#9 Echo Music

Hannan stared into the dirty shaving mirror and groaned.  She hadn't had those terrible brown bags under her eyes last July; crescent shaped endurance awards hanging from her lower lids announcing "Worse Summer Ever: Gold Winner".  Depressingly, she thought how refreshed she ought to be looking for this first day back at teaching.  Was a face like this really worth the approximate £34, 658.08 she would be paid this year? 

She turned off the hot tap and threw handfuls of ice cold water onto her eyes.  What a terrible mistake. She still couldn't believe she'd gone hiking alone in Romania without knowing about the wild dogs. Drying her face she looked down at her legs.  Yes they were still there, despite the beast's attempts to gnaw them off her.  The shepherd had said afterwards that she was lucky.  Lucky! All that was left of the attack now though, was a constellation of small red dots on each leg where the beast's teeth had pierced her skin, and, a tendency to tremble like jelly in an earthquake at sudden sounds such as a dog barking, or any animal making any noise, or the doorbell, or the kettle switching off, or a text arriving, or someone calling out "hello" (not necessarily to her) in the street, or the sound of a letter dropping through the letter box (either in her flat or at the neighbour’s above), or fridge noises in the night, or brakes squeaking in the car park  below her windows, or announcements in the supermarket.  Maybe she wasn't ready for school, maybe should have asked for sick leave.

Hannan's colleague Simon was already on his way to the school.  He thought he'd get in early to top up his caffeine levels in the staffroom.  He'd been up most of the night with insomnia.  Usually he slept like a baby; his lovers always commented how suddenly he'd tip into sleep with no warning.  But not now, he felt completely changed and all in the space of a few summer weeks.  It was bad to be out of the house.  He had become fixated on typing different combinations of similar words into his search engine: "adult child of deceased polygamist support group", "sudden knowledge my father was a polygamist but my mother does not know support group", "new half siblings at age 40, dead father a waste of space forum".

Brendon, also on his way to the school, was still thinking about the only thing he'd thought about for two weeks now.  His tan was fading but his memory (however reliable that was) wasn't.  Like a mantra from a horror film, his mind played out the sequence of events; that morning with its stark white sky, he was on the way to the airport back home, lowering the suitcase into the boot of the hire car, walking round to the driver's door and then seeing the streak of cracked red something along the lower edge of the windscreen and across part of the bonnet, the breath rushing out of him as he realised it was blood, then trying...trying.... to recall what happened the night before on his way back to the villa, trying to work out how drunk had he been, trying to remember everything.  Oh god! What if he'd killed someone?  But he had no memory at all of any crash or incident on the road.  So now, his waking moments were plagued and he was also living with the fear that at anytime there would be a knock at his door.  The word extradition echoed round his head. 

      "You're so brown Brendon!  And Hannan! How wonderful to see you!  How are you both? Long holiday, eh?"  Simon shook Brendon's hand warmly and gave Hannan a hug, chuckling.  The three grinning teachers strode enthusiastically through the school gates towards the staff room.

©LolaPerrin2010