If I were to describe myself in one word. It would be scared. I fear a lot of things. I fear butter knives and kettles. I’m terrified of garden gnomes and the sound of paper ripping. I can barely leave my house as the sound of cars whizzing down the road sends me into blind panic. I hate postmen and bin men and the feel of ice dissolving in my mouth.
Everyday is a struggle, a nightmare that I cannot wake from. If sleep comes at all, it’s in the form of a pill.
It took me some time to find a therapist that didn’t have blonde hair and green eyes, for I am fearful of those features. I finally found one. Doctor Gorman, and boy was I pleased to meet him. He’s highly regarded, has a nice soothing voice, and assured me during our first session that he would find some way to help me.
He’s writing a paper on me, titled; The Man that Fears his Own Footsteps, and in return for my permission to have my story published to baffled academics and students, he’s offering me my sessions free of charge.
It’s a sad Autumn day and I’m in his office. My fingers are shaking as the fan in the corner of his room unnerves me. He tells me to recline on a red leather sofa and rest my head on a soft fluffy pillow. Gorman’s glasses are tilted precariously on his nose and his pen is mindlessly scribbling into a thick notebook, dedicated entirely to me.
“I want you to tell me about your parents.” He asks.
“They’re normal. Dad’s a policeman and mum is a homemaker. I have a sister named Julie, but she doesn’t speak to us anymore.” I replied.
“Why does Julie not keep in touch with the family anymore?” He pressed me.
“I don’t know exactly, she got married and moved to Australia, she just stopped replying to messages and phone calls after a while.” I said.
“I see.” He replied, scribbling down long paragraphs of shorthand. “Do you recall a fond memory from childhood, perhaps your father teaching you ride a bike or your mother taking you to a funfair?”
“No specific thing… but it was good. My childhood I mean, it was normal.”
“Normal is a strange word to use. I want to talk about your fear of balloons, where do you think that came from? Did you have one at a birthday party where none of your friends showed up? Did you try to blow one up and it popped in your face? Bang! Real loud and surprising.” He asked, shifting the subject effortlessly.
“I don’t know. I’ve just been scared of them for as long as I can remember.”
“The brain is a marvellous thing. It can protect itself. It can cleanse itself of that which would maim it, cast out all the bad memories that might inhibit it’s ability to survive.” Doctor Gorman explained. “It isn’t always conducive to growth however. Sometimes it is better to face these things, to overcome them. You can’t fix a car if you don’t know what’s happened to it.”
“You think I’ve forgotten why I’m scared of balloons?” I asked.
“I do. I can help you find out why. If you’d let me.” He said casually.
I was silent for a moment, pondering. Did I want to remember? What would I unearth in the dark cesspit of my mind? if anything at all? But I was here to learn about myself, to fix myself. If Doctor Gorman thought it would help…
“Okay.. If you think it can help. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m going to put you under hypnosis. I know it sounds frightening, but I want you to remember that no matter how dark and awful it feels, I am always with you. If at any point you need to leave the memory you can. No harm can come to you in this room.” He said gently. He reached out and tapped his metronome into life. “Let you muscles unwind and relax. Breathe out from your fingers and your toes, feel your chest rise and fall, imagine that it’s a gust of wind in a familiar field.”
I watched the metronome swing. A part of me wanted to resist the sleepiness that had begun to wrack my body, so overwhelming it was. I felt my eyes roll around in their sockets, rather faintly I saw a hay field, the one that had surrounded my family home. No. No, I don’t want to go there.
“Where are you Johnathan?” I heard Dr Gorman ask. His voice came from the sky and though it was clear it sounded like it was a million miles away.
“I am home.” I said.
I could see my parent’s thatched house on the edge of the hayfield. It’s chimney was billowing out great swathes of smoke and the ivy that crept up the mismatched brick walls was swaying in the wind. I looked down at my hands and saw that I was carrying a long string, it led up to a small little balloon, bright red and shiny.
I could hear a fairground and beyond the stiff shadowy peaks of hay, I could see bright neon lights. I clutched the balloon string tightly and my feet, moving of their own accord, carried me to the backdoor of the familiar old house that took me directly into the kitchen. There were knives and freshly sliced bread on the worktops and a glass of rum and coke, half drunk.
There were voices from the living room, both familiar and unfamiliar.
“I’ve said no. I’d like to go home now.” The thin and gaunt voice belonging to a female said, though quavering there was strength in it. “I don’t know why you’re doing this Mr Samuels, but be rest assured the police shall be called.”
“I am the police. Police Constable Samuels, you’ll do me the courtesy of my proper title.” The voice of my dad replied. “You’ll find no such justice here, this town is called Sorrow. It did not gain that name by being a happy place where justice prevails.”
“I’ve already said don’t touch me!” She squeaked. My feet moved me toward the living room door, dread pooling in my insides. Don’t look. I said to myself. Nothing good is on the other side. My head peeked to the side of the door, the balloon slipped from my hand and bobbed into the living room, as if carried there by magic. The bleating of our goats slipped in through the open windows.
The girl was on the couch. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. During Christmas all my presents would be laid out there on the couch in gaudy wrapping paper. She was covered in no such modesty, her dress had been torn from her and only the frayed remnants of it stuck to her milky body.
My dad was kneeling at her feet. He didn’t look as I remembered him. His eyebrows were knitted together and his eyes, usually warm and brown, looked closer to black.
“Stand up girl, out the back, easy now.” He said firmly. I was paralysed, I screamed at myself to move, but I wouldn’t. To get to the back garden they would have to pass me, he would find me, this man who was my father but did not look at all like him.
“I’m here.” Dr Gorman said. “Keep going, you’re doing so well.”
I clung to the comfort of his words. Dad nudged by me in the corridor, tugging at the poor blonde girl’s hand.
“Johnny, you’re late. Never mind, come help me. If she runs the shotgun is in the shed, it’s loaded, you remember how to use it?” He said, my head bobbed like the balloon. I grabbed the string with my hand and pulled it after me.
“Please, let me go mr- Police Sergeant Samuels. I just want my mum, I won’t tell.” She said, her voice losing its strength.
“You’re not going home. Stop speaking and I’ll pop you something that’ll take the edge away from the pain. That’s the only kindness you’ll get from me.” Dad said. She went mute.
I followed them.
“Help me.” She whispered to me as dad walked ahead, still pulling at her hand. I gave her no answer.
In the back garden there was a large wooden post. At the bottom, was another going diagonal. The girl recoiled in terror at the sight, as if it meant something to her.
“Swallow this. There’s a good girl.” Dad shoved a few pills into the girls mouth. She shook and quivered, and I just watched. Dad moved ahead and unfurled some rope that had been left on the ground. He tied it around her shaking wrists. He put his hands around her waist and tugged her up onto the wooden post, upside down. “Up here. That’s it.”
He tied her wrists to each of the posts and her ankles too. It was the worst saltire I’d ever seen. I clutched at my balloon string as all the blood rushed to the girl’s head. Her eyes bulged and her hair dangled.
“Johnny, the petrol. Just by the door.” He hissed at me. The girl was crying now. I did as I was asked, still clutching my balloon.
He poured it over her and her face contorted as some of it went in her mouth, she spluttered and whinged but dad looked unaffected by the pitiful sight.
“Please no. I want my mum. I want-“ She was crying hard now.
“The pain won’t last long.” He said to her, he pulled out a lighter from his pocket and clipped it open. He threw it at the saltire cross and it went up in a blaze of glorious orange.
She screamed for a while. Ugly, struggled screams that came from the very gut of her belly. Her hair went first and it fell as ashes to the ground.
An ear seemed to melt off her face and yellow fat seeped out of her like a roast left too long in the oven. It was only when the fire descended to her feet that the screaming seemed to stop.
I was still holding the balloon, dad had lit a cigarette on the fiery remains of her now moistureless corpse. We watched until the flames stopped. Dad helped it with a little bit of water from the garden hose. I was shaking, but the young body I was in was far too calm. He had seen this before, I knew.
The blackened charred corpse of her remained, smoking, smouldering and, twisted in her last agonising moments.
“I don’t think it’s taken. We’ll need to get another.” Dad groaned, watching the corpse studiously.
Then it happened.
The balloon slipped from my hand. The wind carried it toward the burnt altar. If it flew any lower the hot steam would melt it, but before it could, a blackened hand reached for the string.
The ropes had long since burnt off, and unrestrained, the corpse held out its charred arms and marvelled at them. It had no eyes, no mouth, no ears. It was a black shadow and as it moved, the ash of its flesh crumbled off.
This wasn’t real I said. It isn’t real. Dr Gorman I want to stop.
The charred corpse moved as if it had just learned to walk. It twisted its head at my balloon, as if it were a dog trying to understand Nietszche.
“Walk it to the old barn, son.” Dad said to me. “Put it with the others.”
As the young boy moved forward, he left me behind. I watched him walk hand in hand with that charred and crumbling thing. It’s blackened hand still clutched at the balloon string, only when it reached the barn did it finally pop.
Bang, it went, real loud and surprising.