The air I breathe

I think I’ve loved Susanna from the first time we slept together. I don’t mean like that, not sex, but the hours when I awoke and saw her next to me, her eyes closed but racing under the lids. I have always found it hard to sleep and for the first time in my life, I had something, someone, to reassure me, calm me and lull me back into sleeping through until dawn. For all that came after, I know that I did love her and she loved me, more than many; more than most, I think. We knew what it meant to love.

****

The stay was Suzie’s idea, though I had little trouble being swept along with it. The two of us were polar opposites as far as work went: the artist and the computer fiend. And yet, I always enjoyed her paintings as much as she followed what I showed her on my laptop and a day later was doing a better job of it than me. Her friend’s teased her about it and she reasoned that we showed each other the other side of the coin. I knew her friend’s did not like me much; not even that, I don’t think they ever trusted her with me. I appeared too remote and stand-offish, or possibly too weak. For my own part, I simply went along and smiled, clutching Suzie’s hand as if my life depended on it.

I had always found making friend’s hard, it was true and the idea of isolation was nothing like a problem for me, but more like a treat. There were no skeletons in my closest, no abuse or family rifts. I simply struggled with strangers and found solace in machines. In that respect I was born in the right age as much as Suzie was in the wrong. From an early age I understood gadgets and took time with the ones that defeated me until I knew them best of all. It was a fascination that was married with stubbornness, which made me the perfect 21st century work-horse.
 
We packed our car, the trailer tacked on the back, each of us teasing the other at our baggage. Suzie rolled her eyes as I fumbled along with my laptop wires trailing underfoot; I sighed with exaggeration as I loaded the umpteenth paint pot into the trailer. We bickered like brother and sister during the day and only really became husband and wife deep into the night. Sometimes my passion for her frightened myself; it was as if without her, I would be incomplete, as if a very real part of me was missing. At times, when she was on top of me, breathless and warm, she would take on the appearance of her own paintings and it would be as if I were staring at her imagination, come to life. I told her this and she blushed, though it did not shame her; I understood her need was different from mine, but just as great. She needed to channel her work and be connected with it in every moment she drew breath.

The drive to the ferry was largely uneventful, besides the odd stories coming over the radio. We were both leaving our twenties now and pop was being replaced by talk on the dials. The reports seemed even more horrific than usual, the everyday murders being replaced with a spate of bizarre, seemingly suicidal events. I saw how pale my face had become and Suzie clicked it off moments before I did. She smiled and our conversation switched to how good it would be to get away from the chaos of the city for a while. By the time we finished listing all the good points of living in a cottage, the harbour appeared, as if on cue.

We ate and then dozed on the ferry and drove the last part of the way to the cottage itself. There were no comedy moments of getting lost and asking brusque farmers for directions. All the tools and gadgets Suzie made fun of me for buying steered us to the gate. I tried to keep a smug smile from my face when we arrived and she tutted good naturedly about me getting my reward later. We drove down the lane to the house, bumping slightly on the dirt and keeping our eyes on the trailer in the wing mirrors until we stopped.

The place was perfect. The wide expanse of the living room became her studio and I claimed the spare room at the top of the stairs for my office. The utilities all worked and the kitchen was big enough to become the place where we would reconvene at the end of the day to swap notes and prepare dinner. The freezer out the back was stocked and the map to the local village, roughly an hour’s drive from the house, was pinned to the back door. No pipes leaked, no doors slammed suddenly; it was just as it was meant to be.

We spent the rest of the day to ourselves and then got to work the next morning. Though we grinned to each other as we went about it, we had both agreed to work hard at reaching our goals. As well as Suzie’s paintings and my on-line sales, we had agreed to go into partnership, too; a small website selling her work which I would design. It had been a pipe dream of ours for almost a year but this was the time, the slow season in both our professions, when we had decided to push it forward. For a while we-I- had been wary of working together, but the more we discussed it, the more sense it made and in the last few weeks, I had been as eager to start it up as Suzie. At mid-day, we began to work.

Each of us worked ferociously in that first week. I left my door open and listened to Suzie as she worked and the rhythm of her became my own soundtrack. I worked as hard as I had ever known; filling the first half of my day with business and the second half, sometimes well into the evening, with the website. At night, we would meet in the kitchen, both of us looking dazed and giggling at the sight of ourselves. Suzie seemed to be painting at an accelerated rate; completing two canvases in the time it would normally take her to outline the first. As we talked about it over wine, both of us were almost frightened at what we were achieving. We mentioned the change of surroundings, the fresh air and then, after our second glass, the power the house had over us. I let Suzy shower first and then she led me inside to join her and the energy we had burned in the daytime seemed to re-ignite with the moon.

The mod-cons, TV, radio, fell away in the wake of our work. As a concession to Suzie, I had blocked every other internet site, with the exception of direct work links, to reduce the all too easy distractions of working on-line. The first time I thought about the outside world was on the fourth day, when the weather seemed set to change and rain appeared to be moving in. I remembered thinking I could have got a heads-up on that but then dismissed it, even enjoying the idea of not knowing simple things like the colour of the sky and leaving it to chance instead; like when I was a kid and got caught in a hail shower at the end of a sunny day.
    
The man came on the night of the storm.

Even the lashing rain hadn’t spoiled our work-rate or our mood. The rain pelted the windows and became another part of the soundtrack, like wild, unpredictable drums. It meant neither of us could stop for a walk at lunch-time, but I was sure there would be a break in it at some point and when there wasn’t, I was still too wrapped in my work to really mind all that much. I finished about nine, listening for Suzie to begin her ritual of setting down and cleaning her pots and collecting up the dirty white sheet she used for covering the floor. I loved following those sounds, knowing it soon meant we could be together again; it reminded me of the school bell at the end of the worst lesson and the sense of unbridled, almost ridiculous freedom it gave everyone. We showered, we ate and I had tentatively reached out to kiss her, even though she was always the one who began it, when a fierce knocking rattled against the front door.

It was such a surprise that Suzie actually screamed, a little yelp, the way school kids behave in plays. I gasped, too and spun round to the door as if it was going to explode at any moment. I turned back and saw Suzie staring hard at the door, as if making a decision inside her mind. I felt my eyes grow wide and wanted to tell her we could ignore it, we should ignore it. I didn’t care about the candles that showed we were clearly at home, the car outside, or anything else. Something in me screamed that we should not acknowledge the stranger and we should maintain what we had; undisturbed and safe. My mind made all these decisions, just like Suzie’s, I knew, was making all the opposite decisions. Before I could speak, she strode towards the door, reaching for the handle to face the man- and it would be a man- I knew, and waited.
 
The door drew back awkwardly and the man stumbled into the cottage without a word. Flecks of rain chased in after him, as if attached and Suzie quickly closed the door. The man, who was big, almost too big for the cottage itself, staggered forward a little more and then fell into the nearest chair. Everything about him was soaked, as if he had come directly from the ocean, and when he didn’t speak, it seemed as if the dripping rain was his voice. His eyes became wide for a moment, almost bucking open with a sort of shock and then fell away gently, almost femininely. I looked over to Suzie in disbelief, as the man fainted dead away, slipping a little further into the chair before coming to a stop.

He wasn’t drunk, that much both of us knew; his eyes were too alert and his body, although shambling, was coordinated. There was no smell on him, either, of booze or drugs. Even though we didn’t dare to peel his clothes away, we did draw a blanket over him and removed his cap. He was surprisingly youthful looking and seemed peaceful as he slept. We drew away, into the kitchen and started to discuss what had happened. I was upset at how we had let him invade our space but my argument fell away in the face of both the truth and her sudden contempt. Wounded, I stepped away and began to build a fire for him, the silence between the three of us soon filled by the logs as they began to crackle in the fireplace. After a while, as the heat began to fill the room, he stirred.

He seemed to come to almost immediately, as if bracing himself for violence. At first, he jerked back in the seat and then swiftly looked from us to the fire, as if it were all linked in a way I couldn’t understand. The man moved out of the chair and over to the fire, every movement tight and coiled, like a cat. When he looked round he smiled, but it was such a terribly sad expression, I thought in the next moment he might cry.

“I thought you were going to burn me,” he said, his voice quiet and measured. I had wandered over to Suzie and gripped her hand. She moved forward, closer to him and I followed, squeezing her closer.

“Of course we wouldn’t do that. Why would we?” she said. Her voice was calm and measured and I recognised she was trying to reassure him, the way she did when things overwhelmed me sometimes.
 
“Because of what’s out there,” he went on, his voice staying tight. I got the idea he could’ve screamed at any moment. He looked away from the fire and over to the both of us.

“Nothing’s out there,” Suzie said and smiled gently. I had hoped her smile would calm him, but instead, his eyes grew wide again and he almost laughed, before stopping himself.

“My god, you don’t know…” he said, almost sounding bewildered. “You don’t know what’s happening!”

“What’s out there?” I said and I felt Suzie flinch as I spoke. She glanced over, her eyes scolding me. That was the difference between us; she thought nothing could hurt us, whereas I only wondered what the weapon would be.

“It’s in the air,” he said, looking back to the fire, his voice taking on an almost monotone. “It’s in the air and it kills everyone who is not wearing a mask. They burn the bodies and those they’re not sure about.”

“Who does?” Suzie said, her voice shaking for the first time. Like me, she thought he was going to describe a wild animal, perhaps a gang…but nothing like this.

“Everyone! Old men and women, families, the community, everyone is acting against it. If you’re not fighting it, you must have it.” For a second he swelled up, as if he was going to tear down the nearest canvas but then he stilled. “If you don’t have it, you must fight it,” he repeated, like a mantra.

“You don’t have it,” Suzie said, her voice returning to calm. I thought the same words, but added a please at the end of it. I tightened my grip against her palm but felt nothing in return.

“I don’t have any signs. I’m heading to the harbour tomorrow and claiming a boat. Maybe it’ll be safe out on the water.” He looked at us both in expectation, as if wanting, needing, an answer.
 
“What signs?” I said and felt Suzie’s nails dig into mine. I felt my face turn scarlet, not with annoyance but shame. This was our first crisis and I was the coward in the pair.

“Facial signs, skin signs, sick signs,” he muttered, as if he were reading from the back of a prescription bottle. For the first time since he’d spoke, he actually sounded a little crazy. “You should head for the harbour too,” he said, nodding.

“I think we’ll wait until morning,” Suzie said. “You can sleep here and then we’ll sort this out.” Her voice was clear and final. I think I looked in disbelief at her as much as the other man did.

“You don’t believe me,” he said quietly and I saw his face flame in embarrassment. He peered into the fire to hide it and didn’t look back.

“I think you need to rest,” she said and then waved her hand around. “Eat; sleep and then we’ll talk in the morning.” I watched him as she spoke but he was no longer listening. Something in his mind had been made up.

“Why are you letting him stay?” I asked, as soon as we got into the bedroom. She undressed in a mechanical way, neither of us registering the sight of her body.
 
“Is that all you can think of, your safety? What about that poor boy?” Her voice was low but it was trembling with anger.
 
“He’s young Suzie! His friend’s could be at the back door!” I said. I felt my own voice cracking, but with fear.
 
“He’s obviously high, or else there’s something wrong with him, can’t you see that?” Suzie’s sister had learning disabilities and she was raw on anything touching the subject. “Lock the door if you’re that terrified. Why would he come up with such a lunatic story? He’s just looking for help.”

“But…” I said and then took a breath. I looked at Suzie and she stared back at me. She had always teased me at how mechanical my mind worked, at how logical I had always been. “But if you don’t think he’s here to hurt us, Suzie, if you think he needs our help…” I swallowed. “Then what he’s trying to tell us is true,” I said.

****
                           
I didn’t really sleep on the floorboards that night. Instead, I listened for the creaking boards that didn’t materialise and the sound of Suzie as she slept. She obviously had thought it through and reasoned we were simply doing a good deed; dismissing the story as quickly as she did the threat of the ‘boy.’ For the first time since we’d been together, I stayed awake until the near dawn, before I slipped away for a few hours and was then awoken by Suzie’s foot.

“He’s gone,” was all she said before walking away from me and down the stairs. I followed her, not thinking about the bathroom or anything else, but just bracing myself for the damage he had done, maybe to Suzie’s paintings, or perhaps to the cottage in general. I reached the bottom step and saw everything as it was, except for the note pinned to the front door. As I walked towards it, I started to think how the day before last, before the intruder, when we were happy, seemed a long time ago. I pulled the note from the door and looked over to Suzie, who was hugging herself even as she tried to strike a defiant pose. If I had been more of a man the night before, I would have been hugging her. Instead, I gave the note a final once over before dropping it into the embers of the dying fire. The single word, ‘RUN,’ had been written in the centre of the page and was the last thing to burn.

“What if it’s true?” I asked, immediately hating myself and seeing the look in her eyes. It wasn’t even disgust, or contempt but sorrow, as if she was finally seeing me, peeled back to the thing I truly was underneath the man.
 
“How can you say that?” she said softly. The pity in her voice was worse than any anger she could have mustered. For a moment, I felt myself take on the role of the boy and felt the hot flash of her eyes.

“Then why was he here? What purpose did he serve?” I felt my voice rising and was ashamed at how timid and ineffectual it still sounded. I was aware I was confirming all her friend’s worst fears about me.
 
“Purpose, serve? Jesus, he’s not a pet! He was obviously upset about something; maybe he’d broken up with his girl or something.” She brought her hands down and went about making coffee.
 
“Let me just check…” I said, gesturing to the television set. She waved me away and went on with her drink, not looking at me. For the first time in our lives together, I felt like a stranger.

I trudged over to the set and turned it on. White noise and static greeted me. I miserably adjusted the antenna but got nothing. I looked out of the window and saw it had stopped raining. I opened my mouth to say what I planned to do and then closed it when I saw she would no longer look at me. After I turned off the set, I walked upstairs and got dressed, stuffing a handkerchief into my pocket at the last moment.
 
Everything was dead. The radio in the car and the gadgets that had steered us to the cottage were all finished. I checked my mobile, not expecting a signal and got none. I drew down the handkerchief and stepped back inside, hoping she hadn’t seen me through the window. Even though I felt ridiculous, my heart was racing and the dread rose higher, almost to my throat.

“Well?” She asked, almost distractedly. When I told her, her body tightened but she didn’t speak. Before I said anything else, I jogged up the stairs and went to the office, flicking on the laptop. I removed all the blocks and typed in the basic sites. Nothing responded. For a few minutes, I checked my computer and saw nothing wrong with it, outside the fact it was useless. Suzie moved downstairs and I saw her appear at the bottom step.

“Nothing’s working,” I said. “The electricity is still on to make coffee, the lights, but every piece of technology has dried up.”

She tensed as I walked down the stairs and edged to the far wall, away from me when I walked into the room. Her paintings surrounded us but suddenly they all seemed harmless and little more than a children’s hobby. None of it mattered; I thought coldly but did not say.
 
“So connections are down,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. It sounded nothing like her and instead felt like we were colleagues in a business meeting.
 
“It wouldn’t affect so many things on such a broad scale,” I replied, adopting the same blank tone as her. It was a childish thing to do but I suddenly felt adrift, as if everything had shifted slightly while I had remained standing still.
 
“Everything wouldn’t shut down simultaneously, it would be near impossible.” It was the sort of thing people he knew discussed around the water cooler, the doomsday effect and other, equally ridiculously grand-sounding theories.
    
“Coincidence,” she said, as if baiting me. I felt a shiver of something run down my back and almost jolted as I felt it move over me. I realised I was furious with her, for her unwillingness to accept the situation, for her bull-headedness. I shook my head, not wanting to shout, or scream.

“The boy meant it when he said it, you know that as well I do,” I said, my mind still halfway inside the problem. The only way a virus breeds is if there’s no-one left alive to kill it, I thought in a sudden, thunderclap of a moment.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t accept what you’re telling me,” she said, coolly. “It’s the locals playing games with us and I won’t be dragged into it.” Suddenly, she sounded like her friends, slightly better and removed from everyone else, in their ideas and their actions.
 
“You won’t accept it? What choice do you have?” I spluttered, not quite believing what it was she was saying. “What about all those stories on the radio?”

“That’s the world we live in,” she said and sipped her coffee. I shook my head, hating her suddenly; her tone, her bourgeoisie attitude, all of it. A streak of something poured through me and I wondered if at some point after I’d fallen asleep she’d tip-toed over me on the floor and made her way down the stairs to the boy.

“What will you do?” my voice suddenly calm. She must understand at some level, I thought; she had to.
 
“I’ll go on with my work. What I came down here for,” she replied, looking over the mug to me as she did. She had emphasised the ‘I’ and was waiting for my reaction; her eyes glowed a little, goading and waiting, like a teenager setting a trap with their tongue.

“And do you think that will save you?” I said, turning away from her, just seeing her jaw drop slightly before making my way back up the stairs.

****

I spent the day in the attic, going through all the old boxes her grandparents had kept. All of it was a waste of time, apart from one, remarkable thing; a gas mask left over from the Second World War. The box was strewn with old memorabilia; ration tokens, newspaper clippings and other bits and bobs. I carried it over to the door, hearing her paint, though there was no fluidity to her strokes now, no grace. I dropped down the ladder and took a breath. I checked the computer, the phones and saw it was all still down. I looked out of the window and then down to the equipment, my mind darkly whispering to remind me of the fact that only one of my hands came down with the mask and the other was left empty.
 
I sat at my desk, watching the world outside grow dark, listening to her paint below me. Even though it no longer rained, she didn’t go out for her lunchtime stroll and I took a grim, perverse pleasure in that fact. When she finally finished, the pots clattered and the cloth ripped and everything took on a dark, nightmarish quality, tainting everything that went before. By the time I came down, she was already working on the food and the wine was already uncorked and halfway empty.
 
“Shall I set a place for the next infected neighbour? A zombie, perhaps?” Her voice was slurred but her anger was clear and bubbling at the surface. “I wasted a few hours with the paint pots. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Suzie, we have to talk about this,” I said, holding my voice. She sneered and poured herself another glass. It sloshed over the edges and trickled to the floor.
 
“What, about the end of the world?” She said, opening her eyes wide, mocking me. I had only ever seen her cruel-drunk once before, when she had said unbelievably cruel things to me and spent the next day, hung-over, apologising.
 
“About what we’re going to do next,” I said. I had noticed in the distance of the village fewer house lights appeared, making the place look smaller and sparse. A part of me wondered what that meant, while another piece of me, the logical piece, understood clearly.

“I’ve decided. I’m going to drive to the village and speak to them and sort this out. Satisfied?” She lifted her free hand up and I saw red-specks of paint under the nails; it looked as if she had run her hands through her scalp over and over.

“If you do that, we won’t have enough petrol to reach the harbour, if we need to,” I said. Her face squirmed at the idea I had already thought it through.

“And the petrol station, has that been seized by the werewolves, I suppose?” She messily sipped her drink and arched her eyebrow at me; when she was sober I found it sexy and teasing.
 
“In times of emergency, fuel’s the first thing people stock up on. It’ll be long gone by now,” I said, trying to stay neutral and not antagonise her.

“Let me ask you something, something that’s not about this…situation.” I waited but didn’t want to speak. “Have you ever not been scared?” she said.

I opened my mouth to speak but felt it dry up with the truth of her accusation. I saw a flicker of triumph in her eyes and then a wave of sadness and everything I needed to know was in her eyes for those few seconds. I saw that whatever love she had for me was not deep enough to last a lifetime and this…whatever it was, situation, crisis, had just come in place of another problem which would have ruined us. I reached into the bag I’d set aside, pulled out the mask and set it down on the table.
 
“Wear it for me, even if you don’t believe in it,” I said and waited for her to say something spiteful and true. Instead, she simply scooped it up, looked at it and then slipped it over her head. She stared at me for a long time; a strange, alien figure until I turned and walked away. There was only the sound of her oddly shaped breath filtering through the air between us to fill the silence.
 
****
                   
I woke from the living room as she showered and waited for her. We ate in silence and I was aware of how stagnant the air had become from the windows remaining shut. She collected the car keys and took the gas mask in her hand. She slipped it on so there was no way for me to kiss her goodbye, or even speak. I watched her reach the back-door and then, hating myself, draped the handkerchief over my mouth, closed the inner door and watched as she slipped out. I moved back through the house and followed her as she climbed into the car and started the engine, which coughed and spluttered but came alive eventually. The car shambled down the drive and I waited to see if she would turn right to the harbour or left to the village. The left indicator came on and she disappeared, her hands on the wheel and not looking back.

As soon as she was gone I dropped the handkerchief. I looked around and stared at the paintings. Those will be the first things to go, I thought. It took me a while, but eventually, I removed every trace of them, pots and brushes and all. After that, I packed up her clothes, her books and carefully stored them in the attic, where I had first found the rusty, old mask. When it was finished, I checked the pantry and made an inventory. It was dark by the time I locked the doors and dead-bolted them.

It was later still, by the time I had fashioned the planks of wood and hammered them across the inside of the doors and the windows. It was dawn by the time I felt the place was finally safe and secure and I noticed that once again, I had stayed awake through the night and sleep was again a strange and foreign thing to me. Now, that she was gone forever.