The Last Magician

The Final Distance

The heat of the sun was rising.

Jack felt his final reserve of energy being evaporated through his open pores by the ferocious eye of the blazing ball. Soon he would lose the strength from his legs, the feeling from his skin and he would hit the dirt with the thud of a carcass. Another lost soul in a land of damnation.

His eyes were playing cruel tricks on him. Ashbrooke had appeared to him as a golden mile, now Rushton lay before him as an eternal highway, stretching out into the unknown for all time.

He turned to his left. The shell of a house with a large number one hanging on the wall in paint so faded and flaked it was as though the house had begun to shed its skin. To his right was number two. Neither of the houses were what he would describe as livable, but they were a damn sight sturdier and healthier than many of their counterparts he had already encountered.

His house was close. The number seven dominated his thoughts. His house; he had seen the number in another fragment of memory. He could be wrong, but that was all he had to aim for.

Number seven was three buildings away, but those buildings were so far apart. There was a mile between each individual home. It was just the heat playing with his head, his dehydration taking its toll on his basic functions. Yet believing the vast distance before him was nothing but a desert mirage was beyond his drained body’s capability.

He closed his eyes tight, pressing his fingers into the soft orbs. It hurt like a bastard, but it helped. His eyes were almost as dry as his mouth, but his continued blinking shrank the distance he was expected to travel dramatically.

He blinked.

The distance halved.

He blinked.

The distance halved again.

Moving slowly forward, his feet dragging in the dirt, he blinked again, and again, shortening the distance he was expected to traverse every time. Each step took immeasurable amounts of willpower, his mental thought bent on forcing his limbs onward, his physical ability pushed to the very limit of what it was capable of. His muscles roared in agony, grinding against each other like rusty, disused cogs.

Number three appeared beside him. Not far to go now. A blink and his destination was even closer. He was closer to home, closer to Charlie. Closer to water, to food, to shelter, to all the small things he had taken for granted until he found himself without them. When beggars on the street hounded him for spare change, he used to ignore them. He of the black suit and common luxuries, they of the rags and scrounged food.

Who’s begging now? Jack thought.

Number Five passed by. He was there. His house; his home.

He glazed up at the building, its state much better than he could have hoped. Only one window was broken, the masonry work remained mainly intact in all respects; only a section of the roof was missing, either caved in or purposely removed.

He was only a few steps from the door. Only a few more...

His legs gave out, folding under him, sending him onto the floor with a numbing crunch. His palms stung as the sharp gravel ripped the soft flesh but only for a short time, as his arms refused to take the weight and buckled under him. His face slid along the ground, a series of deep crimson gashes opening across his cheek

He lifted his head with the strength of his pain. Right before him, teasingly and tantalizingly close, was the front door of his house. It was mocking him; the man who had struggled with his amnesia to remember anything about his life only to fall at the last hurdle when the information was his. He had overcome every obstacle this hellish vision of reality had trown his way, and he was damned if he would allow himself to give in so close to his goal.

He pressed one bleeding hand against the hard road, then the other He pushed against the tarmac, ignoring the flare of bright pain that ran through his arm like lightning. On his knees now, the sharp stones under him pressing through the dark material of his trousers. He ignored it. His limbs could be gushing pints of blood but it did not matter at that moment.

He had to make it to the door.

Crawling onwards, on his hands and knees like a sinner before the gates of heaven, he focussed on the sight of his goal and in his mind’s eye he had already seen the outcome. He was going to make it to the door, he was going to make it if he had to slither on his stomach ripping every inch of his flesh from his bones.

Five metres to go.

It was becoming the longest distance he had ever travelled. Longer than when he drove from London to Edinburgh to see in New Year with Charlie; when he walked from Land’s End to John O’Groats from charity; when he cycled, as a ten year old boy, from his parents house out into the wide open country with no intention of returning home.

The memories flooded his head, the gates that had barred his access to his past had been breached in a great explosion of unwanted images and information. He was bent on reaching the door ahead, and the bombardment to freshly released memories only served as a hindrance.

His knees scuffed the road as he pressed on, mentally forcing the one image of himself in the arms of Charlie to muscle out all other thought.

Four metres to go.

But he was on his knees. How could he expect to fall into anything except the dirt again? If he fell at her feet she would pick him up. If he fell by the door, she would pick him up. All he had to do was get closer. All he had to do was get to the green door.

Three metres to go.

But the door was no longer green. He could see the door clearly and there was no denying what he saw. The lime green paint that had coated the wood was gone. Only a few loose flaps hung from the wood. Behind the remaining flaps was the same sickly yellow colour that seemed to be everywhere in the village.

Two metres to go.

And the house, far from the untouched, unchanged building he had seen through lying eyes, was a shadow of itself. All but one of the windows were jagged-toothed wounds, a sight he had somehow reversed in his mind until that moment. Tatters of curtain, the flowery design the only constant item in his dual visions, waved forlornly at him. And around the frames that should have held panes of glass, the fungus grew in bulbous, putrid clumps.

One metre to go.

His arms buckled, crumpling under his body as he crashed to the ground a final time. His already bloody cheek raked over the gravel, loose chippings tearing into his open flesh. Released blood spurted onto the concrete, a crimson pool forming quickly around his head.

He was home. As close as he could possibly have been without actually being inside the building, yet he was not close enough. So far he had come, so near he had been, but in the end it was the distance that had beaten him.

The white fire in his cheek flared; the ache in his arms was enough to make him want to rip them from their sockets; the dryness in his mouth and throat made every breath an agonizing chore.

It was all a conspiracy against him; a rebellion by his body to prevent him taking those last two or three movements to the door.

The came a distant click, somewhere far away, then there was a voice in another world. The words could not be defined, the distance between Jack and the speaker, at least in his head, too great to contemplate reaching out for help.
He was dying. That was why the voice was so far away. He was passing on and he was leaving the world of the living. He was going to die and he was going to do it on his own doorstep.

No metres to go.

The blackness swallowed him, and the pain faded into the dark.