RAINSTORMS:
I watch as the small droplets of rain fall harshly against the glass. Tap-tap-tapping. They watch me from outside the thick pane. Taunting. I trace their paths as they slip and slide, slip and slide down the window. Jolting and speeding up, before slowing again. They halt a moment, teasing, before they lurch downwards once more.
I continue to watch the small beads as they sneer at me, distorted against the glass. My hand grapples on the bed blindly before curling around smooth leather. I lift the book and hurl it towards the window.
The sound of leather against glass reverberates around the cramped room. Smack. Then a thud as it falls to the floor. The dots of water shake, some sinking down the glass in defeat. Tap-tap. And still they continue to beat against the pane. Goading. Gliding. Guarding.
They examine me, tilting their heads in…pity? Slipping and sliding all the while. Slipping and sliding, sliding and slipping, down the window they stumble. They appear almost drunk as they slur into one another, stuttering against the glass, staggering away from one another then coming together again.
In my mind I see the bikes, the boisterous exuberance of youth. Down the cracked and furrowed lanes we sped, weaving together, then apart, then together again. Just like the raindrops. Together, apart, together.
My mind cracks like the tough skin on the knuckles of a hand, or the parched summer soil, or the fallen porcelain vase in the corner of the room. I grope around in the cobwebbed crevices of my mind but the bikes begin to fade. Blurring at the edges, the laughter ebbing, dying.
I cannot see. The grey clouds, heavy with rain, fringe my memory. I shout out and my mind writhes, clutching at the black stripes of my mind, pulling, twisting, rattling. The stripes stiffen in my grasp. Hard metal glares back at me, burning my hands. I recoil and the thick bars return to stripes.
Tigers. They are like the stripes of tigers. But blacker, thicker. They move with the shadows, as if the tiger is running, circling. Closing in. Tighter, faster. The stripes begin to muddle until I am surrounded not by the stripe-like bars but a wall. A tall, black wall. And still the rain falls against the window. Tap-tap-tapping.
That incessant tap-tap-tapping. Their pattern is now familiar to me. Strike, sneer, slip, slur, slide. Over and over again they rehearse the same routine. Of course there is the occasional mistake, perhaps a strike, slip, sneer, slur, slide. But still they never cease to end their tapping.
Beyond the smears of rain I can see a hazy outline of green. Oh how I wish that awful rain would stop so I could see out again. The blood red poppies, golden wheat dancing in the wind, green velvet blades of grass carrying the jewels of morning dew. But still the beads of rain trip and tumble down the window pane.
The ugly lace veil they sew across the window is almost worse than the black stripes. The stripes. The stripes that have separated as the tiger has uncurled, no longer circling. Some of the air returns to my lungs, no longer suffocated by thick, black walls, but the air is stale and sour, stifling. I long to throw open the window but the rain still slaps the glass. Tap-tap-tapping.
My hands itch to pull the curtains across the window so as they might shut out the wretched tap-tap-tapping, but my body does not move. I am not just a prisoner in this room but a prisoner in my own body too. I let out a short, wolf-like howl and the droplets shake their heads at me, disapproving. I slink back into the coarse-sheeted bed, watching as the beads of water continue their path. And their heads carry on bobbing, besmirching the glass.
I scratch the skin on my hands, old before its time. It clings to the bones, gnarled and knotted like the oak behind the greenhouse. Red and sore from scratching, swollen, and in some places, starting to crumple into thin-lipped wrinkles that curve into grimaces or pitying smiles. I examine my disfigured hands for a long time, but still I hear the rain relentlessly assaulting the window pane. Tap-tap-tapping.
I wonder, what do tigers do when it rains? The stripes seem to stiffen at my question before starting to pace once more. This time they move back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, quite unlike their circular movement earlier.
My eyes struggle to keep up with the marching lines, dark and heavy behind my eyelids. They speed up and soon a solid black wall stands before me. It is less claustrophobic than the circular wall and the smooth darkness of the wall seems inviting.
I look closer at the wall and notice there are small grooves as if someone has climbed it before. I tentatively place a foot in one of the indentations and find it fits almost perfectly. It is as if this wall is asking only me to discover what is beyond it.
I begin to climb the wall, eagerly now. Foothold after foothold I climb higher. I can feel the small room fading away, the leather book lying beneath the window, the scratchy pillows and coarse sheets. I dare not look down, instead I keep climbing. Higher and higher. Further and further.
I am almost at the top now and I can smell freedom, taste it on the tip of my tongue. It does not take me long to reach the brow of the wall. I pull my body up onto the shiny surface of the top and there I see it. My escape, my emancipation.
An amorphous accumulation of black stretches out beyond me. Then I see them. A gleaming pair of amber eyes winking at me like the blinkers of a motor car. They encourage me towards them, into the blackness below. I lift one foot from the ledge so that I am balancing, like a flamingo, on the other. Then down, down I dive, into the field of black. Everything spins, a ballet of pirouettes, twist and turns, and the tiger-eyes grin wickedly at me, victorious, before everything stops.
But still I hear the rain as it falls against the window. Tap-tap-tapping.
BG
