Aveline and the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse

Part 2 - A State of Mind

Actually, I was pissed off later. At the time, I was terrified.

The terror lasted a whole three seconds. In those three seconds however, I got in a lot of thoughts. It's amazing how fast your brain works when you're full of adrenaline. As I fell, I tumbled, so for a second I was looking back up at the bridge, where a dark, indistinct face is peering down at me in the gloom. I swear I can hear laughing, but that must have been my imagination as I'm screaming as hard as I can and the wind is roaring in my ears.

I have a sudden image of my mother, running towards me in slow-mo, reaching out and calling to me, and with a kind of strange detachment, I realise I'm reaching out too - both in my mind and in reality, while at the same time thinking, "Wow, mum, cool dress!", because she's wearing a truly stunning close fitting white suit that makes her look amazing.

The vision seems to go on forever, but when it becomes obvious our hands aren't going to connect, and I'm moving away from her, it fades, leaving me looking at the river coming up fast. And that's when I black out.

*

When I start to come to, it's like I'm waking from the best sleep ever, on a Sunday morning when your body knows there's no rush to get up, and it's raining outside so it's nice and warm and cosy under the duvet, and....

Wait a minute here...

You know that feeling you get when you're just about to fall asleep - when you're mind is on the border between wakefulness and dreaming - and suddenly it feels like you're falling off the edge of the bed? You suddenly jerk awake with a spasm of fright and you open your eyes and wonder where the hell you are for a second?

Well, imagine that ten times over - a hundred times. It was like I'd been electrocuted. That was what it felt like when I woke up. My heart hammered inside and I yelped loudly, sitting bolt upright and staring straight ahead, wide-eyed and gasping for breath.

Where the hell was I?

After a few seconds I get control of my breathing and look about me. I appear to be in some kind of desert. It's dark, and the only light comes from thousands of stars in a cloudless sky, and they blaze overhead more fiercely than I can ever recall seeing before. Beneath my hands I feel warm, gritty sand, and the air around me is warm too. It's perfectly still, and absolutely silent.

Except, it wasn't.

Over the sound of my breathing and heartbeat which still sounds strongly in my ears, there is another, regular beat that I can feel more than hear. It seems to be coming from a long way off, like a deep bass drum from a distant rock concert. I stand and turn in a circle. There's little to see in the featureless landscape, but away in the distance towards a star that glows red on the horizon there is just the slightest hint of a glow - the sort you get from street lights of a distant town viewed from many miles away.

One thing I was sure of - I wasn't in Bristol, PA anymore. I should be dead. A fall like that - certainly terminal. Maybe that's what this is - an afterlife. Was it Heaven? Hell? Something else?

Maybe I should start to rethink my atheism.

My laughter at the thought disappears into the darkness and suddenly I feel very vulnerable and alone. I can't see clearly around me. There might be anything out there, waiting for me in the dark.

The darkness; the deep, only just audible beat; the strange empty desert and the eerily starry sky begin to frighten me. I consider what to do for a moment, but there is no choice, really. I begin walking towards the glow.

*

After a while, the beat that has been going non-stop since I woke gets louder. I realise that I've been walking in time to it since setting out. In my mind it fits perfectly with the Bee Gees cheesy disco hit 'Stayin Alive', and to relieve the monotony and to take my mind off thoughts of what might be out there in the dark, I begin to sing. I only know the chorus, so I'm walking along singing, "Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive," over and over. Its so surreal I'm convinced I'm dreaming, and none of this is real. I even start to enjoy it a little, just walking along, strutting my stuff, singing my tune and wondering just what the hell I must have eaten last night to get me this trippy.