleep for several hours without palpitations, and
eventually I learned to deal with the informationdump of the day and get the hours
in. /y fifteen I could go to bed at night and wake the ne%t morning &ust like a normal
person. I don)t remember dreaming at all in those years, &ust the drifting away and
the snapping back. And I was happy, so happy. I didn)t know any better.
I took my 0ualifications two years later than my original peergroup and got to en&oy
being the tall one in my new, younger class. This could have gone either way but my
0uiet nature and fascinating backstory made me a social chameleon and I was
universally popular. It was a welcome second life for the somewhat gawky and
bookish individual who had always previously given too much away in his passionate
outpourings.
I felt like a pro&ection screen as I shared conversations with anyone who would
venture in my direction about matters of great importance to them. 'y interest in
their views, e%periences and cultural mores was genuine and I could flip from Pepsi
to "ola depending on company, without feeling the need to declare my hand on such
a burning issue. People sketched in the missing years for me and I pined for them,
shrunk and repackaged as they came- a succession of noteworthy events and
significant movies, music and sports and everything else. As far as I could tell it
never rained in all the time I slept.
I did not do especially well at school and, to my parents) great sadness, I failed
1nglish. .ell, sort of. I managed to pass the language part of the course, which was
not bad going for someone who has had to learn to read twice, but I failed to connect
with the books duly presented, dissected and repackaged with formula, for the
delectation of my e%aminers. I processed the work with little thought and consigned
the te%ts to the margins of my mind. 'y destinationcollege was understanding and I
then filled my head)s space with other matters, then emptying the recycle bin for
good. 2arewell 3ohn Steinbeck,
At 4olton "ollege, 5orth "ampus, I met pretty, clever 3essica 6ale when we found
out that we had chemistry together. .e dated for a while and then became an *item+
but she got terribly upset when 3essica 6orrans, with whom I had biology, took her
place. 3essica 6orrans had braces which made her irresistible and I can still feel her
perverse, metallic kiss. The whole scene turned ghastly and the entire scientific
fraternity positioned itself against me.
/rad said *I know you)ve been in a coma but that doesn)t mean you can behave
atrociously to 3essica,+ and I thought, *.hich 3essica(+
I attended lectures purely for the purpose of getting the 0ualifications and retreated
into myself. I was to be saved and damned by the college)s re0uirement that I resit
1nglish.
!abriella 6e Sou7a 'atthews had glasses and wore black everything. Positioning
herself on the outside of whatever was in meant that my shunningbypublic moved
me into her sphere. !abi was set to pass the course with flying colours, only being
on it because of a che0uered emotional past. She is the only member of the group
who did not see the course as an enabler and the only one who did not 0uestion the
relevance of 1li7abeth /arrett /rowning)s thoughts to a career in the banking sector,
sportsscience industry or retail management.
/rowning left me pretty cold I must say but !abi did not, and it is with her in mind that
I set about /righton 8ock with newfound 7eal. I blasted through the first chapter or
two and thought it felt terribly *si%ties,+ proving my estimation skills to be some thirty
years out. I could not stand the snooping dogooder character but I was very much
taken with Pinky and his misanthropic gang. Slowly, I wiled away an afternoon sliding
into the story and I was thrilled to be able to discuss it with !abi the ne%t day in the
smoker)s common room.
I survived Tess of the 6)9rbervilles and lied about my en&oyment of it before we get
to first base and then, before I knew it, I had passed the course, ditched science
completely, and leapt fullbodied into the waiting arms of the communications faculty,
rebranding myself as an 1nglish ma&or with some accoutrements from the humanities
to suit my second fresh start in education.
I left !abi when Sylvia Plath convinced her to selfharm from beyond the grave. I
deliberately pronounced my love of Ted 4ughes midseminar and they pumped her
stomach that very night. Saddened but freed I en&oyed some /yron, while shooting
up Trainspotting in my spare time.
I fell asleep reading my personal selection and was very cold when I awoke. I was
also not in my room. $ery troubled, I made my way home. 2rom a grimy and grubby
1dinburgh tenement building. I began to suspect that I was going 0uite mad before
the lorry driver picked me up and eight hours in his company failed to convince me
otherwise.
That night I locked all of the windows in the house as well as my bedroom door. I
decided to try to stay up all night reading. 'y choice was a little 4unter S Thompson.
It was :ctober and nobody was to see me for the ne%t month.
*4e went to bed 0uite early, with his book and a glass of water,+ my mother told
police officers, *and then he was gone.+
She was at a loss to e%plain how the doors and windows all remained sealed from
within but that I was without. She sobbed to the policeman about losing me for a
second time and I imagined every word soon after I woke.
.hen I did awake I had sand in my mouth and a sense that every droplet of water
had been wrung from my body. I sweated dry and wiped my skin and it was dry. I
shivered with cold in a fever dream that gave the lie to my senses. Something was
pressing against my face and my eye. I tried to open the other but a lamp was in my
face. 1%haustion sapped every muscle. I lay, unsleeping, for what seemed like an
age, while bats shrieked and swooped overhead. 'y interrogator &ust waited and
waited. 'y stomach rumbled with an ache that twisted between pleasure and hollow
emptiness. Something touched my eye and I moved fast. 1lbows up, palms down
on grit, upper body raised like a scorpion, hand swiping across eye. A reflective &ump
back onto feet. I was awake. I staggered but I was awake. It was supremely sunny
and I had red, burnt skin. I needed water and cover and for ants not to have been
crawling upon my body. I shooed the ones that I could see away but the ones I could
not kept on crawling.
I staggered along the road, which I later discovered was a highway, and along into
/arstow ;the nearest settlement< to get some necessary attention. I drank deep at a
faucet attached to the side of a farmhouse, my lips feeling the bite of pain with every
chapped lower&awful. 'y teeth chattered between lugs and my body felt every
nerve stretch, like tendons against fingers when inspected with a fresh coat of nail
varnish applied to their e%tremities. I inwardly blossomed as the water breathed life
into me then staggered into town to find a phone. I called home, having eventually
established the correct countrycode with the operator, and failed to e%plain.
The psychiatrist thought there was something very wrong with me and very wrong
with my mother and father too. .e decided on a code of silence after they
concluded that my strange disappearance and reappearance in another country the
very ne%t morning seemed like wasting the authorities) time on a rather grandiose
scale.
I had been to 2rance and 'orocco before I was taken in for observation. They
placed me in a locked room with striplighting that bu77ed and a pervasive smell of
fresh paint. A courtyard with charming pond did little to detract from the window bars
that sliced it into three. 'y movements were free within the facility during the day but
I was locked in and observed at night. I was denied anything that might cause me
potential harm ;ra7ors, shoelaces, py&ama cord, etc<. I slept soundly at night and
was a model patient. I was as interested as they were in my condition.
I spoke to a therapist of some sort who wanted to ask me lots of 0uestions about my
coma, to which I responded as honestly as I can. /ut, the thing is, I knew that the
coma was a red herring. After all, it was the one period of my life when I could be
relied up in to go to sleep and still be in the same place the ne%t morning. I tried to
e%plain this and they sectioned me. In e%asperation I made one wish- I chose 6eath
in $enice from the library at the facility, with my mind firmly on the latter aspect of the
te%t.
The ne%t morning I gave them until ==am, *our time,+ to implode before I called. I
imagined the seconds before my doctor picked up the phone may have ran
something like this-
*6r !riffin, there is a phone call for you>?es, I do know that but I really think you will
want to take this one>It is a call from an Italian number. ..It is your patient,+
.hen I am repatriated we work together to view the available archived $T from my
coma years. It proves nothing to my doctors and everything to me. 4our after hour
after hour I lay without moving. Stimulation does not occur, as evidenced by the
steady, regular visual blip of my vital signs, like a clock counting down time until my
seemingly inevitable death.
I am told that I am not to be allowed to leave. 6oors are locked and a guard is put in
place. I am trapped and studied. I am denied all but the barest essentials. This
intolerable state of affairs continues for an inordinate amount of time until one fine
day, when their guard is down, and I slide into their library during the day. I purloin
the first work of fiction I can lay my hands upon and smuggle it back to my cell.
That night I rest forward on my elbows and hunch my back on the bed, raising the
sheet and waiting for the light of the early morn to penetrate firstly the room and then,
afterwards, the aperture made at the top of my covers. I e%haust myself with the
wait. 2inally, &ust when I think my endurance has been defeated, a well of light
appears and illuminates a tract of the room.
6o7ily, holding my strange position, I open the book beneath the covers. 'y eyes
scan the page until I am too heavylidded to continue. It is science fiction. I am never
seen again.
8ussell @ing