Rental (Part 2 of 2)
By Charlie77
- 86 reads
I move briskly, like I’m late for the Stratford bus, but that can’t be where I’m going. I recognize the land around me. These are the fields on the edge of town. I’m walking across the face of a modest hill, the place where all the town’s kids go sledging when it snows. But it’s not snowing on this day and there is no one else around.
I hop over a stile and continue along a desire line which takes me out towards the river and the bridge. Towards Fell Mill.
The riverbank comes into view and we can see two figures stood beside it. They face towards each other and, as the camera shot gets closer, we can see they are together, holding each other. There is no doubting the embrace. Their hands are placed teasingly around each other’s waists, their heads leaned in, their mouths joined in a kiss.
Watching this, in the video shop, I hold my hands up to my face and open my mouth wide, finally taking in the air I need because, since I saw them together, kissing, I have not been able to breathe. I groan, a deep agonized sound which comes from deep down inside me.
I’d worked it out. Called her parents. Called his. I could hear their embarrassment down the phone. They didn’t know where Jazz or Emily might be, they said. Went for a walk maybe? They knew. Maybe everyone knew.
Me, for weeks, writing her letters, following her home. Demanding to know why it was over, what I’d done wrong.
But I wasn’t the problem. It was him. My friend. The boy who lived the other side of town. The one who I welcomed into our group, who looked up to me, who needed my protection from Dube, Cuthbert, and all the other bullies. But he grew, lost his acne and I could see that spark in his eye, realizing that he could be something more than the little kid, the weak one. Did I notice the change in the way she looked at him? The way she laughed at his jokes, his quick tongue?
On the screen, my hurried walk turns to a run, I speed towards Emily and Jazz. Even now, they don’t see me. They are lost in each other, in that terrible kiss.
The camera plunges forward, towards the back of my head, then inside, so that what we can see on-screen is what I saw that day, a perfect recreation of my experience. I want to scream, to warn them what is coming, warn them about me.
A few yards closer, and finally they look up and see. Their faces turn from shock to shame to fear in the space of a heartbeat. I do not stop for conversation or explanation. It is too late for that.
I slam into Jazz, shoving him back, away from her, towards the riverbank.
Fists fly. He tries to fend me off but my momentum is too much, my aim too true. Emily shouts, then comes into the shot from my left flank grabbing at my arms. She screams, “The river!” like nobody has noticed it was there.
But we are moving fast, too fast, towards the bank, all three of us locked in a new embrace. Hatred, violence and love joined as one.
The perspective of the camera suddenly angles down as our feet, my feet, pass over the lip of the bank. Me and Jazz and Emily are almost falling, but not quite. Even I have understood we are almost past the point of no return.
Below, the fast-flowing river runs at pace, churning white, the current strongest here where the water splits into smaller estuaries, rain in the Cotswolds pummelling down from the hills, achieving its greatest fury this place. The water looks hungry, desperate to swallow these squabbling children with the cheek to play near its jaws.
And play, we do. Me, trying to pull back, to reverse my motion so I can stop all three of us from descending into the clay-brown river. Jazz is no longer fighting me, but trying to push us all back. Emily, at my shoulder, doing the same. And for a moment, it looks like we might turn this around. The descent has stopped, we are all pulling back from the river.
But the ground is wet and one of us (me) slips, dragging us all down.
And that’s when the drop happens, the camera drops, bringing a jumble of limbs and heads into view. Shaking madly from side to side, we tumble down and smash into the water.
Silence, as the brown water swallows the camera The shot bounces upwards for a fraction of a second. Grey sky, a glimpse of Emily’s terrified eyes, her head bobbing out of the water, her hands grasping at the air, then gone.
Down again, then out for another half-breath, my own desperately scrabbling arms coming briefly into shot.
We hear Jazz begin to say a word. (My name?) but it’s gone, consumed by the churning water. A muffled, suppressed sound, me screaming below the surface, is choked off by the slosh of the river.
And the viewer is forced to retreat from my point of view, the shot somehow unhitching from inside my head, slowly rising up from the river, beyond the banks and then higher than the gnarled trees.
Below, three shrinking figures struggle against the propulsion of the Stour. Appearing and disappearing from view according to the rhythms of the water.
The final image we see, before the camera is taken by a white cloud, is a neat top-down shot of the bending river, neatly contoured against the green of fields, the surface no longer disturbed.
In the white of the cloud, the film’s title appears in black against the white background, as if the director is asking for a round of applause.
all that we leave behind
The VCR stops and the screen goes blank.
When I turn away from the screen, the customer and Tom are stood the other side of the counter.
Like before, they speak in perfect unison, “So?”
I can’t speak because I’m still thinking about the look in Emily’s eyes before she went below the water.
They try again, “You need to tell us, Ryan.”
“Tell you what?” I manage, my voice weak, pathetic.
“Did you mean to? Kill them? Kill yourself?”
“I don’t… no. No, I didn’t.”
“That’s your answer? That’s what you want to say to us?” they say.
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to push them, to push us, into the river.”
Tom and the customer look at each other and then back to me. They shake their heads. “Then we will do it all again.”
They both turn as one and nod at the security camera on the wall.
“Rewind.” says the customer.
“Rewind.” says Tom.
And the world around us does as they command.
THE END
- Log in to post comments
Comments
yeh, makes sense in a way.
yeh, makes sense in a way. rewind. back to the future and all that stuff.
- Log in to post comments
Just finished reading your
Just finished reading your great story, and what a horrific ending to imagine.
Grabbed my attention from beginning to end.
Jenny.
- Log in to post comments