The Journeyman.......Back into the real world

Tuesday 11:28

Ludo visited me this morning, be brought grapes and assorted fruit in a bag. He arrived covered up in his orderly coat and a large peak baseball cap, much larger than even the most 'street' kids have been wearing. He told me it was better for covering him up in the sunlight and not scaring the old people it was his turn to wheel around from ward to ward or the toilet and back.

He sat with me during his break and told me Xanthic had been seen out last night by friends of his (he never said if they were human friends or otherwise) but he looked like he was having fun, or at least running to, after or from something. So I guess he's keeping fit if nothing else. Ludo also said there had been a dramatic increase in the well being of all the young patients on the children’s ward. Some making so surprising a recovery the Doctors were considering sending them home in the next few days. So even if I was still bandaged up like an accident prone mummy and also bit the big one, we did some good here.

Tuesday 23:28

I have just woken from a dream. I was back in the expansive but squat rock cavern, it was hot and confining like before, but this time the people destined to wander within it were giving me more space like they didn't want to be near me. I tried to look around and as I looked all I could see was walls of people spreading for miles in every direction and all staggering in the same overall direction. Where their path led I could not see, the ceiling just millimetres above my head reducing my spans of sight to near nothing at the same time I knew it stretched on for ever.

I could not talk, but I did not try, I was in a dream and not really there and from my point of view I was floating just behind my own shoulders. I couldn't see the back of my head but part of me thought I could if I were brave enough to try. I was out of my body and I was staying as close to it as I possibly could.

The heat was real, and my bed is soaked with sweat. Before I woke up, a split in the wall of black silhouettes ripped down from a point in forever to just before my eyes. Stood so far away it looked as tall as an action figure, but as large as the cavern allowed a very dark figure stood. Male, even from this distance I could instantly tell it was very male; it stood looking at me with eyes unseen by mine as picking out features on it was impossible to me, but IT could see every detail of me, every part and every thing, even the parts I try to hide and never reveal to anyone; all my secrets and all my sins.

It raised its right arm from its side to straight out in front. One long index finger stretched out pointing at me, and in the very second I woke from this dream it screamed out in a voice that carried throughout the cavern and caused every silhouetted soul within it to fall to their knees and cover their ears with their hands;

"YOU!"

 

Wednesday 10:35

After a nice Doctor came round the ward looking at everyone’s notes and discussing how they slept, it was my turn.  He was nice, younger than the Doctors I had been seeing, and had huge bags under his eyes.

  He told me he was happy with my progress and, as they needed the beds, he was going to let me go home.  He told me to ask one of the nurses if I needed to call anyone to pick me up and he would be back very shortly with my discharge paperwork.

  I made a call to Xanthic’s answerphone and left a message asking to be collected but in the knowledge I’d probably have to get a taxi from the rank by the hospital entrance.  The only issue with this would be pushing past the army of smokers all hanging around to get their fix of nicotine before being marched back to their beds so they can be made fit and well again.

 

Wednesday 15:40.

  A new Doctor can with my paperwork and I was sent with a smile out into a very bright Wednesday afternoon.  The sky was cloudless and a rich light blue sky held a full orb of yellow hanging in the very centre of it all.  The warmth and light of real sun was so pleasant after being artificially lit by strip lights in the hospital that I thought I was in paradise.  That was until a scruffy kids dressed in rags that was somewhere under a very wide rimmed ripped and moth eaten black hat ran up to me and slapped a grubby folded paper note into my clenched hand before disappearing across the busy street without stopping or looking.  When the cars cleared the kids (he, she, it?) was gone.

  I looked down at my hand, which was not dirty from brown mud (or something worse I didn’t want to think about) and at finger tips opened the note.

  ‘You’re wanted’ it said.  And I knew I was.