‘As the days pass in the continuous routine of institution, the white clock on the white wall becomes my only connection to anything remotely resembling normality. The friendly face of this sinister recorder of our dwindling days is conditioning me to salivate in the Pavlovian knowledge that at 8 a.m., 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. my meals will arrive fresh in their plastic trays’
I was going to write a story extolling the survivors, the thrivers, those hardy verdurous winners of herbage versus a summer of the brown, withered crunch of dearth; the thistles, bindweeds, knapweeds, wild horseradish and ragwort, fecund and green against all odds. But following recent events in my own struggle for life and existence, I would like to take you down a different path, where individual survival pales in the face of a far greater assimilation…
Admission
As I bounce along the scarred roads, the occasional glimpse of the outside world, a confusion through the smoked windows, my mood is one of non-acceptance. My green-clad companion glances and smiles, whilst engrossed in her work. Already I am becoming detached, my body and consciousness vying with each other for control. Fulgent lights and a hard pallet welcome me inside, whilst needles, always needles, invade my vasculature, further allowing my consciousness to separate and expand. I lie in a bubble of isolation as the holding area throngs about me, awaiting my turn to be abruptly distributed to my designated final destination.
The Room
The poison drips into my arm, a cloudy bane bent on seeking out the most resistant of foes, whilst extinguishing all others in its murderous rampage. At first this assault invokes a euphoric state, my disparate parts brought once more into alignment, as I feast upon the finest soft roast potatoes and microwaved chicken imaginable. But soon this tide of hormonal release gives way to the realisation that this moment has been 63 years in the waiting, quietly materialising in an unsettling certitude of four bleak walls and an adjustable bed.
The Weakening
As the days pass in the continuous routine of institution, the white clock on the white wall becomes my only connection to anything remotely resembling normality. The friendly face of this sinister recorder of our dwindling days is conditioning me to salivate in the Pavlovian knowledge that at 8 a.m., 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. my meals will arrive fresh in their plastic trays. These highlights,however, soon become frustrations, as eating becomes more difficult. Parts of my anatomy are now shutting down, devoid of their natural flora that has succumbed to the massacre. Even a brief desperate foray into the halal curry menu, an attempt tostimulate things, is in vain. I am becoming lessened by the day and the seriousness of the situation is sinking deeper and deeper into my thoughts; a multi-resistant being burrows into the very fabric of my existence. I had its name but, as much as I burrow after him, Klebsiella Pneumoniae always seems a step ahead, disappearing from view around yet another convoluted loop. But all the while I, too, am being hunted; a cloistered wolf is calling me in the darkness. Eventually I can deny it no longer; the time has come to face the greatest fear of all…which, as it happened, was not at all like what I had expected.
1970’s
As I turn to confront the beast, I become aware quite quickly that I am no longer fully in 2026. Part of me has travelled back to the late 1970s as if in some bizarre episode of Life on Mars. Over the next couple of days this experience becomes more vivid and consumes me more fully…and, as I write, it still hasn’t fully left me; not so much individual memories, but rather a feeling of those days, a state of mind, a sense of freedom and anonymity that is now all but lost. I suppose it was my consciousness activating safety circuits to separate me from my current dire situation, to halcyon days of punk rock, motorbikes and cheap cars. It certainly was like someone had slipped some mushrooms in my tea. But this was just the first tentative steps of acceptance and during the long nights I found myself falling deeper into those yellow eyes of death… Nothing really prepared me for what I found.
Assimilation
I begin to imagine myself lying on the ground under the twin oaks in my garden, the area I call ‘the portal’. Deeply meditating, I control my body’s natural rejection processes and allow myself to descend further into this state, until it becomes irrefutable. All is still within me and I can feel the cooling breeze on my naked body, the brush of the grasses and the first tentative explorations of small insects battling through my body hair. I go deeper still, physically sinking, to be slowly received by the yielding soil. I am able to ignore the chewing and biting insects, the inquisitive prowling of wary feral creatures, and as my skin begins to deteriorate, I feel the first touch of mycelium, welcoming me with feathered fingers. I allow it to colonise my body, drawing me into its filamentous embrace. My consciousness is still able to exist alongside my slowly dissolving body and I realise, with certainty, that this is the true meaning of enlightenment, of death and reincarnation, and even the notion of God; the true meaning of the universe. There is, with this realisation, a forcible summons to be clean of soul, to take just purity with me. I find myself able to discard the cloak of iniquity that we all carry with but the merest of shrugs and, by doing so, become once more part of the firmament, in the womb of universal motherhood. It feels like a joyous homecoming…
Reality
Did I experience a real glimpse of death or was it purely the result of poisoning by sepsis and antibiotics? I sense that it matters not. I certainly feel like I faced my Maker. I saw how being a stand-alone entity was only part of the story, how it was necessary for life to be finite, so as to return to the soup of creation as aningredient for new recipes, in the never ending rebirth of everything. I found a familiar warmth in that realisation; I had been there before. As we look around at the destruction and devastation of all that we hold dear, I feel it is but an interlude. The end is never the end. So let us not despair, let us take with us our love, stoicism and truth, because there will be beauty again and we will all be part of it.
Afterword
It has been six weeks since the surprise announcement that Mr Klebsiella was eliminated and I am still trying to adjust back to my old reality. The 1970s are slowly fading to their rightful place in time but I am not fully as I was. There is a duality that didn’t exist previously but now manifests as a deeper connection with the elements, a warmth that joins me to the ebb and flow of the universe. I have more peace within myself; probably a good thing, as I am still absolutely exhausted and the wolf howls faintly in the forest, plotting his return…
Knight Heron Langmere, Norfolk (September 2026)
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