“Who voted for that arse to be the Shadow Minister?” I hissed in my ever-dwindling voice to the world in general. “The man’s so full of bullshit it’s running out of his nose.”
“Well let’s just hope the people don’t buy into it,” Terry Mansfield my secretary and right-hand man replied. “How you feeling today? You seemed good out there, bit more life in you.”
“Not hard when I’m practically a walking corpse.”
“Come on that’s not true,” Terry said. “You can’t walk T.” He gave the back of my wheel chair a slap in a way he might have given one of his male friends if he’d just told them a joke. That was what I liked about Terry, it didn’t disturb him that I was so crippled and moreover, it didn’t bother him that I took the piss out of it. Many of my closest friends had struggled to even look at me when I first started to deteriorate, and that had angered me so much. Not Terry though, as far as he was concerned, I could still be as fit as I was when I was twenty. His strong calming presence was always seen with me these days. Whether it be in photos, or news reports, he would always be standing there, arch backed and solemn looking, wheeling me to where I needed to be; he was an essential member of my team. Terry was my voice, where I failed to be able to communicate with the people, a medium through which I could still live vicariously. He would speak on my behalf whenever I was not well enough to do so myself, and so because of this knew me much too well. Rarely was I ever disappointed with Terry.
"He's not going to get that policy through don't worry, he's marketing it as nationwide protection, but nobody’s going to buy it." Terry said.
The man's got a smile that belongs in a Disney film! Who knows who he’s charmed with it. And I told you I don’t know how many times, please refrain from calling me T. It’s Tawney or Ms sanders if you must.” I gasped. “You don’t hear me calling you T, or Ter, do you?”
"Whatever you say boss.” He replied, and then continued. "People aren't going to want to be monitored twenty-four seven. Well maybe some people want to be, but I'm hoping those nuts tweeting their every thought on Twitter don't represent the world as a whole. The moment they let themselves be monitored like that they may as well be inviting the Shadow Ministry into their homes for dinner."
"But he doesn't just want to broaden the amount of surveillance, he wants to keep track of us with microchips! Like dogs!" I said, my voice failing me towards the end of the sentence. “Take me home Terry, I'm getting too worked up, it's been giving me a headache all day."
That night I took my numerous tablets that all did their bit at slowing my disease, including the new prototype tablet that I had been told had had promising results although I was very doubtful. I sank into a deep sleep and dreamed of vivid foreign things that night, events that I did not relate with at all, and could not understand where I had gained such knowledge.
The sun was bright in my eyes as I looked up to the sky, then for a brief second it was blotted out and darkness flooded from it, as a great bird swept low over my head. I was not myself, I looked down, my hands were a dark leathery brown, my clothes were dirty and torn, and it appeared I was a child, no older than ten. My feet were bare and felt hot on the rough sandy floor that they caressed, my toes curling, picking up a stone as if they were talons like those of the bird of prey above me catching a mouse. I cried out, flapping my wings and running around, emulating the bird yet feeling not that I was doing it in admiration for the powerful beast, but more as a challenge, a challenge to the creature that tried to blot out my world. I would become what I needed to be to scare him off, I remember thinking to myself. In the distance I heard a low rumbling increasing in volume as I stood there flapping, I cried louder in defiance until the rumbling had grown so great it sounded like the roar of a violent battle in my ears. Then, as so often happens in dreams, I had moved on to somewhere else. I realised that the low rumbling was emanating from me, the deep exclamation of a grown man. Before I had time to contemplate this strange gender reversal, I began to feel fearful for my life, yet I did not know why. I needed to run but did not know from whom, and then as I began to run, through rooms so clinically white it was painful to look at. The edges of my vision slowly began to darken giving the effect of running through a tunnel. Finally, I stopped I could not run any longer, a loud noise fired in my ear, and with it I awoke.
The fear I had felt had caused me to sweat, and also for something unusual to happen, stranger than my dream was my hand. I had balled it up into a fist, as if to fight away my pursuer. A natural response for most possibly, but for me the act of closing my hand so tight in defence had been denied to me for some time. The power of the mind is a mysterious thing. Faced with such a peril, maybe it had found a way to help me defend myself. I gave a tiny smile to the thought that maybe my body wasn’t as lost to me yet as I thought. It was still there if I needed it, ready to protect me. It was the smallest of victories, but in many ways that small act meant more than anything that I had achieved in the last few years in parliament, with my family or any other aspect of life. My mind was still sharp, but we are after all made of flesh and bone, and to be refused its use was a hard position to accept.
The next morning, I did not tell anyone of my achievement, nor did I discuss my dream. I did not want my son or anyone else to get their hopes up because of what could have been merely a freak occurrence, even if it did mean so much to me. Oddly though my hand did feel almost as if it had been freed of its constraints, although my arm was still not doing what I wanted, I felt that I could at least get a decent grip on to the arms of my wheelchair as my son lowered me into it. It was probably wishful thinking. I was concentrating on its movements so hard that I was bound to notice it grip a little harder.
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