The wet, wet rain dripped, dripped, dripped on the car roof; it was midnight, under a harvest moon that fought to penetrate the rain soaked clouds.

I was half way home; another hour, I would be curled up next to my boyfriend and could forget the stresses of the day.

The road dragged on through marshes and into forest, hemmed in on either side by wet, wet trees. Wind lashed their rain soaked branches scratching, scratching, wipers skidding across fallen leaves now glued to the glass.

In the distance a hideous orange light beckoned, I should have driven on, but no, I had to be sensible and pull over. I needed coffee; it would be stupid to drive on in the wet, wet rain.

It was stupid to stop. I knew it was stupid to stop, all my senses told me it was stupid to stop and to this day I wish I hadn’t.

Roadside café’s are awful places even on a bright sunny day. On a wind lashed night in the wet, wet rain, surrounded by the over powering greenery of the trees it was a scene from a horror film. One last cigarette before I braved the dismal neon glare. I gazed in through the wet, wet rain; a few hardy souls were preparing to be slaughtered unbeknownst, the waitress lent against the counter staring into space, ready to be the first willing victim.

It was stupid to stop. I knew it was stupid to stop, all my senses told me it was stupid to stop and to this day I wish I hadn’t.


The short walk from the car to the café ensured that I was wet, cold and windswept. The blank neon lighting made me look like the living dead, as my tired features were washed in the grey, grey light.

I picked up a newspaper and made my way to a Formica topped table and a sticky orange plastic chair, the waitress almost greeted me.

Just a coffee, no milk, no sugar, probably no coffee either. I glanced around at my fellow dinners all as grey and sick looking as me, nobody gay and nobody I knew, life occasionally has small mercies. The coffee looked like coffee and even tasted like coffee, perhaps it is coffee? A miracle on a miserable night.

It was stupid to stop. I knew it was stupid to stop, all my senses told me it was stupid to stop and to this day I wish I hadn’t.

I skimmed the paper, uninterested and uncaring. The usual record of politicians, pop stars, mayhem and madness. The waitress picked at her nails and from behind the counter a spotty youth appeared, his skin a torment of acne, the red patches highlighted by the grim grey, grey light.

I sipped my coffee and stared vacantly ahead, something deep inside, nagging.

What …?

I stared again at the paper, a bad, bad feeling seeped into my skin, my flesh crawled, something bad, bad is about to happen. Something, something very, very bad.

I turn the pages slowly, slower and check the headlines.

Oh…God…

My coffee cup clattered to the floor, I skid back in the chair a brown pool surrounds me.

It was stupid to stop. I knew it was stupid to stop, all my senses told me it was stupid to stop and to this day I wish I hadn’t.

We met twelve years ago, he was beautiful, oh god he was beautiful, Eurasian, my age exactly, my name exactly, it was the name that brought us together at the Empire Disco, Leicester Square, London. One summer night all that time ago, dear god, was it so far in the past.

I muttered apologies to the waitress; who brings a mop and clears up. I stared and stared and stared at the newspaper, there but not there, on a wet, wet night.

Thanks, sorry, can I have …

My hands were shaking badly; I stuffed them in my pockets searching for a cigarette. I could barely form words.

Umm, Thanks sorry…

I shoot outside to calm down. Unheeding of the lashing, lashing wind and the wet, wet rain, barely thinking I drew deep.

We were both 21 and neither of us were gay but we fell, oh did we fall. Rapidly, too rapidly in love and that, as they, say was that. How did we do those things that are expressions of love, I have no idea, but we learnt.

That glorious summer and it was a summer, so rare in England, when the sun shone and everything was perfect and everything was perfect, just like our life. Perfect.

The wet, wet rain poured and the wind lashed. I stood, white faced unable to move, shaking, shaking, smoking, smoking, smoking in the wet, wet rain.

Oh dear god…, Oh god…oh…

The summer ended and he left. Left me yearning and longing and jealous whilst he returned to university and I stayed on in London commuting for snatched weekends of over heated passion.

The day I bought my first flat was the day Tim finished college and there he was on the steps, beautiful, sexy and adored as ever. We lasted five years, not so bad for a first try, the end like our over heated relationship was dramatic and messy, just like his.

Oh dear god…

My last sight of Tim was in Cardiff, he’d decided to return home, so I drove him one last time, and there he stood on the pavement outside his father’s house, surrounded by bags staring after me like an abandoned puppy.

The paper was where I had left it, the headline glaring up at me through the grim grey light on this wet wet night.

He was dead. Tim was dead, murdered on a lonely beach in Wales.

A vision flashed into my head making me gasp, I closed my eyes and held the table tight as the world shifted around me.

He had become a tramp and sold the ‘Big Issue’ on the streets of Swansea. The information was sinking in slowly and my feeble brain tried to process the Tim I knew and still loved with the Tim I was reading about. Bizarrely to some, but not to me, he had almost £60,000 in his account; he was killed for the money.

God how boring.

I used both hands to hold the coffee as I read and re read the report, the space around was an hallucinogenic swirl of grey and orange.

His face, his beautiful face had been smashed to pulp and the body, that beautiful golden body had been dumped in the sea to rot away.

I had to get out; I could see the scene in all its gory detail.

Stumbling to the car, I was collapsing in on myself, the terror he felt at the moment of death I could physically feel. The wind howled louder and the rain poured heavier. I wrenched the car door open and fell inside gasping for breath, eyes streaming tears. At some point I started screaming and screaming and screaming until exhaustion hit and my head smashed onto the steering wheel everything deadened by the howling wind and the wet wet rain.

Later perhaps minutes, perhaps hours I sit up suddenly and look about. The wet wet rain still pours, the wind still howls and the grey faced waitress is still picking her nails.

Where the am I?

Shock does that, part of your brain dies.

Phone where’s my phone?

I call my sleeping brother. I’m coming apart; the tale takes its time, the horrific details, in vivid technicolor slow motion hovering above a car park in a roadside café at the dead of night in the wet wet rain.

Shocked by death. Jason is more worried about me, I am at least an hour from home and the only way forward is for him to drive.

On a wet, wet rain as the wind howled through the overburdened greenery of the scratching trees.

The instructions permeate my numbed brain, translating the data to my arms, the car turned left or right I don’t know. I’m past caring, sleepwalking.

How long did this take? I have no idea.

At sometime, I park outside my home, the hall light on, welcoming me. I leave the car preceded by a fog of smoke, my body speeding up, fumbling the keys in the door, terrified in the wet, wet rain.

I crash through the door racing breathless to the bedroom, but he lies blond and warm and curled up, beatifically asleep.

I pour a large scotch and slump in the open doorway, watching as the wet wet rain fade away.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 18.03.2010

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