Nobody (A Short Story) [Originally written 2nd November 2012]

The sun shined all the way over the city skyline as a young man sits at a bus stop. It’s 7am and he’s ready for a weekend back at home. Seeing old friends, seeing family and staying somewhere familiar. He’d loved moving away but he missed home too. His job at a law firm was stable and paid well but that was only because he was alone. He hadn’t had a partner in a long time and he felt like no-one would ever love him. He lived alone and spent his nights in front of the telly watching Dragons Den and TOWIE and ate mostly take-aways. Any time he didn’t spend doing this he was at the gym working off last night’s pizza or something.

Despite only being away for a year he was starting to feel afraid for himself. 6 months previous to today, there’d been a murder on his estate. He was petrified of going out at night and got 6 extra locks fitted on his door so he could feel safer. It seemed that the city wasn’t the safe haven his ex-girlfriend had told me.

“I grew up there. And I didn’t turn out bad did I?” She once said to him. But after moving there, and their break-up, he tended not to listen to that. She lied to him about so many things before why not lie about this as well?

Soon after this over-reaction, he became almost completely withdrawn from everyone. His boss at the firm invited him out for late night drinks after winning a high-profile case but he refused out of fear for his safety. He also refused to go out with some friends who lived not too far away for the same reasons. Instead they would have weekly nights in. Which annoyed and concerned his mates. But this was ill-fated because soon after they got girlfriends. Leaving him behind a little bit more.

Alone in his flat, he continues to sit there munching on chow mein, drinking Becks, trying to forget the life he’d made for himself. And it was so promising. Good grades at school, great friends, some fantastic memories. And the he got the law apprenticeship in the city. So he packed up his old life and tried to start anew. But he didn’t realise it’d be this hard. He didn’t realise the real world was so strange. And sometimes he’d felt his parents had lied to him.

“It’ll be fine”, they’d say, “you’ll get a job, get a house, a car, then you’ll meet someone who’ll one day be your wife. Or husband if that’s what you’d prefer. Life works out in the end”.

Well it’s alright for them, they’ve had a stable life for 21 years. Married for 25, together for 28,  two kids, two cars, house, mortgage, proper picket-fence life. But what has he got? A flat, a job, a bed, a sofa and a Prison Break box-set. This is not what was promised to him. This is not what his parents meant at all. He felt insignificant, a failure, someone that didn’t matter. A nobody.

And so, he gets on the bus at 7:11am with a backpack on his shoulder heading for the little rural town he called home. He wasn’t sure what he’d expect when he got home and he didn’t want to let onto his parents that he was struggling with things. His sister may cotton on but she won’t say anything. She’s got a kid to worry about now. But he stops thinking about that for the moment. He sits down and tries to find something to make him smile. He looks around for inspiration but finds none. Desperate to think something happy, he picks up a newspaper. The front page says “Soldier killed in Afghanistan by rogue police officer”. Definitely not something to make him smile. So he gives up looking and decides to carry on with the journey, whatever shit it brought to his day.

Half an hour later he got off at the bus station and walked through the city centre to get to the station. But on his way, he passed a mother and a child. The mother was trying to carry all the shopping bags while trying to call a taxi to pick them up to take them home. The child however had other ideas and was trying to get out of his buggy. He tugged at the strap keeping him in his pram and tried to struggle free. After a short while he managed to. And started to run towards the road.

Slightly further up the road, a bus was driving down. The man looked and realised that the child would be hit by the bus by the time he got onto the road. And then he suffered a conflict of interest.

“Do I try to stop that child…or do I stand back?”

After a split second of thought, the man dropped his back pack and ran for the child. And then it was down to chance. If he was unsuccessful, at least he tried. And you can’t do anything but try right?

The man ran as fast as he could towards the racing child before the bus got to him first. He hadn’t run this fast since Year 8 sports day when he won the gold medal for the 100m. Would he be able to do it again?

People started to notice the situation and started to scream for help. The mother of the child turned around and realised. She cried frantically for her child to come back. But the child was blissfully unaware of the fate that awaited him.

The man finals got to the road. Seconds away from what could be the worst day of his life. He raced forward some more and grabbed the child. He continued to run to the other side just as the bus passed them. With centimetres to spare. They both fall to the floor and try to take in what just happened. People were surprised at to what this man had done and started to congratulate him. He looked at the child who was crying from fear.

“It’s ok little man…you’re alright. Just don’t do that again yeah?”

The little boy nodded. The mother ran over and grabbed the child from the man’s arms and comforted him. She looked to the man who had rescued her son and gave him an evil look.

“And I suppose you want a reward or something?”

The man looked shocked. He shook his head confused.

“No. I’m just glad you’re sons alright!”

She looked at him snobbishly again.

“Well…thanks I suppose!”

She grabbed her sons arm and stormed away. People looked disgusted about her reaction and continued to congratulate the man for what he’d done. They then soon went back to their daily lives. He got up, brushed himself down and walked back across the road to collect his backpack. Next to his backpack was an elderly man with a walking stick. Of 80, maybe 90. He smiled at the man as he picked up his back pack.

“That was quite something you did there son”.

The man looked at the elderly man and looked confused.

"Maybe. I’m just glad the kid’s ok”.

“Yeah. But she could’ve been nicer about it!”

The man nodded as he slung his bag over his shoulder. The elderly man continued.

“I just wanted to say something to you. I wanted to say that I’ve only ever seen something else like that once before in my life. It was on the beaches in 1944. There were bullets everywhere, German and our own. Bombs going off, people losing arms, legs and everything else. Body parts everywhere. It was worse than hell itself. I was about your age at the time. I got onto the beach eager to hunt some Jerrys. I was on the beach for 20 seconds when a bomb went off near me and sent me flying. I landed on a spike and it went right through my right leg. It was the single most excruciating experience I had ever felt. And where I’d landed was in a vantage point for the enemy. I was a sitting duck. But then a young man came over to me through the bullets and chaos and came to help me. He became a sitting duck too. I told him to go but he refused and he lifted me up off the spike. He then ran me over to the medic who managed to patch me up. After dropping me off, I thanked him and he ran off back into the battle. I took his name. Corporal James Hunt was his name. I tried to find him after the war. But I found out that he was killed shortly after helping me. And I couldn’t do anything to stop it”.

The man looked upset by this story. But the elderly man smiled.

“But do you know what the good thing is about this story? Corporal James Hunt saved my life that day. And I was able to thank him. And although that little boy can’t thank you in person, he will one day in absentia. And it was nice to see a Corporal Hunt again. You are the sort of person we fought that godforsaken war for. It’s for people like you that we won it for. And it’s for people like you that we did win”.

The elderly man walked off and left the man on his own. He reflected on what the old man said and he realised something that he’d needed to realise.

He wasn’t a nobody anymore…