Walk home

Leaving the pub, wool coats buttoned tight and irresponsible shoes wobbling and clicking on cobblestones, we part at the lights.  Now I am only sounds; rhythmic pounding of cheap heels on cobbles, shallow breathing.  Now the city is quiet and I'm passing the old city council building, all stone spires and gables and turrets, rows of knobby needles stark black against a purple sky.  I enjoy this; envisioning myself wrapped in black lace and miles of black velvet, perched in a tower.  But I am walking faster, to have it over with; that place I must pass.  Cornhill Mental Hospital stretches along a full street; no other buildings but the empty shopping complex across the way.  Echoes from my heels follow close, convince me that my double has come to replace me; no one will never know I lie somewhere in a nether-world, kidnapped, with this echo pretending to be me.  Behind the stone wall bordering the hospital the blank eyes of windows are boarded up.  Bony trees leer interestedly over the wall.  Wind blowing at me, tearing at my scarf, turning eyes to water.  Breathing shallow now, faster now, I want to silence these confounded heels to see if the echo will stop when I do, or maybe they'll go on, and come closer.  Something skitters across the road, white and undulating it stops at a low wall.  Now something creaks almost behind my head what the hell.  How many crazies, are they all locked up, what about side doors what about unlocked gates what was that noise?

I'm no longer drunk.  I'm not ashamed to pray.  Then the thing happens that always happens.  As I pass a streetlight it goes off, just the one.  I resign myself to my fate but don't stop clicking on and saying a string of 'OurFatherwhoartinheaven' until I turn onto my street where I consider the possibility of my fright itself becoming a fearful, shadowy thing, walking beside me, echoing me into death.  Turning the lock in the door I turn my back to the door and walk in backwards to stop anything from coming inside, as my granny told me to do.