The Mariner

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___ _______ _____ __ _______ ____________ _________ __ ____ _________ __ ____ ___ _____ ______ ________ ______ ___ _ yet still the blood wouldn’t clear.

Vzzzzzzzz.

What? Why wouldn’t the blood clear? And clear what? The thought had been with him, but where was it now?

Christopher McConnell blinked as the hot substance dripped from his forehead and continued to seep into his eyes. Where was he? What was going on?

As abrupt as his consciousness, his seat lurched as if in the grip of an earthquake. An object in his hand slithered like a muscular snake. Terrified, he recoiled from it, screaming, desperate to get a grip on the situation, and forced his eyes open. The world was blurry, yet through the red mess clogging his lids he could make out a landscape hurtling closer.

He was driving! He was in his old second-hand ford, why hadn’t he known that before? The object in his hands was the wheel, turning uncontrollably as he careered off the road. No time to try to make sense of the situation, first he had to avoid the ___ _____ __ ______ __ ___ __ __ _ _

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___ ___ __ _____ ___ _____ ___ _ __ __ __ ____ ___ __ _ ___ _ ____ _

__ ____ _____ ___ ____ but all that echoed back was the sound of his own voice, terrified and childlike in its shrill terror.

The car was still. What just happened? Had he crashed? The front of the car was embedded in a small wall and the engine had stalled, but the bonnet didn’t look too badly damaged. The seatbelt bit into his chest, but apart from his head wound he felt fine.

His head! That’s what he’d been thinking about before. He had done something to get the blood out of his eyes. McConnell looked down and saw a dark red smear along his sleeve. He’d come-round mid-thought, as if awaking from a dream, and the thought had been about clearing his eyes. So it couldn’t have been a dream? Amnesia then? Or a brain aneurysm? He suddenly wished he’d watched more medical dramas on TV, or even better studied medicine! Perhaps then he might have a clue as to what was going on, and how he’d got here.

‘Here’ was a sparse wood divided by a long straight road. To each side was a small stone wall, age weakened enough to crumble at first contact with his car, offering nothing but a stalled engine as comeuppance.

The landscape seemed familiar in make-up, but not from any direct memory. The trees were evergreen… he supposed. McConnell had never been good at identifying flora and fauna, let alone determining his locale by them. In fact, McConnell had never been much good at anything, other than operating video cameras. For three years he’d practised this single skill in gainful employment for the BBC recording ‘Old To Gold’, a direct copy of a thousand other shows searching through peoples junk to find items that might fetch twenty quid at auction. The show lasted three long years before getting shut down for appalling ratings (and in a daytime slot, ratings could be pretty dreadful before being considered a liability). Suddenly his career as a cameraman came to a crushing halt. Dreams of working alongside great directors such as Raimi or Spate were thrown in the trash, right alongside with his Clapham flat and decadent lifestyle. Not that he’d been paid much for the antiques show, but everyone was in debt these days. Or at least they had been, until the damn credit crunch wotsit, when all of a sudden stores no longer offered you credit cards and his credit cards no longer worked in stores.

McConnell would have ended up on the scrap-heap, if not for a producer he’d worked with in year one of Old To Gold, since left for greener pastures. He was starting up a new show, a sort of funky documentary series called ‘Gibberish’ and it needed a researcher. Pretty low pay, but it was something. Actually, it turned out to be a lot of fun. It mocked groups and businesses that took advantage of the ignorant — alternative medicines, psychics, that sort of thing. Although the biggest targets were the organised religions, anything ranging from Islam to Scientology. The approach led to some pretty harsh reviews, but great ratings.

His father, a life-long Catholic, hadn’t been impressed. All his fears about his son joining the liberal media had been proven right, and when McConnell tried to move back into the family home (empty other than his father these past five years since Mum passed away) the old man had refused. Home or the job. McConnell chose the job, and moved into a bedsit.