Tania Carver: Choked

She heard voices behind her, becoming louder. She ignored them. Heard footsteps running towards her. Ignored them too. Staying focused on the cottage. Moving towards it. Her world narrowed down to that burning ruin. To saving her family.

She had almost reached the car when she was grabbed from behind.

‘Get away from there! You mental?’

She shook the hands off her, kept going. They grabbed her again.

‘It’s not safe, you’ll be killed. Come on … ’

The hands pulled her back, stopped her from moving forward, separating her from her family.

She tried to shake them off again, but they gripped harder.

‘Please, stay back … see sense … ’

Desperation and adrenalin gave her strength. She turned, saw a man about her own age, concern and fear in his eyes, his hands grappling with her shoulders. She shook him off, broke free from his grasp.

As she reached the car, she felt the heat on her face and body. It was so bright it forced her eyes to close, so powerful it knocked her back like a physical presence. She squinted through the flames. Tried to make out anyone else. Reality rippled through the heat haze.

She heard the man’s voice behind her once more.

‘Get back! The car’s going to … ’

She felt hands on her body, the sensation of being pushed roughly to the ground. Then a sudden burst of searing heat, like she was being devoured by a miniature sun, accompanied by a sound so loud it must have shattered her eardrums.

Then nothing.

Just blackness.

They had given him his own curtains. That was something. Curtains and a window. But not a view. That was asking too much.

That didn’t stop him staring out of it, though. Staring and thinking. Some days that was all he did, because he had nothing else to do. Just stare and think. There wasn’t much to look at. Sometimes he counted the pigeons. Tried to identify them by their markings. Individualise them. Anthropomorphise them even, give them names, assign character traits. That was when he knew he had been staring too long. He would be dressing them up in little waistcoats next. So instead he would sit on the bed, turn his attention inwards rather than outwards.

He would think about things he had read in books, the pencilled notes he had made in the margins. The books now sat permanently on his shelf. He didn’t take them down much any more. He had looked at them so often, he had memorised the bits he liked. The important bits.

One of the main things he thought about was time. It occupied his mind a lot, and he had read plenty of books on it, with all sorts of theories. How it wasn’t a straight line. How it twisted, stretched. How sometimes it seemed short but was actually long. How it would loop in on itself. How it could fool you into thinking it was one thing when it was really another.

He applied the things he had read to his own life, his own situation. The way it seemed short but was actually long. Although most days it was the opposite, seeming long but actually short. No, not most days: all days. And nights. The nights were worse than the days.

Because he kept having the same dream, over and over, night after night. For years, since he had first arrived. He would dream his own death. And it was always a slow death. Cancer, MS, Aids, something like that. Something he couldn’t stop, couldn’t cure. Parts of him would be taken away, bit by bit. His body would become a cage, with him trapped inside. Sometimes it took everything away and left only his voice. A small, weak voice screaming silently within. Ignored. Unheard.

When he woke up, the dream would still be with him, clinging, convincing him he was dead. He would have to force himself to believe he was alive. Then he would lie in the dark, hearing the groans and cries from beyond his door, and think about being dead. His body rotted, his mind dissipated. No longer existing. No thoughts, no life, no memories. Just nothing.

And then he would feel more alone than he had ever believed a human being could feel.

Eventually morning would come and another day would start: the same as the last one, the same as the next. Dragging a greater piece of the dream with him every time he woke, barely existing until he existed no more, until he eventually became nothing.

Now he was just a collection of memories. And memories, he knew, were as reliable as time. If you told someone a table was a chair and you told them long enough and loud enough, they would eventually believe you. And that was what had happened to his memories. They had told him what he had done. What had caused it. What had happened as a result. And even though he hadn’t believed them and had fought against them, pitted his own memories against theirs, theirs had been stronger and theirs had won. It had taken years, but eventually he had accepted what they said as truth. That their memories were his. That he had done what they said he had done.

It had been easier once he had let them implant their events into his mind. They had started to be nicer to him, talked about letting him go. Time might even have speeded up. But it may have just been time playing tricks on him once again.

Or not. Because the day had come. And it was today. No more staring at the curtains. No more sitting in his room with his memorised books, dreaming of living death.

He would be out. He would be free.

They all told him it was a good thing. That it must be what he wanted. And he had agreed with them. Because that was what they wanted to hear. And if they were pleased, he was pleased.

He heard keys in the door. Stood up. Stared straight ahead, at the wall. The door opened and two of them entered. One of them smiling.

‘Going home today, eh?’ the smiling one said.

He wanted to say I am home , but knew better. Instead he nodded.

Smiler laughed. ‘Won’t know what to do with yourself.’

Knowing a response was expected, he returned the laugh. ‘Bet I will.’

Smiler laughed again.

‘Get your things, then, come on,’ the other one said, yawning.

He knew their names and had even used them sometimes. But he would forget them as soon as he left. Because he wouldn’t need them any more.

He gave one last look round his cell. His home. He took in the curtains, the memorised books and the toiletries. ‘There’s nothing I want here,’ he said.

‘Suit yourself, then.’

He followed them out.

The door clanged shut behind them.

He walked off the wing, down the corridor and towards the gate, trying to think of the future and not the past. Hoping time wouldn’t play tricks any more and that a table would become a table again and not a chair.

Trying not to feel death in his every step.

Marina opened her eyes. She tried to focus, but there was too much light in the room, too much brightness. She closed her eyes to block it out, then opened them again, slowly this time.

She saw curtains. Thin, patterned in a style she couldn’t identify. She looked round. She was in a small room. No, not a room, a cubicle. There was a beige wall with a small sink against it. She looked down and realised she was on a hospital stretcher. For a few seconds her consciousness floated adrift from her memory, then the two came crashing together. She jerked upright.

The cottage … the fire …

‘Whoa, hey, it’s OK … ’

She felt hands on her shoulders. Firm, not harsh. Not forcing her down, just holding her in place.

‘Where am I?’

‘Ipswich General. A and E.’

The voice sounded familiar. Warm and friendly. Another thought hit her. ‘Phil, where’s Phil …?’

‘It’s OK,’ said the voice again.

Marina focused, managed to look at the face of the speaker. She made out dark skin and lightened hair, a denim jacket and a T-shirt. Her friend and work colleague, Detective Constable Anni Hepburn.