Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

From my window I see a bird in the sky. To start with I don’t know it’s a bird. How could it be up in the air?

We’re at the car jam again. Mum’s shivering like she came back from the outside. I can see the bumps on her neck, her ears, even the tips of her fingers. Now she has red bits instead of white bits in her eyes.

A man in a white paper suit puts her in the passenger seat, and drives us home. Then we’re allowed to go through the place with the orange and white fences. This time they don’t even want to check our ears.

I keep dreaming about the bird. It has red eyes, white feathers. It’s big. Somehow it looks like a dog. It runs and flies too fast to get away from. It lives for ever.

Then I wake up: and I’m wrapped in a blanket. I feel cold-hot-cold. It’s a strange room. Too dark. There’s a bottle of juice and a plate of biscuits next to my pillow.

There’s a baby next to me. It breathes with a fast snoring sound. My clothes are all damp.

I don’t see Mum.

The real reason I didn’t put Mum’s letter back together was because she wrote three of them.

One telling me how to work the heating. The next, a list of emergency numbers.

But the last one: what was it?

If I’d seen the other two envelopes as well, it would’ve been easier. But I never found them.

There was just this one, the one she posted back through the door. Paper gone pale on one side, from the sun.

Try not to look at the words as I tape the torn pieces back together again. Dirt-marked but readable, only her signing-words blurry from when I dropped it that day on the wet ground:

Mo luaidh Rona,

This is for when you get home. I’m sorry they didn’t let me stay. As soon as I get better I’m coming back, that’s my promise.

If I don’t get better then I want to tell you I love you with all my heart and always will.

Aunt Moira said she will take care of you. There’s money put away by in the kitchen.

Don’t hide yourself, be bright in this world.

I say it out loud. I hear, or imagine I hear, Mum saying the words. I put the letter against my cheek. I don’t care if there are germs of illness on it.

I write the whole thing up on my wall. I colour around the words in rainbows. It takes me hours, and my hands get numb, but it’s worth every second.

I want more. I look at the letter side-on, in case she pressed into it a secret message. I look inside the envelope, unpeel its glue. It’s just plain.

What else? I get hungry for other messages. So I go back to my old home and do a complete search.

Some of the cards on the mantelpiece fell down since we came in. But there’s still dirty washing in the sink, Mum’s grey pants and bras on the clothes horse still.

I rub the pen-marks off the tablecloth. Then I use Sellotape to stick down the wallpaper I peeled.

I peel off the stickers I shouldn’t’ve put on the wall upstairs. But I have to stop, because the wallpaper rips underneath.

‘Sorry,’ I say to Mum.

She’s not answering today.

I look around for anything of her: and after a strong search I find a shopping list at the bottom of a plastic bag, in the cupboard. It says: Carrots, Lentils, Eggs, Tomato sauce, Milk, Breakfast, Rolls, Juice, Treats.

Her writing isn’t hurried, and even though it’s only a shopping list, I want to keep it: because it’s of her.

1. Watch 4 times a day.

2. Send messages.

3. Collect from beaches.

4. New Shopping.

5. Old Shopping.

6. Water – collect rain.

Six becomes one, when I remember that water is the most important thing. So I put loads of plastic cups in a fish crate on the stone wall of the house, with green nets over the top to stop the cats getting in.

After this I wait for rain. Still: I know that if you wait too hard then it never comes. So I pretend to the sky that I was busy doing something else instead.

It works for a day before the snails get in.

I never got to see where they came from. There had been a spot of rain at night, and I went straight out in the morning to find there’d been an attack.

When I shouted the dogs started to bark. There was only a couple of cups spared, so it became a battle: me against the snails. I crushed and smashed them: threw them against the wall, flattened them under rocks.

But then I saw a snail try to slide off, with its sad cracked shell. And all the world hated me, because I was the worst person for hurting this creature.

Draw imaginary people. The family I’ll become part of. A kind dad with glasses, beard.

The sailors who come. They look like pirates. They keep their parrots on long string. One has a wooden leg, the other an eye-patch. The next one a hook for a hand. It was unfair that Long John Silver had all the injuries, so I spread them more evenly around his shipmates.

Talking becomes the new rule. ‘Use it or lose it,’ Mum used to say. My big worry is I forget to speak, like Mairi did; that my tongue shrivels and disappears and it’s gone for good. So I practise. I talk out the words I remember from DVDs. ‘ Quiet, you fools. She’s in the oubliette. ’ And, ‘ Look for the, bear necessities; those simple bear necessities! ’ Also, ‘ When a zebra’s in the zone, leave him alone. ’ Then pages from any kids’ book with pictures: especially the ones Elizabeth used to read to Alex, where I can imagine her voice: ‘ The night Max made mischief of one kind, and then another … Please don’t go, we love you so, we’ll eat you up …’

Still: my voice sounds too buried inside. So I try adverts, even though I can only remember the most annoying ones: ‘ Go Compare! Go Compare! When you hear that sound, look around, Go Compare! ’ But though the adverts are usually short, I never seem to know them exact. Then I try reading Gaelic learning books: but I’m never very sure that I’m saying the words proper, or that I forgot how to without a teacher or Mum to correct me.

It starts to be nursery rhymes. I lie in bed and sing. If I shut my eyes I can pretend it’s Mum doing the rhyme. I can nearly make myself think it’s her voice.

It’s difficult, but nearly possible.

The cats begin to follow me. The kittens want to follow most, rather than go to their mothers. To start with I encourage them, but then a big dog runs from nowhere and kills one kitten in a bite, which is so terrible to see and hear that I never let the kittens near me again.

I befriend two big dogs, who both act friendly. One still has a collar on: her name’s Elsa. Elsa only ever wants food. She’s a brown and white dog, with middle-long ears. She’s friendly and sleeps beside me at night, which is a good help.

Elsa eats the dog-meat I open. In exchange she snarls at the night-time rats. It’s a fair partnership.

If she keeps being friendly she’ll become my sidekick.

Sometimes the sea roars. You can’t listen to it for too long because it turns from a quiet rumble to the biggest sound in history. It’s like watching the clock. The ticks get louder and louder until you’re not sure they’re bigger than you.

Other times I worry I’m not alive. So I do a routine of checks to guarantee I’m still here. First: press myself all over. Then I shout to hear the sound of it coming out from my own mouth, so it’s not just air. Then there’s the mirror, though sometimes the mirror lies. Then there’s the dogs, who are friendly and treat me like I’m an actual being.

Then there’s giving myself a Chinese burn. Or pouring cold water from the sea down my neck.