The Fall of Man

Part I chapter 3

Chapter 3

In their suburban home at 23 Arlington Close, Joanna Bale’s body jerks with yet another gag reflex. Noisily, she retches into the glossy white toilet bowl in her first floor en-suite bathroom. Her stomach heaves with monster-truck force, her insides contracting in on themselves over and over again, until nothing remains. Finally, the spasms pass. She breathes a ragged sigh of relief and rests her head.

The ceramic rim feels wonderfully cool on her cheek; the sensation penetrates through thick clouds of fog that have gathered around her senses. Beads of moisture stand on the skin of her neck and forehead like tiny hemispherical glaciers on a sea of heat. Her eyes swim in salty lakes, blurring her vision. Beneath the sculpted bulge of the wall-mounted WC pan, a few wisps of hair and dirt have gathered together to form a tiny tumbleweed, undetected until now. A wry smile flits across Joanna’s lips as she imagines the paroxysms of fear that such a sight would cause Arnold.

Then the cramp returns like a twisting knife in her guts, bending her entirely double onto the floor. Her teeth grind involuntarily inside her head, and she can feel the grit of the painkillers rubbing between them like fine grains of sand. The pain abates again and she wipes some of the thick yellowish spittle off her chin with the shoulder of her nightdress. Slumping back against the tiled wall of the bathroom, she squints up to the ceiling. The harsh fluorescent light overhead fragments into a sunburst of colours in her watery vision.

So much for an easy way to go. After thirty nine long years, each squandered day chained inexorably and uneventfully to the next, this is how it ends. How appropriate. Blinking back tears, she shakes out another handful of pills into the palm of her hand.

In the quiet of the bedroom behind her, a third empty pharmaceutical bottle has traced a cosmic arc across the heavily varnished pine floorboards. It now rests beneath the bed, rocking gently to and fro, alongside her husband’s fluffy white towelling slippers.