GRAY SAM

by Colum Knight

The most violent and subtle forces of nature are perceived by instinct. An inspired pertinence, wreathed in haste and some unwitting foreknowledge, account for the survival of birds, the skittish rodents of the city streets, the playful animals of the country field. They had all gone before Samuel woke that day. The city was empty except for its humans. A storm was coming, and Samuel had not yet sensed it. Still, guided by some vague and strident thing within him, he ventured out toward an open space, driven and perturbed toward some magnetic direction and purpose. He felt it in his neck at two points; one point above the collar bone on his right – a soft, deep well under the skin – the other just under his jaw where the habits of his heart could be seen in paired rhythms. It was suffocating. He unlaced his scarf with a pull from the left and stretched his face toward a cloud-capped sky. The light grey sidewalks underfoot darkened one Dalmatian spot at a time. The brown leather under black leather of his shoes scuffed up a dry – then wetted – percussion of movement. He was walking now, now jogging an unerring pace. It was getting late. He was late. The buses might run away. We have to catch them, he thought to himself. Samuel ran.

Samuel hurt a child once. He stepped on her shins as she was playing on the lawn of a city park. Then he kicked her while catching his balance and stepped again on her legs and hurt her badly. It unsettled him when she cried. Her father beat him. He could never remember exactly what he had said or what words were spoken. He remembered only that the child never looked at him. The shock of the pain must have distracted her from its source. Samuel thought of that day often when he ran, dizzy and hot and hurt as he felt now, running to catch his bus.

Samuel touched the polished metal handrail aboard the bus. It felt cold under wet palms. He slid a finger down until he felt a warm spot and left his grip there. With his offhand, he wrung the trapped rainwater from his loose skin off his face and felt the emerging stubble. It's late, he thought. Later than I thought, he thought. His face sagged. The bus hissed and lurched. Samuel's eye color was somewhere between grey and blue depending on the day; some days they might appear hazel. His hair was somewhere between darker or lighter grays; some days nearly white. Everyone seemed young to him. Everyone a stranger. All fading.

His last romance had nearly worked. She played piano. She played violin. She taught privately. She loved him – him and games and the outdoors. They camped wild and hiked off-trail as often as they could both escape. He had a knack for the wilderness. He enjoyed the sounds of solitude in the company of nature. As for music, he had no talent at all. Instrumentations confused him and he simply had no voice for the rest of it. The games, though. He liked the games. She was better at pub quizzes, he – at puzzles, history, and the sort of obscure or tedious details others make a habit of ignoring. He took trivial things in with great seriousness and a particular lack of discretion. When she left, she called him wide-eyed and dumb.

The heavy, steadying rain lulled the bus to a few quiet whispers here and there. Each of them swayed under the weight of their own bodies as the vehicle made its turns, casting waves and ripples onto flowing sidewalks. This wasn’t such a bad place sometimes, he thought. He noticed the tint of the bus windows. Either that or the world outside was getting darker fast.

He had left home that morning unsure and ill at ease. It was one of those days that were becoming more frequent when the world seemed at odds with itself - or just with him in it. The normal cacophony of useful things that populated his home and everyday life - the things that made it sing - now felt more and more unfamiliar and became more and more unused until his apartment became a place of still and prolonged silences. Even his clothes became an irritant felt daily – ill-fitting and caustic gestures of symmetry, he thought.

The bus squealed, then stopped. He could smell the heat here. There was no getting away from that. His face soured at the thought as he slid his glasses away, slick from sweat, dried them, and dropped them into a coat pocket. The still-black hairs on his curved sternum were bursting for freedom under his shirt. Every pore of his being needed air. He never could acclimate to this weather. As the bus moved, there grew a singular idea in Samuel’s head. Slow at first but escalating – doubling in size each moment. And along with it, a frenetic energy bound up, unwilling to release itself. Samuel lost his grip wiping his eyes and stammered toward an air vent.

Excuse me, I’m sorry, I'm fine, he thought. A thunderclap caught him unaware and unsupported between railings. Light shattered across every city window on the street and blinded the bus patrons in stages as a pulse of three. Lightning followed thunder and, in turn, was followed by a deafening absence of sound. Samuel collapsed. He cried. He slept. He woke. He was dizzy. Lost. Samuel clenched the collars behind his neck and moaned. Face down on flocked flooring, he pulled and wrenched and broke things.

As Samuel came to, a confusion of voices forced his large, grey-faded eyes up. More people were standing near him now than he remembered there being. Some were shouting threats. He could see others were frightened, holding themselves or the person nearest them closer. It’s later than I thought, he thought. Others had cupped both hands to their faces to hide their eyes from him. He remembered the girl in the park. He remembered the child’s father. Samuel pulled away, shoulders bent, head down. He forced open bus doors and ran free leaving a chorus of shrieks and cursing behind him.

Barely conscious of what he was doing he tore at himself until every stitch of clothing had gone. Air. Open space, he thought. He lifted both arms mid-sprint and threw his head back. The hot slime of his sweat commingled with rainwater and fell off. This pleased Samuel. All the new sensations he could now feel while running hot, sweat-covered and naked elated and delighted him. Air. He could feel the air.

It was darker and raining harder as Samuel’s faded silhouette sped into the tree line of the city park. His skin swelled, sagging off bone in clumps and ribbons.

As he neared a clearing, all the sounds of the world became dull and dampened. A vibration of hummings and a rhythm of waking dreams brought Samuel to a more calming pace and were joined only by the sounds stirring within Samuel’s chest cavity; here, a vertical line of combed bristles protruded through the sternum and shuddered quickly against one another in frantic, sonic agreements with the coming storm.

This was all the world left to him now: Grass blades whispering along arches of bare feet. Breath. Weaving wind between splayed fingers. Breath. Salt-stung eyes. Tears. Another breath in the chest. Another stride. He peered, grey-eyed and wide-eyed into the day’s night sky awaiting his halo of lights and the smell of a colder, more familiar climate.

At last, a cool breeze touched him, his face awash in light.

Home, he thought.

Then Samuel was gone and the city was empty except for its humans.