Big Shop

“Daddy, I’m scared!” 

His words are shards of glass in my heart. They bring it home to me in a way nothing else can. I’ve lied to myself so many times in an attempt to convince myself that I am not scared, that I have risen above such things. 

The truth is I’m about as scared as it’s possible to be, and I can feel myself coming apart at seams I never knew I had, and my collapse into chaos terrifies me. I know that I could let go right now and there would be no coming back. That I would disintegrate into a million pieces and those pieces would be unrecognisable as the person I once was.

Do you want to hear the worst of it?

I want to let go. 

I’m drawn to a defining moment where all meaning is lost and that is about the most seductive thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

I don’t want it to matter anymore.

I don’t want to care.

I’m so tired it hurts.

I just want someone to take it all away.

But I can’t.

I have to be strong for Leo. I have to be brave for my little lion cub. I have to do this for him. There is only him. He is my world. 

But what world is this, that I will one day leave him in? This is a world unlike anything any of us could have envisaged. 

This is hell.

This is beyond hell.

“Me too, matey. Me too,” I tell my little boy.

Leo’s eyes go wide, “you’re scared, Daddy?”

I nod slowly and deliberately, “being scared is what keeps you alive. Being scared gives you an edge.”

“So we can fight them?” he asks, his face small and round and earnest.

I smile, and I wonder at what it is that he sees when he looks upon me. I am huge in his world and I have the status of a demi-god. I can do no wrong. He expects me to go out there and beat the heck out of anything that gets in our way. I am his Superman. 

Right now, I’d prefer to be his Batman. Bruce Wayne was just a man, but he had money and nous and he amassed a customised arsenal to fight the criminal underworld with. Mostly, he used his mind. He outthought those around him. Once he beat Superman. That wasn’t a fair fight, but since when are fights fair?

I shake my head, “always avoid a fight,” I tell him.

“Isn’t that cowardly?” he asks me.

I chuckle and I hate myself for the hollow sound of it. I cannot laugh. I have not laughed in such a long while. Even my smiles are forced. I put on a brave face. For him. “Better to be alive and cowardly than to be brave and dead.”

He scowls at me, not liking my reply and choosing not to give it credence.

“Listen,” I hold his still chubby cheeks between the palms of my hands and I stare into his eyes, “and listen well. Even the bravest avoid fights. When they do fight, they choose their ground and how they will fight. Remember King Leonidas?”

Leo nods, he knows all about the Spartan King and his heroic stand against the might of the Persian empire at the Hot Gates. 

“You are named after the bravest of the brave,” I release his cheeks and place my right hand on his chest, conscious that it is shaking. My hand always shaking these days, “inside you beats the heart of a lion.”

He nods solemnly and my heart breaks all over again. Over and over my heart is crushed and broken. Who will look after my little boy when I am gone?

That is my greatest fear. This fear stalks me in every waking moment of this terrible existence of mine, and it even follows me into my dreams. It is not alone. Fear has many guises. Fear is legion. Especially now, in this blighted land where fear reigns.

Fear has contaminated everything. Fear is in everything, it is everything. I sound paranoid and I feel paranoid, I only wish that this were so. I wish and I wish that this was all in my head, but the world has flipped and now the only safe space is in my mind and that space gets smaller every day. When it finally is gone I do not know what will become of my son. I don’t care about me. I am already lost. Leo is the only thing I live for now.

If you can call it living.

“Now get your coat,” I tell him.

He stands up, but he goes nowhere, “do we have to?”

“Yes we do,” I say.

“But we have food!” he protests.

“I’ve already told you,” I sigh as I repeat myself, “we’re running out and we need more provisions.”

This is a lie and I cannot deliver it convincingly. I don’t want to go either, but we must. We have to leave the illusion of the protection of a place we once called home and venture forth into a world that wants us dead. The whole of the world is ranged against us and our chances are slim. 

If we have any chance at all.

Provisions, I consider this word and why I used it. Once upon a time, we would go food shopping. We would go to the Big Shop and stock up. We called it food shopping because the bulk of what we bought was food and back then there was a joy to that. The choices we could make and the prospect of meals together. Tasty meals, eaten amidst fun and laughter.

All of that is long gone now.

None of that remains, and I wonder whether it ever existed in the first place. I wonder whether that was a dream I once had, now blown away in the acrid winds of an inhospitable world.

Leo will not remember those times. He is too young. He will not remember Betty, his mother. He will look at the photos and he will bring to mind a concept, a construct of something that is beyond him. 

I hope he remembers me.

I go with him to fetch his coat and I zip it up for him, “there we go, little man.”

“I’m not little!” he shouts.

I bite my lower lip. His defiance wounds me somehow, “no, you’re not so little now. You’re a big lad and one day you will be mighty.”

I raise my hand, palm up, “high five!”

He hits my hand for all he is worth. It hurts. I conceal just how much it hurts as I question the merits of leaving this house and going out there.

“Daddy?” he asks me.

“Yes, big man?” I say.

“Are you OK?” he asks this and I see worry in his eyes.

“Yes,” I say immediately, “why do you ask?”

“You seem sad,” he tells me.

I’m nodding before I know it and tears roll down my face, “it’s just that I miss…” I get choked up and can’t continue.

“I miss Mummy too,” Leo says, and then he hugs me.

I miss her, of course I do, but I wasn’t going to say that. I was and I wasn’t. I miss her, but what I really miss is the life I led before all of this. The life that has been cruelly stolen from me. I grieve for what once was and I hate the way it was taken from me. I don’t deserve this. It isn’t fair.

My life is now a nightmare. One that I cannot wake up from. It’s bad enough to lose so much, but to see it twisted and corrupted is too much. Life was always a matter of struggle and survival, but we dressed it up in pretty clothes and played a game of make believe. We pretended that we were civilised and that we were to be trusted and maybe we were, just as long as we all went with the script and played our part. Well now no one plays their part and it’s all a mess. 

We hug and it hurts.

Leo doesn’t see the pain I am in. He thinks I am sad. At least that’s what I tell myself.

We separate and I look down at him, doing a quick inventory. He has his coat on and he’s wearing his shoes, “one last wee before we go,” I tell him. I need to go as much as he does. I seem to need the toilet more and more.

We go together. It’s a bit of fun. A moment that we share.

“Don’t cross the streams!” he warns me as we both stand around the bowl and focus on our aim. 

He does not notice the discoloration in my urine, but I do. Dark, far too dark, it stings as I go. I blink back more tears. I don’t want to go like this. This isn’t fair!

Will it hurt?

That’s what I keep asking myself. It already hurts like hell and it’s getting worse. I hope and pray that my body can cope with the gradual worsening. I’m sure I read somewhere that the body is built to deal with pain like that. Selfishly, I also pray for an ignorant transition when it doesn’t matter anymore and I no longer feel anything.

I’m scared. 

I’m beyond scared, but I realise that it is not death that I fear.

There are worse things than death.

I’m ashamed that my fears only extend so far for Leo, and that the sadness I feel for him is eclipsed by my own plight. I am already lacking and there is a way for us to go yet.

My recent days seem to be a consideration of all the ways I can fear and my fear of falling short and not being a decent person is receding. All I had left of my former life was being Leo’s Daddy and doing a good job of it. I haven’t given up so much as resigned myself to defeat. I have reconciled myself to losing.

You’re on your own, kiddo.

In the end, we are all on our own. The lucky ones have people around them who help perpetuate a myth to the contrary. I pity them almost as much as I pity myself and Leo. But then, there is nothing left to pity. They were the ones that went first. They were ill-equipped to live the life they were plodding through, so when it all changed on a six-pence, they were lambs to the slaughter. Unwitting cannon fodder.

They were the worst of us and they slept walked into becoming something even worse.

“Ready?” I ask Leo as we finish drying our hands.

He nods bravely. The time for dissent is gone. He knows we have to go. He’s a good little boy and he will do as he is told. That was always the expectation. His life always depended on him paying attention and doing as he was told. 

We go to the back door of the house.

I smile to myself as I realise the absurdity of this. Only now does it strike me. Going to the back door is a superstition that I have clung to. Danger is all around us, and yet I still believe it is a better bet for us to exit through the back door. My thinking is clear. They won’t expect that. They’ll expect that we’ll stick to the age old habit of going through the front door. 

Like they care!

For them, it’s a waiting game and it’s a numbers game. In the end they will win. In the end, they always win.

I take a deep breath that hurts my ribs and it shudders back out of me painfully. I’m shaking more than I ever have. Fear and a rising fever. Fear is a fever. My mind is screaming at me.

NOOOOO!

I really do not want to do this. I can’t do this. I’m putting my own son’s life at risk and for what? Underlying all the protests is a quieter, gentler voice. A soothing voice. This voice has a bedside manner. It is coaxing me back inside the house and to bed. Telling me that I need to rest and that everything will be OK. I know what it is doing and even though I defy it, it saps my strength and weakens my will. I feel my energy draining out of me. My legs become hollow.

“Daddy?” Leo sounds far away, but I read his confusion and fear.

I come back to myself along a long translucent tunnel and his face is at the end of it. I am panting and I feel a sheen of cold sweat on my forehead.

“Just preparing myself,” I lie. “Ready?” I ask him again.

He nods and tries for a smile. I open the door.

We run into the chaos of a world that wants us gone.

Most of the rest of it is a blur and I give thanks for this. They are slow and seemingly stupid, but I know this is my way of making myself feel better and seeing my odds as higher than they really are. It’s also hubris. They don’t have to be fast and intelligence can manifest itself in myriad ways. Fact is, I’m losing and they are winning, so who’s the brightest in that scenario?

They stand.

They watch.

Then they come for us.

There is something of the hive mind about them because as we go further they are more and more ready for us. The way this works is tragic. I’ve seen it play out so many times before. An encouraging start and the promise of success, only for the fortunes of the player to deteriorate. Their head goes down as they realise that the game has turned. It’s a classic story, the hunter wears its prey down. It’s a war of attrition with only one outcome.

We get within sight of the Big Shop and my heart lifts as it looms before us. I keep Leo near and I remember myself. The final yards are the hardest. We have to pace ourselves. We cannot get carried away. The trick is not to snatch defeat from victory.

“Nearly there,” I tell myself, but Leo hears it too and nods grimly.

Between us and the front of that large store is a small group of them. My fevered mind casts back to a time when I described the shambling and annoying people in a supermarket in a similar way to what we are confronted with now. The difference is that these things are real enough, and they bite.

“What are we going to do, Daddy?” Leo asks the question I’m already asking myself.

We’re not going to do anything. I have to remind myself of that. Even in the circumstances I have found myself in, I don’t want to accept reality. I’m scared and so I deny the truth. The sad and pathetic part is it’s not even about survival. But something old and ancient within me will not accept that. It will never accept that. It has got all this way by being just the way it is and it won’t change now. 

It will never change.

I see it now.

I see what it is that drives these things and I have the same engine. I am the same. We all are.

And it’s fear.

We’re all driven by fear. We may call it survival, but that’s because we’re ashamed. Fear wears a cloak of shame and it calls itself by another name.

I straighten up and I know what I must do. I’ve one more roll of the dice, but Leo has the whole game to play, or he will if I play my part now. 

Because there’s something that trumps this engine of ours. There’s something that counts. That something makes me different to them. That something will make the difference.

That something’s love.

“Whatever happens,” I say to Leo, “you run to that door and you bang on it for all you’re worth. OK?”

“But…” Leo begins and I feel his pleading eyes upon me.

“OK?” there’s no defying that word.

This is it.

I am it.

I am Leo’s Daddy and I will do what I have to.

For him.

Then we are running and I am swinging at them with my good arm, pulling Leo in my wake with my injured arm. The arm with what had seemed like an innocuous graze. It was barely a bite. Not really. But there was my denial all over again. Pretending that I wasn’t infected. That I was going to be OK, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Everything slows down and I feel no pain, and yet I see and feel everything around me. My thoughts are playing out old home movies and reminding me of what really counts. I pile through them all and with the last of my strength and will I propel Leo forward and towards the door.

I watch as he stutters and stumbles to the glass of the shut door. I see him raise a hand and hesitate. I want to call out to him and urge him to hit that door with everything he’s got, but I have no words. I have nothing left. I’m a spectator now. This is the end.

I can only watch as I am dragged back, and I feel them upon me.

I see the door open and hands snake out, pulling Leo out of danger and into the safety of the last enclave of humanity.

We did it, son.

We…

I’m… hungry.

So… hungry.

There is… food.

Food is… there… beyond that door.