Fic: One of These Mornings, white cortina, by Sytaxia
Every night, Gene can hear the sounds over the car radio. “Do you hear that?” Sam’s voice, the last words that he had ever spoken. Babbling on about sommat on the radio, the same way he had during his turbulent first year at the station. Every morning, he woke in a cold sweat, feeling for the familiar touch of Vera on the empty half of the bed.
Walking through the crowds, he would catch a glimpse, every now and then, of black leather, and turn sharply on his heel, only to find nothing but the endless see of blank faces staring back at him. Every day, he would see flashes of light from a phantom saint Christopher medal dancing around the aimless, shuffling crowds, hear soft laughter amid the droning mumbling of the city, and turn to find nothing where he expected to see a familiar smile. There was never anyone there, when he looked, never anything to see.
Ghosts haunted his every step. With every passing day, more glimpses showed through the crowds, and with every turn, every stare, he saw nothing. Each morning as he drove into work, the city ceased to be his, ceased to be the living, breathing thing that he was meant to protect from harm, and faded into a dull, lifeless silhouette. Yet another in the long procession of ghosts that ambled past him, drifting through time and space as he drifted through the crowds. There was nothing here, nothing but ghosts.
Ray and Chris had remained loyal, had stayed with him, had followed him when the ghosts had gotten to be too much. In a new city, a bright urban sprawl, he thought that he would stop seeing the little signs, the flashes of leather and silver in the light. But they were still there, dancing at his peripheral vision, just out of reach. He would turn and look at his loyal followers, and soon they, too, started to become ghosts. No longer the patrons of familiar pubs, they were cosmopolitan wine bar nutters, skinny ties and curled hair, creatures of the new world. He couldn’t bring himself to sit with them as they drank, couldn’t bring himself to join in their celebrations. What was there to celebrate?
And how long before they, too, became ghosts? How long before either of them faded out, lingering after a crash, a shot, a fall? It was the fear of staying too close to them, more than the fear of becoming lost in the new world that he didn’t belong to, that drove him to sit in his own corner, to try to drown out the ghosts. Each morning he wondered when they, too, would be gone, taken by the darkness that he felt he could no longer defeat, or worse, taken by the realization that they could operate on their own, without him. They were already doing that, weren’t they? Schemes and plans and their “good cop, bad cop” routine. Traces of the men that he once knew, once loved, like sons or brothers fading into strangers.
And every morning, he would still look, and wonder, was Sam still there, turning over his own shoulder, searching for him in the great industrial jungle of the north? Was there someone else turning around, searching the crowds, scanning faces that blurred into a single mash of unknown features, a crush of uncaring, unthinking bodies drifting through the streets?
Every morning he would look, but what he was searching for was gone.