Forgiveness

Forgiveness(Limbo vII)

         Copper tainted my mouth as my eyes slowly opened. Everything was fuzzy as I attempted to collect my scattered thoughts. A blacksmiths anvil beat between my ears, my eyes throbbing with each heartbeat. Every breath sent lightning through my ribs and surges of pain erupted from my insides. I looked upwards to see endless gray expanse, clouds that stretched to the edge of my peripherals. I slowly sat up and tried to collect myself. My dirty blonde hair was caked on one side with dried blood from a deep scratch that ran from my temple to the back of my head. My phone tumbled out of the pocket of my ash colored coat; its screen was a spider web of shattered glass.
"Where's the car? Where's Sara? Where's....here?"
         I remembered my girlfriend Sara and I leaving our apartment; we were getting away. Savoring what little quality time we could by traveling far out of town, up to the mountains and staying at a bed and breakfast. It seemed we never saw much of each other anymore. She and I seemed to work on opposite schedules bringing our exchanges into a passing kiss, and though we share a bed we were always asleep at different times. We were together but isolated, strangers in the same bed. So when our weekends aligned we hopped in the car and skipped town, away from responsibilities and duties, to unwind. The only tedious bit was the 17 hours of driving, with not much to say. Things had been different between us for a while honestly, since my spiral. I never told her it was her who stopped me from ending it all. We tried to talk about it, but it was still beyond me. It still hurt, that was a really bad year.
Sara and I held hands the entire trip. We spoke of work, traffic, weather; idle small talk to pass the time. We flipped the radio on and listened to this station then that station. Eventually we succumbed to silence. She fell asleep and I drove on. The late August sun had set, stars dotted the azure sky. The full moon was vast and bright yet did little to illuminate the murky forest. Trees that scraped the stars stood like sentries tracing the road, barring trespassers from driving through the forests murky interior. My headlights dotted past the mossy trunks of the ancient evergreens, Sara's head bobbed with the bumps in the road while she slept. Her auburn curls cascaded down the back of her neck, tucked behind her ear, but a few strays had found their way onto her freckled face.
The road winded along for what seemed like forever, deeper, and deeper into the woods. I stepped on the gas hoping to hurry to the next motel so I could sleep. It started to sprinkle, and then it started to pour. The rain crashed on the leaves of the trees like cymbals, making the forest come alive with sound. I turned the radio back on, low so Sara could sleep. I took the next turn and suddenly a shadowy figure appeared in the road. I braked and swerved, narrowly avoiding what I presumed to be a person. It was all so fast. Rolling...darkness...and now, here. I crashed at night but now it was light out. When I crashed I was in the dense woods. Now I am on the sidewalk in some town.
The Town seemed familiar but I had never been there. So normal and formulaic that even strangers feel at home. Small businesses flanked the main road; their faded red brick faces staring each other down. Everything was neat and in a row like headstones, fitting because the town was as stony silent as a graveyard. An unsettling quietness as pervasive and ubiquitous as the swirling fog that hid the buildings across the road and sent shivers down my spine. The only sound was the drumming of my heart, pulsing in my throat, and soft footfalls of the occasional passerby.
"Hello, can you help me?" The man I addressed kept walking, head low and legs in full stride.
"Pardon me, where am I?" The woman kept her brisk stroll, handbag bouncing in rhythm.
"Do you know what time it is? Do you know what day it is? Hello!" The gentleman kept on strolling by, not even glancing at me. I took him by the shoulders but he merely shrugged me off.
"Can anyone hear me? Am I alive?" I screamed with an effort that left me breathless. Panic began to make my skin tingle. No response from anyone. The Town was deaf to my cries and its residents would not be interrupted by my intrusion.
"What the hell is going on? Did I break my brain? I need to find a hospital and a phone, Sara might be severely hurt or lost and scared, perhaps dead. I need to know..." I took a deep breath and forced myself to not have an anxiety attack.
An unseasonal chill crept up my back. I pressed onward. Every shop and storefront was immaculate. Adorned with fine gold lettering in windows, red budded tulips decorating flower boxes, woven wicker welcome mats, and wares neatly displayed. It was all clean and tidy as though the proprietor prided themselves upon presentation. A fade of welcome, saccharin and Norman Rockwell-esque, but I felt like a trespasser. No one who walked the streets acknowledged my existence. No cars parked along the road or drove by. No barking dogs or chirping birds. I felt so lost and isolated, like when the depression got really bad last year.
I stopped at an intersection for a second to get my bearings. I turned my head left and right, both straight stretches of road that faded to obscurity amongst the swirling fog. Both had the same cookie cutter shops in the same neat little rows. I looked in front of me to see the same thing. I turned around. Thick whirling fog and red brick buildings, but something else too; I can make out a singular figure walking towards me. It slowly staggered closer, at a steady rate. I could make out a dark human form. I raised my hand and waved.
"Hello can you hear me?"
The figure in the fog said nothing and kept coming straight towards me. As it drew closer and I could make out more features, my heart rate quickened with each proximal inch the figure gained with each methodic step. It looked like me last year, but something off. The shade was tall and wide with unkempt, uncombed hair that framed a sullen, gaunt, unshaved face. It even wore my favorite coat, the same coat I wore now. It carried something in its right hand. I started to smell the distinct sticky sweetness of a strong whiskey. It smelled like Crown Royal, my drink of choice before I quit drinking. I also started to smell something rotten. When the shade was close enough to clearly see it I felt the welling of tears in my eyes. Its hands turned towards me revealing they were covered in dried blood as well. I could see large vertical gashes peeking out from beneath the cuffs of the jacket. The object in his right hand was a long, rusty knife. Dried blood caked its jagged edge. It pointed the blade at me.
I did not know if the specter was real or not but I ran regardless. I sprinted as fast and far as my legs would carry me as it slowly staggered after me, back bowed as though it bore a heavy load. Straight, left, right, straight, straight...it all looked the same but I ran on, putting distance between it and me. I ran into a man and pleaded, "Sir, you have to help me." He walked on. No matter how much I screamed no one would come to my aid. I continued my frantic sprint.
In the distance I could see a looming building with a bright red cross. A modest hospital, but still the largest building I had seen in town yet. Its gray stone face blended with the clouds. Windows dotted its face, I counted four stories. A row of tidily trimmed hedges traced its perimeter and a bountiful flower bed that enclosed a sign which read 'Saint Albert's General Hospital'.
"It kind of looks like the hospital Sara brought me to after I nearly killed myself." I brushed the thought off.
I made heading for it, figuring I could hide there. I slipped through the double doors, pausing briefly to look behind me. I could not see the shade that looked like me. I could not see the townsfolk, ignorant to my existence. I could not see the formulaic bricks of the cookie cutter shops. All I could see was ubiquitous, swirling fog, swallowing all that lay behind me. I went through the glass doors, lest the fog swallow me too.
"The town was weird but this is surreal," I remarked. The hospital looked perfectly fine until you walk into the pitch black waiting room. It smelled musty, stagnated, and a bit rotten. I shakily turned the flashlight on and traced my beam around the room. Vacant, dusty plastic chairs with rusted metal frames sat in neat rows off to the right. The walls were filthy and scarred. I walked to the front desk and rang the bell mostly out of reflex. The hospital seemed to be empty. I turned to leave but I spotted a familiar figure staggering through the fog.
I turned off my light and ducked behind the front desk and crawled through the door behind it into what looked like the nurse's station. A musty looking maroon couch sat with a vending machine in the corner. A small kitchenette was pushed to one side. An under watered fichus and a faded Monet print were the extent of the interior dor. The other half of the room was a massive cluttered cabinet of everything a nurse may need. I peeked through the window in the door to the waiting room.
"You don't give up do you? Persistent bastard," I muttered. The shade stopped before the doors. It pressed its face against their narrow glass panels and stared forth, eyes piercing the darkness. I ducked down and pressed my back to the door. My heart was pounding so hard I hoped he could not hear it. "There's no way he saw me go in here," I silently hoped. A clipboard on the couch caught my eye. I crawled over to it and investigated. A nurses room ledger, with an admittance from the day I crashed my car on.
"Jane Doe....could it be Sara? I ...I have to find out. I have to se-
Tink, tink, tink.
The sudden intrusion to the silence stilled my rapid heartbeat. It was very close.
TINK, TINK, TINK.
I crawled back to the door. I peeked through the window again only to find the shade standing outside the window I was spying through, knocking the blade of its jagged knife against the glass.
I dove across the floor and darted into the hall. I flicked my flashlight on while sprinting to the stairs. I flew up the steps the only illumination came from my flashlight, its eerie incandescent glow bouncing along the dirty stairs as I went. Arriving at the first landing I ran into a metal barricade for separating the floors. I shut the barricade and clasped its padlock. I pushed in on the door and reentered the hospital floor, making for the opposing stairwell.
The trend of derelict disrepair continued throughout the hospital. The stagnated air was thick with the smell of rust and death. The tile floor was cracked and even had squares missing here and there. Darkness broke across the bouncing beam of my light as I strolled down the length of the hallway. A black mildew appeared in patches on the grimy walls, and ran the hallway's length. As I walked a soft droning beep broke the silence. It was a flat lining heart rate monitor.
I checked one of the rooms as I strolled past. Its interior was as pitch black and neglected as the rest of the hospital, but the stench was much stronger. My heart caught in my throat as the beam of light found its way onto the bed to find a form resting there. Brown dried blood tarnished the white linens. Soiled bandages wrapped around their head and convex chest. An IV was attached to their withered form; its bag was filled with a dark fluid. A heart monitor was set up as well, producing a faint green glow and a long droning beep. The metal furnishings, parts to the heart monitor, the IV stand, and exam table were all coated in orange rust. Whoever this was had died a while ago. The chart on the end of their bed said they had been in a car accident. "What kind of hospital leaves someone like this? Don't they care?"
Every room was like this, dark foreboding filth and a deceased person, who lay in soiled linens or in their own filth. The walls were grimy, the floor cracked, and everything metal had rusted entirely. It was obvious no one cared for these people, or for this place, in sometime. The most unsettling thing is they had all been mangled in some form of car accident or another according to the charts at the feet of their beds. Jonathan Summers, hit and run victim; Tara Fieldy was hit head on by a drunk driver; Bob Gailand was ran over in a cross walk; all innocent people who died in an empty, uncaring hospital. I traversed the entire length of the hallway and made it to the opposing stairwell, tears staining my concrete face. The persistent drone of flat lined heart monitors followed me into the stairwell and intensified, as though added to by the floors waiting above me.
The walls of the stairwell were partially swallowed in thin black branches that crawled like vines. It was as though a tree was trying to break through from every crack and crevice of this decrepit building, and followed my ascent.
"What the hell happened here? This can't be real...no, no it is real. I can touch the dead. I can hear them flat lining. This place is not normal, but it feels very real."
The taps of shoes meeting concrete steps resonated along the stairwell as I climbed to the second floor landing, where my progress was stymied by a gate barring further ascension from this side. My head hung heavy as I loosed a deep sigh, preparing myself for what lay ahead.
"I will do anything just to see Sara again, to make sure she is okay. I need to make sure Sara is ok. She never gave up, neither can I."
The door swung out with an audible creak. Somehow this floor was even dingier and dirtier. Brown stains intermingled with the mildew on the walls; I knew they were dried blood. The patients of this floor were all car accident victims as well, their forms more mangled and destroyed than their counterparts on the floor below. A few still bore tokens of their collision, like a large shard of windshield jutting grotesquely outward from a middle aged man's face. On the opposing side was an indistinguishable soul who had clearly been drug to death. It became too much for me to bear, I could not bring myself to check the rooms anymore but they still tormented me. An iron lung heaved and wheezed, joining the droning heart monitors in this symphony of sounds perverting the quite stillness of the ghost town. Banging emanated from the aluminum vents in short sudden bursts. Soft footsteps echoed my own as I plodded along, stopping and starting with my own. I neurotically swung around, to catch whoever was tracking me, only to be greeted by forlorn empty darkness.
"I must be losing it. I hope I am losing it. There is no way it could have made it through that gate."
No medicine, no doctors, no life at all. It was as though the hospital was a living thing that had died. Now it was rejoining the dirt it came from as we all do, swallowed by mold and the odd branches which I have begun to notice in the hall. Like the ones in the stairwell they grew from every crack and crevice in the progressively more decrepit hall. Even reaching the stairwell was no reprieve as the smell and the loud emulsion of sound followed me as I walked. And still, between the droning beep and heavy wheezes and the clanging metal, I could make out a soft tap of a footstep. "I have to keep going, for Sara." I said this to myself over and over, and it was the only thing that drove me to continue to the third floor landing.
I made the attempt, while traversing the third floor, to not look in the rooms, but something caught my eye. I could see an individual restrained to the bed, with their head facing the door. It was a young woman, eye sockets sallow and cheeks gaunt. A purple and blue bruise ran around her visibly broken neck. I checked her chart. She had hung herself I briskly moved ahead, trying to put distance between me and the suicidal woman. I did not want to look but still I saw. The man in the room over had a stomach pump still in him; chart says he had tried to take his whole prescription at once. His neighbor had shot himself in the head, why he was admitted he could not say. The room across from his was vacant; the wide open window let fresh air into the hall.
There was one final room, it was vacant as well but its window was shut tight. This room immediately stood out because it was immaculate. Its bed was freshly made; belt restraints open and ready The IV and heart rate monitor on standby. The chart at the foot of the bed said 'Stanley Thomas: blood loss. The bed was empty except for a knife, the knife that the specter bore. I tearfully clutched the knife in my shaking hand, the scars on my arms burning.
"This is my bed...and this is the kitchen knife I used. These charts...they say causes of death, not injuries. This hospital is a mortuary. Did I...did I die in the accident? Am I in hell?" I slumped in a heap to the floor, head in my hands. "No, no if I were in hell I would be in that bed...I need to...I need to move on. I need to see if 'Jane Doe' is Sara. I need to know if she is alive..."
The branches gained girth as I went further ran down the hall, consuming more and more of the building. They throbbed and pulsated, creeped and crawled. I stopped to catch my breath; my wheezing matched the iron lung. The thick stench of decay made breathing difficult, the air felt thick and heavy in my lungs. The footsteps were getting louder and louder until they stopped. I cast a curious gaze over my right shoulder and froze at what I saw. It was the shadowy figure.
"What do you want!?" No response.
"I'm not allowed to kill me; YOU sure as shit aren't allowed to kill me either," I yelled pointing the knife at it. No response. Angry fear pulsed hot in my veins.
"Leave me alone," I screamed. No response.
With a shout I dashed towards him and plunged the knife deep into the shades heart. Its glassy eyes widened as he began to scream, low and mournful at first, but intensified to an unearthly howl that shook me to my core.
I ran, and ran, and ran but made no headway. It was as though the hallway stretched and distorted unperceivably as I went. The branches had thickened into full on tree limbs and the hospital began to strain and crack under their growing weight. The ajar doors leading to the rooms containing the drunk drivers and the suicidal people slammed as I dashed past. Glancing over my shoulder I can still see my pursuer behind me, calmly walking towards me with intent. No matter how fast I ran he was still right there calmly strolling down the bloodstained floor. His reverberant cry drowned out the pounding, heaving, and beeping of the hospital and suffocated every thought in my head.
The door to the final floor was nearly within reach. The thick, black tree limbs had begun to spring up from the floor and made the final stretch an obstacle course. I crawled past, climbed over, and leapt; bounding branch to branch like a frightened squirrel. Until a misstep sent me crashing down, belly flopping over the rugged floor and reminding me that my ribs are probably broken. I would not, could not allow the pain to win. I stood and tried to move but a branch had coiled around my ankle like a python. I hopped on one foot and kicked my trapped leg, but the branch just climbed higher and higher. I am nearly to the door. I crawled on my belly, pulling myself across the limbs that enclosed the floor. The tension on my leg was becoming tighter and tighter as I went. Nearly there I was halted. I pulled and twisted and kicked with all my remaining strength to no avail. As I fought the death grip on my leg was getting tighter and tighter.
A sudden sickening snap sent me flying forward. Between me pulling and the branch squeezing my leg had fractured and splintered, making it flexible enough to escape. I looked down and saw my femur. I saw hamburger muscle and shredded flesh. I saw a lot of blood. I did not feel it, I could not feel it, for if I allowed myself to feel it I would surely die. I cannot stay here, I need to move on. I crawled onward and raised myself onto my working leg. Hobbling lamely forth I finally made it to the stairwell. No tears or feeling resided within me. I was too tired to feel. I just needed to know if Sara was okay.
Using both hands I pulled myself up the stairs like I was climbing a rope, abandoning my flashlight on the landing below. My right leg hopped along whilst my left drug uselessly behind, bouncing on every step leaving a little trail of blood. When I reached the fourth floor landing I had to lean on the door to hold myself up, which caused the door to swing out and send me tumbling to the ground in the pitch black darkness of the fourth floor.
I crawled across broken jagged tile at a snail's pace. My fingertips were aching from digging into the grout so I began to just use my elbows. Wet warm spot began to soak into my coat. The flat line had diminished, but still pursued me but I did not hear the door behind me so the shadow man is either tired of chasing me or I am too tired to hear. Gone were the iron lung sound and the banging of the ventilation shaft, but a morose sobbing cut the darkness. "Sara?"
The air lost its deathly stench and smelled more of rain. On and on I crawled through the dark unknown, feeling along the wall, until I had come upon the last door. The crying was quite loud, as though it were inside the door. I grasped the handle and pulled down, and let the door swing wide open. A blinding white light emanated forth.
My eyes shot open, the world before me slowly came into focus. My car sat upside down directly behind me. Sara was kneeling right by my side, tearful eyes framed by rain soaked hair.
"I'm so sorry Sara..." I rasped.
"Shush. Don't move. I called paramedics; you are going to be fine. It's my fault. I knew I should have napped earlier so we could drive in shifts." She gave me a weary smile and brushed my cheek with the back of her hand.
"I'm sorry about everything. I thought not talking about it would make it go away, but I can't let go like that."
"Hush honey, it's okay. Save your energy."
"I was being a selfish and stupid drunk trying to kill myself. I was depressed after I killed that family driving drunk and too ashamed to talk about it. Worst of all I hurt you. My not talking about any of it affecting me is also me not talking to you about how you felt about it. That weight on your heart must be unbearable," tears welled in my eyes. "I'm sorry I alienated you. I'm sorry I ..." A big kiss told me to shut up. I wiped my eyes as she sat against the car
"I forgive you; I forgave you the night it happened. I don't know how you got to that dark of a place but I'm just glad that you have been through the dark place. Being aware of it helps you stay out of it." She grabbed my hand and looked me dead in the eye. "You just need to forgive yourself. You just need to move on." I squeezed her hand as I began to hear enclosing sirens.