Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 1

Rungkarn Rujiwarangkul (2,145

words) ID. 4680657 (short

story)

rurutheguru@yahoo.co.nz

Lucky to be Alive

By Rungkarn Rujiwarangkul

The voice came from somewhere, but he could not tell

where. He could not catch the whispering words. They

sounded soothing, almost forgiving, and made him feel

alive. That was the only thing he could sense before a

sharp pain shot through his chest and a sudden burst of

chaotic voices flooded into his head.

"We’ve got him back! He’s on steady . . ."

Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 2

". . . What a lucky guy . . ."

He woke up in a bed, damp with sweat. The monitor’s

mechanical hum reassured him in the silence as if it wanted

to comfort him. The familiar soothing voice had once again

saved him, this time from his own dream where a pair of

blood-shot eyes was penetrating and torturing him with

fear, hatred, and agony. His head throbbed like hell and

every inch of his body ached nastily that it made a simple

task like lifting eyelids open become the most tiring job.

The room blurred for a few minutes then started to clear.

Gathering from what he skimmed through--clean odor, white

room, monitors, rubber cords and wires in and out from his

body--he figured he was in a hospital. He fixed his eyes

on the white ceiling, trying to recall what happened but

could not do much with all this nagging pain. The door

knob turned, interrupted his thought, as someone slowly

pushed the door open from outside. A uniformed woman, whom

he assumed to be a nurse, stepped into the room. His eyes

followed her movements. She smiled to him as she checked

the monitor. He wanted to ask her many questions but he

simply did not have enough energy to do so; needless to

think about the bandage wrapping around his head. She drew

the curtain open after finished fiddling with the cords.

Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 3

Then she left him alone in wonder and the dim of dusk,

reflected through the glass window.

She wondered how long she had been lying there.

Taking from the light coming into the house, it was

probably five or six in the evening. She did not feel like

getting up. No, actually she did not feel like she could

get up. But this stained, dusty, wooden floor was not

exactly the best place to be on for long either. She

managed to push her torso up a little just to find out that

her left fingers were out of place because they looked very

purple and numbed. She bit her lips as she cracked them

into place--her hand shook uncontrollably. She ran her

right hand all over her face. Nothing smashed, just a

couple of bruises here and there, and blood stains from her

nose and right temple. She sat up on the floor, back to

the wall, and observed the room. She thought it looked

like battle field in some bloody war movies except that

this one was real. The air stunk, three chairs broken,

dozens of bottles smashed, walls perforated, one woman

deformed.

Sitting there in the realistic war zone, she could do

nothing but, once again, forgave him for what he did and

helplessly sobbed to herself.

Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 4

"You are lucky to be alive, you know that? You were

seriously injured and I doubt if anyone like your case

would make it this far," a short, bald man with a

ridiculous pair of glasses was talking to him.

". . . Your overall physical conditions are good

except that you might encounter short-term memory loss and

bad headache because your head was the worst part. But

don’t worry you’ll soon resume your memory . . .," the

doctor was babbling away while he tried to think about what

happened.

Apparently he had a very serious accident but he could

not remember anything before it happened. Yes, he was

drunk and just blacked out when he was driving the truck

but that was all he could recall. Once again, the pain

whipped through his head as if there was a large needle

stuck into it, destroyed his building blocks of thoughts.

He closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep, hoping that

the soothing voice would comfort him again in his dream.

She did not remember going to sleep but was surprised

to find herself on sofa instead of being on the floor. The

afternoon sunlight brightened up the room. The mess in the

battle field was cleaned up, crudely. All the bottles were
Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 5

gone. The air did not smell as bad as before because all

the blood smudges were removed though she could still see

the dark patches on the floor. The bloody skin flakes on

her face were gone too. She checked her fingers: they

looked slightly better.

Anna . . .

There were a bowl of biscuits and a glass of milk in a

tray on the floor, presumably for her. She slipped from

the sofa to sit on the floor, and slowly ate her biscuits.

She wondered where her daughter was, then realized she

might be at school. Poor Anna had to put up with all the

mess her useless mother brought into her life, especially

her mother’s boyfriend--the bastard. Tears started to well

up in her eyes, wishing she could fulfill Anna’s life

better.

The front gate creaked: Anna was home. She finished

her milk and wiped her tears as Anna walked into the room.

Anna looked different; she dressed differently. Her

eyes were hidden under a cap, and her smooth skin was

covered under a long-sleeve shirt and a pair of jeans.

"Hey mom, how are you feeling?" Anna hugged her mother.

"I’m OK, honey," she could sense something, "but why

are you wearing these clothes? Can you take your cap off?"
Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 6

And, in hesitation, Anna did.

He almost had enough with the pain. He wanted to

scream at them. He wanted to shout at the bald doctor,

told him to stop gabbling. He wanted to tell them to let

him die. But it was this soothing voice that kept him

alive.

It had been a few days since he woke up, and the voice

talked to him every time he slept. He was curious about

the voice but he needed to quit thinking too hard: it gave

him a terrible headache. However in the past few days, he

could slowly recall few things before the accident. He

remembered he was on his shift early in the morning,

driving the truck full of canned salmons to Cliff Bay,

still hung over from the night before. Just while he was

gazing and being hypnotized by the sun rising on the

horizon, a pair of blood-shot eyes appeared right in front

of him, exactly like those ones in his dream.

They were full of fear, hatred, and agony. They were

haunting him.

He stamped hard on the break but the damn truck would

not stop.
Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 7

That was the moment before the truck accelerated

through a sharp bent, in projectile motion, onto the rocky

shore below.

That was all he could remember.

She could not remember how long it had been since the

last time she put her daughter into bed. That was probably

the first time in years. Anna really needed a good rest.

As she walked downstairs, she tried to think of a

name. A company name. Where, precisely, did he tell her?

Sea King? No, something salmon…Sea Salmon?

King Salmon.

She looked in the phone directory, dialed the number,

and hung up a few minutes later with every bit of

information she wanted to know.

She put on her jacket, hid part of her bruised face

under a dark beanie, and stepped out into the chill night.

She could feel stream of anger pouring out of her against

the cold air, against her forgiveness which was drained

away completely after she saw what was hidden under Anna’s

unusual outfit. Her anger turned into energy she needed to

drag her throbbing body pass blocks and blocks of

buildings. Each and every screaming part of her body

reminded her of what he had done to Anna. She limped along

Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 8

the empty streets, accompanied by the cold breeze of the

late night.

Two, or maybe two and a half hours later, she was

standing in front of a white building. Timing was not

something she ever cared but right now it was a perfect

time. There were only only a couple of nurses and a

security occupied the lobby. That would make it easier for

her to enter without having anyone notice. She felt for

the metal in her jacket. It cooled against her fingers,

promised to do her good.

The nurse had left the window slightly open for him.

She said he needed some fresh air. He could hear the

breeze leapt through the gap, making a strange, hollow

sound. The room cooled down a little. There was no sound

to be heard from the outside, apart from the curtain which

eased back and forth as it was teased by the gentle wind.

He stared at the dim ceiling, thinking about himself and

how lucky he was to be alive. And the voice. Whose voice

was it, he wondered. God’s? After all, he could hardly

consider himself as the religious type, so why would God

help him.

He heard a footstep from the corridor. A very faint

one. He listened. The pace was slow, but steady. It was

Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 9

probably the nurse coming back to shut the window for him.

He closed his eyes, and decided to go to sleep.

A moment later, she came into the room but she did not

shut the window for him. Still with his eyes closed,

wakeful, he could feel that she was standing right next to

his bed, motionless, just looking at him. He started to

feel uneasy. He opened his eyes. The figure was not the

nurse he was certain, though it was too dark to get a clear

look of the face.

The figure breathed heavily.

"Look at yourself, you dirty rat," she taunted. "This

is what you deserve. Just hang about in a bed like a

useless crip, so you can’t hurt other people."

Her voice did sound familiar. So familiar that it

triggered something in his head.

All of his memory flashed into his head like out-of-

order pieces and bits of scenes pasted together. The

broken chairs and the smashed bottles, the smears of blood

on the dusty, wooden floor, the woman beaten to death. And

the blood-shot eyes of a girl, looking at him with fear,

hatred, and agony.

Anna. . .

At that moment, the breeze swept into the room,

seizing the curtain high up into the air, which momentarily

Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 10

offered the moonlight a chance to enter through the

unhindered window, and reflected off a shiny, flat object

in her hand.

A knife blade.

His eyes widened. He screamed. But what came out of

his throat was only a pathetic groan. He began to struggle

now. He was twisting around with all the strength he had

left. He remembered he had slapped her and beat her

viciously like she was an animal. He had raped her,

completely ignored her pleading, right there in her own

house, where her mother was lying unconsciously, beaten,

unable to help her.

"So you’re afraid now, are you?" She sneered. "You

want to get out of here, right? Beg me then. Beg for

mercy you creature!"

He tried to say something but he gagged. Still

twitching, he was now unable to escape as the wires and the

rubber cords entangled him.

"Oh . . . you don’t care about begging anyway, do you?

That’s probably what my little Anna did, but you couldn’t

give a shit about it."

She raised the blade high--"This is for my Anna."

The second the blade was coming for him, he hoped this

was only another bad dream, and the voice would come and
Rungkarn / Lucky to be Alive 11

pulled him up from hell. Then came the whispered words,

sounded as soothing, forgiving, and as clear as ever:

Die . . .

Her rage burst as the blade thrust into his chest with

an enormous force. His body jerked. It was the moment he

realized that perhaps the voice belonged to God.

Maybe it was God who demanded the sun to hypnotize him

and demanded the brake to fail. Maybe it was God who

wanted him to be back from death and wanted to save him,

just for this moment.

God wished him to redeem and get what he deserved.

God wished him to die painfully.

Again she jammed the blade into his stomach, and

again, and again, and again, making little fountains of

blood on his wilting body.

Lucky to be alive? For God’s sake, he was only saved

for this moment--the only moment for redemption.