Goatie 30

Leslie groaned, her face was flushed. ‘Are you quite alright?’ she asked, looking over my shoulder.

I could no longer see the shapeshifter, only her concerned eyes peering at me.

‘You look stressed out,’ sitting straighter, she remarked on my posture and lack of breathing.

I slouched and slid down the chair, in a pique of childishness and squinted back at her. ‘Breathing?’

‘Yes, it’s written all over your body. I can see you pendulating. Your body in pain as you go in and out of stress.’

‘I never knew,’ and I did sit with my backbone tighter against the polyvinyl chair. I rubbed at the back of my head and noticed my breathing was raggedy. ‘Must huv been aw that smokin.’

‘That wouldn’t help, but you need to learn how to tense and release the stress in your body by breathing.’ She demonstrated. ‘In….Out…INHALE…EXHALE.’

I tried breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth as she was doing, but one of my nostrils was blocked and it wasn’t as easy as I thought.

‘That’s it,’ she said, maintaining eye contact. ‘Let yourself go.’

I huffed and puffed. My mind racing as I tried to think of a good way of telling her she as going to be murdered shortly.

‘If we have the inner resources, we help create the outer resources.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘ Don’t tell me if yeh believe hard enough the universe will bring it intae being bullshite. That’s middle-class twaddle.’

Don’t argue with a lawyer. ‘What I mean is studies have shown that the brains of people that practiced proper breathing techniques and are more attuned to living have more grey matter and dendrite connections associated with all of the good things in the frontal cortex: memory, language and decision making. It might even work as palliatve against age-related thinning. The findings have been replicated, worldwide.’

‘Honestly,’ I said. ‘That’s jist fuckin brilliant. Practice make’s fuckin perfection.’  

She found a settled seating posture to view me with disapproval. From where I was sitting it looked the same place. But I was never allowed to get above myself. Maybe she’d meditated herself out of danger. I was no longer sure. She gathered up her stuff, her folders dabbed with pinks and yellows. Her filing system. Her bag.

I could only offer my inadequate breathing, my crumpled life and the poverty what I was trying to say. ‘Sorry, I know yer tryin tae help and I really appreciate it.’ I closed my eyes and started again. ‘I meant wae the case and everythin.’

A prim smile and proper breathing meant I wasn’t getting through to her.

‘I’m so frightened,’ I told her. ‘So frightened that I’m some kinda jinx. Everythin I touch turns tae shit. An whit’s mair fear boxes me in mair than these prison bars. If I get outside, I might dae mair damage.’

‘That’s understandable,’ she offered the usual clichés and assurances, while rising from her chair and making ready to leave.

‘I’m scared for yeh, hen,’ I said. Conscious of the ebb and flow of her leaving. ‘Scared yeh’ll get hurt.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘Yeh drive a Golf?’ I took a deep breath. ‘It activates when yeh approach yer car. Yeh park near the train station. Somebody is gonnae come and get yeh and hurt yeh really bad. Two guys, in fact. Yeh’ll know wan o them.’

‘YOU THREATING ME?’ She grew smaller and bigger as she darted past me. ‘I can no longer represent you.’ She banged on the door with the palm of her hand, her breathing was ragged. Her face set. A folder fell at her feet. She left it lying. The colour in her eyes brightened by fear. She stumbled out into the walkway, escorted safely away by the guard.

Understaffed. I had to wait a while until a screw came to get me. I picked up the file to give myself something to read. The certitude of the printed word had marked me out as a fabulist and a psychopath. I breathed in and out. My breath rising and falling.  Shut my eyes and tried to doze off.

When I opened them, I’d a childlike notion to cry and ask for my mum. Dad had told me God had made the word. I used to think it was my mum and she was the same age as God. And when I went sleep she stayed awake, watching over me.

The screw that came was a different one from the warden that had escorted my defence lawyer away. His beast had the mark of the flood and diving retribution. It was almost a passive presence if it wasn’t for the voices of the drowned.

I took a deep breath. In and out as he escorted me throught the long walkways, the screw never spoke. His beast whispered one word.