London When it Rains

by C. Sean McGee

  “Go, go, go!”

  And then the silence was broken; and with it came panicked screaming, the rapid panting, and shortness of breath. And then came the desperate pleas for help, the hysterical shrieking, sobbing and even laughter - over lost friends and lost limbs.

  The Old Man stared at body after body as he was carried by his rescuers out of the burning building. They were all so young - just children; no matter how grown up they’d profess to being. To The Old Man, they were just kids.

  “We need more black tags,” shouted someone in Triage.

  “Just use green then,” was the response. “Green is the new black.”

  They weren’t gentle in how they dumped The Old Man’s body onto the ground. The thump of his buttocks hitting the grass was only marginally worse than that of the back of his head. But this was hardly the time for gentle consideration.

  “Excuse me,” he said, holding his hand up in the air – still clinging to burned notes.

  Someone stood over him for a second. They didn’t look like a doctor or a nurse, and they certainly didn’t look like someone trained or prepared to be of any use in a trauma of this magnitude. The person took one second to evaluate The Old Man before hanging a coloured tag around his neck and then moving on to the body that lay beside him.

  “Excuse me, someone, please,” he pleaded, still flapping those notes around as if he were still eyeing off those complimentary fries.

  It was dizzying now as The Old Man lay on the grass, listening to the sirens blaring. It was a sunny day like most days were. The sky was blue and filled with long, white vapour trails; and there some large birds way up high – like small black dots – soaring with their wings abreast. They looked bold and majestic.

  Though the might have been drones.

  “Please,” said The Old Man.

  Body after body was passed over his head. He saw the faces of his rescuers for seconds before they again vanished; with each body – like him – left tagged and unattended.

  “You have to tell me,” he shouted, grabbing at someone’s leg.

  The person stopped and looked at him for a second.

  “What colour am I?” he asked.

  The Old Man was covered from head to toe in blood, though it was hard to tell how much of it was his. And with the clumps of white dust and rubble stuck to the side of his face and powdered over his body, he looked like a half-battered steak.

  The person didn’t respond. Instead, they looked right into The Old Man’s eyes, as if they were trying to put his face to a name that was on the tip of their tongue. They looked at him as if he were a piece of a puzzle, but one that was almost too tattered to be of any good. Still, though, they stared at him, and it was so unlike how others were being looked over, looked after or looked at.

  “What colour am I?” pleaded The Old Man, unable to see - or even reach for – the tag around his neck.

  “You,” said the person.

  Their voice was barely recognisable under their gargling throat.

  “It’s you,” they said again, their face pale with disbelief.

  The Old Man felt none of his injuries. This worried him. Were he a yellow or green tag- or even a red tag – his cuts, abrasions and broken bones would be wreaking havoc on his senses. He’d be screaming and shouting and begging for either morphine or his mother. He’d sound like the rest of the yellow tags who were either moaning or wailing, and could not be consoled. But what worried him was that he felt nothing. He felt no tightness in his chest, and he felt no tearing of his muscles or breaking of his skin and bones. He felt no gaping wound at all. There was no stinging and there were no aches and pains.

  There was nothing; no pain at all. Yet he did not feel unscathed. He did not feel as if he were walking away from this. The silence beneath his skin and in the blur of his thoughts, it worried him. The kinds of injuries that the mind chose to ignore were always the very worst and most fatal kind. And that was all that he felt – worry.

  “Please,” he said again, seeing only a person in front of him and not the person that they assumed they actually were. “What colour am I?”

  Just by looking at him, he could have worn any tag.

  The person stumbled backwards, nearly falling over a young couple who, though beyond rescue, still clung to one another, as if they had died that way.

  “No,” shouted The Old Man. “Help me, don’t go.”

  The Old Man couldn’t see. To him, the person merely vanished, as did the clouds and the tiny black dots that circled overhead. Were he able to tilt his head, he would have seen the person clutching at their open belly, keeping their stomach and intestines from slipping to the ground. Were he able, he would have seen how futile such an act truly was; and he would have seen the person collapse on the ground with a look on their face as if at that very second, they had finally solved the missing piece of their lifelong puzzle.

  But The Old Man didn’t see; he was watching nothing else but the blue sky and the return of the circling, black dots above his head. It was the only thing he could focus on. It was calming – a kind of meditation. And it helped him to drown out the noise of all those bloodied injured and dying people. The lesser injured were always louder. They complained a great deal more.

  He watched the black dots circling overhead until he fell asleep; and when he woke, his hand and legs were bound, and his eyes were taped shut.

  IV

  The sound of the explosion had sent all of the protestors to their knees. Their bodies now lay twisted and entwined like woven braids; and for the moment, sheer panic had them crippled and dumb. Still standing on his podium, The Orator turned to his loyal followers and spoke in a kind and benign manner.

  “There is no reason to be afraid. The worst that they can do is to wound us, and for that, we have science and medicine on our side. Let me be clear, and let me be adamant; you will not die here today. Your neighbours will die - and your brothers and your sisters too. Your mothers and your fathers, and even your loved ones too; they will all die here today. The person beside you - to your left and to your right - and the person in front and behind you; they will all die here today. But you will not. You will not die.”

  He looked at each of his followers, and he repeated, thousands of times over.

  “You will not die.”

  Smoke billowed in the distance. From her window, it was all The Administrator could see. It had turned the once blue sky into smouldering charcoal.

  “I refuse to step down,” she said.

  “Mam, you may not have the luxury of choosing.”

  “Bullshit. I will not be forced out office by bullies. As long as I can breathe then I have a choice. No-one will ever take that away from me. We stay and we fight.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “Why? Who’s left? Who stayed?”

  “There’s no-one left; no-one that can make any kind of difference. Just some clerical staff and some interns. But none of them is here out of any loyalty. Most of them have already turned - if not all. They’re all just too scared to leave. As for your adversary…His party has almost full approval. That’s almost unheard of. There’s nothing to fight for anymore.”

  “There’s always something to fight for.”

  “Not this time. Look for yourself. What do you see out there?”

  They both turned to the open window. Below them, the tens of thousands of protestors were no longer huddled in fear. They were on their feet embracing one another. They shook hands and hugged, and even some of them kissed. They shrugged off their worry with little bother as if it were a tassel or some discardable accessory. Mothers and fathers held their children in their arms and absolute strangers stood shoulder to shoulder – some of them holding hands, and others holding onto things to either throw in anger or in a fit of celebration.

  And the police and army too – of which there were almost a thousand; maybe more – they lowered their shields and then turned away from the crowd they had been paid to disper
se. They took off their helmets and covered the insignia sewn onto their breasts so that they looked indifferent to the thousands of other faces around them. Like everyone else, they looked fed up. They looked like they wanted change and, like a child, they would break as much they could and tear everything apart until they got they got what they wanted.

  And there were so many people now. They spilled out way beyond the city centre and from every office, house, and delicatessen; and from every factory, hospital, restaurant and back alley brothel – they all came. Those who couldn’t, hung banners and flags from their windows and sat on the edges of their sills, beating wooden spoons on rickety old pans. Those on the streets marched as far as they could until they could march no further, and then they joined in on the chanting and singing.

  The atmosphere was carnival – at least for now.

  “They marched like that for me,” said The Administrator.

  “And now they march for your successor.”

  “He is no successor of mine. He’s a thug and a nihilist.”

  “Have you read his manifesto?”

  “No. I don’t need to read it to know how absurd his ideas are. He’s a maniac.”

  “Maybe. But his ideas hit home with the average person. I have to admit, some of them aren’t so absurd. Radical, yes; but absurd?”

  “You can’t agree? You’ve seen what he intends to do, right? Their entire philosophy is built upon the dismantling of our culture - on erasing our history.”

  “What is history? If we can let go of it at our deaths, why can’t we let go of it any sooner? Why shouldn’t it be constantly discarded?”

  “Because our history is everything. It’s what outlives us. It is our proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “Proof that we were here.”

  V

  “Do you know who you are?”

  The Old Man struggled for a second but he couldn’t break free of the shackles. He lay there, staring at the back of his eyelids, counting to fifty. About a third of the way through, he settled down somewhat. His breathing calmed, his rage subsided, and those blasted shackles stopped their rattling and clanging. He was still for some time, convincing himself that there was nothing strange about this ordeal. He imagined that he was lying on a park bench under a cold, fluorescent sun. He dreamt up the trees and the sky and beautiful green grass. And he dreamt up a lake too where on one side, a gang of cheering children raced electric boats while their younger siblings ran away from the ducks and geese they had been teasing. He dreamt up a white sun and then he painted it yellow, but at some point, he set it back to white again. On the grass, he imagined a young family having a picnic. He imagined them shaded by some magnificent tree but he couldn’t think of any, so instead he only dreamt up its cool and far-reaching umbrage. He imagined the young couple kissing as their child frolicked by the water’s edge, watching his little blue balloon slowly drift from his grasp. And on the other side of the park, he dreamt up an old lady; a lady as old as he. He gave her bright red hair and purple lipstick, and he had her looking like some kind of vagabond or a ne’er-do-well thug. He imagined her smiling and smoking a cigarette, and breathing – on her own bloody accord.

  “I’m going to remove the covering for your eyes now.”

  The voice was now standing over him. It sounded like a young man; in his fifties maybe. But the way he spoke, and in how he cautiously approached The Old Man, you would swear he was about to pick a bone from a crocodile’s mouth.

  “Do you know your name?” he asked.

  In his thoughts, the old lady took a drag from her cigarette and before The Old Man could call out to her, she disappeared in a cloud of thick smoke. And with it went the colour that he had thought up so vividly. The lush green grass turned brown and prickly; and became infested with ticks, spiders, and stinging ants. The young children by the lake vanished for no good reason while out on the water; their boats all collided and sank. And those geese eventually caught up with their pesky siblings as the young couple turned from their kiss and gasped in disbelief.

  “My name is Doctor Jennings.”

  “Given name,” said The Old Man, barely audible under his dry, crackling throat.

  The Doctor looked at him for a moment. He might have been threatened, intimidated or even insulted, but he didn’t show it. He smiled.

  “William,” he said. “Doctor William Jennings. Now can I ask your name? Do you know your name?”

  “I’m not sure,” said The Old Man.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  He tried to look around. He did the best he could but his head was strapped to the mattress, as were his wrists and ankles. He could only see what his eyes would let him see. The room was beige. Their walls were empty, aside from some charts and a calendar. And on the ceiling there was a picture that someone had painted of the sun and about a dozen or so hot air balloons; but whoever painted them hadn’t the decency, the interest, or most probably the skill to even paint people inside of the balloons - and the sun was yellow.

  “You are at The Goodreach Wellness Institute. You were in an accident. Do you remember anything at all?”

  The Old Man closed his eyes again. He tried to dream up the park but he might as well have been painting on his own tears. The colour ran down the back of his mind with each pitiful stroke; and time and time again, all he could see was the back of his eyelids.

  “No,” he said.

  “Can you tell me what year it is?”

  “It’s five or six something.”

  “6 N.E. Good. Very good. Do you have any family; anyone that we can call?”

  The old lady’s face appeared in his mind for just a second, but it was barely visible behind the wafting smoke. It was enough, though. She was beautiful. Behind her ageing skin and beneath her brittle bones, she was timeless. And though hers was coming to an end, the joy and tireless passion in her eyes spoke as if her journey had yet to begin.

  “No,” he said.

  “Do you know why you are here?”

  Clearly, he did not, but still, The Doctor persisted.

  “The firemen who rescued you, they said you had many questions for them. Do you remember what they were?”

  “No.”

  “They said that you asked them about death and the process of dying. More worrying, though, they said that you asked them about God – and not in any political rhetoric, and not in any metaphorical sense. They swore that you asked in a way as if you believed that such an incredulous idea was true. Do you remember?”

  “No,” replied The Old Man.

  It was a reflex more than anything; like a child, denying the patently obvious and the arguably true. He may or may not have remembered, but his instincts built a quick defence.

  “That is why you were brought to the institute.”

  The Doctor flipped through the pages in the chart in his hands. Though he wasn’t a doctor of the body, he acted as if he were – as if the knowledge from decades past were still fresh in his mind. He nodded his head and he said the words, ‘Yes’, ‘I see’, and ‘Interesting’ as if his agreeance were the necessary final seal.

  “No internal injuries. Your hearing seems fine. You escaped with nothing but a few scrapes and bruises. You were in the right place at the wrong time. You’re a very lucky man.”

  “What happened? Why can’t I move? Am I in prison?”

  “Oh, dear no. The restraints are just a precaution. Let me get them for you.”

  The Doctor undid each shackle and even went so far as to roughly massage The Old Man’s wrists and ankles; as if it were something he was trained to do. As he did, The Old Man stared up at the ceiling - at the pilotless balloons. He saw only empty vessels drifting aimlessly through a clear, blue sky. And it made him remember before the explosion, how all those young kids danced about with the same sense of misdirection.

  “One can’t begrudge the past, so every new guest is restrained until after a full psychiatric evaluation. And in
your case…” he said, obviously pointing out The Old Man’s frail, obese, and wrecked physique. “Well, we don’t see many gentlemen of your prestige causing too much of a ruckus.”

  “Am I a patient?”

  “You were asking about God, my dear fellow.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “Trouble? No, dearie, no. You’re sick, that is all. And you’re here, as a guest, so that we can cure you.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “How long is a piece of string?”

  The Old Man thought about every piece of string he had every bought. And he thought about each and every tiny knot that he had made. Then he thought about how much string had been so needlessly thrown away. “A knot,” he thought, “could not be tied any other way.”

  “Rest assured; our success rate here at The Goodreach Wellness Institute is one hundred percent. We will rid you of this existential doubt and you will leave here a fearless and more apt gentleman. You will be more decisive; you will sleep better, and you’ll find yourself being more compassionate and fair-minded in the presence of unjustness and disappointment. More so, you will be a better human being. And because of it, you will be the better part of a better world. Now doesn’t that sound like something that’s worth as long as it takes?”

  “This bed is terrible. It’s too rigid. And I don’t like this plastic mattress. It’s like you’re expecting me to piss my pants, which makes me think that maybe the person who slept here before had pissed theirs; and I don’t wanna sleep in anyone else’s anything. I’m too old.”

  “Oh, dearie no, sir. This is just our evaluation room. I do apologise for its stark appearance. It is, though, a procedural room, and as we deal with a variety of bodily fluids from time to time, it must remain clinical – hence the beige. You’ll find the rest of the facility quite to your liking I’m sure. Our focus is on comfort and assurance. This facility has every amenity you can imagine to help you on your way to religious emancipation. I’m sure the hardest part will be convincing you to leave. Now, if you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to show you around the centre and introduce you to your roommate.”