Run Rabbit Run

Trees were my only memory. I wandered through the woods for so long that all I remembered was fighting my way through branches. I had to reach a destination, although the location and my purpose were long since erased.

I had hurt my head so badly that I forgot myself.

Time was irrelevant. Not tired, nor hungry or thirsty. Day and night were indistinguishable. One foot after the other. Stay ahead of... what? Was someone chasing me? I just knew I had to keep going, hold back another branch and move onward.

Onward?

No. Stuck. Flailing but not making progress… Until I heard the voices.

I sprinted towards the sound bursting through the trees into the picnic spot near the car park, amazed I had been so close to the way out all this time.

A couple were picnicking by the stream. Beautifully laid out frosted cupcakes and sandwiches on a red and white checked tablecloth reminded me I should be hungry.

The woman was saying, “Looks like rain again. Another storm on the way.”

A small dog circled me with a low growl.

“Good afternoon” I called to them. “Could I trouble you for a lift to town when you finish your picnic.”

There was no response, but I sat down anyway. Some sandwiches were moved in front of me. Ham and egg I think. The feast should have made my stomach growl, but I was not hungry. All the same I reasoned I must eat. But the oddest thing, as I reached for the sandwich it curled into a stale, dry morsel.

It seemed impolite to put the sandwich back after I’d touched it, so I chewed the stale triangle. It had no taste, but I announced that it was delicious. I offered to help pack up the picnic when they were ready to go but the woman was too efficient.

They opened the door to their Oldsmobile and the dog, and I sat in the back. The dog squeezed itself into a corner as far away from me as possible. Bill Haley and the Comets counted time on the car radio.

I looked back at the picnic spot with the dense forest behind it just as a figure burst out from the trees, gazing around the area. He was a majestic Black man, with long locks of greying hair and trailing beard. Tall, with a hood pulled over his head holding what appeared to be a hiking staff.

The radio was overcome by static, as if the channels were switching to the end of the dial and then the signal was restored. This time Sam the Sham howled out his song.

Hey there Little Red Riding Hood

I don't think little big girls should

Go walkin' in these spooky old woods alone

Awooooooooo!

As the car pulled away the man’s coat flapped in the wind. He vanished as a flock of birds appeared, spiraling above the picnic spot. The sound of their wings flapping sounded like a slow clap as if they were waiting for an entertainer to take the stage.

He had been a flicker of a mirage. A symptom of concussion.

#

The unfriendly little dog emitted a low growl as I exited the vehicle. I went to introduce myself again to the couple and found I could not for the life of me remember my name. The man went to the trunk to retrieve the picnic hamper and carried it into the apartment building. The dog sat on the pavement, growling, refusing to move past me.

“It’s the darndest thing,” I explained. “I remember I tripped. I stumbled off the hiking path and fell I think. When I woke up, there I was. Off the track, trying to find my way…”

“What is up with you today, Milly?” The woman asked bending down to the little dog that leapt into her arms. “Why baby you’re shivering.”

She hurried towards the apartment building. I followed thanking her for the ride and she closed the door on me! How rude.

I mused over how the woman referred to her pet as “baby” and decided she must have been overtaken by concern for her hysterical mutt. I on the other hand merely had a concussion, perhaps a hairline fracture of the scull and amnesia. I shrugged and continued down the street hoping something would look familiar to me.

I could not remember who I was, but I remembered this: I had been habitually overlooked all my life, so this was nothing new. I was average. Average grades through school. An average typing speed meant I never left the typing pool. I caught sight of myself in a shop window and confirmed I was of average looks. Light brown hair, brown eyes, a sprinkle of freckles. I wore denim pedal pushers and a slightly grubby white tee shirt from rolling down a muddy cliff. I hooked up my bedraggled duffle coat trying to hide the stains. Nobody made eye contact with me as I walked along the street.

Too dull, perhaps. And instantly forgettable.

I retained a few fragments of my life. I knew I was destined for spinsterhood. Like Garbo, I liked to be let alone. I spent my evenings flicking through Life magazine, listening to Mantovani strings on my record player. Not lonely. Content? Maybe. It gets fuzzy when I try too hard to focus on detail.

The shadows grew longer as I continued to walk. I had reached the center of town and still nothing looked familiar. Occasionally an almost recollection brushed against my consciousness and then it was gone.

He cast a long shadow.

Yes! That was it. I was being followed and that was why I was running. I closed my eyes trying to remember the moments before I woke up with a secret past and no name.

Rain. It had started to rain. Small scattered drops and then a full blown down pour. I put the hood of my coat up. Something must have startled me because I was running. The rain was pelting down, my face was wet, the ground muddy. There was a loud crack as a tree branch broke off in the strong wind.

What was I running from?

The sound of footsteps, slow measured footfalls behind me and then a trip and a slip and darkness… a vague sensation of rain falling as I lay still as the cold swamped my senses…

Now I opened my eyes.

It was night. There were still a few people on the street. A couple walking hand in hand to dinner maybe. A man pushing a baby carriage with a baby howling at the top of his lungs. He stopped to light his pipe and I looked into the baby carriage. The baby stopped mid-cry, staring at me. It lifted its arms, waving its mittened hands.

“Finally,” murmured the man and resumed pushing the carriage.

I watched them move on smiling. A man walked up to me, and I turned to him to wish him good evening, wondering if perhaps he knew me and that was why he had approached.

His eyes were gold and glowing, his lips spread in a leer revealing long sharp teeth. Shrill manic laughter sounded behind me as I took to my heels and start to run. Along the street were suddenly creatures of the night at every turn. Demons. Devils. Things I had never seen before.

And once again I heard the footsteps behind me. This time I looked back, and it was him. The man I had seen in the picnic area. A tall regal man with long grey hair, spilling out from a black hood. He wasn’t one of the twisted horrific monsters cavorting in the shadows – but all the same I was terrified of him. He was looking in all directions as if searching for something.

Someone.

I ducked down an alley way, scaled a wall and found myself on Peach Street where I sought refuge in a movie theatre. The man at the ticket booth was reading a newspaper so I didn’t pause, slipping into the theatre taking an empty seat at the back.

On the big screen Marshall Will Kane, the man too proud to run prepared to face down four men who were coming in at High Noon.

Just as the movie poster promised: “Time was his deadly enemy, with every minute, every swing of the pendulum a man’s life ticked away…”

#

Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster kissed passionately on the beach. Waves crashed over them as the camera zoomed in on her wedding ring… That didn’t shock me, but their passion intrigued me. Why would anyone risk so much? I preferred Montgomery Cliff. There was something about him that was reserved, hidden and that felt more… more the way one should act. It seemed wrong to share so much of yourself with another person. I watched that movie a dozen times and shivered at that scene each time I watched it.

The theatre staff never bothered me. I didn’t give it much thought as to why they would let me take up residence in the theatre. I assumed because I didn’t give them any trouble and didn’t try to interact with the paying customers it was easier to just ignore me.

I watched stories play out in the cinema and occasionally I would remember I should try to uncover the secret of my own life. I wondered if my inability to recall my life was because there was nothing of interest to remember.. Work, TV Dinner, Sleep. No day different from the next. Life went on and on and on…

Outside the howling of unearthly creatures that did not sleep continued. The tall man with the walking staff prowled outside. I felt a chill that told me he was nearby. I stayed in the darkness of the theatre watching made up lives and felt safe.

For now.

#

The audience was made up of families and couples. Sometimes if I had seen the movie several times I took more interest in the audience as they walked in to take their seats. I came to know the couple who every Saturday attended whatever was screening. He always waited until the halfway point before he put his arm her shoulders. He spent more time gazing at her than watching the movie.

The mother of a boy who I estimated to be around ten years old attended every Saturday matinee together, always sitting in the front row. Sometimes I moved from my usual seat to sit next to them. The joy the boy derived from the story on the screen was infectious as was his excitement as he cheered for the Lone Ranger, booed the villains and mimed along with Michael Rennie’s Robot “Klaatu barada nikto”.

Every teenager in town broke curfew and snuck in to see Brando’s Wild One. They were joined by a methodist minister who had come to see for himself what was Johnny rebelling against. He filled himself with righteous indignation and when Chino and Johnnie came to blows he stood up angrily to denounce the film for encouraging juvenile delinquency. He raised his fist to the sky, urging the teenagers in the audience to leave the theatre before corruption set in.

Suddenly he clutched his chest. His knees buckled and he fell to the floor. A horrified gasp echoed across the theatre as his wife wailed in fear. Two men carried him from the seat to the aisle, shouting for someone to call an ambulance.

But when the theatre doors opened it was not the paramedics responding to the emergency, instead an icy wind blew through the theatre and a raven took flight and perched upon the chest of the minister awaiting his master’s arrival.

He glided into the theatre. The air turned to ice as he passed. I pulled my knees up to my chin and huddled in my seat, still and hopefully unnoticed. I placed one hand over my eyes, with the same logic as a child thinking if I couldn’t see the hooded stranger he might not see me. Through my fingers I saw the minister stand and take the hand of the stranger. They walked slowly and solemnly towards the door. The stranger paused suddenly, his eyes flickering across the theatre. He sniffed the air.

He can’t be searching for me. Still? After all this time?

I closed my eyes again and only opened them when the temperature returned to normal.

Perhaps if I solved the mystery of who I was, I would understand what the stranger wanted from me. But I only got as far as the front entrance. I watched through the glass windows of the theatre as the world passed by that morning and then returned to my seat and the make-believe world.

#

My last night at the theatre saw a sparse audience because it was a foreign language film.

Det sjunde inseglet.

Swedish. Subtitles not dubbed.

I sat up straight, an overwhelming sense of panic took hold. The white-haired knight was on a beach and a figure in black robes approached.

I knew him.

For me it was a trip and a slip and a quiet uneventful ending.

I ran to find shelter from the rain, and slipped, rolling off down the side of the track… grasping at bushes as I slid down the escarpment. Time was frozen until the sickening thud as I hit the ground. I lay there unable to move as heavy rain fell on me and I grew so, so cold.

My father told me once that if you find a bird with a broken wing the kindest thing to do is to wrap it in a towel and place it in the freezer to fall asleep as hypothermia sets in. Just as if I was a bird with a broken wing, the cold wrapped around me and I would have slipped away.... That was when I heard his footsteps. Heavy and measured, like the ticking of a grandfather clock.

I shivered with cold and the recognition of what I had been running from. And at that point he took the seat next to me.

“I do not play chess,” he said. “They have that all wrong.”

His robes were black like Bergman’s Death but his appearance much more benign. A wise man who has seen everything. There’s even a little kindness in his eyes. He lays down his staff. Although of course it is not a hiking staff. He walks endless miles, but he does not need support. He carries a scythe not a staff.

My ability to hide from the knowledge of my own demise saw Death pass me by. I did not stop for him but now he has kindly stopped for me. Just as Emily Dickinson wrote, he knows no haste. He waits and eventually you have no choice but to take his hand and step into his carriage.

My half-lived life closed with a sigh so soft my ending went unnoticed. And with the time I stole back from Death, I spent it watching other people’s lives on the Cinema screen. Even when I had a second chance I chose to hide from Life as if I feared it more than Death.

“You have run a long time, little rabbit,” said Death. “But it’s time.”

“I feel I have more to do,” I said.

“Everyone does,” said Death.

He held his hand out and when I clasped it the cold spread through me. I remembered who I was. Jane. Plain Jane Smith was no more. The cold pierced me and I fractured into a million pieces, the last remnants of my identity drifting like snowflakes extinguished in the soundless darkness of eternity.

END