Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 15

         The glow of acceptance courses between me and my younger self. Little did I know, but the film adaptation of The Iron Captain would usher in a new age of big budget films based on comic books. My secret shame would become a badge of honour to talk about in public. This is the summer when comics become cool. Silly thing is; they always have been, just a lot of people were too small minded to let them.
          ‘My dad loves comics,’ she says. ‘He was obsessed with The Bullet in the 60s.’
          ‘Oh I love The Bullet too,’ I say. ‘”Faster than the turn of the earth!”’’ I quote the super speedy superhero’s catchphrase, holding my fist in front of me me before I can stop myself.
          Our laughs fill the clearing; mine nervous-becoming-happy and Penny’s free and uncontrollable, from the pit of her stomach.
          Seeing our first meeting lifts my spirits in a way that I have yet to experience in this other life. Lifts my spirits until I see the dark shape flit between the trees.
          Fleeting and near-non-existent, the air shimmers and my eyes are drawn to the person shaped entity that darts across the small space behind a thick branch of leaves and then disappears. It is like my shadow, which still remains absent has come back to find me.
          The back of my neck prickles uncomfortably, but I find myself lifting. Away from the clearing, from the smells of newly exhaled smoke and wet summer leaves and the world fades, fades, fades…
          I open my eyes. The smell of grass is clear in my nostrils and my face feels wet on the still dewy ground. I am back at the site of my crash and I see that it is still closed off. The woman, now extracted from the wreckage of the van is talking to someone in the back of the ambulance. The stretchers are now gone.
          My experience in my own memories is still fresh in my own. Why had it happened? That one day of awkwardness, misplaced things in common and happiness, of all the days I could have chosen.
          One line of speech emerges through the mist like it’s more important than anything else.
          My dad loves comics.
          Where would you go after you died? I had thought it myself and the clench of guilt returns to me again.
          You would visit your parents.
          The image of Penny, standing before her red front door beckons to me. Like déjà vu only far stronger. Like a point in the distance pulling me closer.
          I close my eyes.