Might Not Get Back

Might Not Get Back

I am writing this down for you because I might not be able to get back. And you need to know the reason I’m doing this. And I guess I need you to forgive me. It’s because of the near miss. Another near miss. There have been too many in my adult lifetime and I am tired of this life. This time it was a child. I managed to stand hard on the brakes and my old car saved me. Again. The front grill was inches away from the toddler’s pink wool coat. She stood and stared at me through the windscreen. I think she was too shocked to move or cry or run away. The mother turned, a whiplash movement as she heard the brakes scream. I clutched the steering wheel and the tears fell in slow motion down my veined cheeks. The mother grabbed the child’s hand and pulled her to the safety of the kerb, her mouth making the words I could not hear. Other people on the street came to their aid, pointing at me, stroking the mother’s arm in comfort. All mouthing words. Two days later I saw the notice in the drugstore window. A meeting. For my kind. And this time I knew I had to go.

The room was situated at the back of a teddy bear shop. Of all places. The windows either side of the red door were packed with bears of all colours and sizes. Cute little bears in aprons and frilly dress, dungarees, straw hats at a jaunty angle. Others were old, bits of fur rubbed off as if through too much loving. The soft window lights gave off a dim glow that seemed to illuminate each beady eye and I was so fixated on a bear with a velvet waistcoat and bow tie that I didn’t hear the key turn in the lock. The door opened and there stood a small oriental man. He stood back and gestured for me to enter.

‘The meeting?’ The words didn’t seem to come from my mouth.

He nodded and beckoned me in. As the door shut behind me I stared around at the shelves of bears. And I heard the key in the door. I remember thinking that I couldn’t escape now. There was no going back from this point. Which was a crazy thought. But it seems it was so true. I followed the man through a red curtain at the back of the shop and into a storeroom. I had never wanted a drink more than I did at that point. And that was exactly the point. Past boxes and packing tape, a low bench with a bear dissected, arms resting inelegantly against a bulging furry tummy. I am in the middle of a bear post-mortem, I thought and gave out a wild giggle. The man turned and smiled but the smile did not reach his eyes. We passed through another door into a larger room lit by many candles on small tables around the outer areas of the room.. It was bare apart from a circle of chairs, ten I think but I can’t be sure. The man pointed to an empty chair, the only empty chair and I moved forward and sat down. The candles made it difficult to see the faces of the other occupants of the chairs but I forced a smile and played with the edge of a pocket on my coat that was coming away from the seam. That was my life, I thought. Random, these thoughts. My life is coming away from the seams.

‘You speak now. You know what to say.’ The host nodded to me and stood with his back to the door.

My breath felt scratchy and alien in my throat. ‘My name is Stacey... and I’m an alcoholic.’

My nine companions muttered a welcome and gave me a quiet round of applause. The candle flames guttered at the movement made by hands and shadows jittered on the walls.

One of the circle leaned forward, a man with jowls and cheap cologne. ‘How long has it been since your last drink?’

It was then that I realised I did not want to be there. This was not for me. But the oriental gentleman of quiet demeanour and elfin stature was pressed against the only way out that I could see and my heart fluttered. But not in a good way. In a maybe-I’m-having-a heart-attack way. Saliva flooded my tongue, fat and slimy in my mouth. I looked at my watch. No going back. Come on now.

‘Two hours, nine minutes.’ My words sounded thick and unpleasant, a curse muttered over a body long since passed.

The group mumbled and nodded. Someone clapped. Then silence. Beady eyes, like bear eyes, stared at me, waiting. I stared back. I shook my head.

‘I... I don’t know what to do now.’ I shrugged my shoulders, waiting for an answer. Silence.

‘This group is not like any other’. A woman to my left crossed her legs, hands on knees. Her fair hair moved in time to her high leg bouncing on top of the other. I waited for further explanation. But there was silence again. I was going to have to say something.

‘I thought... well, I‘ve heard that we all share our stories and then go away and try not to drink until the next meeting.’ The sentence sounded trite but it was all I had had. There was a collective shaking of heads and wry smiles and I was beginning to doubt that I had made the right decision. And I really needed a damn drink right at that moment.

‘It’s about going back.’ The voice came from the doorway. Whilst I was processing the statement I felt his hands on my shoulders behind me. I had not seen him move but it was definitely our host. I looked ahead to the wall in front of me and I saw no shadow. And I felt the realisation through his pressure that this was no ordinary alcoholics meeting.

‘David? Would you explain to our new member about the journey undertaken here?’

David seemed very young. His boots creaked as he leaned forward, sitting off to my right. I could see acne scars pitting his face, a dark lock of hair falling over his eyebrow that he pushed away, only for it to fall forward again.

‘We can go back.’ He said. ‘Back to that first time, that first saturation of alcohol in our bodies that made us into the people we are now. And the people we do not want to be anymore. Do you want to join us?’

I looked quickly at all nine faces. They seemed eager, pressed forward, waiting for my response.

‘I don’t understand.’ I said. I really didn’t. Had no clue about where this was going.

The pressure on my shoulders pushed me further into my seat as the host spoke.

‘Tell us, Stacey. Tell us about that first time when alcohol made you into what you are.’

And I started to cry. I had no idea where the tears came from. All I wanted to do was get it out of me, that story, that moment. That night.

‘It was the cat’. I sniffed and a little pressure lifted.

‘I was driving late, forgot to put on the headlights. Knew the lane, no problem, I thought. Thought I could make it home okay. I didn’t see it. Felt the bump under the wheels. I got out. It was so dark, trees closing in on me from either side. Its stomach had opened up.’ I was crying harder now, the speaking of that night bringing it all back in a fast forward motion. ‘I had to feel it. Make sure it was dead. Stripey cat. Big tail. Small ears. They say there is that moment when you are so drunk that you sober up immediately something like this happens. That shock moment. It’s really true, isn’t it?’

I looked to the group for validation and they nodded.

‘Go on.’ said David

‘I took off my jumper and scooped it up, trying to keep it all together. I wanted to move it, you see. Out of the road. I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought that someone else might run over it.’ I fumbled in my broken coat pocket for a tissue but found emptiness. I sniffed loudly.

‘I went into the woods. The moon was out, there was a bit of being able to see my way but not much. I put it at the base of a tree amongst some leaves. I was going to bury it, but I couldn’t. I sat down next to it. It looked peaceful even though it had an empty stomach and the blood was soaked into my blue jumper.’ I stopped. Blue jumper. What a thing to remember. Cashmere. Very expensive. I should have cared I had ruined it. But I didn’t. That was the point. That was really the point in my life. And I missed it. Until now.

‘I stayed with it for almost a day.’ Someone in the group gasped but I was not looking up at faces now. I was lost in my lap, in the memory. ‘My flatmate had reported me missing. Someone had lost their cat. I sat with the cat.’ I laughed then, proper out loud laughing. ‘I sat with the cat that had no hat.’ Laughing with tears again now. ‘ I watched the body as the flies gathered and the maggots appeared and the sun came up warming us and the little bodies ate the big body and I watched and I was fascinated. And I was sober.’

‘But then you drank again.’ I don’t know who said this. Didn’t care now.

‘Yep. Did it again. Didn’t learn. Didn’t care after a few glasses of wine that I killed a cat. Just a cat. So what.’

‘What was next?’ Question from the floor, from the audience.

‘Just missed a deer about a month later. Thought I was handling the drink and the car better now. More experienced. Deer survived. I survived. Drinking survived.’

I wiped my nose on the back of my hand and my snot glistened in the candlelight.

The host was suddenly in front of me, in the middle of the circle. He pointed.

‘Do you see that doorway?’ I followed his finger, thinking he meant the way we had come in. But there was another door. I had missed it. But it was there. I could see it now. Had it been there when I came in? I thought not but now I was a wreck and all rational thought had diminished. I nodded.

‘Behind that door is the chance to go back, back to that night and change the outcome.’

I felt my head loll back and now I was just fucking annoyed.

‘Really? Seriously? I just step through the doorway into a fucking time machine and it will all be very different?’ My neck cricked as I snapped forward. Now I definitely needed a drink and to be out of this place.

‘Yes.’

One word. Then silence. I looked then at all the other faces. No smiles. No laughter. No pity. Just watching me. Interested in my choice.

David spoke. ‘We have all been coming here for months. Sharing our stories. And we are all going to do it. Go back to that first time. And change it. And see what our lives could have become.’

I snorted and more snot landed on my coat. ‘You’re too fucking young to have had any life anyway.’ My nasty mouth was usually only apparent after alcohol. It seemed that this group was bringing out in me all I wished to say.

I think David smiled. ‘It’s a chance. To have good blood running in our veins, not blood diluted with alcohol that makes us care less and careless. But there is a chance you can’t come back.’

‘How the hell do you know all this?’ I was pissed off but still curious to know before I high tailed it out of the fucking bear shop never to return.

‘Because one of us has done it.’

Silence. I looked to all the faces but no-one was giving anything away.

‘No.’ The host was now at the entrance door to the shop. ‘We cannot tell you who it is, which one of us took the journey through the passageway and returned as the person they were meant to be.’

I tried to study all the faces, for the poker tell, giving me a clue. But I got nothing.

‘So, what happens now then?’ I wanted to stand up, make a grand exit but my body didn’t want to obey just yet.

‘ You go away.’ Someone else spoke, man with jowls I think. Can’t remember. ‘You go away and you think about tonight and whether you want a drink or whether you want to come back tomorrow and step through into the passage.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘We meet every night. Every night until a decision is made.’

And that is why I have to write this all down for you. Because I am going through into the passageway. I’m not sure whether it will be tonight, or the night after that. But I am going. And... I’m just spiffballing here because I have no idea what comes next... I may not ever see you again. Or I may meet you in this new life that I may climb into. I just don’t know.  But if I can keep the maggots from the cat, if I can resist that drink, if I cannot get into the car and drive home, it might all be so very different. That is what they say. That is what one of them says. Because they have come back.