present and future visions in A Christmas Carol in reverse - that you might be shown the best yet to come from the get-go and work backwards to the pit of hell after nine years of endless strife and surprise fatherhood, suddenly and definitely truncated by death. But you feel relaxed watching the mundanity of your partner packing and you want to pause the view behind the darkness of the glasses and call her up there and then and apologise for ignoring her needs and desires so often; ask to meet her later, take her away to a hotel - perhaps the one you stayed at in Bath all those years ago when the lust between the two of you was magnetic and you could barely keep your skin apart. But, for now, the vision will have to be enough and it feels so good to see.
Your partner zips the suitcase looks at her Smarterphone, smiles and presses the screen. She holds the phone to her ear and smiles wider. A few seconds pass, during which she looks at herself in the dressing-table mirror; pushes her bobbed hair behind her ears and applies some of the lime-flavoured lipsalve that she compulsively uses during the autumn and winter. A little ritual that you had grown to despise, but now seems part of her charm.
'Hello you,' she says in to the phone. 'I'm packed and ready. Come over as soon as you can. I want to be gone before he gets back. I can't stand any more scenes with him ... Fantastic. I'll be waiting ... I love you too.'
Your partner puts her Smarterphone in to her jacket pocket and looks around your bedroom. She picks up the photograph of the two of you - taken by the River Arno on your holiday to Florence three years ago. She shakes her head and raises an eyebrow; her closed mouth seems to sway with her thoughts. You know that look intimately. She is feeling derision.
She takes the photograph out of the clip-frame and rips it in half, tossing the image of you on to the unmade bed.
That is the exact moment when your brain awakens to the blindingly obvious - she is leaving you. Your partner is in love with someone else and that someone else is coming to your house to collect her and take her away. Perhaps she will want to return to Bath, with this someone else, and feel the same surge of lust and freedom on the same hotel bed.
Fuck the lime-flavoured lipsalve and the stupid wheeled suitcase and the sneering mouth and eyes with the judgmental eyebrow, you think. Let someone else deal with the boring demands to improve everything and change everything and ...
'This is happening now,' the balloon says, knowing your lateral thinking.
'You want ... you stop her?' you ask.
'You cannot stop any of this. The only way you can react to anything you see is to create an emotional and psychological defence for yourself, a way of dealing with the inevitable. Try seeing this as an insurance policy against the shock of the new,' your voice from the balloon sounds wiser than you ever thought you could be.
'Who is she going to meet? Who is the fucker who's going to fuck her?' The sarcastic contempt in your voice sounds like another person entirely, and grief is trickling in to the tone; spoken through gritted teeth. The scarf feels hot against your lips and under your chin.
'Is that important to you? Be honest with yourself. You haven't been in love with each other for a long time and this was always inevitable. One of you was going to leave eventually and she just happened to meet someone new. Try and see it this way, and you will eventually, remember that, she gave you new experience, confidence and the ability to share your life. That will be very significant.'
'Who is he?'
'Let's move on,' the balloon says. You open your mouth to demand an answer - you want to see the smug bastard whose hands and lips will be moving over your partner's body soon; reigniting the passion within her that expired beneath your limp and careless palms some time ago - but stop as you are reminded that the balloon is you and you have given your belief and trust to its words and pictures. Your own words and pictures.
You hang your head and close your eyes for a moment, breathe out; make a mental resolution to attempt to avoid such immediate emotional reflexes in the coming attractions; roll your shoulders and then look ahead in to the light.
You are kneeling next to a young woman. She is dead - you know this by the pool of blood growing from behind her head, the crimson red, oleaginous liquid that is nearing your hand and the wide bullet hole above her right eye that makes you feel nauseous. You look around; there is mayhem, people dropping placards - you cannot see the words on the fallen flags and signs. Masses of scared faces are running in different directions. The area is filled with a type of smoke, your eyes are burning - you guess tear gas; you blink and try to make sense of this happening.
You feel a hard prod to the back of your skull. You look up. There is a police officer standing above you. He is young and holding a gun to your head. He has a fixed and vivid look in his eyes - fear and anger. You are convinced he is about to pull the trigger, you notice his finger flicking.
You wonder if the balloon has decided to show you your death so soon for a specific reason. Surely this cannot be the conclusive moment in your life - your future voice spoke of achieving so much. Why would the visions hop from the end of your relationship to the end of your existence?
'What did you do?' a voice calls out from behind the young police marksman. The cop looks at you and you see his jaw tense as he considers his options for a moment - put you down for ever or turn and answer the call out.
He lowers the gun barrel an inch or two, just enough to make you feel as if you will not be blown in to the big sleep. Not in those moments anyway. But you do not know what will come next. Is this how nine years comes to a close. End credits: That's All Folks!
'This one was going for my weapon and the other ...' the police officer does not have enough time left in his life to finish any explanation for his actions.
He staggers forward and hits the pavement with a deathly thud as if he has suddenly lost his ability to stand still - some mysterious force has drawn him to the ground beneath in a final act of mortal balance.
You blink harder; rub your eyes and try to focus. The back of the police marksman's head is obliterated - pieces of broken skull are exposed and the brilliant red of freshly drawn blood is quickly oozing from under his blue-chequered baseball cap. You can see one of his eyes looking sideways.
There is a face standing above the uniformed body; as angry as the officers' had been just minutes before. The angry face looks at you and immediately softens slightly - then hammers two more blows on to the obviously dead cop head. The face above you stops and looks at his handy-work. He is breathing hard. He stands up straight - flexes his arms, glances over his left shoulder and wipes his eyes.
He is a young man with a flabby gut behind a Beatles t-shirt, that has the motif: Lovely Rita! on it and he is wearing a denim jacket covered in patches. He has a shaved head and a goatee beard. He looks scared, clutching a sticky, reddened baseball bat. He has the look of a man who has reacted without a first or second thought; with a primal force coursing through his veins, and now as his heart is beginning to regain its slowing beat, he has recognised the savagery he enacted. He is realising he is a killer.
You recognise him - Sam is his name. He makes eye contact with you and tries to smile, but his gaze is soon upon the dead woman lying next to you.
'Jesus, no. Isabel? What the fuck did they do this time? Is she really dead?' he asks you as if you are are a god who can stop time and change the inevitable in the universe.
You stand up and take a bottle of water from your suede jacket pocket.
'Is she really dead? What do you think?'
You lean down and lift Isabel's head; it flops back over the top of your hand. Her throat is twisted. Your feel as if you have murdered her. You turn her face to the left and right - her fixed stare and open mouth have the look of a person with just one last thing to say before they leave somewhere. An afterthought for the Afterlife, you think, as you look at her lips.
You find yourself wondering what her las
t thought might have been, and quickly answer your own question: "I'm going to die. I don't want to ..."
You lay Isabel back down, let your own head drop back; rub the back of your neck and then pour the contents of the water bottle into your eyes. You use your sleeve to dry your face and then look at Sam, who seems to be waiting for a resolution or order of some kind.
'Yes Sam, Sam the man, she's fucking dead. Really very dead. As dead as a Dodo. Do you get the picture? Or is she dead? Maybe she'll jump to her feet any moment now and shout, "Just a flesh wound! It's a graze really, my boys. Come on now, follow me. One, two, three, Onward Christian soldiers, marching out to sea ..."'
You sing the last part of your statement as an admonition, as if from a hymnal, to your hapless foot soldier. You know he is your follower. You are the leader. The madness that surrounds you is your making. You see fighting through the drift of the gas smoke. These are your people and they are beating back the police. You knew this would be an epic battle and some would fall and never get back up. You are on a mission - a final drive home to freedom, that is what your mind is telling you.
'Sam, dear boy. Enjoy this day. Can you hear it? Can you hear the clarion call? We will grieve for the dead later. But this is the moment we have talked about. This
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