I shift down a gear as my car goes light. The road humps and troughs, forcing me into my seat. Windows down, a recently dead singer screams through the speakers. It’s one thing to hear a dead singer who has always been dead, but hearing a voice recently lost… that is something I’ll never get used to.
Or the visions. I overtook myself earlier; a young boy dressed in dark green, huffing and puffing uphill on a bright orange bicycle. The place where I used to work, where I used to cycle to, burned down years ago. I don’t know why, in one reality, I’m still trying to get there. Maybe it’s a genuine rescue attempt. Perhaps it is an empty gesture born from a pathless, meandering existence. The last option terrifies me.
As the village draws near I flashback to the dream I had of us walking together in a snowy field, where the trees thrashed in a hurricane, and yet we didn’t hear or feel anything except each other. Our ears rang with silence and our tread left no footprint. Your ungloved hands were warm on my cheek. I realise, having overtaken the past, I’ve now collided with it.
On a tight corner, the remains of a crashed car hangs – pathetically – upside-down. Around it, rusted skeletons of former accidents sleep peacefully in the ditches and the brambles.
I stamp the brakes. Real or not, the boy on the orange bicycle is not ready to see his own ending.
