Just a bloke running to the station. Not for any reason other than running is faster than walking and I never was one for bikes. Autumn at seven in the night. Mayfair looks just as beautiful as it does in the Summer. Bright lights reflecting off sleek surfaces. Lots of sleek surfaces in Park Lane, a sea of slowly moving cars and big red buses. Sirens fill the air and flashing blue lights. A procession of police cars and ambulances and your mind reaches out. Some poor bastard.
I run through black gates into Hyde Park, turn right and away from the gentle tides of the Serpentine. I'm close to five on the park's clockface, running anti-clockwise. You only see beautiful people running around Hyde Park, I have come to conclude. It's like a montage of every sportswear and cosmetic advertisement that ever contained shorts and trainers. And white iPod cables.
Bikes sweep passed, flashing lights hanging from every place. I pass joggers with L'Oreal hair swishing from side to side. Tanned muscles running in the opposite direction. Brave New World I always think. The blue flashing lights of the Police cars reach through gaps in the trees. I can hear more coming around behind. Something major. That's when it happened.
I'd like to say it went really slow but the truth is I never knew it was happening. Not at first. A flash of light from the same place as the sirens. Not just any flash of light, like Marble Arch is filled with spotlights and they all turned on at the same time. Dazzling, that much light makes you blink. Sending long shadows through the park. I recall orange like the dawn, seeing trees for a millisecond bending towards me. Like you see in pictures of hurricanes. A high pitched sound like demonic banshees charging towards me. Then it hit me. Nothing more than very hot air and a shit load of debris. It picked me up and didn't let go.
It was like I was back wearing a parachute but in that hurricane. Was aware of other bodies rolling with me, dolls with no control, flapping arms and legs at all angles. Just this invisible enemy that threw us all about with no thought for bones. I think back and that must have been me as well, rolling over and over. Leaves everywhere and that orange colour in the sky, the banshees really giving it some.
My head hit hard and I struggled to bring thoughts together. I kept rolling. Hitting something again, this time my back. Not sure if I was breathing anymore. But I kept rolling. Then an impact so hard all my bones felt dislocated at the same time. And so wet I must have been through water. But that was just blood from all the abrasions.
I opened my eyes and was grateful not to be moving. The wind kept coming but even that had lost its vengeance. The world a blurred mess and all wrong. Slowly it stopped being blurred and I was mostly upside down. Like a crucified Jesus, toppled on a mostly rolled over fence.
The body has two hundred and six bones and I had eight major breaks and forty two fractures. Which are smaller breaks. Somehow I turned myself around on that fence. Sat for a while looking back over Hyde Park. Looked like the hand of god got tired with the game and swiped the pieces from the board. Which I think is what happened, if you look at it in a certain way.
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