The One Who Is Two (Book 1 of White Rabbit)

by Stuart Oldfield

At the gate the road turned sharply to the right. When he reached it, the girl had moved on; she was not more than thirty yards away from him, now moving with molluscan slowness, gazing around at the trees and the sky. He made to follow her but stopped dead. For on the other side of the gate were two people – a woman and a man – sinking slowly behind the crest of a low grassy hill.

  The woman had flowing hair as black as the night itself and wore a tiny dress of the brightest of bright reds, like a splash of freshly spilled blood against the brilliant blue of the sky. He caught her profile as she turned to speak to her companion: magazine model loveliness, with tanned skin and sculptured features.

  But for all the woman's allure, it was the man who caught his attention. For some reason, the disappearing torso filled his consciousness, hammering its presence into the back of his brain. The short hair was thinning from the forehead, and he wore glasses and a lime green tee-shirt with a flash of orange on the front. Slung casually over his left shoulder the man carried a jacket, a black jacket with a red lining. He felt something he couldn't identify, a tightness inside, cold and dark, which blossomed quickly into a unplumbed, all-encompassing loathing. Standing rock still, he was turned to stone, unable not to watch, boiling black blood pumping furiously through his skull. Then a moment later the man was gone, vanished behind the hill, and the terrible spell was broken. The empty grass rolled towards him like the ocean swell; he was breathing hard and he was afraid.

  The girl in white! He turned quickly and relaxed; she was still there, standing at the side of the road and pulling a flower from the hedge. She felt so close that he could reach out and touch her, pluck her out of his field of vision like taking a picture off a wall. As he watched the scene coalesced into a moving tableau of unbearable beauty: the girl in her dazzling white gown floating on the plastic river of tarmac as it flowed slowly between the undulating green banks, her dark hair flowing over her face to meet the startling blueness of the flower, a splinter of sky in her hand.

  Then another figure appeared behind her, a discordant pulse of ugliness, and the tableau shattered. It was a small fat man in a dark suit and a bowler hat. His chubby face was creased with worry and his stubby pin-striped legs sliced together like scissors as he walked briskly up the road, carrying a battered leather briefcase in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

  He shook his head and blinked vigorously, trying to get rid of this new, unwelcome blot, trying to restore the harmony. But the man caught his eye and raised the umbrella in greeting, then hurried forward to meet him. The ugly stain spread quickly across the loveliness, growing larger, closer, but he couldn't escape, he was trapped like a light-blinded rabbit. Then, when all seemed lost, the girl intervened; as the little man trotted past her, she stepped forward and took his arm, stopping him.

  The cool wash of relief quickly ebbed away, however, as the girl leaned up to whisper to her chubby new friend, her body touching his with a revolting familiarity. The fat man tried to pull away, indicating at him with the briefcase. But she held her prey, talking softly to him and turning him away. He struggled again and this time she kissed him, pressing her lips onto the quivering pink jowls. The little man's struggles now became feeble, like an exhausted salmon, and as he collapsed into her control she took his umbrella and led him away down the road like an obedient puppy.

  His short-lived relief was now replaced by a sharp sense of betrayal. How could she desert him like this? It couldn't be true; there must be some mistake. Any minute now she would send the little man on his way and come back to him, he knew she would, she was bound to. But even as these thoughts jabbed through his mind, the girl was stepping off the road, leading her man into the woods on the left. The incongruous pair was now encased in a horrible and exclusive intimacy and, choking on jealousy and betrayal, he watched helplessly as they disappeared into the enveloping greenery.

  Now he was really alone. Completely alone. Utterly alone. He stared blankly up the empty road as the hot tarmac arched and rolled towards him, and the hedges and trees twisted and swayed with slow deliberation. A cold snake of fear slithered up his spine. It was all now so oppressively close, the trees and the sky crowding against him, the tarmac smothering his awareness with a crawling intimacy. He pushed at the air, fighting for space, but still it pressed in on him, the whole of creation forming an existential rugby scrum with him at its centre. Then suddenly, just as he was about to collapse under the great weight, it lurched back, the trees and the sky hurling themselves away from him, stretching into the dizzy distance, further than he could ever hope to reach. He staggered forward into the gaping void – and it was all back again, crushing in on him, tight and suffocating. The fear-snake coiled into his skull and a hurricane of panic whirled through his brain.

  He spun round to escape the hideous oscillations, first turning back to the gate then over towards the bridge. But it wouldn't stop, the oppressive closeness and dizzying distance still alternated wildly – and then blended, combining into one hideous blur of suffocation and vertigo. He jammed his eyes closed to shut it out – but they were all still there, the gate, the road, the field, writhing on the undersides of his eyelids. A scream ripped through his skull, but the noise coagulated silently in the plastic air. He ran forward, but his feet refused to obey.

  And then gravity was no more. As a panorama of tarmac slid by under him he could see the tiny stones, each embedded in its coat of black tar, each so different from, and yet at the same time so alike, those that surrounded it. They moved past in slow motion, coming gently towards him with an unhurried languor like hundreds of black, luminous friends.

  Then, with an explosion of light and colour and jolted twisting limbs, gravity made a come-back.