White Rabbit Story, March 2025.

Let's Pretend

South Shields is a coastal town in the north east of England. There is a street there renowned for its Indian Restaurants. Ocean Road, it’s called. The locals are proud of this street – it has been at the centre of Indian cuisine in the area for decades.

Let’s pretend there is a small, nondescript restaurant half way along a side street off Ocean Road that nobody can ever tell you the name of. This is either because the name changes too often, or perhaps it simply doesn’t have one. The place is rarely open; its hours are random and unknowable. I don’t know anybody who claims to have eaten there.

Let us agree, you and I, that at the rear of this restaurant there is a small cobbled yard, enclosed by high walls topped with daggers of broken glass set in concrete – an outdated, and now illegal, security method.

Let’s also imagine that the yard is full of fly-tipped rubbish: old, damaged furniture, obsolete-model television sets with their screens smashed in, rusting bicycle frames, mysterious tools with vital parts missing. The detritus forms a loose circle, almost a barrier, and at its centre there lies a dirty mattress covered in dark stains.

Something else to consider; another little flight of fancy:

At night, the mattress moves. It gently inflates, then deflates with a regular rhythm, and if one were to lean in close, one might hear what could be described as the sound of air passing through clogged pipes. If one were to examine the mattress closely, it might be said to have a peculiar shape: like that of a giant human lung.

I’ve heard that one night many years ago, a homeless man somehow managed to enter the yard. He lay down on the mattress to rest. He wasn’t there the next morning, and the stains on the mattress were darker, and wet. One of them resembled a bearded face, not unlike the mark on the famous shroud of Turin.

This is what I’ve heard, but I don’t like to listen to rumours.

Stories like that can get a person in trouble.

The guy who told me this story hasn’t been seen for sixteen months. I’d like to pretend there isn’t a new, somewhat familiar stain on that mattress, but I’m willing to bet there is.

Not that I’m prepared to go and look.

Oh, no, not me.

Not that.

It’s enough for me to walk past that glass-topped wall, listening to the sound like phlegmy breathing that comes from the other side. Keep on walking; never stop. Wishing that sixteen months ago my brother hadn’t told me what he suspected. Hoping that he didn’t really see it for himself. Imagining that he’s safe and sound, on a long trip somewhere, and he’ll be back soon. Very soon.

Until then, I’ll go on pretending.

 

© Gary McMahon, 2025