Jogging Memories Ch. 01

I shake my head and use that last lungful of God's sweet air to shout out "Nooooo!"

My face is so wet that I choke and splutter. I open my eyes and the sky is bright white with a dark silhouette hovering over me, blanking out the sun, which flares around that head like ... like a lunar eclipse. I feel so weary, with so little energy in my batteries, that I cannot easily assimilate this new bright vision. But I try with every effort left in me, if only to use that fresh snapshot as wallpaper to blank out and cover up those old images that were so distressing to me.

When I close my eyelids, once again the image in front of my eyes starts out black. Mercifully, as seconds tick by and I anticipate the inevitable recurring nightmare, the retina screen remains inky-black. Then slowly, only the darker grey on lighter grey image of a face flaring against a background sky is the only thing I can see. Now I can relax and the face and sky picture remains, like a comfortable blanket lightly stencilled on my retina.

Thankfully no memories at all and no distressing sounds disturb my peaceful slumber. Perhaps I have finally passed over to heaven and those images, which drove me to my recent terminus were merely a transitory purgatory. I am at peace at last. I just can't remember if I deserve this calmness that I now feel, but I think I can live with it, if this is living.

Eternity doesn't seem to be as long to my soul as I imagined it would when I was mortal. I was surprised when my human senses became stimulated again.

Sounds came first. Hushed whispers came to me, first one voice, then a second, consisting of indistinct rumblings, echoey murmurings, without recognisable words.

Feeling came to me second, tingling pins and needles, hot and cold areas of skin, growing to a surprising amount of pain and discomfort, yet overlaid with an unbelievable degree of floating euphoria. That weightlessness offset by some pressure on my face, my chest, my arms and thighs. I had been so hot in the forest, now I am just warm in whatever astral plane I have gravitated to.

Curiously, my lower legs and feet feel warmest and lack that weighed down sensation. My head feels coolest.

The sense of smell returns to my nostrils next. Clean and antiseptic scents come through strongly, and heady aromatics, flowers, yes, of course, flowers, sharply fragrant, wiping away those pungent earthy smells which lingered in my recent memory momentarily before evaporating like Scotch mist.

I try to recall what the memory was that had become associated with that earthy smell but I cannot. It has gone and all that remains is the current environment. It appears to be the only smell I have ever experienced before now and I feel a surge of pleasure at that.

Taste makes itself apparent, telling me that my tongue is furry and my breath unpleasant, like I haven't cleaned my teeth for days. I can only taste a horrible gun-metal acidic sourness that makes me screw up my face. I feel my nose wrinkling.

Then my ears hear and register a few isolated words being spoken by the two people in the room. I now realise that they are from one male and one female. Words I recognise, like "dead, shock, heart". Are they talking about me? My face screws up again and I sneeze.

<<<>>>

The man's wife:

They say once you go black, you don't go back. Well, first time going black was a big mistake for Jennifer Morris, a drunken prank that went badly wrong, so wrong. It was going to be a one-time thing for her but she ended up going back to the same man, albeit ten years later.

The first reason for doing so and the second were different, but it all boils down to the same thing in the end, doesn't it? Deception and reckless risks equals disaster. They all lead to confidence and contempt and that inevitably leaves one open to getting caught.

It first happened more than ten years before, when all four friends were on holiday, for once without the kids. The four were very close then and now, neighbours, friends, best friends. Besides Jennifer, there was Bob, her husband, Emma, their neighbour and Jennifer's best friend, and Em's husband Richard, Bob's best friend. They would always be friends, even though they were no longer neighbours.

Richard and Jennifer stopped what they were doing almost as soon as they started. Well, actually, he finished quite quickly and rather unsatisfactorily, Jennifer remembered, before the enormity of what they'd done hit her. Jennifer blamed the drunken haze, which was clouding her best judgement.

She never thought she would ever be unfaithful to Bob. They had married nine years earlier and had three beautiful children. Never ever, had she considered adultery, not for a single minute. Once she crossed that line, though, the second time was easier; the guilt spread thinner and thinner with the third and fourth time until it stopped bothering her any longer as she continued to get away with it. Jennifer thought that she would never be caught until suddenly she was brought up short.

Circumstances in his marriage had recently changed, Richard told her in passing, when they were alone. They had changed for Jennifer, too, but what he was angling for at that time didn't appeal to her. But he kept making suggestions, she kept listening and laughing it off but she gave in eventually, as he probably knew she would. At least Richard didn't know what else she had been up to, it was really far too embarrassing to even think about.

They started up their affair again about three months before Bob's incident. They were thinking that it would do both of them some good, even help their own established family relationships and, besides, nobody would get hurt. Neither of them wanted to hurt anyone, did they?

In their own way they were each onto a good thing. Jennifer loved Bob, Richard loved Emma; Jennifer didn't love Richard and he didn't love her. He just wanted to enjoy her when the opportunities presented themselves. So why rock the boat? They could get away with this little thing that was just their little secret pleasure, forever, couldn't they? What did they know?

How did Jennifer know that they would oversleep?

Well, they didn't even do that exactly. No, Bob came home early, really, really early, while Richard and Jennifer were still asleep in the Morris marital bed. The alarm was set for at least another hour. Emma was at her sick mother's house, as she had been three nights a week for the previous few months. Jennifer's three kids were all away camping for the weekend at the start of half-term holidays. Now, Jennifer had remarked when the suggestion was made, she didn't mind camping in the height of summer, but late October? Camping out in the Yorkshire moors in the middle of autumn? What were they thinking? Jennifer blamed their father.

The kids loved the outdoors. They took after their father, of course. He would have been with them, too, if the shift pattern fell kinder or he hadn't already run out of annual holiday. Bob was at work, the last night of his cycle of six nights on, six off; until he was due to start a stint of days again the following Saturday.

This was Rich's one chance to stay with Jennifer all night instead of her sneaking over to his and Em's place for half an hour at a time whenever Emma was away. With the shift pattern Bob was on, the opportunity of a whole night together wouldn't arise again for three months, and by then Em's mother would almost certainly have passed on.

Their first night in together should have been perfect. Bob wasn't expected home until middle to late morning, after he had his morning run. But there he was, just a quarter past five, standing there, crying, at her open bedroom door. Crying at the sight of them, treacherously entwined in sleep. Richard jumped out of bed when Jennifer screamed.

Bob floored Richard with one punch, Jennifer thought, she didn't have time to put her lenses in, so she couldn't be certain. She thought Bob was going to slap her, too, but he just stared at her for a moment, with a look of pity, or sorrow or hate, she imagined, in his eyes. Jennifer couldn't tell, his face wasn't in focus; he just looked at her while she squirmed under his awful gaze. Then he ran down the stairs and out the front door into the street.

Jennifer knew she should have chased after him. Chased after Bob, her husband of almost twenty years, naked if necessary, anything to get him back, to explain the unexplainable to him, to begin to atone for the pain caused him, to them both.

Instead she put on her dressing gown and tried to wake up Richard. Not to see if he was hurt, she didn't think, when she thought about her actions later. She didn't have time or her wits to think at the time. No. Her only thought was that she desperately had to get Richard out of her bedroom before Bob came back.

She wanted Bob, her Bob, to come back, to forgive her. To beat her, even, if he felt he needed to. She was prepared to do anything for that forgiveness, anything to make it right with her Bob. He was the man she knew and loved most, out of all the men in the world.

But her Bob never came back.

<<<>>>

"Hi Hon, miss me?" Emma asked her husband Richard over the telephone.

"Of course I did, it's been lonely without you ordering me about all the time, dear," came Richard's glib reply, pretty much along the lines that Emma had expected.

"You wouldn't know what to do without me directing you through life," she laughed.

"Yeah, I s'pose," Richard observed, "Anyway, Em, how's your Mum?"

"She's still the same. She's not getting any better, she's never going to get any better," Emma said, then more brightly, "So, where were you last night, Rich? I rang and rang to try and talk to you before 'Match of the Day' started but your phone was switched off."

"Went to bed early, Em. I was really knackered, couldn't keep my eyes open for the footy, even though County nearly won yesterday, too, according to the papers. Saw the repeat on the box, though, early this morning."

"You must've been shattered, poor lamb," Emma clucked, "Well, make the most of your rest, honey, I'll be home on Monday night and ... I'll need a bit of care and attention when I see you, if you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean," Richard agreed, wearily. How could he forget that Emma was desperate for a baby and they had been trying real hard for months? "See you then, honey."

<<<>>>

"Yoo hoo, Tig!" Jennifer called out and waved, recognising her youngest as the fourth child off the front steps of the coach in the school car park.

"Hey, hi Mums," he grinned as he sauntered over as if he had all the time in the world, his whole life ahead of him. He still had all his regrets to come, thought Jennifer.

Jennifer tried hard not to shake her head as she noticed his jogging bottoms were hanging so low off his hips they must be halfway down his buttocks at the back. She steeled herself not to look; she just hoped his underpants had survived the weekend away with some degree of decency. Tig, no one had called him George since he was a toddler, towered over his mother by at least nine inches. He bent down and gave her the briefest of cursory hugs.

"Gotta get me bags, Mums," he muttered, then spun around and sauntered back towards the coach.

Jennifer closed her eyes and counted to thirty before opening them.

Then she began searching for Tig's two older siblings.

She saw Tom almost immediately; he was so tall and thin that he stood out from the rest of the youths who had attended the weekend camp. He was standing in front of the coach with Susannah Fincher, his girlfriend, and her mother Madge. Susannah was in Tom's class and they had been practically inseparable since they were both about fourteen. Jennifer was aware that Susannah didn't go on the weekend camp. She had been busy sorting out arrangements for their forthcoming wedding at the end of January. Susannah was four months' pregnant and would be seven months' gone by the time they were hitched, which made Jennifer wonder how the wedding dress selection and fitting was even possible. The couple had argued before this trip, with the girl anxious about being left to make all the wedding arrangements alone. Usually acquiescent to all her demands, the boy was an outdoor enthusiast and insisted on going, this being one of the few points he was adamant about. Judging from the present body language of the couple, though, all appeared forgiven. No sign of Andrew, Madge's husband, of course, but then he was rarely ever seen away from the golf course on a Sunday.

Jennifer's final quarry was the middle sibling, her daughter JJ. Her name was Jennifer too, but almost since a babe in arms she was always called JJ. The smallest of the three children and, being the most furtive, you would have thought she would be the hardest to find. Jennifer knew where to look though. Not where the luggage was being unpacked, the throng massed there was too thick; that's where Tig was, chucking bags here and there, probably causing more confusion than helping, Jennifer chuckled.

No, JJ would be ... there, alone, right at the back of the coach, leaning her back against it, head bowed, curly hair flopped around her face, shoulders hunched, arms folded across her chest, one foot against the coach with knee pointing out defensively in front of her. And she was wearing that shapeless chunky jumper, which must be three sizes too big for her. Even if you bought her nice things, Jennifer thought, JJ would take them back to the store and change them rather than wear anything complementary. It was such a shame. JJ had always been a bright and lively girl, into everything, irrepressible. Almost since puberty though, she had become introspective, truculent and moody all the time.

JJ only had one friend, it seemed, Sharron "Shazza" Mason, an odd choice as she was a girly-girl, tending to wear all fluffy pinks, with her long painted nails. In contrast JJ wore earthy browns and bit her fingernails to the quick. No boyfriend yet, just the one friend, not even a best friend. No, Jennifer thought, her best friend was certainly her Dad.

If Bob was here, if only, Jennifer thought, he would get JJ out of her fug and talking enthusiastically about what fun she'd had over the weekend. Without Bob, JJ would be unnervingly silent in the car on the way home.

<<<>>>

"John Doe":

When I sneezed, I launched a fresh pattern of events into action. Firstly the two voices stopped their insular interaction and adapted their positions to commence conversations with me. I think they were actually panicking more than I was. They explained who they were, nurse Ben and hospital visitor Helen. Helen held my hand, it was warm and dry and very comforting, while Ben explained what was happening to me. I couldn't see because my eyes were covered up. I was badly sunburned and suffering from photokeratitis, or something like that, apparently. Ben explained this to me but I was still confused. My eyes would have be covered up for at least a couple more days, Ben said, except for dressing changes, to allow my eyes time and rest to recover. My face was also blistered, lacerated and bruised but I should make a full recovery in a week or two, probably with little or no scarring, he assured me.

Then Ben told me that they needed to know who I was because when I was admitted I was dressed only in trainers, socks, a tee shirt and shorts and didn't have any form of identification on me, not even door or vehicle keys. The only other objects associated with me were a nondescript wristwatch and a wedding band on my ring finger.

All they needed from me now was my name.

It's not much to ask, is it? What was my name? What WAS my name? I was dreaming of it just now, I am sure. It was there on the tip of my tongue...