Meltwater - Writing - Concrete Messages

The messages were becoming more frequent and colourful as time passed. The frequency of the red explosions had become increasingly intense since the first one a month earlier. Their increases in activity had in turn fed and twisted the morbid and ominous preoccupation's of John. The first one had quietly announced the arrival of the messages a month earlier, as he sat pondering the outside world from the passenger seat of his girlfriend's car.

The heavy traffic had come to a claustrophobic halt on the sweltering park side roadway. To the left of him rose the refined Victorian houses that ran parallel to the boundary of the park on raised banks, casting their prosperous glare over the inner-city green esplanade. In turn the road bisected the bygone atmosphere of wealthy Victorian serenity with a loud and metallic swathe of twentieth century technology. In his passenger seat languid stupor he was unprepared for the first of the messages which announced itself from nowhere, interrupting his sweaty thoughts. As the shinning river of engines and chassis started to move, his girlfriend, Angela, started the car off on its snail like crawl into second gear. They momentarily passed an uphill side street, running perpendicular to the main road between two grand, four storied, gothic, castlesque houses. The two corner structures framed the scene that was burned onto the ascending roadway, their mock medieval towers looking down passively on the side street that held them firmly apart.

As the car started accelerating it gave John a brief view which sent scant chills reverberating through his senses. The first sign that something was wrong was the yellow tape stretched across the road, splicing through a sun reflecting red 'No Entry' sign. In the brief moments it took for the car to traverse the side road, the image was inputted into his mind which burned and returned for hours and days afterwards. The sloping road was empty apart from a couple of cars parked on the sides. In the middle of the coarse concrete was a large carmine patch of liquid, glowing iridescently in the hot summer sunlight. Trails ran away from the patch, describing the incline of the road with irregular linear shapes. It was the blood signature of some recently occurred road accident. Any other evidence as to what had happened had been removed, leaving only the puddle of sun dried blood which carried a halo of cubed and shattered glass.

Something turned in his stomach at the sight of the lonely street besmirched with its deep red patch. He tried to picture what had happened with the morbid fascination that such a scene aroused. Angela had missed the image, her mind was busy concentrating on the increasing flow of the traffic. When he told her she took no notice, passing the event off with an unnerving indifference. Seconds after passing the road he had turned to her and spoke. "Christ! did you see that, blood all down the road."

"Huh? Oh well, serves them right." She replied uninterestedly, without taking any notice of his agitation.

His mind started turning as he pictured the body hitting the solid road, a shower of crimson spraying the adjacent concrete surface. He thought to himself, Christ, what a horrendous way to go. He couldn't help himself from reconstructing the gruesome images and replaying his morbid improvisations over and over in his head. The slow stream of traffic continued, the sweltering sun kissing the metallic surfaces of the car with fiery lips.

It was a week after the park side message that the second sign appeared, as he was driving past a melee of flashing lights at a motorway slip road. Like the first message it came with no specific details of what had happened. He gained only an impression in his high speed drive by. He was once again struck by the pool of blood which lay on the slope glistening thick and deep, with its halo of shining fragments. The side fence of the slip road had taken its own memory of the shape of one of the protagonists involved. Two police officers in bright orange overcoats were slowly descending the slip road with thick long handled sweeping brushes, slowly and methodically moving the remaining remnants of broken glass and metal to the sides of the road.

In his brief view of the auto-death scene, the thing that stuck in his mind was the blood patch with its tiny satellites of glowing, uniform fragments of smashed windshield glass. He found himself engrossed with the sudden death potentialities that car driving involved, his mind once more picturing the pass that the unfortunate person had made through the car's window into the unyielding firmness of the black tarmac. The image haunted him for the remainder of his drive home. That evening as he made disinterested love to Angela, the moment of orgasm bought the sickening image flooding back into his mind with a violent frenzy.

Over the following week, the aftermasses of road accidents once again invaded his quiet concentration as he made his way home along the city's roads in his silver estate car. The site's of the accidents were always empty, barring the cleaning up operations that were going on around them. It was a scene that was breeding an uneasy familiarity with him, as were the patches of blood that marked where the unfortunate victims had come to rest at their journeys end. There were three more sightings in the week of the second message and it made John uneasy to notice that they were getting progressively closer to his flat, each one encroaching closer than the last. The third had been outside the high rise offices where he worked on the bland outskirts of the city. The fourth was on the other side of town, close to his mothers house. The fifth had come at the start of the long main road that led to the residential area where he lived.

The familiar blood signatures were beginning to mean something to him. They had started to take on the symbolic potential of omens. As he saw it, the red messages were the premonition of events yet to unfold in his life. He became scared that some brutal and bloody fate was lying around the corner, waiting to ensnare him in its brief but violent jaws. When driving his car he became enveloped by a thick, damp clamminess as his head perspired a cold and fearful sweat. His mind became cloudy, and he would find himself making errors as the hard plastic wheel would slip through the hot and damp flesh of his hands. On several occasions he had to brake suddenly through misjudged departures from hidden side streets, into the path of unyielding fast cars. His body was only stopped from flying through the strengthened safety glass by the thin black strip of material that cut into his chest. In his mind he had been lucky to be spared an awful death; although, another voice told him that he wasn't being spared, but saved for some worse demise in the near future.

Up until that point, the glimpses of the omenistic messages had spared him the distaste of seeing any human remains in the aftermath. The messages had been impersonal reminders about the instant fatality of life in the modern age. But in the third week, the meagre relief of being spared the sight of the dead was to be graphically exploded. Ever since the first sighting, John had been repeatedly reconstructing his own versions of the accidents in his increasingly morbid mind, a process which was starting to leave an indelible scar on his psyche. The grisly prologues that he had constructed were ill fittingly suitable to prepare him for the sight of the first grizzled body that he saw resting on the black, lifeless, sand paper textured tarmac.

It was on the second day of the third week that he spotted the accident. As a precaution in response to the perceived omens, he had taken to walking back and fore to work. As he was strolling home after another uneventful day at the office, walking down the main road that led to the comfortable safety of his flat, he passed a normally quiet side street. As he stepped past the shopped corner he saw the flashing lights that had become the usual precursors to the sightings of the red omens, down on the side street's next corner.

He was drawn along the scrawny tree lined terrace of mirror image houses by the flashing beacons. At the corner the side street formed a cross-roads with another similar street, and it was where the accident had happened, marked out by the crowd of bystanders who shimmied about the flashing vehicles. They were also held fascinated, some held there hands up to the mouths, looking like they wished to be sick, some stared intently, others blankly, but they were all dispassionate. It had obviously involved people from outside the area, as no one was concerned about the victims. He could see no distraught relatives or friends, no crying mothers or shocked spouses being comforted by the officers in their bright coats.

He strode in between two groups of people to see a sight that made his stomach flip and his heart dissolute. The car had come to rest in the middle of the cross-roads, its radiator dented and bloodied. Some thirty feet behind it lay a crumpled figure, a man of about John's age and height, somewhat leaner. He lay on his back eyes open agape at the ambulance men that were around him. His arms were outstretched from his body, like a crucified Christ on a concrete cross. He had a bloody tail that streaked along the road from his feet to the car. It described the path that his body had taken as he made a painful and bloody skid along the hard and coarse road.

John walked closer to the body, watching the ambulance men working on the victim with an apparent air of despair. The majority of blood from the skid seemed to come from the victims head, around which a large scarlet patch had formed, creating a bond between the road and his thickly matted blood dreadlocked hair. The Paramedics were trying to revive him, the one pressed on his chest with a painful rhythm. As he did so, the bloodied figure's mouth opened and closed with a rising and falling froth of red bubbles, up and down in a bizarre see-saw. Patches of the victims scalp hung away from the skull, which in on place had become totally detached, leaking a thick and glutinous substance on to the ground.

John watched as the young victim's body went slack, the previously taut body giving up its fight for life. He looked into the blood streaked face as the flooded cavities of the eyes rolled upwards in an attempt to reach peace. John walked back to look at the car, its dented radiator had taken the impression of the young mans legs, its windshield displayed a network of spiders web patterns where parts of the victims body made their swift impacts with the glass. Spots of red lined across the roof of the car, denoting the shower of blood that had rained from the human cloud that had swept over the roof. From the carnage it appeared that the driver had been travelling at great velocity down the residential street. John then spotted the driver, who was sat shaking on the low wall of one of the corner houses. Two policemen milled about him. asking questions and giving him indignant looks for creating this problem for them. From out of the house who's wall he sat on came an old and kindly woman, bearing a tray full of mugs which billowed steam, hot tea for the officers and one with extra sugar for the driver of the deathmobile.

John stood there for a long time, transfixed by the events, and feeling like he was taking part in the rehearsal for his own future demise. He had watched as the ambulance men removed the body, lifting the tattered and bloody mass onto a stretcher that disappeared into the back of the ambulance. Where the young man had lain was now covered with the familiar blood omen. Its bloody tendrils run away down the curve of the road, describe the surface's arc. This signature was different though, it took him a while to notice that the majority of the patch's little streams ran in his direction, collecting in the gutter's ditch beneath his feet. He looked down at the pool, which was deep scarlet and still wet, unlike the thickening blood on the road. He could see his features reflected in the grim mirror.

He stayed at the scene hypnotised by the cleaning up operation, the ambulance had since left, after scraping up the fragments of skull from the thick blood patch. John was surprised by their indifference to the sticky mess that was left on the floor, it was highly undignified and impersonal. The tow truck came and removed the damaged battering ram from the scene, the driver left with the policemen.

Before they left they came out of the old ladies house with a couple of buckets of water, which they used to flush away the rest of the bloody spillage that was despoiling the overall greyness of the road. The water flowed into the gutter inches below his toes, washing away the mirror upon which he had been fixedly gazing. It was enough to snap his mind back into the present. Since he had started gazing into the red puddle at his distorted reflection, he had felt that he was stood on some mountainous arret, staring down the steep sloping sides to the black tarn at the bottom. It was as if his very next step would start the rapid falling descent towards the instant oblivion beneath him. This feeling stayed with him, making him fearful to continue the journey homewards.

The grisly tableaux had played itself out before him, the cross-roads returned to its normal and routine appearance, as if nothing had happened there, ever. He was still unable to move, caught up in the convictions of his blood meditation, his terror aroused by the feeling that his next step would engage the machinations of fate that would start the mechanisms of his dissolution, and bring it to reality. He waited for the feeling to become less intense, and then left the alien side street to return to the bustling main road which led home. He felt like he was followed by the ghost of the dead young man, and its implications in his unravelled future.

He returned home dazed and mentally bruised, in a trance as his mind played tricks on him. He was starting to see the blood omens everywhere, in the road, in the reflections of the sun lit, glowing windows of shops, in car windows, in the flowers that adorned the gardens of the houses in his street. As he turned the key in the lock of his glass panelled front door, he spotted not his own reflection, but the vacant death stare of the bloodied victim's flooded eyes.

Angela had been waiting for him, on his pale entrance he walked straight past her and plumped himself down in his chair. She spoke concernedly. "What's wrong John, you look like death warmed up?"

He removed his shaking hand from his sweat moistened forehead, staring at her dimly, and whispered deeply from a great distance. "So much blood, everywhere, shit. I think I'm gonna di..." His voice trailed off as he looked up at her, for a brief second it appeared as if she had a violet halo, with shiny points of light glowing in their orbit. The halo gave off a ghastly reverberation of light, accompanied by a high pitched screaming sound. He jumped from the chair with a mad maniac's energy, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her violently, screaming. "What the fuck's happening, tell me, tell me, oh god... Oh Christ, what's happening?"

He stopped as abruptly as he had started, slumping into the arms of his terrified lover, sobbing at the throng of inexperienced feelings of fear and apprehension that were overloading his soul. He sobbed heavily to her. "Oh Christ, what's happening to me, why? I'm sorry. God I'm sorry."

He calmed himself, and tried to bring to bare then rational calculating and analysing parts of his mind, to assess the inexplicable dread that pervaded him. He started to explain the events of the last couple of weeks, and the feelings that they had aroused, too her. It was hard for him to make it sound believable, but he persevered to express his fears.

John explained to her the common factors of the witnessed accidents, and how they seemed to him to be ominous messages of his own near demise. Once he had finished, Angela looked at him curiously, and with the tersest of tones spoke, "what? You're taking the piss, aren't you"

John's jaw dropped, as after finishing she burst into a fit of laughter. She looked at him through her spasmodic bouts of mirth, and continued, "well, come on, you can't be serious can you. Do you really think that because you have seen a couple of accidents that all of a sudden you're going to have one yourself? Come on now John, be serious. Its nothing more than coincidence. Think about it, you live in a big and bustling city, there must be a dozen accidents every day."

She stood up and walked over to the coffee table, where she picked up a copy of the local paper, which she threw at him whilst asking, "go on, look at it, and tell me how many road accidents are in today's issue."

He looked at her, slightly lost by her uncaring attitude, and then began to flick through the paper. As he did he began to feel increasingly stupid, he answered her like a scolded school boy, "four fatalities, seven injuries, two of which are critical."

He looked at her sheepishly, knowing what she was likely to say to him next. She began, "There you go then. So, wouldn't you say that on your travels, there would be a fairly good chance of bumping into one of them? Its just a case of being in the wrong place at the right time, a set of coincidences. Its a bit stupid of you to make such a big deal about it, have you listened to yourself. Jesus! Its pitiful, blood patches are not omens, they're just the remains of some unfortunate people having collisions with cars. I know its not a pleasant thing, but its a fact, nothing more"

* * * *

A week had passed since John had told his girlfriend about his fears. Since then she had readily dismissed his worries, as he himself came to the understanding that it was no more than a perverse and self indulgent fear. One that he had created in his own mind, as a result of fantasising about the culmination of events concerned with the first accidents that he had witnessed. What made his mental state worse, was his constant self identification with the road accidents, and the horrific thoughts of the injuries which he might himself obtain.

He had always had an over-active imagination, and consequently he was more than happy to blame his problems on that fact. During that week he saw no more flashing sirens, and had near forgotten about his self induced deathtrip fantasies which he had manufactured like an assembly line of sleek motor vehicles rolling through the robotic machinations of his mind. He started driving the day after his reassuring talk, and was relieved to find that he no longer felt a clammy terror upon driving the car. Instead he felt powerful, having the knowledge that he had the phallus of power in his strong and controlled fingers. The poetical power of life and death could be wielded by either the vicious press of the accelerator peddle or the life saving, instinctive, stab of the brake.

It was on the Sunday of the following week that John had to attend a family christening, the anticipation of which had been causing much pleasure. He was excited, as he always relished the chance to put his Sunday best on, especially at the rare times that his family would all be together. It was equally rare for him to be seen at church, but he felt it worth the trauma, in order enjoy the family reunion.

The pleasant service had been held in the city's docklands, from where they had gone to the bayside leisure centre for the reception. He drove the mile to the tall and modern red bricked, yellow panelled and mural windowed building, which stood on the muddy banks of one of the major estuaries from the city's numerous rivers. The estuary was more like an open sewer, as the coursing river spilled out its contents of effluence from the miles of urban industrial sprawl; covering its wide and slimy mud banks with many strange artefacts as it run on its path to the nearby sea.

The leisure centre existed in a strange area of the city, surrounded by industry and tight packed housing. The dockland area had been run down and on the verge of collapse for many years, but recent renovations had given the place a breath of new life. It had created a strange place, where the old and decaying mixed with the new and modern. The leisure centre was one of the modern beacons of hope in the area, the token for a new and prosperous future, but as John approached it, he felt prey to the strangest feelings. He turned the car into the sea of fields that adorned the banks of the river, creating a green sea with the road a thin causeway to the island of the brightly coloured building. As he approached the lurid centre, his mind became fogged and distant, the strangeness boring its way through his happy, high spirits. His state of mind had appeared from nowhere, he couldn't understand what the feelings meant, but he felt them increasing as he neared the building.

Inside he sat with his closest family members, with Angela by his side and a pint in his hand. For all the loving people around him, and there joy and interest, he felt totally separate. John felt as though some invisible medium had filled the room with the effect of trapping everyone in their own personal spaces, bereft of any means of approaching anyone else. He felt truly apart from the rest of his family, even his lover, as if he had been separated for some unseen purpose. Everyone around now terrified him. He had to leave the muzzy bar and revelling occupants, so he excused himself from his family and walked out onto the adjoining balcony that overlooked the estuary and the sea.

As he stood on the concrete terrace, smoking a cigar, Angela came and stood with him. The weather was squally and sunny, a strong breeze momentarily lifting on its journey from the dark dappled sea. He stood looking out at the mud flats, through which the river snaked its way onwards to the sea.

The sun came out from behind a dark cloud, flooding the scene with an intense summer light that made the dark mud flats shine silver. It illuminated the far off cranes and tall buildings that cradled the bay with their aged grandeur. In the distance the sea broiled into a dark strip, covered in the shade of far off storm clouds which gathered above the blanketed sea, harbingers of heavy weather to be announced on the mainland in a few hours time. Behind the docklands and centre where the gathered rises of the city, the tall buildings stood like candles, their tops glowing in the bathing they received from the sun.

John stood on the balcony, utterly alone, surveying the whole scene with a soul eating melancholy. He felt like a stick of driftwood in the eye of the hurricane, about to be dashed on the mountainous seas on the journey away from the calm centre of the storm. He watched as the silver curls from his cigar quickly coiled away from its burning end, dispersing as the wind caught them. In an instant the glorious light that bathed them turned black, as another dark cloud flooded across the surface of the sun. The wind rose among the darkened scene flinging his tie over his shoulder and lifting his hair with the caress of a lover. He stared blankly at his girlfriend, who was silently mouthing the words, "what's wrong?"

He didn't hear her, he was lost in the thoughts that where drowning him. All of a sudden her face caught fire, glowing like a flame as the sun once more poked its head out from behind the cloud. He stared at her, aglow in the suns rekindled light, hair flying across her face and her skirt flapping like a sail on the winter's ocean. Her eyes burned into him with the concern of many years closeness. "Nothing," he replied mechanically, unable to put into words the tumultuous feelings that ensnared him.

At that moment, his mother came out onto the balcony with a coven of family members, whom she fussily positioned around him for the sake of a family photograph. It disturbed him, it was like this was to be their keepsake of him. He grinned as best he could under the strength of his strange emotions. He floated about his family members in a fearful daze. It occurred to him what his strange feeling was. It was a feeling of finality. It had never struck him before, but at that moment it clawed its way through his soul like an untamed berserker. He was running the gauntlet of many emotions, from the deepest and darkest manifestations of fear to the most despairing void of sadness.

It took all his self possession to keep himself in the photo shoot, as he felt like running to the toilets to cry. After the photo was taken, everyone left him alone on the balcony, unaware of his strange frame of mind. John was glad that he had been in the photo though, as he felt it would be the final paper testimonial of himself for his family, whom he couldn't help feeling were soon to suffer some tragedy.

John turned to look at the bay, and taking hold of Angela's hand, he swept back inside. He tried to rejoin his family at the table, but they had formed an impenetrable barrier around the newly baptised baby. He look at the baby through the tightly packed familiars, feeling a strange pang of regret. It was as if the baby's future was a lot more certain than his own. The tiny white bundle of puckled flesh in her Christening gown was a symbol for a future that he didn't feel he was to be allowed to take part in. He looked at his concerned partner, and asked sadly, "can we get out of here now? I don't think I can handle this any more." She looked at his earnest face, and agreed. He made his good-byes to his family, in a more than demonstrative fashion than he had done before, and left.

As they sat in the car outside the centre, the sun once more darted its slowly diminishing brilliance across the playing fields, swathing the greens with flying light and illuminating warmth. Inside the car, John was trying to explain what had been wrong. It was not easy for him to find the words to explain his fears.

"I don't know, its weird. I know it sounds funny, but, um, it was as if I'd never see them all again. I felt really strange being with them, like I wasn't part of it all. Oh, I know it sounds stupid, but that's what I felt. Don't smile at me like that, I'm serious, I feel really down about it." He paused momentarily, letting the lump in his throat subside, and Angela's smug look disappear. He looked at her as if he was somewhere else, and asked, "will you drive please, I don't feel up to it."

She looked tersely, and replied, "Your not on that again are you? I thought you'd got over that now. Is that what's bothering you? Is it? Shift over then, I'll drive."

They swapped sides, passing each other around the front bonnet of the car the sun once more flashed its swath of light over them, illuminating the car with a fierce gesture. Once inside and secured, Angela started up the engine, chugging through its mechanical birth pains. John was sat in silence, so she tried to cheer him up as they drove. She made friendly jokes about the various family members, trying to distract him but it was to no avail. John was in a strong fear, his only concern was what was coming in the near future. He was silent and scared.

It was as they sped down the main road near to the home, that John became extremely agitated, as if some unforeseen force had awaken in side of him. Suddenly, a car shot in front of them from a hidden side street. It hadn't seen their rapid approach, or, if it had, the driver was chancing his arm in a rush to return home. John threw his hands up to protect himself as the car shot in front of them. Angela instinctively stabbed the break, the car screamed, whilst they were thrown sharply forward in their seat belts. The car shuddered to a grinding halt, as the back end of the car in front cleared their front bumper by millimetres. Although their seat belts protected them from flying through the windows, the velocity had been such that their heads caught painfully on the dash board and steering wheel, dazing them. John reeled back into his, holding his head, whilst Angela Sat back with a bloodied nose. after a second, she put the car into gear, and pulled over to the curb.

They sat in their metallic chamber on the road side, dazed, bruised, and recovering their senses. It had been a very close call. John passed his girlfriend a tissue for her haemorrhaging nose, which although bloody, was not seriously damaged. It had caused deep red stains on her white blouse, like poppies blossoming on an alpine hillside. He rubbed his head, a deep purple blotch had began to display itself upon his whitened forehead. He felt his chest pockets for the packet of cigarettes that had been there, but on retrieving them he discovered that they had been crushed by the force of the saving seat belt. "Are you alright?" he slowly asked his bleeding girlfriend. "Yes I'm alright, just a bit shaken up, I'll be okay soon, just give us a chance to recover. Ha! Christ, that was close, did you see the look on the other drivers face, hah ha. Last time he'll do that in a hurry. What's the time, oh shit, what? We've missed 'Eastenders', bloody weathers gone funny again, look at it, the sky has gone dark, its going to piss down soon. No? My nose is fine, nothing funny, nothing broke. Oh shit, and my nice new blouse, these stains will never come out, what an awful waste."

She looked at him with a tortured and bloody smile, shaking in the shock of the near miss that they had just survived. He rubbed his forehead, and gestured over her shoulder to the shop across the road and quietly spoke, "I'm just going to pop over there for some more fags, oh, and I'll get you some chocolate, it'll be good for the shock, the sugar I mean."

He left her alone in the car, still talking banalities to herself, and shaking fiercely, and crossed the road to the shop. His mind was once more aflame with the blood omens that had preoccupied him but a week earlier. He thought to himself, 'surely, this is what the patches have been leading too, their prophetic content must have been appeased. The blood and the injuries today, finally, the warnings were true. But now I'm free, oh God I hope so, I couldn't bear any more of this fear.'

He entered the dark shelf lined shop, and purchased his cigarettes, and chocolate for the still bleeding Angela. He immediately unwrapped the smokes, pulled one out and stuck it in his mouth. He headed back to the car, lighting the cigarette as he left the shop. He was much in need of some calming smoke, so he breathed inwards heavily. He tried to rationalise what had happened, but his throbbing temple and the whiz of his jangled emotions made the task impossible.

He stepped off the curb. In an instant a strange feeling swelled over him. It was as if he had leapt off a mountain. The shock of the feeling unbalanced him, causing an uncoordinated panic, he stumbled between the two parked vehicles at the roadside onto the road. He felt as though he was plummeting into the black tarn that he had envisioned a fortnight earlier.

A sudden scream, like the gates of hell opening, filled his ears. He swung his confused head around to see the white car starting to break only a few feet away from him. He froze, as if already prepared for his fate. His only reaction was to throw his hands up to shield his face. A second later he heard the bone crunching impact as his legs were lifted from underneath himself, as he began his ungainly flight through the air. Everything swam and spun. He saw Angela sat in the car by the roadside, screaming a silent and bloody scream into his eyes. As he revolved he saw both sky and earth, the houses, the street, the white car below him. He felt the first impact of his knees on the windscreen, leaving their spider webbed impressions in the glass. This was followed by the impact of his toes, cracking against the shattering screen and ripping from their sockets. Everything rushed past his spiralling, free falling body, like a revolving kaleidoscope of colour, emotion, pain and fear, until he saw the deathly head long charge of the concrete.

He closed his eyes, knowing what was coming next. The last sound he heard before the great dark death dream fell on him was the guttural crunch that his head made as his head caved in from the hard attack. Afterwards, all that remained was the fading, far off sound of a thousand taps dripping. They dripped the medium that John used to paint his own concrete message. The drip, drip then dissipated.