Ch 1 - Meda

The morning had been born dry and bright and quintessential of British October with lavender-grey meadow skies when Meda Johnson’s heart stopped beating. Twenty-two seconds of cardiac arrhythmia and muscular jitters with eyes locked up toward the 1960s ceiling-lamp, the direction of conceptual heaven, and then –

Three.

Two.

One.

As her body acknowledged this homeostatic change her breastbone began to concave, wisps of air escaping her lungs like worms surfacing through soil and toward light.  

A building collapsed in slow motion; the clock strikes 07:02.

For all the morning’s tragedy, Meda had always said that if given the choice she would like to die in her sleep: ‘death’ and all its administration was bothersome enough without a slow and winding demise and goodbyes were always such heartache, thank you very much!  To sleep was to pause a film at a natural inflection point because one wanted a break from a gathering plot. To die in one’s sleep was to pause the film at the inflection point and then to pull the power from the player: memories of the person would forever survive amidst glorious ‘I wonder what…’ retrospect and nothing more. It was all she could have wished for.

Zero.

The alarm was set to sound at 07:45 a.m. but there were no plans for the day: Mr Johnson, first name Phil, simply liked to rise early and sink late. Phil was not sleeping deeply at 07:02 and shortly thereafter was roused by a strange sound like the gurgling of a bathroom drain as dirtied water emptied to another interface, or the suction of a straw grasping the final dregs of a thick, sludge ‘shake.

Three.

Two.

One.

Fifteen seconds of grappling with sleep – oh, that cruel, ephemeral enchantress – and then, no longer.

Zero.

“What on God’s Earth is that sound?” His stirs. Consciousness flows glutinous syrup behind his eyes. For a moment, he hears all frequencies of the world: he hears the blackbirds sing their morning hymns, hears the yawn of the central heating system recently awakened, hears the gurgling of a bathroom drain as dirtied waters empty, hears the whisper of wind against the window frames.

Why is a drain gurgling?

He sits up in the bed; something creaks, though he is not sure if it’s his bed or his bones.

“What on God’s Earth is that sound? That sound like a gurgling drain?” He asks the room. And then he asks, “Meda?” but she does not reply. The time is 07:03 and now those morning airs born dry, bright and lavender are scarlet-edged, and -

“Fuck, why is everything scarlet? Med?”

Philip turns to his wife and he sees her eyes locked open and dead. He sees her lips: all the pastels of a bruise and barely parted through which those wisps of air escape with all the sound of a gurgling bathroom drain. He sees the wet locus of her body stamped upon the navy bedsheets and feels the stickiness of their mattress under his palms.

The bed is a deathbed.

“MEDA??” He bellows his wife’s name and he shakes her shoulders and he searches about the room for anything that could help him but of course, the room just looks back, and the seconds gather and coagulate like blood but time is not something that the moment has and he screams -

“This cannot be happening!”, and consciousness now flows clear: clear and dry and bright and burning scarlet, searing his eyes and his throat and his nose and his chest and conceptual heaven is just that – a concept and a mocking notion, a fucking mocking notion.

He shakes her form for the form has not stopped gurgling and everything turns to soil and dirt and worms and decay and carbon matter born from dying stars and time stops and the deathbed is coated in glutinous, scarlet syrup.

 “MEDA!”