“What is past is prologue.”

Prologue

The ticking of the aged Grandfather clock had been going almost unheard for a full year. Nobody but her ever paid any attention to the constant gentle swinging of the pendulum and soft whirring of the mechanism. The moving parts in perpetual motion that had been kept alive in much the same way that the man in the bed on the other side of the room had been, by the careful hands of one the two attendant nurses.  She had kept the man topped up with the pain killers prescribed by the doctor; she had cleaned him every day and shaved the greying stubble that poked out through his death coloured skin diligently every day. She kept up his appearance in much the same way she kept up the appearance of normality, the rigid straight lines on her nurse’s uniform were creased perfectly and she looked respectable, even if she was hungrier and mentally exhausted than she ever thought she could be.

She stared out of the smear stained window; the mist had come in off the Mersey earlier than usual and the streets below were empty. She needed a cigarette badly but glancing across at the Grandfather clock she realised that she had to wait at least another hour before the next one, she often thought that the current restrictions were killing her quicker than the nicotine ever could. She looked across the Mersey to where only the strongest lights, more like unattended fires, from Birkenhead were visible. A certain sadness crept over her like she had never felt before, not even losing her only child during the cholera outbreak of 2026 had been as desperate as this. The comforting sound of the clock, always primed, wound perfectly every day to the exact minute as per the instructions by the Assembly Leader drew her attention from the lack of people on the streets and from the destructive thoughts of her daughter’s death.

There was time for a quick sit down before she had to top up the pain killers for the man. If only there was something to read, there had been nothing new printed for years now and she was fed up of the same old well-thumbed offerings that was bought to the room every day on the wooden trolley. The solitary chair in the room, an old sedan, was comfortable and she had often got lost in her own thoughts, the time before time, the freedom she had to think before time just went wrong and the days became foreboding and dangerous. This dip into the past, the thought of days walking beside the Mersey with her skirt lifting slightly in the breeze, of music in one of the many venues, of stolen kisses with some of the musicians, would always bring a smile to her face for a while but the vibrating alarm on her watch would bring her out of her reverie and the work would start again, the cleaning, the checking, the topping up of Denodril in the man’s system and keeping him alive. Alive she thought with a hint of irony in her mind, he hadn’t been alive since the first bullet fired from the assassin’s gun had hit him in the spine. The second bullet which hit him ordinarily would have killed him out right but whatever God looked after those in league with the Devil had looked after him and instead of taking his brain out unnaturally had somehow gone slightly astray and instead had splintered part of the cranium, injuring, harming the brain, but not killing him.

She longed for the days before assassins, before the country became fractured and split into different factions all run by their own despots and demi-gods. The revolution that had long been promised; came and went with a whimper and what it left in its wake was not what the nurse had ever envisioned. It had been short and sweet but like any party she had ever been invited to, left a bitter and lingering hangover. The town by the Mersey had relatively had a peaceful time but other parts of the country had been obliterated off the map. There were tales of old superstitions and near folklore stories telling of old places being so thrown back in their beliefs that the people there saw witches, imps and talking dogs in the streets. The cholera epidemic had been bad as well, nearly a fifth of the local area had been affected and the bad-lands to the north were full of hurriedly dug graves in which to encompass the dead and dying. She shuddered at the thought, it was long gone and though her daughter had been one of those hastily put into the shallow graves that lined the route along the Stanley Road; she at least was still alive…for now. Her life depended on the man in the bed, the only man she had seen for so long now aside from the doctor, that she had developed sincere feelings for. She liked looking after him; the tenderness she employed in bathing him was the same as when she used to care for her daughter when she was a baby. She smiled at the thought and then admonished herself for the lapse in her professional outlook.

She stood up from the sedan, the comfort she craved would not be found in the chair tonight, she was tired and went to the window once more. She drew a heart in the condensation that had built up on the glass and sighed. From the bed, a moan drew her attention. Had she imagined it? She must have! Tiredness was making itself known to her. She opened the window, something against the strict rules laid down by the council but she wanted air, she craved to breathe something different than the stale rigidity of the room she was placed in. The window was stubborn; she wondered when the last time it had been opened as she put her weight against the frame. It groaned under the pressure and finally with what felt like the final reaching gasp of a dying man, opened up and let in the cold damp misty air. She breathed in the sticky and yellow tinged air and remained there for what seemed like an eternity. Another groan from the bed behind her, she turned towards the man, saw the machinery working as well as it ever did and decided to take a look.

She bent over the man, took his pulse, regular as the clock that ticked in the corner and relaxed. Just an involuntary spasm, enough to concern her slightly but as she gently opened the man’s left eye to check the movement of the organ; she noticed it was still, unfeeling and soulless, his once bright blue eyes now grey and almost inhuman. She closed the eye lid just as gently and listened to him breathe. She loved the sound of his breathing and other than the noise of her heels against the wooden floor, it was the only reason she knew she was alive and not dreaming it – more appropriately, experiencing the worst living nightmare possible. She was about to go back to the window, to breathe in the foul air once more but stopped. She felt something move under her fingers, she thought perhaps an echo of the man who was. She touched the man gently, oh what thoughts she had the last few months of doing more than touching, she desperately wanted him to be alive, to take her and make love to her but she soon suppressed them, pushed them deep into her soul and let them multiply and fester against her knowledge.

The movement came again; she looked down at the man’s fingers, a movement, a definite change in his motor function. She experienced pure joy for the first time in years and nearly cried out. The fingers twitched and then shot out and grabbed her wrist. The shock of what she saw kept her from screaming. What came next; did not. She looked at the man, he was still certainly in a coma, the machinery told her that fact but there was something new. The left eyelid was closed and she imagined the eye underneath was still and dead but still she knew there was life. The hand started to squeeze harder and became intolerable but she couldn’t pull away from its cold vice like grip. She tried to pull at it, to try and loosen it somehow before the pain he was causing her caused her to pass out. She was afraid, visibly scared and if anyone came in now she would look a state, she couldn’t reach the button on the wall which would have bought help from the other nurse that attended to the man. She scratched at his wrist with her free hand hoping to prise him off her but the grip got more concentrated, tighter. Then just as she thought she couldn’t take any more and that her own wrist would surely break, he slackened off slightly giving her some respite. She breathed easier but not for long. Within moments the man started to move, he sat up straight and whilst the machine declared that he was in a world that was far from this one, she knew there was something driving him. She only started to scream when the man’s own audible and distressing cry stopped and he fell away again into darkness.

Ian D. Hall 2013