The Walker

I clutch the bag. It is with great delight that I am leaving this place. It is 1.30 am. It takes me a while to find my bearings. I was sleeping on the bathroom floor. Fully clothed and ready to go. I have been sitting in the dark planning an escape route for ten months. Ten months of waking up every hour through the night. Confused. Sweating. Hoping that all of this is a bad dream and I will come to in my real home. But I know there is no other place than this. That’s what made me sweat. You can’t shake off the concrete reality of where you exist in this exact moment. Not completely anyway. The green pills helped. They made the man who spat in my face nothing more than a blur of beard and raincoat. It is odd. Endless nights spent in the dark puzzling and I now feel more comfortable being spat at than smiled at. There is a young girl with long hair in the library. She always smiles at me as I hide behind the books. It makes me want to cry. Don’t be nice to me. It might make me feel. I pretend to read the words. Really I am just there to hear the sound of voices. Children singing nursery rhymes and the click-click of the scanner over the bar-codes. Sometimes I see my face in the glass doors or shelving units. It startles me too. It’s not surprising people spit or smile. It was without question that I needed to be re-defined.

I don’t know why I am taking a bag really. Just some clothes and a few wash-things. I don’t expect I will need either but I feel the need to carry something. Makes a woman look more purposeful. As if I am really off to greet that husband and son I lost. I expect after a while I will ditch the bag. I won’t need it any more. I will become as invisible as the paving stones that will eat me up and carry me away. I won’t need a dark room to hide in any more. The whole world will become my dark room. I will become one of life’s walkers.

I shut the door. Leave the man upstairs pacing and the woman across from me screaming. I put the keys in the outside lock and sellotape the note I have written to the door ‘THERE IS NO NEED TO FORCE ENTRY. I AM NOT HERE.’ When they come in to scavenge through my belongings they will find the plastic ID card and my documents on the kitchen table. I will leave it up to them to shred me up and consign me to some government dump. I am disappearing without a trace. With a new face. And I cannot tell you how happy I feel.