Suddenly it became a man by Daniel Scott (ebook voice reader txt) 📕

Beside the rabbit hole, sprung, battered-hot, the snakes cold deliberate form was no more and in stillness its forked tongue loosed, admitting death stubbornly as it once did life.

I looked into the earthy hole from where I stood several paces away from the sweating concrete road drenched in the heat of the day and wondering if there was still a rabbit somewhere inside when his encroaching footsteps behind me vocalised confidently.

‘Let me tell you about radical change, its gone, you accept society to find an identity, but find no identity that can survive without breathing in its smoke.’

I looked inwardly for an opinion acceptable to Tom, found nothing and quickly agreed ‘That sounds about right.’

He didn’t like it one glance back at his horrible eyes told me so and i suddenly felt the urge to fill the awkward silence.

‘How’s the engine now?’ I asked but he answered nothing.

I turned to Tom abruptly, he turned away dismissively, paused a minute and stared at the sky then strolled back to my cars open bonnet.

I didn’t want to upset him, I have always been more patient than interested in what my friends told me and accepting of talkative strangers I’d later forget or quote. Then there was Tom, when he had something to say I listened and remembered because he was different, and terrifying.

By chance he’d passed me broken down on the causeway, later returning with jump leads to help me get back on my way.

It seemed like kindness at the time.

‘Okay she’s ready’ Tom announced as he shut the bonnet.

It was time to go, my attention briefly came back to the dead snake, the hole then swiftly returned to the road ahead with hope for the rabbit crystallised. Though it was later shattered as we passed the animals fluffy body a short while after, stretched violently atop the concrete road.

We first met inside a hospital sometime in June Tom insisted, I was the most mobile patient of the long stay ward.

I remember feeling almost completely fine after spending more than a week propped up on white linen sheets by bleached white polyester pillows, awaiting the head physician and his coveted final verdict.

Already in bad stead due to a spilt bed pan the Nurses contempt for me grew in the heat of the days that followed like a bacteria that multiplied into hate.

It wasn’t long before they were changing my sheets aggressively and whenever I was in earshot passing biting comments to each other about how abusers of the system ought to be punished.

“It’s not a Hotel”

“My husband says loafers should be strung up and beaten”

“Did you know they’re shot in the army that’s how wrong it is you know?”

“Huh, the shame of it laid out on a much needed bed, not a thing wrong, in the nude, shame on them.”

There was a morning when Fred; the oldest man I’ve ever seen two beds across offered me his cereal, as was the Thursday routine.

I stood at his bedside as he went on about the war and I went on eating and nodding at the crucial moments in his story.

“It was the Great British Air Force!”

“There were thousands of them!”

And so on, when I heard a great gasp let out behind me, I span around with my mouth still full only to see three Nurses at the entrance to the ward looking absolutely mortified, so much so that a passing Doctor stopped what he was doing took up his stethoscope and hurriedly doubled back.

During nights if I was spotted out of bed returning from or going to the toilet I received a repetitive and deliberately vexing inquisition.

My favourite Nurse Ester made it her personal mission to watch me at night, whenever even so much as one of my toes touched that cold floor she’d have at me with a bed pan.

I’d then lie wondering why it was so important that I should be in bed.

Beginning to suppose she assumed I had intentions to meddle with the other patients at night which were incapacitated, feverishly sick or both and being innocent I made a habit of staring back indignantly.

That’s when it happened.

A hot stuffy day had curdled into hot stuffy night leaving the entire ward hot and devoid of real air. Every breath in felt like the last one let out. I couldn’t sleep when I noticed a murmuring, a low desperate cry stifled by the thick air, falling short, reaching no one but me.

Compelled by the cries I slid out of bed and followed the sound to an isolated bed with closed curtains, I walked straight in.

‘Are you okay?’

He wasn’t okay, he was neck deep in plaster ‘Struck by a car’ I thought as I recalled a goby Nurses laborious rant about dangerous roads, road rage and domestic violence.

Submerged in grief the young mans bruised eyes opened slowly and looked through me, I looked back sympathetically at all pipes going in and out of his nose and mouth then next to the machines I noticed a window.

His battered eyes darted to the window with mine and remained there until moved toward it.

‘Want this open?’ I asked rhetorically, of course he did, the poor fool was being boiled in his shell.

My fingers took firm purchase at the bottom of the windows frame, it was painted shut but the paint was cracked and rotten, clearly decades old. My first mediocre attempt was enough to send it flying open letting in a great gust of fresh, nutritious air.

The expression on his face changed, he looked pleasant and I walked away assured the good deed was administered in time. I hopped into bed, lulled by the gift of cool air, I slept like a hero.

The next morning I woke to a squall of frantic nurses rushing from bed to bed, temperatures had skyrocketed and the old man two beds across was dead.

That day I was removed to another ward, where the stormy head physician finally came at a fast pace to deal with me.

I knew the verdict before he got through the door.

Two and a half years later here he was, out of his shell and returning a favour, he said his name was Tomas Baker.   

Our journey together along the concrete road was meant to meet its end when I signalled into a lane that led to the car park of the hotel I reserved a room in.

When Tom saw it he slowed up behind me, I rolled down the window and waited for him to pass by but instead he stopped, got out of his car and walked over to my window.       

I wasn’t sure what he was going to say.

‘Tom, thank you, what can I say? You’ve been a big help.’

He leaned in ‘Join me for a drink’. What could I say?

Tom bought me a beer and for himself a still water with ice from the hotel bar, we picked a quiet spot to sit down of which there were many, it wasn’t a busy place, more a relaxing corner of the world with hard seats and tired furnishings.

I raised my glass and Tom did likewise but unlike me he didn’t drink from it, he just sat there holding it steadily, lowered it again and started asking me questions.

He was very interested in my career; I told him all about my movie roles and that I wanted bigger ones. I didn’t realise until after half an hour when I felt it was time to say our goodbyes, that in this whole time I had learned nothing about him, so took a moment to look him over.

Thick black beard and matching moustache no lips, a crooked peaked cap that appeared to have been worn over night cupped his head I could see his brown eyes clearly. I kept noticing how horrible they were while we spoke, slightly off set and sunk into his face.

The bar was almost vacant, except for a few slow mechanical drinkers like Tom.

‘That’s enough’ I thought, my appreciation was conveyed and I felt it was time to go.

‘Listen Tom it’s been-‘

He interrupted me suddenly with his hand, abruptly producing a crammed leather wallet.

‘This is the family.’ he boasted.

He looked young in the picture, a short boyish adolescent with strong shoulders, proud smile. ‘What happened to you?’ I thought.

His drivers licence was the same, he was a little older though but the same proud smile, he must have been about nineteen when it was taken; he’d clearly gained height and girth with age, kept the shoulders, lost the looks.

Tom noticed my interest and offered me the wallet. I held it for a moment re-examining the family portrait.

‘Still see them?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ He lowered the glass again ‘There are nights when I try to sleep. I shut my eyes and all I see are their faces.’

He looked at me with expectation in the midst of his shaded eyes.

I grimaced ‘Did something happen to them?’

He answered nothing.

Then from under his hats crooked peak a deep frown sank down into his face, his brow furrowed taut and creased tightly into an expression comparable to hate.

‘Sounds about right’ I knew instantly they were the words I used earlier being spewed back at me.

The mood had changed.

He sat hunched, croaked and hissed inaudibly into his full glass, tipped it back against his dark facial hair and started to swallow it down with a kind of drowning desperation. The excess spilled out the sides of his mouth and dripped down his beard onto the table. I looked away with tempered disgust, recoiling from each of his loud breathy gulps.

His emptied glass came back down with a gentle thud and he offered out his hand ‘Shake it’ he said with a smile, the frown had vanished.

My hand automatically reached into his grip, I felt it close tight like an iron trap without teeth.

‘I still feel like I owe you.’ He confessed, but it sounded like a question.

‘Don’t feel that way. We’re even’

‘No were not’ his grip was getting tighter.

‘Well thank you for what you did. I don’t know what I’d of-’

‘Thank you is enough’ he interrupted.

‘Okay you’re right, Tom it’s been’

He interrupted me again, louder and tighter.

‘Thank you, is enough’

‘Thank you.’ The moment I said the words the handshake relented.

With blood freely racing back into my fingers I gave Tom a meek nod of respect mingled with relief as he got up and left the bar through the main doors.

When I was sure he was gone, I wiped my face with my other hand and relaxed into the chair puzzled as to what went wrong.

Suddenly a thought came into my head that cheered me up the rest of the evening

‘If that mad display was Tom saying thank you and returning a favour, what happens when he’s got something to be vengeful about?’ I retired to my reserved room in the hotel with a smile and laughed to myself to sleep, wondering which poor Nurse closed that old window I opened. I hoped it was Ester.

Benjamin Stanes long time friend and agent drummed feverishly at my hotel door, I didn’t realise it was him but thought it was the neighbours beds backboard thumping the wall