DISCONNECT

I’m where I should be, at the family party, pouring champagne for everyone when it happens.  I start to lose interest.  In panic I try desperately to involve myself in a conversation about the premier league with my brother, but he smiles indulgently, like his younger sister couldn’t possibly know a thing about football.  I then try and talk finance with my father, but he reminds me I have no savings to invest.  Careless of me.

My mother directs me to fill more glasses.  I look at all the faces and hear the same conversations spilling out of mouths.  The warmth is sucked from the room and the music dies in my ears.  I can feel the weight of the bottle in my hand, but that is all.  I put it down on the table because I’m afraid I’m going to drop it.  Desperately I try to make eye contact but everyone is in deep conversation – my parents, my brother, their friends and the man who got through to me for a season.  I feel nothing, no love, no sense of belonging and I want to scream for help.  I am receding.  I try to cling to the sound of the little girl playing in the garden, but it won’t save me.  If I feel no love for a child, then there is no hope for me.

The scene begins to roll back, the cream wall paper is replaced by a deep black night.  The people, table and chairs disappear and the carpet is replaced by a sea of litter.  I am alone in a midnight junk yard, standing amongst the grey rubble of my life, illuminated by floodlights.  Broken dolls, thrown away clothes, bottles, ancient furniture.  The scene is all too familiar to me.  A hand touches my shoulder, I spin round and he is there, face all confusion; “What is this place?”

I’m galvanised into action, no-one has come with me before and it’s dangerous here; “Quick!  We must find it before it’s too late!”
“What?” he asks.
“You’ll know it when you see it!”
I begin my search desperately through the crap built up over years.  It has to be buried here somewhere.  He asks me no more questions, but begins to hunt too, wrenching aside a rocking horse and feeling underneath.  We hear the sound in the background, the growing sound of engines, of junk being ground down under wheels.
“They’re coming!  Oh God!” I cry because they normally give me more time.  I can see them in the distance, great engines, ploughing everything inwards in front of them, crushing everything else.
He doesn’t panic like I do, he simply reassures me that we’re going to find it, that it’s definitely here.  I wonder how he can know.  I tear up a girls world doll head, nothing under it, I look inside an old cupboard, it’s empty.  The juggernauts are getting closer.  We can hear nothing now but the sound of bending metal, crunching glass and machinery as loud as freight trains in the night.
“Got it!” he yells and hands it to me, just as they close in.

I pick up the champagne bottle from the table and continue my rounds, I can feel my heart beating in my chest, feel its warmth at the sound of the child’s play and the voice of my mother.  I reach him and hold his shaking hand steady as I refill his glass, my eyes meet his; “That was close,” I murmur.