Bequest

Chapter 4

Fear stings him. It's dark, he feels trapped and it's hard to breathe. There's something tight around his head. He touches his face. He has a stumpy elephant's trunk and his eyes are covered by round lenses. He runs his hands to the back of his head, discovers two straps and pulls this suffocating thing off his head. Free, he gasps for air, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

He pants for a long time and clasps his hands together in his lap. When he snatches his senses back, he realises he is lying down on the couch and can just make out the flicker of the television. He can't hear anything. There's complete silence in his house, except for the hum of the refrigerator. He must have muted the television, he thinks. He swings his legs over the couch and turns on the light. On the floor he sees a Cold War gas mask. It is light grey, with two large round eye lenses, a long snout and a green filter. He knows it well, but thinks it's impossible. A war of terror gnashes its tail across him, seizing his logic and screwing his mind. He gets down to the floor slowly, his two reconstructed knees creaking in pain. He holds the gas mask up. He knows this type of gas mask from a photograph of schoolboys in Russia lined up on a bench, swinging their black leather shoes, socks halfway up their legs. They wore little black shorts and some were fiddling innocently with the filter on their mask. There's something very creepy about the staged photograph. The boys are well-dressed pawns in a message of propaganda. Their hair is combed and their shoes are polished, their mothers have taken pride in sending them off to school that day to have their photograph taken. But it's a class shot of survival in a dire situation.

It's an unnerving photograph from an unnerving period. Leonard had shown it to X, as he'd wanted that Cold War gas mask to be his first tattoo. For him, it was about trying to breathe in the toxic gas of life.

He phones his son with a shaky finger.

'Dad, what is it? It's two a.m.'

'I woke up with a gas mask over my face. It was suffocating me.'

'Calm down, are you okay?'

'It's the gas mask from my first tattoo. You know the one.'

'You're probably having a panic attack. Go back to bed, Dad. I'll call you in the morning. Have a glass of milk or something.'

Leonard goes to the kitchen, as told, and pours himself a glass of milk. When he returns to the couch, the gas mask is no longer there.