I sat outside the old hospital and tried to regain my composure. The icy rain poured over me as I assured myself.
‘All in your head. It is not real. All in your head.’
‘How did she walk without cutting herself on the glass then? How did she know of that smile upon my face, when I did not even recall it to Dr. Prescott?’
‘Stop it. All in your head. It is not real.’
My mind continued to push and pull against itself. This was not the first time such conflict approached me. So many things I could not explain reared their disgusting appearance towards me, and every time I would devolve into nothing but senseless compromises with myself.
‘Perhaps she heard the pieces clatter against the ground and avoided- No. What if- No... None of it makes sense! There is one explanation! WHAT ARE THEY?’
‘No. It is all in your mind. Do not entertain such preposterous ideas. The explanation? Well of course there is an explanation. The explanation is simple… It is… It is…’
I found myself staring at the hospital, my mouth open. I combed my fingers through my messy hair and turned to the courtyard’s exit. I was quite parched, as my dry mouth would tell me. I had enough pocket change to get myself a drink, and why not? I worried too much, and a drink would do good to settle my nerves. It was really a shame I would tense myself so greatly over something made up. Silly mother. Silly me.
My travel to the nearest pub was like clockwork. It was all too often I would visit after such encounters with my mother. All too often I turn a blind eye.
Down the block. Through the alley. Across the street. All the steps needed to find myself at the shabby entrance to the cheapest alcohol serving establishment in town. The old door creaked open as I took refuge from the storm, although the wooden flooring throughout was soaked wet with both a mixture of rain shed from those seeking protection themselves and booze sloppily strewn about the room. I put my coat and hat on the stand beside me as I entered.
Seeing as how it was not yet noon, there were few attendees at the bar. A disheveled man in the corner, crying into his pint. A woman eating the unappealing soup of the day. And with strange enough luck, a young man sleeping at the counter.
Pacing up to him, I took a closer inspection. My only friend of many years, Herbert Bradley, mumbled to himself as he slept. He was another patient of Dr. Prescott’s, and we had met quickly after he was taken in for appointments. He had stubble across his chin and short hair that was misshapen from his head rolling back and forth on the counter. In his hand was a half-drunken mug of an unknown liquid, and from my understanding of him I thought it safe to assume that he had stayed from the night before, and the bartender had just grown used to Bradley sleeping in his establishment.
With a solid kick to his barstool, Bradley fumbled awake. I had a feeling he might be angry if his attention was not completely consumed by a flush of pain as he raised his head. After a moment to recollect himself, he looked to see who caused him to wake up. In an instant, confusion turned to a smile. “Oh! Theodore! I didn’t expect to see you around here.”
Sitting next to him, I responded. “It has been a long… Morning.”
Looking through the windows behind him, Bradley nodded. “Morning… Well let’s have a drink then, eh?”
I rummaged through my pockets, finding only the few pounds I had left when I tried to eat at Payne’s butchery the morning before. “Correct, only I will be drinking liquor and you will be drinking water. You are drunk enough as-is.”
Bradley protested as I put my money on the counter. “Aww. Theodore. Theo. Teddy. I’m not that bad. What’s the fun in drinking alone anywho?”
I did not care to respond as the waiter approached, allowing me to order. “I will have whatever is strong. He will have a water.” Then, I turned to Bradley. “And the fact that you have just called me ‘Teddy’ makes it known that you are not nearly sober enough.” The waiter went to fetch drinks while Bradley simply recollected himself. I continued with idle conversation while waiting. “Long night I assume?”
Bradley answered. “Indeed, it was, but I will have you know it was for business.”
I gestured to the state of my friend in disbelief. “Thatwas for business?”
With defiance, Bradley insisted. “Yes! Yes, it was! You know how they rescheduled your appointments because the doctor got himself another patient? Well, I’ve met him now that he’s in your timeslot, and we actually got along pretty well.”
Our drinks were delivered as I urged Bradley to limit his talkativeness. “And how does this relate to business?”
He took a long drink from his water and continued. “Do you remember the crashed ship near the bay?” I nodded. “Well, this fella is running a scrap crew, and needs divers to go grab what they can find from the ship. Now, the ship wasn’t originally theirs, so it isn’t entirely legal work, but its better than letting it sit there half sunken, eh?”
“I suppose so.” ‘Another patient of Dr. Prescott’s?’ I thought to myself.
Dr. Prescott did not accept patients who only had mild conditions, and although at that moment Bradley did not seem it, the only reason he was not speaking in tongues or babbling incoherently was due to the same medicine that coursed through my own veins and kept myself at bay. If so, could a patient be so easily trusted to work for?
These thoughts coursed through my mind as I drank. Due to my lack of eating, it did not take much for alcohol to affect me, and that it did. With only a small bit more time of pondering and sipping, I nodded to Bradley. “We should do it. I need the money.”
He nodded back. “Pays well, too.”
“I do wish to know more about this individual, though. What is he like?”
Herbert Bradley contemplated my words, then spoke. “Strong build. Thirties, I’d guess. Finnigan Price is his name. He seemed stern, but that’s alright I think. We didn’t talk about much… The work we had planned out. The city. How we all live a lie.General chit chat.”
Confused, I retorted. “How we all live a what?” Why would he say such a thing? And in such a softer and more contemplative tone than his usual boisterous and quick way of speech.
Tilting his head and raising his brow, Bradley reciprocated my confusion. “I didn’t say that?” An awkward moment passed before he spoke again. “Probably just me rambling. You know those ticks of mine. Whatever it was, I didn’t mean it.”
I did not respond, only tipping back my cup of undisclosed alcohol and drinking.
After the room was adequately off-axis, I moved our conversation back to our next potential line of work. “What is it we would be expected to do with this salvage company?”
“Well… We… Uh… Salvage…” Bradley thought for longer. “I remember him telling me the business is lucrative enough for him to afford diving suits. Most likely we’ll dive down, attach whatever looks expensive to a pulley, and swim back up.”
“That does not seem too difficult…” I said, but in truth the prospect of diving in the murky bay waters was not exactly enticing. My level of sobriety was not enough to argue against the only work I had seen in quite some time, and although not entirely legal, it was at least mildly respectful.
After having finished my beverage, I ordered another with the last of my funds. The contents of but one glass made a lasting effect on me, yet I was not drunken enough to entirely forget the events of earlier that morning. I needed to forget like I always did, and that required at least one more.
Bradley rambled on about menial, everyday matters, but my attention was quickly lessening to the extent that I could not keep pace with his conversation. Once finished with the drink, my head quickly began to feel weighted, and my face hot. With little resistance from my depreciating sense of dignity, I gently laid my head on the counter.
It took no time for my eyes to close and my mind to grow abuzz and the ambient noise of the bar to turn into an indecipherable drone. Two drinks were all it took with my complete lack of diet. The only reason I did not drink myself to sleep more often was due to both a severe lack of funds and frequently unpleasant dreams while inebriated. I held the hope that due to how recently I had taken my medicine; it would make my dreams manageable.
In a manner of ways, I was correct. My dreams were much less vivid and I was calmer, but I still experienced it with full awareness.
I stood upon a large, perfectly spherical rock, in an endless ocean. Murky waters thrashed against the large stone with loud crashes. I tried not to pay attention to the water, as I had previously learned that seeing my own reflection was not desirable. The sky was a pallid grey, and the clouds seemingly swayed back and forth. Everything was obscured and smeared, like fresh paint that had slithered farther down a painting than it should have.
I did not know what to think in such a situation. The scenery was not frightening, but eerily empty and unclear. It felt like my peripheral vision was blinded, and I was not seeing everything with the clarity I usually did.
Upon closer inspection, though, I realized the clouds were not clouds at all, but a reflection of the waves below. Directly above me was the stony grey sphere I stood upon, but other than that it was simply a misty mirror of the angry tides below.
At the edge of the skyline, the two sides of the world met. Slowly, the horizon became closer and closer, until I realized it hid more than met the naked eye.
The ocean above and the ocean below merged into a great calamity, leaving nothing but an endless sea of black and grey. The flood grew increasingly closer as I simply stared. My heartbeat grew no faster. My legs felt no urge to move. I felt utterly sedated to the crashing tidal wave approaching me.
Nearer and nearer the maw of clashing liquid came, and I continued to feel nothing. The wrathful tremor shook me as the noise grew near deafening. Cold water sprayed over me as the merging waves became only meters away.
With a deep breath, I waited for the impact, and in lightning speed it came.
That was when I awoke once more, to Herbert Bradley gently pouring a glass of chilled water on my head.
I immediately straightened back to an upright position and brushed the water out of my hair. Bradley sat the cup down as he looked at me, sober. “Getting nightfall, Chatwood. Don’t wanna get caught in with the evening crowd, do we?”
Still reclaiming my consciousness, I nodded. ‘Nightfall?’ I thought to myself. It did not seem like I had been staring at that scene for merely a minute, yet I had somehow slept through the entire afternoon…
Getting up with Bradley, I spoke to him as we traveled to the entrance. “Thank you, Herbert.” Even though I needed all the sleep I could find, the populace of that bar during the night was not the kind I wanted to be unconscious in the presence of, and for that I was grateful.
Opening the door to the still downpouring outdoors, Bradley nodded. “No problem, Theo. Just do make sure you get some sleep in a bed next time, alright?”
“Yes… Yes… I will.” What I said was a lie, though. My dreams seemed to be tolerable, but I had enough knowledge of my body to know that trying to sleep again that night would be fruitless, which meant I had to prepare for another evening of roaming in the dark alleys of England.
With a nod, Bradley proceeded back to his home, and I was alone at the streets once more.
The blanket of night had fallen, leaving only me and the shadows to converse in whispers.
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