Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

I did what he asked and lingered a few yards behind, following his back. He was shaking a little as he crossed over onto the high street. A police car passed on the road, but was going fast, and when it went by Harry seemed to calm down again.

Crime rates are ten times lower here than Glasgow, I thought. That means more bored cops looking for something to do.

Harry led into a close then turned right again and we arrived at a camping store with a big “Half price on all items!” notice on the window. We headed in. We saw everything we needed, and they weren’t too expensive- sleeping bags, warm clothes, a pot and pan and a decent knife, a few other things. I couldn’t help checking out the window. Even the sales assistant was making me suspicious. She was watching us like a hawk.

We paid and left promptly. I followed Harry’s quick strides down one side street then up another, and into Lidl. We threw rice, jam, bread, peanuts, cheese and teabags into the basket and headed to the checkout then outside and paced back to the bus station. With two minutes to spare we caught the bus for Cannich, paid the rosy-cheeked driver, and went to the back row. I sat by the right window and Harry sat to the left. He was a bundle of energy and grinning from ear to ear. He clenched his hand and pumped it in the air, “Think we’ve done it, Aisha! We’re fine now!” He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed tightly. “Yeah! Think we’re okay! We’re okay!”

I let him hug me then pulled back out. I wasn’t convinced. I wanted to get there first. And what would we even do when we were there?

“What’s the matter?”

“Nuthin. I just want to get there, and get settled into the tent. I’ll feel better then. I kind of, feel…” I didn’t want to say.

His grin faded a little. His eyes narrowed. “What? The hospital? You’re worrying about the other patients?”

“Well, yeah and…yeah the hospital.” I lied. “And I’m tired. I just want to get there.” I was exhausted though, that was true. His supercharged state wasn’t picking me up either.

“Well, look, we can discuss the hospital later. And phone someone or something. But we’re free, I think. So, you can relax now. Go. Sleep!” His smile encouraged.

He scooted back to the left to peer out the other window, and I closed my eyes and tried to drift off. But sleep wouldn’t come. I opened them again to the main road. The bus crossed over a bridge. A police car went by the other way, but it disappeared out the back window.

Harry was crashed out. Burnt himself out probably. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth as his head rested against the other windowpane. We came to the shore of Loch Ness. Eventually, the tension in my head started to ebb away, and ten minutes later, on an empty, winding country road, as I looked forward in that mostly empty bus with only a few elderly passengers, I knew too, that we’d be safe.

I breathed a deep sigh of relief. The anxiety had drained me. The cities and the people had drained me. The chase and running had drained me. I felt foggy, and as the bus climbed the winding hill roads around Loch Ness, when I should have taken some comfort from the views, or hope at my prospective future freedom, instead I was attacked by another round of the blues. I felt myself sinking into it. All the adrenaline and anger had moved on, and left desolation behind to take over.

Harry snored softly. The bus drifted around the bends in the half-light, along the tree-lined glen, under the overcast sky. I closed my eyes again and tried for a while to get to sleep. But my head wouldn’t let up. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. From anxiety to fear, from sickness to depression. I just wanted to switch off.

I felt sad and alone and empty. I rested my cheek on the window and peered out at the misty hue of the saturated landscape. Rain began to fall and cling on persistently to the other side of the glass. The passengers were silent below its tip-tapping and the gentle rumble of the engine. I bent down, shuffled through my bag and took out the CD player. I pulled out Nirvana and clicked in Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind.

It was more than just an ordinary album to me. From when I discovered it at twelve, just after it all started going wrong, those songs enabled me to drag myself through life. And I wanted them, needed them, to drag me through again now.

There were words of truth in there, profound truths that floated back from time to time to haunt my mind, especially in times like this when I was really low and the images ate at me. When I heard that strained, weary, death-like voice slowly crackling in my ears going “well my sense of humanity… has gone down the drain…. behind every beautiful thing… there’s been some kind of pain,” it zapped my nerves like a jolt of electric and seemed to soothe the burned-out wires.

I thought I could listen to those tracks for eternity. My suffering became somehow more meaningful, more mystical and more bearable as I listened to him over the sad violin and distorted instruments. Here he was saying that life was suffering. And he was bored of it all. Everything was so tedious and messed up. Every poor human dragging their bodies along in jangling chains, with nowhere to go and no reason why.

I wasn’t looking forward to hiding out like a fugitive. And that’s what I was now, for God knows how long. At the beginning