A bolt slides sideways and a gate opens, but I don’t walk through it. For many years I longed for this moment. Then I feared it would never come. Then I feared it would. I am an old man. I don’t belong out there. It’s not my world anymore.
I no longer think about what I’ve done. I ran out of new thoughts about it long ago. Simply, I did it. I did those things. I can’t explain why. I could justify it once. Not now. They seem to me the actions of a madman. Is that what rehabilitation is? I have learned to live with it. With myself. That is all.
I step forward before I am fully ready. The gate closes immediately behind me and I stand on the empty pavement looking both ways. I don’t know what for. The road is lined with small trees, not much taller than twice my height. They have been planted an equal distance apart and somewhere in my brain I acknowledge and appreciate the symmetry. I look upward. I have missed the sky. I have seen it of course, but it is different out here. Different mainly in its unhindered expanse. There is nothing up there at all. Nothing solid. Just wide openness.
I walk towards the nearest tree and under it. It is cool in the shade. The contrast is stark and sends a shiver snaking down my spine. They are lime trees. I can smell the sharp citrus in my nostrils. I pull one off the branch and rub it against my face. A single sob splutters out of me, but I gather myself before I am overwhelmed. And now I wait. Something will happen. Something always happens. No. Not that again. I am different now. I look each way down the road again. For unexplained reasons I expect something horrible to come around the corner at any moment. I don’t know what the horrible thing will look like.
On the opposite side of the road a woman is standing on the pavement looking at me. She is in the open. Where was she before? But she’s not a woman at all. She’s me. A different version of me. I know her. I don’t know her. She is a stranger. I know her name.
She begins to say something, but as she does so a car passes between us. The driver has their window down and snatches of song catch in the wind and then vanish. She has stopped talking now. I want to know what she said. I want to say something back. An ocean of words pours in and I can’t tell them apart. It’s impossible to capture the lost decades in a single sentence. She turns and walks away.
The sob I suppressed a moment ago returns. It is more powerful now. It overcomes me. It forces me back against the tree and I slide down its trunk until I’m sitting at its base. I don’t know why I’m crying. My reasons are like the words; there are just too many to identify just one.
‘Daddy?’
I can’t look at her. I have done wrong things. She is touching my shoulder now. I can’t look at her. I think of all the ways in which I misrepresented myself. I was a superhero. I could walk on water. Her hand is reaching down to take mine. She is pulling me to my feet. I still can’t look at her. I turn my face away. Our shadows are flat and still on the pavement. There is a gap between them. Not a wide gap. The gap closes and now there is just one shadow.
Day 8,379.
THE END