By Rebecca Milne
The councillor said I should read it, “live by its words”, easy for her to say she hasn’t tried doing the opposite. The book was called “breathe” by jean hall. It had a side note beside a tree saying “simple breathing techniques for a calmer happier life”. I’ve heard about a friend reading this and he ended up hanging himself on a tree, just like the one on the cover.
Given the advice I had took the book home and started reading, I though how much harm could a book do. I only read it to make my mind go less suicidal but the words on the page started jumping out at me. Surrounding me and putting ideas in my mind.
It taught me about heart rate, pulse and how to lead an un-stressful and healthy lifestyle – well that’s how others would see it. The information I had whilst reading was different. That night I took it to bed, though I’d read a chapter or to. It might make me sleep better.
I was about to put it down some time later when a voice flooded my mind. It was my friends – the one who’d hung himself. He was talking to me about what he’d though about the book and like me he said he’d learn more than how to increase beats per minute. Like me he’d learnt how you could stop breathing. My mind is troubled by these new ideas. I pick the book up again and I faintly see a hangman’s rope on one of the branches. I flick to see the next chapter and it consumed me.
The voices played in my head and as I read I found myself crying at my friend’s death. Before long I put the book down again, turned over to hopefully catch some sleep. I put my hands over my ears but I could still hear the voices. I lifted a pillow to drown then out. Then something took hold of me, a new idea droned my mind- just as the pillow is now covering my face. Instead of realising this strange happening and trying to stop it, I drown the voices out for good. I tug at the pillow once more… I have my last breath.
The last scratch of air slips from my lungs, as I’m halfway between life and the anonymous. I think of my friend but no longer feel sad, I somehow feel closer to him. I don’t know where I am but its cold and with a slight breeze. It’s dark like night. I try and walk but find something in the way of my step. That cursed book, it’s here too – where ever here is.
I see nothing but darkness around me but occasionally I hear the twitching of a tree branch. Then I hear a scream and then a crash. I look around and see my friend emerge in front of me. I thought he was dead but he mustn’t be, as here he is. It’s until he comes closer that I realise the rope burn along his neck. His face is white and eyes bloodshot but yet here he stands, in front of me.
“What is this place?” I ask him. He shakes his head and shrugs with no reply. I wonder if he can speak, or is there something about this world that changes people. Sure enough, he meets my eye and says
“I thought you would know, the last thing I knew I was climbing a tree, I read a book. I can’t remember the name or what happened of it but after reading a couple of pages I found myself here”.
I must have looked shocked as I then touched his neck and the marks that covered it. I expected him to flinch but he just looked confused.
“Does it not hurt?” I ask, curiosity taking over.
“Does what not hurt? Are you ok? You’re very pale” he asks.
We both stare at each other. Wondering if we can see something in one another that as ourselves could not see. We both came to the conclusion that to resolve our questions we need to see our own reflections.
“Is there any mirror or glass around here?” I ask. My friend shakes his head and reply’s
“I’ve looked around or tried to but all I could see was a river”. He points over a small grass bank. We look at each other then run over the bank. Just like young kids we reach the top laughing, yet our breath does not restrict us. We fall to the floor and roll down until stopping at a verge of the river. I sit up and kneel, my friend copies me a few spaces away.
I look to see my reflection in the clear waters but the face I see is not one I recognise. I seem to see a girl with darker hair then me with a face like she suffers insomnia. I’m still wearing my nightie but then the hair I see must be mine only drenched in water or sweat. My eyes are also bloodshot with massive purple bags around them. As my friend explained, my face was very pale. Deathly pale.
I stand up and look over my friends shoulder. Yet I see his reflection is what he looked like in our old world, he did not look like that here. The same as me, he’s also making relations between what I said and what he sees and feels. He must be able to see
his white face, bloodshot eyes and rope burn. He touches his neck but feels no pain but in his reflection he’s screaming. His face is creased with pain and my friend must be able to hear something. I look at myself again, in the river. All I hear is a heartbeat. It’s beating fast but then as I go to stand up, the beating stops.
It’s now that my friend is actually screaming. The sound his reflection made must have scared him as he is now trying to wave it away. As soon as his hand ripples the water, something grabs his wrist. A hand appears followed by a head.
A little boy, about 5 or 6. After wed got him surfaced and calmed down he said the last thing e remembered was reading a book then looking for a fish in the river. I gave my friend a look of knowing then turned back to the boy and said
“What was the book? Where were your parents? What made you look for the fish?”
I only asked the fish as I had seen none but then again id only looked into the river whilst in this world. The child looked up, his face a mixture of rosy red cheeks and deathly pale skin. His eyes looked red, the kind of eyes you’d get when you’ve opened your eyes under water or been crying for too long. The boy blinked then replied.
“I can’t remember the name but I thought it would be a Goosebumps or gory fiction, it wasn’t. It was quite bad actually. My mummy had taken me out for a picnic. I was reading the book and then…” the child trailed off. Returning to look at the ground.
“I heard a voice, it didn’t sound like my mummies, but it told me to look for the fishes in the river. I had a thought that made me forget I can’t swim”. I knelt down and the child spoke again.
“For a moment I thought I could swim, I saw a beautiful black and silver angel fish then it was gone. Now I’ve met you “. My friend listened intently the same as me and as I wrapped my arms around the boy my friend asked
“What did it sound like? The voice” the child looked over my shoulder and answered
“It was a girls voice, I thought it was mummy’s but”. He paused and pulled out of my arms. “She sounded like you”. I’m quite surprised by this but my friend seems to be at some understanding.
“Mine sounded like her too” my friend said. He looked back into the river and the boy ran over to stand beside him.
I was confused, yet full of knowing. This is starting to make sense. My friend on the other hand is busy putting the child on his shoulders and making friends with him. The child hesitates to grab his neck or head.
“Its ok, go ahead” my friend tell him. “My names Robert by the way and the last thing I knew I was climbing to the highest tree branch, I thought how close was to the sky”. The child gasped in wonder and giggled.
“My names billy. Billy brown and I thought I saw fishes”. The pair started walking and giggling as they went. You wouldn’t think of the impossibility of this. Robert and billy were giggling and I think billy thought he was a plane. Robert held onto him as he spread his arms out, catching the breeze on his shirt.
I don’t know where we are, or what’s going to happen but right now I felt like my heart couldn’t be beating faster. Well… that would be a good feeling if could feel my heart beating to start with. I go to join the pair of giggling boys when I hear a shriek.
Billy drops carefully off Roberts’s shoulders and runs to catch my hand. Before I know it we are running to find where the noise came. We follow the river for what seems like ages but none of us are panting but the time we reach a bridge. Robert steps onto the white wooden panes first, cautiously. He caught a glimpse of something, came back to us and got me to leave billy at the foot of the bridge. I walked onto the bridge with Robert beside me.
Then I saw it … the bloodstains on the white paint of the bridge. A girl in her early 20’s with a stab wound going through her chest. As I observed in horror Robert tried to get the girl to stand but she said it hurt when she moved.
“I’m Sarah” the girl said. I’m starting to understand this now, I tried not to be rude but I saw half of the book flapping in the breeze next to Sarah. As I picked it up, Robert stared and then grabbed at his backpack. He pulled out the other half. He passes it to me as I went back down the bridge to billy, calling back to the pair
“I’m going to end this, or at least try to”. I reach billy and look into his innocent face.
“We need a bookmark billy, do you reckon you could pick us a flower”. Billy’s face lit up as he said
“Of course, the best flowers are near the river” he runs a few paces then kneels down. He picks a white lily then returns to me with it in his hands.
“A water lily” he says. I give a small laugh, take his hand and rush us to the bridge. I stop a little few steps up the bridge and turn to billy.
“This is Sarah billy, she’s very poorly but we ae going to take her home, we are going to take you home. You just need to be brave ok, billy. Just breathe and be brave”. He nods and walks with me, hand in hand until we reach Sarah and Robert. We sit up and stare at each other.
“There’s something we haven’t done whilst being here, something we’ve learnt. Guys all we need to do is… breathe”. I start chanting whilst fixing the lily into the middle of the 2 parts of the book.
“In and out, in and out” I call. Robert, Sarah and billy all try doing what should be human nature. I breathe in and as I breathe out I whisper the word “breathe”.
I see a flash of light and when I open my eyes I see curtain. Faintly I hear the sound of heart monitors. My consciousness returns and my heart beats faster, I can’t feel it but I can hear it. I’m awake. I’m alive. I’m breathing. In the next week I stay in the care of doctors “just in case” but eventually I build up the strength to walk the wards. Little did I know that the occupants of the rooms next door war billy the boy who drown and Robert the friend who’d hung himself. All alive and breathing.
We had our adventure and got brought back to reality. It was not until we all got cleared and we all walked out of the emergency ward when we saw a bed being rushed in. sheets covered in blood, and a girl lying very still on it. We realized then that not all of us got out of the book breathing.
We returned many times to see Sarah but her wounds were too drastic. Within a week Sarah was deceased. Her body too mangled and exposed to be healed, even with modern medicine. Robert and I went to her funeral to lay a bunch of lilies, unfortunately billy could not attend due to his age.
Months later we returned to school. No one really noticed wed gone anywhere. Not to mention wed been dead or not breathing for an adventure. As it were not in this world no one would believe us. No one except mine and Roberts’s councillor, who simply asked “how was the book?”
Well our book review would be out of this world, better hold your breath…
Comments
Post a Comment