‘Mind you get that bike home in one piece.’
His mother left him at the school bike sheds. The car faded towards Ipsden Heath, leaving him to cycle home the long route.
The long route would have been all right in the end. But on this fateful day Tom Purton decided to make the descent of Berins Hill, the forbidden shortcut. Thirty seconds down the incline he heard a little tinkling behind him. His rear brake was falling off. Away went the endless sequence of nuts and washers accompanying the brake pads, into the abyss. The bike picked up speed.
To the right a vertical drop through flimsy birch branches to jagged rocks. To the left, sharp flint stabbing out of the chalk hill. It quickly tore a bloody gash in his forearm. Somewhere over his bell, images began to come, people he knew in the distance, then rushing through the trees, then big, walking right through his body and his bike frame. He saw himself with them, a haunted look, and knew what was going on. Life flashes before the eyes of people drowning, but it also comes to doomed cyclists on dry land.
Life was flashing by. Time was jumbled. A lot of it was his dad’s life, it seemed. How was that? Just a few recognisable images of his own lacklustre moments. The awful mess of his eighth birthday the year before; his mother shouting at him for being caught cheating; a glimpse of Laura Barton’s striped knickers as she climbed a ladder. His cat looking at him the day it died.
But his father’s life was stronger. Images of strange grey days hemmed the speeding bicycle in on the descent. The first ATM came up a lot. An important moment in his dad’s life. Then demonic scenes of carcasses burning on pyres. The foot and mouth epidemic. A strident female voice giving a running commentary to the drowning sensation, piercing and shrill. Thatcher, the Iron Lady. Then riots on the street, cars on fire, police vans overturned. And one incongruous image close up of a beef and tomato pot noodle.
His dad loved pot noodles.
Way, way below, he saw something on the road. It wasn’t tumbling downhill like him. If anything it seemed to be climbing. A sports cyclist. They came from far and wide to use the steep ascent at Berins Hill for training. How inescapably foolish, the doomed boy thought, struggling to turn the handlebars. He heard his father’s voice from somewhere in the rush of memories:
‘Life is not about struggling, son. You’re getting something wrong. There’s a knack. The trick is to go with the flow. Let it carry you along.’
It was carrying him along, all right. Sweeping him to the end, all too quick. The wind rushed into his nose, ripping out snot. His shirt billowed like a parachute, but didn’t slow him. Natural instinct to steer away from the edge got him into more trouble. Outcrops of flint kept slashing him till he was a mass of blood on his lefthand side.
In the corner of his eye, snapshots of life today vied with his father’s years. Two county lines down and outs flashed by. How thin and dirty they were. They looked like they’d been kept in a small dark shed all their lives. What could be so good about the drugs they took to allow that?
Swerving to avoid an overgrown bramble bush, he passed an advert for an Airbnb property. It looked like a dog kennel. ‘£200 per night. Kitchen and toilet shared with live-in owner.’
Life had so many strange things going on in it, and he was only just beginning to notice on the day he would die. Images kept coming. Another birthday. Was that his sixth? Tom recognised faces of kids he was no longer friends with. His brother was there. He saw himself opening presents, hoping for a smart phone. Was it there? Would he get it? It was hard to tell because the images of his father’s life kept surging in powerful torrents over his own. There was his dad using the first ATM again. Eyes wide to see money coming out of a slot when you pressed a few buttons. Where had people got money before? Every second image that flashed through Tom’s mind was embarrassing. The other dominant theme from his dad’s era seemed to be people sticking their fingers together with superglue.
‘Look out!’ a voice called. ‘You’re going off the edge.’
Tom had been so caught up in the rush of his father’s life he wasn’t watching the road. Now he was right on the lip. He could feel his front tyre riding air, his back wheel skidding when he turned the handlebars.
Suddenly there was a whooshing noise and a rush of wind that nearly knocked him back over the edge. A boy on an e-scooter flashed by, breaking all the legal limits. Tom’s heart briefly surged with envy. He’d always wanted something like that. Only with an effort did he control his emotions, accepting it would be no use to him as he was going to die. The boy on the scooter passed another figure sitting by the side of the road with a placard. The scooter boy spat a long stream of gooey gob at the seated figure and scored a bullseye. The seated person didn’t seem to notice. All his attention was on Tom, coming along behind. A dirty stubby finger pointed to Tom and then to the sign. ‘You’re so privileged, you’ve got a bike!’ the placard said. Tom skidded by, feeling guilty on his way to his death. ‘Wanker!’ A cry followed him down the hill to the next bend.
More images from his father’s life surged up. Buying his first suit for a job interview, and saying ‘I look like a dickhead.’ Taking a girl out on a date and having nothing to say to her. There he was, at an AC/DC concert, with the hint of a mullet, collar turned up. Always walking around with a can of WD40.
Then the rough times. That same father coming into his bedroom at weird hours.
‘She works too hard, Tom.’ The whispers came through the darkness. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong.’ Tom’s father was a big man. The weight of him at the end of the bed squashed Tom’s feet till they hurt. Sometimes he was still there in the middle of the night if Tom woke up.
Below him, the shape on the road was getting closer. The sports cyclist, slogging up the gruelling climb towards the summit, driven by a motivation Tom could not fathom. On the day Tom was going to die, this person had donned lycra, lubed their bike, swallowed glucose drinks, and decided to inflict pain on themselves. Tom was ashamed to die so easily while someone else was summoning the will to overcome the impossible. The ascent of Berins Hill.
Around the next corner he saw a sign in the corner of his eye. GRADIENT – 1:10. VERY STEEP.
Thanks for the warning, he muttered. Very helpful. But around the turn he passed another figure with a banner disputing this. THEY SAY IT’S 1:10 BUT THAT’S JUST WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE. THEY WANT TO KEEP YOU IN FEAR.
Tom flashed by. What a thought that was. What if it was true? It wouldn’t be so bad to be flying down here if you weren’t afraid.
Another placard zipped past on the left. BERINS HILL IS FLAT. LOOK AT ME. I’M NOT FALLING OFF.
Tom looked, and sure enough, a man was standing over the edge of the drop. Only the tip of one shoe seemed to attach him to the incline. There was no obvious sign of him falling. There must be a rope keeping him there, surely. But Tom’s bike had raced on before he could examine the man closely. So, some people thought Berin’s Hill was flat. Tom had heard that before. It was an intriguing thought. How does anyone know anything for certain. Today, that was the world Tom lived in. So different from his father’s day. But flat hill or not, the bike was screaming at an incredible rate towards the bottom. It felt like only pain and death could follow.
‘Use your feet!’ a voice said in Tom’s ear. ‘If your brakes don’t work, put your feet on the ground to slow your progress.’
Tom could see no one, but it sounded like his father. Cautiously he lowered his left foot towards the tarmac, spurting grey under his wheels. A great wrenching explosion shook his body and the bike frame, followed by heat and mangled agony in his foot. The bike continued its unstoppable descent. Wondering if his foot was broken, he drew it back up and gingerly placed it on the pedal again. The sport cyclist drew level and passed in a blur. It was a woman, about his mother’s age. Their eyes met. The woman was smiling at him. Tom briefly thought of saying ‘Could you help me? I’m only eight years old. I can’t stop my bike.’ But while he was trying to summon the nerve to address a stranger, they had passed at high speed and were already separated by long metres of road.
So he settled back into the rush to his death, accepting the images battering his mind. More birthdays. Some his own, some his father’s. Friends’ birthdays that he wasn’t invited to. Toys featured strongly in the last moments. All the toys he had wanted but not been given. The cupboard full of the things he had been given instead. Loyal and useless, waiting to greet him every time he opened the cupboard in need of inspiration for his play. Those toys did not provide it.
Faster and faster, the bicycle pelted. Berins Hill finally came down to earth. Settlements and habitation rushed towards Tom at unbelievable speeds. Houses. Parked cars. Stone bollards. Old farm wagons. A former phone box marked ‘Defibrillator’. At the very bottom of the hill a group of sports cyclists gathered, checking their watches, their blood-sugar levels and handlebars before tackling the climb. One shouted ‘Watch the van, kid!’ Yes, of course, there was a removals van just around the corner. No chance of stopping. Things were happening too fast, while his thoughts were in slow motion. Too much noise. Too many people. How calm and peaceful by comparison the few seconds on Berins Hill had seemed.
One last lap of his memories whirred through his mind, as he careened around the corner. He saw the startled look on the removals men’s faces, a sofa on the tail lift. The gloomy faces of the new owners, already burdened by the price they had paid for their property. The woman at the upstairs window, holding a lamp. The man wedging the door open for the settee.
Tom took all that in as the van reversed towards him. The tail lift came down inexorably, crushing the remains of his bike, its edge at just the level to catch a little boy under the chin.
Even as he felt his head severed from his neck images of his dad’s life continued to dominate him. He could see him, that very evening, talking to a son who was not there.
‘Good job that sofa was there when you came flying round, hey Tom. You’ve made a right mess of your bike.’
‘But I’m not there dad’, Tom’s head shouted as it flew through the air. ‘Stop talking as if I’m in the room with you. I’m dead.’
A severed head flew through the air, bounced off the sofa, leaving a splattering of blood, and rolled into the bushes where it came to a halt next to a rusty can. The eyes in the head surveyed the can before they glazed over for the last time, and saw some large and familiar letters under the rust. W. D. 40. A disgruntled murmur crossed the lips as they closed for the last time and was heard by the sports cyclists looking in shock as they rested on their pedals and saddles.
‘I hate you, dad’, the lips said. They heard it clear as day, before they threw their own bikes in a pile and rushed to help. They knew they were too late, but they were pulled by the gravity of the others so all the cyclists crowded round the death scene, not knowing whether to give their attention to the headless trunk of the child, or the head a few feet away. Words were still pouring out of the lips.
‘I hate bicycles. I hate them so much. Why did you have to give me one? I wanted something else for my birthday. You had to give me a bicycle.’
Colour was draining from the boy’s head. The eyes would blink open, stare horrifically at each and every one of the sports cyclists, and then the lids would slam down closed. Blood was saturating the two dozen cycling shoes around the body. Three riders were calling ambulances. One or two glanced wistfully up the incline of Berins Hill. That would have to be postponed. They couldn’t just cycle off with the poor lad lying dead there.
One last time the mouth opened though it should have been impossible on the long dead child. It screamed and shook more violently than ever, so the grown men and women were frightened. The severed head seemed definitely to blame them.
‘I hate bicycles! I hate my dad! Cyclists are cunts!’
It almost seemed this tiny severed head would rise up and start biting them. But its violent gnashing disturbed the old rusted can in the bush so it rolled out, and just as the mouth opened for another round of abuse, the can rolled in and took the bite of the childish teeth until all further life had passed out of it.
*
‘So what happened to me after that’, Tom’s father asked, dabbing iodine into Tom’s many cuts.
‘What?’
‘You said my life flashed before you, so you must have seen how I died.’
The boy-shaped nothing did not reply. The father kept dabbing away, reckoning his son must be exhausted. Look at him, dropping off to sleep. He carried on removing splinters of glass and fragments of rusted tin. Better let him rest. Tomorrow they’d have a hard day’s work repairing the bike. But the father couldn’t resist a last wistful ponder.
‘I wonder what he did see at the end of my life. Something boring like dying in bed of old age, I expect.’
Jeremy lives in Didcot, near the old power station and the Ridgeway. His short stories and flash have appeared in competition anthologies Home (Comma Press), Barely Casting a Shadow (Reflex Fiction), Earthless Melting Pot (Words with Jam). His e-novel Dead Olives was published by Impress Books.
Twitter: @HinchJeremy
Idle Ink 