Take Back The City - Part One of the 'Life in London Town' series

8 - A Sleepless Night

A shadow emerged from the smoke and the inferno of the shop, hunched over in one corner. I couldn’t help but stand there at the end of the cobbled street, staring. In the end, I had to leave. The odds of another attack were just too high for me to stay, but for the length of the journey back to meet with the rest of the Brigade at Centre Point – assuming they made it out of the on-going skirmish at Cambridge Circus - I couldn’t help but wonder; ‘What have I done?’

‘What have I done?’

‘What have I done?’

‘What have I done?’

The words bombarded me. I tumbled about the hammock, flinching, contracting as metaphorical punches slammed into my body, punches formed of the crippling image that had burnt itself subconsciously into every piece of grey matter in my brain. I shook. I cowered. I darted side to side, trying to leave the horrifying image behind, but it was no use. No matter where I went, how much I tried to hide, how much I forced it aside, the image, that terrifying image guilt had branded me with, remained as a scar in my retina. I was a ball, struggling to face a world I had just made into a living hell for someone. I was a ball, an emotional wreck, and my muscles did not wish for that ball to release itself. The image of the smoke, the wailing silhouette, the whole streetscape of death and destruction was stabbing its way through my skin and gassing my nose and my throat like chemical weaponry. When I shut my eyes, even the tiniest bit, I saw it. Guilt had sent electric shocks through my entire body, never letting me take even a second’s rest. The memory was like a prison and sleep was the handsome man waiting, arms outstretched, on the outside. Unfortunately, this was not a prison one could simply be released from.

Sniffling sounds filled the still, dust-filled air enshrouding Newburgh Street. A shrill wail followed a few seconds later, and grew louder and louder with every second that followed. A shadow emerged from the smoke and the inferno of the shop, hunched over in one corner. I couldn’t help but wonder; ‘What have I done?’

A spasm shook my body. Tears made my eyes into melting pools of ice, which slipped down my cheeks. I couldn’t hide from my guilt, or from the horror. I couldn’t sleep – there was no chance of that happening while I was in this state. I couldn’t even comfort myself on the feather-bed of nostalgia; my photograph – or rather, my Dad’s photo – was gone, long gone, floating in the winds over Soho, Trafalgar Square or, perhaps, Haymarket. Another spasm hit me. Air in, air out, air in, air out; in, out, in, out, in, out; I was hyperventilating. My body was in lockdown. I couldn’t move. My senses were disabled, my nerves shot to pieces, malfunctioning, tangled up like wires behind a television so that the fault was untraceable, not to mention unfixable.

I raised myself to sit bolt upright; I had finally broken free of the ball. Everywhere I looked, the silhouette stared back at me: the grey walls, the sharp, jagged floor, even the dust-ridden, exposed tiles. I had nothing to be guilty about, just as Oscar had told me not two hours earlier. ‘These things are an inevitability of conflict,’ I told myself, but the words just would not sink in. I was the guilty one. I could’ve killed the person behind the silhouette; he wasn’t dead when I left him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dead now. I had put a life at risk and left without batting an eyelid. ‘What have I done? What have I done?’

There was nothing else for it; I was going to have to relieve myself of my guilty conscience in the only way I could. I slipped silently from the hammock, making sure not to wake Will and Oscar, who had thankfully, in the time since their arrival, dropped off into a deep sleep, opened the heavy, black iron door, and dropped down a trapdoor into the room below.

“Nox?”

Unfortunately, there was one person I hadn't accounted for. There were three boys living down here, and one of them was still awake.