Chapter 7 Damon
Damon
I recognise who’s talking outside. It’s the young man who lives in the apartment opposite yelling at his girlfriend again.
He’s calling her a ‘miserable bitch’ and she’s telling him she is sorry.
Now, they’re stomping down the metal staircase together, him still showering abuse upon her.
This isn’t a one-off. I don’t really get angry, so much so that Melissa once nicknamed me Lake Placid during a one-sided row about whose turn it was to fill the car up with diesel.
And I don’t understand why people can’t talk it out instead of yelling.
I’ve yet to meet my neighbours in person, but based on past experience, I know that tonight they’ll be making up with sex so noisy it would make porn actors blush.
I do a double take when I check the time on my phone.
What the hell? What started as a Sunday afternoon nap has become an epic twenty-hour sleep coma and it’s now mid-morning on Monday.
The sharp movement makes me aware I’m about to piss myself so I tiptoe to the bathroom like a ninja in stealth mode, fearing I might accidentally dribble down the front of my Calvins.
Then, after swallowing three codeine tablets, I return to bed.
God knows why, but I’m still exhausted. My eyes glaze over as I stare at the ceiling.
And soon enough, I’m losing myself in the sea, returning to the moment the largest of the waves caught me off guard, jamming my mouth and throat full of freezing water.
I didn’t have time to brace myself for the next wave, which triggered a coughing fit, and before I knew it I was below the water’s surface, dragged by a terrifically potent, invisible force.
A rip current, Melissa told me later. Now I understand that by panicking and fighting against it, I did the worst thing possible. Soon after, I lost consciousness.
When I think back to it, I’m certain my brain was preparing me for the inevitable, protecting me, wanting me to exit this life experiencing something aside from terror.
Hence, as my body began shutting down, the gush of my life’s significant moments flooding over me – the instantaneous, somehow simultaneous manifestation of my entire existence.
There was no chronological order to it; it wasn’t like starting a book at the first chapter.
One moment I was a teenager; the next, I’d reverted to a child and then an adult.
Static images and mini-movies all played together, each with vivid clarity.
A black-and-red balance bike I’d loved as a toddler; a football tournament I’d competed in as a teen; towering skyscrapers I’d made out of Lego; a poster of my first crush Margot, from the pop band Party Hard Posse, that hung on my bedroom wall; a marble run game I was obsessed with building; being hit in the neck by AJ’s rogue blue paintball; and being mugged for my mobile phone by a hooded hyena on a BMX.
A party I organised when Tommy returned from travelling around America; a Taylor Swift concert Melissa dragged me to; opening my terrible A-level exam results; and the whitey I pulled that was so intense, I never smoked a joint again.
I suddenly realise the only person conspicuously absent from those life events was my mum. There wasn’t even a glimpse of her, the person I miss the most.
The good and the bad, I was able to not only recall but understand every one of these people and events.
Well, all but one: the dead red-haired boy.
I’ve replayed his death hundreds of times since then, searching for clues to his identity and whether what I saw was real – or, as Melissa suggested, whether he was a figment of my imagination.
Try as I might, I’ve yet to recall anything else about him – his name, where we were, why I was there, who hurt him or what happened next.
But if everything else I remembered that day is true, why would my brain fabricate him?
My phone buzzes. A text message from Jason, one of my colleagues, asking for a lift to work. We both have shifts that start this afternoon. He only lives a couple of streets from me so I won’t need to go out of my way. Yes, I reply, I’ll pick him up in an hour.
I climb out of bed, my head still banging, make my way into the bathroom and turn on the shower.
I freeze in place well shy of the spray, my body rigid, a Pavlovian response to running water.
I’m back under the waves, clawing to reach the surface, failing every time.
I should be grateful to still be here and I really am, thanks to Melissa.
But I keep dwelling on the fact that I drowned.
That for a time, I was dead. And I’m struggling to find a way to deal with the enormity of it.
Half the time I’m thanking God for allowing me to live, and for the rest, I’m crying for what might have been.
Come on, Damon, I tell myself, pull yourself together.
I reach my hand out to feel the water’s temperature.
Ever since I drowned, I can’t seem to find warmth.
I’ve taken to wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt under my work shirt and two pairs of socks in my boots.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually still dead and floating under the surface of the sea, and this is all a dream.
Stop it. How long am I going to keep thinking like this? Why can’t I focus on what I have and what lies ahead and not what I almost lost?
Because it’s easier to recall and dwell.
Finally, when the shower is hot enough, I climb inside and close my eyes as the water cascades over my head and down my back.
My tattoos catch my eye. My first was the words ‘Offering Others Direction In Sorrow’ across my collarbone, etched there when I was seventeen.
I don’t even know what it means. It was a phrase I woke up remembering after a dream in which Mum emerged into my subconscious.
I think it might have something to do with the way in which she died.
My dreams of her are always vague: she is more of a presence than a participant in any dream event.
Her name, Bobbi, runs along my wrist. The rest of my tattoos extend all the way down to my hand.
They are all linked together to form a sleeve, made up of drawings and motifs I have doodled or found online.
Some remained identical from scraps of paper to skin, while others were finessed by tattooists.
Only when the water temperature begins to cool do I turn off the shower and open the door.
And that’s when I see it.
A deep red pool of blood in the centre of my bathroom floor. And a child’s footprints leading into my bedroom.