The Death & Life of Red Henley

by Philip Wilding

  ‘I put you in the ground,’ he said quietly as the snowstorm built around him and clung to his clothes; the wind made his coat-tails straighten and snap, he could barely see more than a few feet in front of him. ‘I can’t make good on all those things I did,’ he said, the sound of the storm becoming louder and louder in his ears, ‘but I can follow you down.’ And Walker took Lisa’s skull and he threw it as hard as he could into the face of the storm and out towards the snow-filled horizon and he quickly stepped out after it, his hand reaching for one final embrace as they both fell into the dazzling sky forever.

  *

  As Green hobbled painfully out of the subway and up the steps to the street above a sudden flurry of snow blew in towards him, making the interior of the stairwell suddenly bright. He instinctively reached for the glowing mass, making a fist around a handful of flakes, and then stopped with a jolt as the snow pulled back and started to rise upwards and away into the sky. He looked around him, but like the night the rain reversed, no one else was there to see the sky fold up in on itself. He followed its upward trajectory, taking the stairs uncertainly like a man who’s suddenly exited a dark room and is struggling to see in the unfamiliar light. He opened his fist and stared at the quickly fading crystalline stars in his palm, he tried to still their watery decay with a useless intense stare and found himself thinking of Mr Porter clinging to the body of his dead wife, like all the things he had once tried to cling to, and like Porter he could only go on living now and the things that he had once held were now so much water simply running through his fingers. He stared hard at the shallow pool of memories on his hand.

  Then the sky fell inwards again and wrapped itself around him until he was lost in the white, his features disappearing in the sudden maelstrom, then he and Red were standing suddenly alone among the flakes, two hazy columns of colour among the nothingness, then the sky sucked hard and he imagined her hand in his as the sky retreated one final time and then the snow was falling normally again, the street lights flooding through the white haze, cars moved, someone brushed against his shoulder, he sidestepped a crack in the sidewalk and picked up his pace. He pulled up his collar and bunched both fists down into his pockets and kept on walking, hoping that as both hands dried the memories would diminish too, that the colour of those thoughts might finally fade and disappear forever, that the spectrum might fragment and become so much dust, that he’d get past this, that the intangible pull of need and want might finally set him free. And he repeated small words of hope to himself and kept on walking until he became a speck against the city and the snow kept falling until it was hard to see him anymore.

  Thank You

  Thank you for helping with the heavy lifting: Grant Moon (have you tried changing this…), Piers Leighton, Mikey Evans, Dai Edwards, Neil Lach-Szyrma, Andy Bass, Alexander Milas, Sian Llewellyn, Tanya Slater (now stop going on about it!), Zaki Boulos, James, Nicky and Sean Manic, Geddy, Nancy and the Wassermans (thanks for sharing the lake with us), Alex and Neil (we’ll always have R40). Pegi Cecconi, Jeff Gorin (for taking the manuscript on holiday to Hollywood), David Miller, Andy Hunns, Sahra ‘Welsh’ Goodall, Laura Jones, Ewely, Paddy (I love you, Brighton), P, Dylan and Ravioli. Sylvain forever. The good people at Unbound who picked Red up when I thought I’d put her down for good. And for the inscrutable, beautiful girl who quietens my insecurities and keeps me standing in the light: I love Lauren Amy Archer.