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The light is always orange here.
Through long, drawn-out rises and sets as the sun breaks on the deadpan horizon. And on through the day as the red dust beats the once-bright rays into weary beams that fall half-heartedly on the town. Through cracks and half-drawn blinds, casting retrospective half-shadows across the floor.
Everything is done in halves. Half-dead, only half-existing.
At night, the orange film remains - the drowsy tint sticks to everything it touches. Slow as they are, the beams touch everything in the end.
The town is hardly that - a scatter of unrelated buildings, strung along the road. An assumed road only - in truth, only a slight discolouration in the dust defines it.
A cracked bowl off the north edge suggests some reason for existence - slightly denser deadwood scrub around the lip suggest water once filled it. And the scrawny lizards, motionless against the shaded bank, hope for its return.
Me? Either way, I don’t care. Water or no, it doesn’t seem to matter.
The half-light, semi-glow, shoots everything into slow motion, paints it all with the same palette. The bright red, plastic-covered seats and the blue, ever-sticky tables are just variations on a theme - their originality lost to the all-consuming steady beat of the orange beams.
“We’re closing soon.” The cafe-owner says, for the twelfth time today. I assume he owns it anyway, but the ’we’ is disconcerting - there’s no-one else here, just us two. Yet he makes no move to close, and doesn’t seem to care - only stands behind the polished counter, wiping non-existent smears off the glasses, staring out across the road.
A single coffee cup - long-drained and cold - sits in front of me. I had the money ready two and a half hours ago, stacked up nice and neat. But the compulsion to move did not arrive - the beams, heavy through the air-bound dust, have trapped me here; and not against my will.
He started staring out a good four hours ago, when at first the shouts arose. I say shouts, but by the time they swam out the opposite building, across the beam-bathed road and through the angled blinds over here, only an essence of sound remained.
And now they started up again. From Bob Dee’s house, of course - he and his wife the only other inhabitants left here. Bob shouts, and she says nothing - about what he raves, it doesn’t seem to matter. Noise travels so slowly, so painfully, through the treacled air that its arrival alone is welcome - never mind what the content.
“We’re closing soon.” The cafe-owner says again, stirred into action by what remained of Bob’s rage - barely a whisper through the building, but enough in the clinging, silent air to provoke a reaction.
Old Man Morrison was the last to go. A farmer he insisted - though the absence of tools and land and any crop that would dare to swell above the dust-line into the muggy orange said otherwise. The beams slowed him into stagnation, and that was the last of it.
He was a great man nonetheless - kind - everything Bob isn’t. It’s hard to be anything here, but they showed opposite sides of the slow emptiness, the gentle hollowing of the orange tint.
I can’t say things have changed since he left - great as he was, it didn’t seem to matter. The orange half-light knocks everything back, takes the edges off life - emotion is dragged out through the slow-motion air and loses all potency.
Now it’s just the four of us - two over here, two over there, and the occasional shadow-child, stalking past the window, platinum-blonde hair defying the beams.
From nowhere the compulsion arrives.
I am over-tired, dragged on heavy chains by the dust-smothered light. Something has to matter, somewhere along the line - the Old Man is forgotten, absorbed into the orange glow, his memories scattered by the slow passing of time.
“We’re-” the cafe-owner starts, his mantra cut short by the click of coins on the countertop. I drop him a wink as his gaze peels away from Bob Dee’s house - his continuous stare has worn two little circles down into the window.
I pause out on the street - my legs have been inactive for so long, sat motionless in the cafe, held by the beams, strung up by the worn shine. And out here, amongst the timeless dust - beyond the angled blinds and half-shadows - time creeps down even further.
It would be so easy to turn back, back amongst the orange seats I know are red, and the orange tables I know are blue. But the click and slide behind me - the unfamiliar sound, crawling sluggishly through the air, of a key turning in a lock halts a retreat.
The cafe-owner stands at the door, staring a new stare through the glass - one hand pressed up against the pane, his face resolute. No going back.
Thoughts travel even slower out here - slower than sound, slower than the light itself. Under the orange glow, full-beam, no protection. Of Old Man Morrison, and the glorious revs ripping trails through the half-light. But he was too late.
It takes me another hour - the cafe-owner watching me all the way - to walk up to the barn, the ancient sound weaving, shimmering through my mind. How long has it been? Since I walked, since he departed?
Impossible to say - as time does not travel as it should, and a day lasts longer than you’d ever let it. He may have gone yesterday, for all I know - the badly-stretched flow thinning out his essence, seams unhitched, threads pulling loose.
The barn doors - huge things - slide back cleanly, an unfamiliar rate of movement. Things are usually stuttered, drawn-out and exhausted - the smooth action only spurs me on further. Inside it’s exactly as I remember, and better.
A blast of cool, clean air - sat for so long away from the orange light it has become pure and fresh again - flows past me, loosening the beams’ strangle-hold over my body.
And there it stands - an old, rusty dusty motorbike - in the middle of the barn. Quickly now, as quick as I can be, I move over to it before the light ruins what is perfect in darkness. The sound streams through my mind again - and seems to matter, more than anything.
With a grin - the unfamiliar expression cracking open my stilled lips - I sit on the bike and start up the engine with a practised kick.
The beams, maliciously creeping into this sacred space, shrink back at the sound - the rippling, chuckling sound of the engine. I rip back the throttle and the wondrous noise fills the barn, shaking the dust from the wood, pushing the clinging beams back further still.
Bob Dee’s screen door slams back against the wall and he steps out, brandishing a shotgun as if someone might care enough to come near. His wife, face puckered into welts and bruises, old and new alike - each as orange as the last - hovers at his shoulder, praying for a saviour.
She steps out towards the door, straying towards the familiar - distantly-familiar - sound that lifts the oppressive film away. Bob shakes his head and shoves his arm across her path.
“Back in the house, b!tch.”
She makes no move to retreat - the sound brings forth her memories as well, of kindness and warmth, far from the hot fists and cool steel and the orange-streaked malice. Tears streak her face as Bob smiles - that båstard was never coming back for her, no matter how hard she pleaded.
The beams stay swirling slowly round the doors - unsure, unfulfilled - as the sound tears through them. More memories come flying back, pounding in my head, faster than anything know before - Old Man Morrison, my Old Man, sat where I am now, beating the beams back beyond the barn.
In a fluid, perfect motion I jerk the bike from it’s stand. The wheels bite down into the cool dust floor, eager to press on, and chase away the orange half-glow. The light stands no chance against me - this glorious sound it too much, too fast, too strong for the sluggish, creeping shine.
I burn on past, into the road, surrounded in a circle of darkness.
From his porch, Bob fires both cartridges at my Old Man’s shadow.
Nothing can stop me now - the compulsion has grown and blossomed out of the light. In a ring of night, I race off towards the deadpan horizon - beyond the influence of the beams, beyond the orange glow, beyond everything that held me.
Two and a half hours later, the two shotguns shells, twisting idly through the air, slowly slide down under the dust. Just the three of them now - soon to be two - and the occasional shadow-child stalking past the window.
Through long, drawn-out rises and sets as the sun breaks on the deadpan horizon. And on through the day as the red dust beats the once-bright rays into weary beams that fall half-heartedly on the town. Through cracks and half-drawn blinds, casting retrospective half-shadows across the floor.
Everything is done in halves. Half-dead, only half-existing.
At night, the orange film remains - the drowsy tint sticks to everything it touches. Slow as they are, the beams touch everything in the end.
The town is hardly that - a scatter of unrelated buildings, strung along the road. An assumed road only - in truth, only a slight discolouration in the dust defines it.
A cracked bowl off the north edge suggests some reason for existence - slightly denser deadwood scrub around the lip suggest water once filled it. And the scrawny lizards, motionless against the shaded bank, hope for its return.
Me? Either way, I don’t care. Water or no, it doesn’t seem to matter.
The half-light, semi-glow, shoots everything into slow motion, paints it all with the same palette. The bright red, plastic-covered seats and the blue, ever-sticky tables are just variations on a theme - their originality lost to the all-consuming steady beat of the orange beams.
“We’re closing soon.” The cafe-owner says, for the twelfth time today. I assume he owns it anyway, but the ’we’ is disconcerting - there’s no-one else here, just us two. Yet he makes no move to close, and doesn’t seem to care - only stands behind the polished counter, wiping non-existent smears off the glasses, staring out across the road.
A single coffee cup - long-drained and cold - sits in front of me. I had the money ready two and a half hours ago, stacked up nice and neat. But the compulsion to move did not arrive - the beams, heavy through the air-bound dust, have trapped me here; and not against my will.
He started staring out a good four hours ago, when at first the shouts arose. I say shouts, but by the time they swam out the opposite building, across the beam-bathed road and through the angled blinds over here, only an essence of sound remained.
And now they started up again. From Bob Dee’s house, of course - he and his wife the only other inhabitants left here. Bob shouts, and she says nothing - about what he raves, it doesn’t seem to matter. Noise travels so slowly, so painfully, through the treacled air that its arrival alone is welcome - never mind what the content.
“We’re closing soon.” The cafe-owner says again, stirred into action by what remained of Bob’s rage - barely a whisper through the building, but enough in the clinging, silent air to provoke a reaction.
Old Man Morrison was the last to go. A farmer he insisted - though the absence of tools and land and any crop that would dare to swell above the dust-line into the muggy orange said otherwise. The beams slowed him into stagnation, and that was the last of it.
He was a great man nonetheless - kind - everything Bob isn’t. It’s hard to be anything here, but they showed opposite sides of the slow emptiness, the gentle hollowing of the orange tint.
I can’t say things have changed since he left - great as he was, it didn’t seem to matter. The orange half-light knocks everything back, takes the edges off life - emotion is dragged out through the slow-motion air and loses all potency.
Now it’s just the four of us - two over here, two over there, and the occasional shadow-child, stalking past the window, platinum-blonde hair defying the beams.
From nowhere the compulsion arrives.
I am over-tired, dragged on heavy chains by the dust-smothered light. Something has to matter, somewhere along the line - the Old Man is forgotten, absorbed into the orange glow, his memories scattered by the slow passing of time.
“We’re-” the cafe-owner starts, his mantra cut short by the click of coins on the countertop. I drop him a wink as his gaze peels away from Bob Dee’s house - his continuous stare has worn two little circles down into the window.
I pause out on the street - my legs have been inactive for so long, sat motionless in the cafe, held by the beams, strung up by the worn shine. And out here, amongst the timeless dust - beyond the angled blinds and half-shadows - time creeps down even further.
It would be so easy to turn back, back amongst the orange seats I know are red, and the orange tables I know are blue. But the click and slide behind me - the unfamiliar sound, crawling sluggishly through the air, of a key turning in a lock halts a retreat.
The cafe-owner stands at the door, staring a new stare through the glass - one hand pressed up against the pane, his face resolute. No going back.
Thoughts travel even slower out here - slower than sound, slower than the light itself. Under the orange glow, full-beam, no protection. Of Old Man Morrison, and the glorious revs ripping trails through the half-light. But he was too late.
It takes me another hour - the cafe-owner watching me all the way - to walk up to the barn, the ancient sound weaving, shimmering through my mind. How long has it been? Since I walked, since he departed?
Impossible to say - as time does not travel as it should, and a day lasts longer than you’d ever let it. He may have gone yesterday, for all I know - the badly-stretched flow thinning out his essence, seams unhitched, threads pulling loose.
The barn doors - huge things - slide back cleanly, an unfamiliar rate of movement. Things are usually stuttered, drawn-out and exhausted - the smooth action only spurs me on further. Inside it’s exactly as I remember, and better.
A blast of cool, clean air - sat for so long away from the orange light it has become pure and fresh again - flows past me, loosening the beams’ strangle-hold over my body.
And there it stands - an old, rusty dusty motorbike - in the middle of the barn. Quickly now, as quick as I can be, I move over to it before the light ruins what is perfect in darkness. The sound streams through my mind again - and seems to matter, more than anything.
With a grin - the unfamiliar expression cracking open my stilled lips - I sit on the bike and start up the engine with a practised kick.
The beams, maliciously creeping into this sacred space, shrink back at the sound - the rippling, chuckling sound of the engine. I rip back the throttle and the wondrous noise fills the barn, shaking the dust from the wood, pushing the clinging beams back further still.
Bob Dee’s screen door slams back against the wall and he steps out, brandishing a shotgun as if someone might care enough to come near. His wife, face puckered into welts and bruises, old and new alike - each as orange as the last - hovers at his shoulder, praying for a saviour.
She steps out towards the door, straying towards the familiar - distantly-familiar - sound that lifts the oppressive film away. Bob shakes his head and shoves his arm across her path.
“Back in the house, b!tch.”
She makes no move to retreat - the sound brings forth her memories as well, of kindness and warmth, far from the hot fists and cool steel and the orange-streaked malice. Tears streak her face as Bob smiles - that båstard was never coming back for her, no matter how hard she pleaded.
The beams stay swirling slowly round the doors - unsure, unfulfilled - as the sound tears through them. More memories come flying back, pounding in my head, faster than anything know before - Old Man Morrison, my Old Man, sat where I am now, beating the beams back beyond the barn.
In a fluid, perfect motion I jerk the bike from it’s stand. The wheels bite down into the cool dust floor, eager to press on, and chase away the orange half-glow. The light stands no chance against me - this glorious sound it too much, too fast, too strong for the sluggish, creeping shine.
I burn on past, into the road, surrounded in a circle of darkness.
From his porch, Bob fires both cartridges at my Old Man’s shadow.
Nothing can stop me now - the compulsion has grown and blossomed out of the light. In a ring of night, I race off towards the deadpan horizon - beyond the influence of the beams, beyond the orange glow, beyond everything that held me.
Two and a half hours later, the two shotguns shells, twisting idly through the air, slowly slide down under the dust. Just the three of them now - soon to be two - and the occasional shadow-child stalking past the window.
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The light is always orange here.
Through long, drawn-out rises and sets as the sun breaks on the deadpan horizon. And on through the day as the red dust beats the once-bright rays into weary beams that fall half-heartedly on the town. Through cracks and half-drawn blinds, casting retrospective half-shadows across the floor.
Everything is done in halves. Half-dead, only half-existing.
At night, the orange film remains - the drowsy tint sticks to everything it touches. Slow as they are, the beams touch everything in the end.
The town is hardly that - a scatter of unrelated buildings, strung along the road. An assumed road only - in truth, only a slight discolouration in the dust defines it.
A cracked bowl off the north edge suggests some reason for existence - slightly denser deadwood scrub around the lip suggest water once filled it. And the scrawny lizards, motionless against the shaded bank, hope for its return.
Me? Either way, I don’t care. Water or no, it doesn’t seem to matter.
The half-light, semi-glow, shoots everything into slow motion, paints it all with the same palette. The bright red, plastic-covered seats and the blue, ever-sticky tables are just variations on a theme - their originality lost to the all-consuming steady beat of the orange beams.
“We’re closing soon.” The cafe-owner says, for the twelfth time today. I assume he owns it anyway, but the ’we’ is disconcerting - there’s no-one else here, just us two. Yet he makes no move to close, and doesn’t seem to care - only stands behind the polished counter, wiping non-existent smears off the glasses, staring out across the road.
A single coffee cup - long-drained and cold - sits in front of me. I had the money ready two and a half hours ago, stacked up nice and neat. But the compulsion to move did not arrive - the beams, heavy through the air-bound dust, have trapped me here; and not against my will.
He started staring out a good four hours ago, when at first the shouts arose. I say shouts, but by the time they swam out the opposite building, across the beam-bathed road and through the angled blinds over here, only an essence of sound remained.
And now they started up again. From Bob Dee’s house, of course - he and his wife the only other inhabitants left here. Bob shouts, and she says nothing - about what he raves, it doesn’t seem to matter. Noise travels so slowly, so painfully, through the treacled air that its arrival alone is welcome - never mind what the content.
“We’re closing soon.” The cafe-owner says again, stirred into action by what remained of Bob’s rage - barely a whisper through the building, but enough in the clinging, silent air to provoke a reaction.
Old Man Morrison was the last to go. A farmer he insisted - though the absence of tools and land and any crop that would dare to swell above the dust-line into the muggy orange said otherwise. The beams slowed him into stagnation, and that was the last of it.
He was a great man nonetheless - kind - everything Bob isn’t. It’s hard to be anything here, but they showed opposite sides of the slow emptiness, the gentle hollowing of the orange tint.
I can’t say things have changed since he left - great as he was, it didn’t seem to matter. The orange half-light knocks everything back, takes the edges off life - emotion is dragged out through the slow-motion air and loses all potency.
Now it’s just the four of us - two over here, two over there, and the occasional shadow-child, stalking past the window, platinum-blonde hair defying the beams.
From nowhere the compulsion arrives.
I am over-tired, dragged on heavy chains by the dust-smothered light. Something has to matter, somewhere along the line - the Old Man is forgotten, absorbed into the orange glow, his memories scattered by the slow passing of time.
“We’re-” the cafe-owner starts, his mantra cut short by the click of coins on the countertop. I drop him a wink as his gaze peels away from Bob Dee’s house - his continuous stare has worn two little circles down into the window.
I pause out on the street - my legs have been inactive for so long, sat motionless in the cafe, held by the beams, strung up by the worn shine. And out here, amongst the timeless dust - beyond the angled blinds and half-shadows - time creeps down even further.
It would be so easy to turn back, back amongst the orange seats I know are red, and the orange tables I know are blue. But the click and slide behind me - the unfamiliar sound, crawling sluggishly through the air, of a key turning in a lock halts a retreat.
The cafe-owner stands at the door, staring a new stare through the glass - one hand pressed up against the pane, his face resolute. No going back.
Thoughts travel even slower out here - slower than sound, slower than the light itself. Under the orange glow, full-beam, no protection. Of Old Man Morrison, and the glorious revs ripping trails through the half-light. But he was too late.
It takes me another hour - the cafe-owner watching me all the way - to walk up to the barn, the ancient sound weaving, shimmering through my mind. How long has it been? Since I walked, since he departed?
Impossible to say - as time does not travel as it should, and a day lasts longer than you’d ever let it. He may have gone yesterday, for all I know - the badly-stretched flow thinning out his essence, seams unhitched, threads pulling loose.
The barn doors - huge things - slide back cleanly, an unfamiliar rate of movement. Things are usually stuttered, drawn-out and exhausted - the smooth action only spurs me on further. Inside it’s exactly as I remember, and better.
A blast of cool, clean air - sat for so long away from the orange light it has become pure and fresh again - flows past me, loosening the beams’ strangle-hold over my body.
And there it stands - an old, rusty dusty motorbike - in the middle of the barn. Quickly now, as quick as I can be, I move over to it before the light ruins what is perfect in darkness. The sound streams through my mind again - and seems to matter, more than anything.
With a grin - the unfamiliar expression cracking open my stilled lips - I sit on the bike and start up the engine with a practised kick.
The beams, maliciously creeping into this sacred space, shrink back at the sound - the rippling, chuckling sound of the engine. I rip back the throttle and the wondrous noise fills the barn, shaking the dust from the wood, pushing the clinging beams back further still.
Bob Dee’s screen door slams back against the wall and he steps out, brandishing a shotgun as if someone might care enough to come near. His wife, face puckered into welts and bruises, old and new alike - each as orange as the last - hovers at his shoulder, praying for a saviour.
She steps out towards the door, straying towards the familiar - distantly-familiar - sound that lifts the oppressive film away. Bob shakes his head and shoves his arm across her path.
“Back in the house, b!tch.”
She makes no move to retreat - the sound brings forth her memories as well, of kindness and warmth, far from the hot fists and cool steel and the orange-streaked malice. Tears streak her face as Bob smiles - that båstard was never coming back for her, no matter how hard she pleaded.
The beams stay swirling slowly round the doors - unsure, unfulfilled - as the sound tears through them. More memories come flying back, pounding in my head, faster than anything know before - Old Man Morrison, my Old Man, sat where I am now, beating the beams back beyond the barn.
In a fluid, perfect motion I jerk the bike from it’s stand. The wheels bite down into the cool dust floor, eager to press on, and chase away the orange half-glow. The light stands no chance against me - this glorious sound it too much, too fast, too strong for the sluggish, creeping shine.
I burn on past, into the road, surrounded in a circle of darkness.
From his porch, Bob fires both cartridges at my Old Man’s shadow.
Nothing can stop me now - the compulsion has grown and blossomed out of the light. In a ring of night, I race off towards the deadpan horizon - beyond the influence of the beams, beyond the orange glow, beyond everything that held me.
Two and a half hours later, the two shotguns shells, twisting idly through the air, slowly slide down under the dust. Just the three of them now - soon to be two - and the occasional shadow-child stalking past the window.
Through long, drawn-out rises and sets as the sun breaks on the deadpan horizon. And on through the day as the red dust beats the once-bright rays into weary beams that fall half-heartedly on the town. Through cracks and half-drawn blinds, casting retrospective half-shadows across the floor.
Everything is done in halves. Half-dead, only half-existing.
At night, the orange film remains - the drowsy tint sticks to everything it touches. Slow as they are, the beams touch everything in the end.
The town is hardly that - a scatter of unrelated buildings, strung along the road. An assumed road only - in truth, only a slight discolouration in the dust defines it.
A cracked bowl off the north edge suggests some reason for existence - slightly denser deadwood scrub around the lip suggest water once filled it. And the scrawny lizards, motionless against the shaded bank, hope for its return.
Me? Either way, I don’t care. Water or no, it doesn’t seem to matter.
The half-light, semi-glow, shoots everything into slow motion, paints it all with the same palette. The bright red, plastic-covered seats and the blue, ever-sticky tables are just variations on a theme - their originality lost to the all-consuming steady beat of the orange beams.
“We’re closing soon.” The cafe-owner says, for the twelfth time today. I assume he owns it anyway, but the ’we’ is disconcerting - there’s no-one else here, just us two. Yet he makes no move to close, and doesn’t seem to care - only stands behind the polished counter, wiping non-existent smears off the glasses, staring out across the road.
A single coffee cup - long-drained and cold - sits in front of me. I had the money ready two and a half hours ago, stacked up nice and neat. But the compulsion to move did not arrive - the beams, heavy through the air-bound dust, have trapped me here; and not against my will.
He started staring out a good four hours ago, when at first the shouts arose. I say shouts, but by the time they swam out the opposite building, across the beam-bathed road and through the angled blinds over here, only an essence of sound remained.
And now they started up again. From Bob Dee’s house, of course - he and his wife the only other inhabitants left here. Bob shouts, and she says nothing - about what he raves, it doesn’t seem to matter. Noise travels so slowly, so painfully, through the treacled air that its arrival alone is welcome - never mind what the content.
“We’re closing soon.” The cafe-owner says again, stirred into action by what remained of Bob’s rage - barely a whisper through the building, but enough in the clinging, silent air to provoke a reaction.
Old Man Morrison was the last to go. A farmer he insisted - though the absence of tools and land and any crop that would dare to swell above the dust-line into the muggy orange said otherwise. The beams slowed him into stagnation, and that was the last of it.
He was a great man nonetheless - kind - everything Bob isn’t. It’s hard to be anything here, but they showed opposite sides of the slow emptiness, the gentle hollowing of the orange tint.
I can’t say things have changed since he left - great as he was, it didn’t seem to matter. The orange half-light knocks everything back, takes the edges off life - emotion is dragged out through the slow-motion air and loses all potency.
Now it’s just the four of us - two over here, two over there, and the occasional shadow-child, stalking past the window, platinum-blonde hair defying the beams.
From nowhere the compulsion arrives.
I am over-tired, dragged on heavy chains by the dust-smothered light. Something has to matter, somewhere along the line - the Old Man is forgotten, absorbed into the orange glow, his memories scattered by the slow passing of time.
“We’re-” the cafe-owner starts, his mantra cut short by the click of coins on the countertop. I drop him a wink as his gaze peels away from Bob Dee’s house - his continuous stare has worn two little circles down into the window.
I pause out on the street - my legs have been inactive for so long, sat motionless in the cafe, held by the beams, strung up by the worn shine. And out here, amongst the timeless dust - beyond the angled blinds and half-shadows - time creeps down even further.
It would be so easy to turn back, back amongst the orange seats I know are red, and the orange tables I know are blue. But the click and slide behind me - the unfamiliar sound, crawling sluggishly through the air, of a key turning in a lock halts a retreat.
The cafe-owner stands at the door, staring a new stare through the glass - one hand pressed up against the pane, his face resolute. No going back.
Thoughts travel even slower out here - slower than sound, slower than the light itself. Under the orange glow, full-beam, no protection. Of Old Man Morrison, and the glorious revs ripping trails through the half-light. But he was too late.
It takes me another hour - the cafe-owner watching me all the way - to walk up to the barn, the ancient sound weaving, shimmering through my mind. How long has it been? Since I walked, since he departed?
Impossible to say - as time does not travel as it should, and a day lasts longer than you’d ever let it. He may have gone yesterday, for all I know - the badly-stretched flow thinning out his essence, seams unhitched, threads pulling loose.
The barn doors - huge things - slide back cleanly, an unfamiliar rate of movement. Things are usually stuttered, drawn-out and exhausted - the smooth action only spurs me on further. Inside it’s exactly as I remember, and better.
A blast of cool, clean air - sat for so long away from the orange light it has become pure and fresh again - flows past me, loosening the beams’ strangle-hold over my body.
And there it stands - an old, rusty dusty motorbike - in the middle of the barn. Quickly now, as quick as I can be, I move over to it before the light ruins what is perfect in darkness. The sound streams through my mind again - and seems to matter, more than anything.
With a grin - the unfamiliar expression cracking open my stilled lips - I sit on the bike and start up the engine with a practised kick.
The beams, maliciously creeping into this sacred space, shrink back at the sound - the rippling, chuckling sound of the engine. I rip back the throttle and the wondrous noise fills the barn, shaking the dust from the wood, pushing the clinging beams back further still.
Bob Dee’s screen door slams back against the wall and he steps out, brandishing a shotgun as if someone might care enough to come near. His wife, face puckered into welts and bruises, old and new alike - each as orange as the last - hovers at his shoulder, praying for a saviour.
She steps out towards the door, straying towards the familiar - distantly-familiar - sound that lifts the oppressive film away. Bob shakes his head and shoves his arm across her path.
“Back in the house, b!tch.”
She makes no move to retreat - the sound brings forth her memories as well, of kindness and warmth, far from the hot fists and cool steel and the orange-streaked malice. Tears streak her face as Bob smiles - that båstard was never coming back for her, no matter how hard she pleaded.
The beams stay swirling slowly round the doors - unsure, unfulfilled - as the sound tears through them. More memories come flying back, pounding in my head, faster than anything know before - Old Man Morrison, my Old Man, sat where I am now, beating the beams back beyond the barn.
In a fluid, perfect motion I jerk the bike from it’s stand. The wheels bite down into the cool dust floor, eager to press on, and chase away the orange half-glow. The light stands no chance against me - this glorious sound it too much, too fast, too strong for the sluggish, creeping shine.
I burn on past, into the road, surrounded in a circle of darkness.
From his porch, Bob fires both cartridges at my Old Man’s shadow.
Nothing can stop me now - the compulsion has grown and blossomed out of the light. In a ring of night, I race off towards the deadpan horizon - beyond the influence of the beams, beyond the orange glow, beyond everything that held me.
Two and a half hours later, the two shotguns shells, twisting idly through the air, slowly slide down under the dust. Just the three of them now - soon to be two - and the occasional shadow-child stalking past the window.
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