The Man in the Bed

It was like a sea breeze. Gentle, at first, a soft sweetness that gradually, gradually, began to filter through the echelons of musty light. It was freshness, a colour that whitewashed the dull reel of grey. There was, quite suddenly, someone in his house.

The idea didn’t quite register in his tired brain. It kept low, skirting the forest of carpet, slinking across the shadows to the stark coolness of the bed. It found its way across the blinding white sheets, pulled itself up his aching body and lodged itself in the cracks of his mind. It sat there, exhausted from its travel, finding no comfort in the industrial mine field of forgotten memories.

But no, there was definitely someone there. In the brightest hours, when the sun’s fever could finally penetrate the thick curtain of his hazy mind and give him the strength to open his eyes, he noticed changes. The shelf, once cluttered with tattered books that guarded their pages from him like ashen cougars; once adorned with ornate pictures, their dusted faces dripping with colours that couldn’t find their rehearsed position and so lingered longingly, formless ghosts in bridesmaid dresses… the shelf, once a graveyard, was alive. He made out wood, varnished and bright, saw a delicate spindle of a vase peek out at him, and there – a whisper of sunshine yellow. Its colour gave him life for just a moment.

But then it was twilight. He looked down at the desert that was his hand. A phalanx of tubes marched forth, carrying his red life, replacing it with a watery flow of sterile nothingness. He fell once again, and as the light withdrew the ceiling caved in. Monochrome limbs of timber tumbled town, paint-pots raining down upon him as if to demand to be filled with life again. He sank, unable to meet their demands, unable to remember if the weed that festered on that shelf was a pestilent cinereal or wretched black.

The idea was back, a-tap-tap-tapping at the door. And with it, came yet more change.

The metal bars of his bed glared at him with blinding light, but now he could lift his head just high enough to swing his vision across a shoulder to the thickset end table that had once been settled in his bedroom. There, almost suddenly, was a tall glass of water. He watched as a fizz of calcium danced about the glass, whispering magical tales of its time rushing down lush mountain falls.

The glass was a crystal: one that sat, watching him with a wry smile. It drew a face, a face of a man that smiled without knowing why, a face of a man that would while away aimless weekends sending bread in ethereal arcs before that glorious splash that heralded the onslaught of ducks…

There was a connection in the fuse box of his mind and suddenly that face belonged to him. The floodgates opened.

Memories flowed like springtime and he was slumped in his chair, the telly at an angry roar to block out the noise, the noise that was them thumping and groaning as they led the new bed through the door. There had been a morbid humour when they realised its size, calculated the geometry like the hawk of his school teacher and concluded that the only place that blasted bed could go was the kitchen. He had vowed never to touch those sterile sheets.

Now he was cradled in it and the memories were gone, drained with a gurgle like the old kitchen sink, empty like the myriad of pots and pans that stared gormlessly down at him. All thought was gone and he was nothing - the beautiful prism of sunlight that glass fed him was grey, grey and gone.

He concluded, gently at first, that the intruder to his silence was not malicious. There was no alacrity to its movement, just the gentle pitter patter of footsteps in rooms unknown, just the occasional strain of a tune, notes that danced merrily through the haze of silence that had become the man’s life. No, the presence was kind –as much as it evaded his futile attempts at capture, he knew it was there. Somehow, it imparted a strength: one that, even when the sun forsook him, kidnapped by the moon and its effervescing cold, could keep him warm. These dark times, when once would immediately set the colours of his world draining like a sieve, now only caused them to falter.

The presence seemed to whisper to him, soft words that set their shoes at the door and gravitated towards the kettle, sending a soothing whistle of comfort. The room around him seemed to wake from its slumber, grow like a tentative seed until it was aglow and warm, the maze of a carpet tamed and purring, the menacing cutlery soundly asleep and the sink no longer hoarse.

It was everywhere, scribbling a spasm of ink across the hurdle of papers that documented every detail of his decline, coaxing strange liquids into his mouth that spirited into a Herculean energy within him.

As his world came alive so did he: the poison that burrowed into him through the horrific causeway in his wrist was, he realised, no more poison that the water that he found himself sipping, relishing it’s depth and freshness. The fuels banished the grey that had once reigned over him, and he found himself no longer slipping away.

With a dull shock, he realised it was a Thursday. He was alive.

Good things come to an end. Those words spit themselves out of someone and suddenly he is surrounded by a crowd of people. It’s them. In their eyes he becomes everything: a friend, a neighbour, a son, a husband. Had he really been alive, he would have noticed with a certain greyness that the presence was not among them.

She was gone, just like the fleeting memories and promiscuous colours of the man in the bed.