Free A Cleansing of Souls by Stuart Ayris

gracefully faded behind the trees, going down in a blaze of pink and orange, and the birds staggered and stumbled to their treetop homes. A slight breeze sighed about the park and the long shadows of the trees struck out across the gravel, intertwining to form a huge, darkly intricate, woven basket.
     
    It was time for Tom and Michael to leave the park, so they crossed the black strips of gravel and walked the short distance to where they had been spending their nights. This place of rest was behind a skip at the end of a dank alley between two desolate office buildings. No light shone upon the two men and even though it had barely rained for a month, water dripped incessantly onto the stone floor upon which the two lonely figures would curl themselves and somehow make it through the night.
     
    As he tried in vain to find comfort on the cold, damp stones, Tom’s mind was filled with the names of the old blues men he had read about and whose music he so loved, those men who suffered but played on, whose lives bled sorrow and destruction. He imagined them roaming the Southern States in all weathers, with just a battered guitar and sore fingers, entirely at the mercy of the world. And for a scintillating moment, he felt akin to them – Tom Spanner - blues man.
     
    They had lived in a world of primitive social deprivation so bitter as to leave them with little choice but to survive on the wings of their own souls. Their music was their rebellion, their guitars their sole means of expression. They had lived, suffered and died. But on the way to their mournful graves, they had given of themselves to this world. Throughout their stricken lives, they had searched intently for a haven, a place of comfort where they would be neither judged nor castigated. And they had found it – there within themselves.
     
    Now Tom was an office clerk with a three hundred pound guitar and vague ideas about living a life of freedom. The choice to leave had been his. It had been there for him to take. He had committed his fatal error the moment he stepped out onto the street in the half-light of the morning ten days previously. The day he left had been the day of his condemnation. He had aspired to physical freedom and hoped to attain some form of spiritual emancipation as a direct consequence. The former necessarily requires riches extreme; such excess can only hinder the latter. He was a boy in search of himself and anyone who begins that long and lonely journey is nothing but courageous. No medals are handed out, nor honours bestowed for the reward can only be eternal.
     
    Tom had, in a moment of pure insight, caught a glimpse of the man in his mind and had set out to pursue him. The journey thus far had brought him to a place of fear and dirt and despair. But the journey is long my son, and you are so young. Remember that as you lie there in that alley, barely awake, brown water dripping onto your cheeks like tears. Remember that as you try to find peace on this, the blackest of nights.
     
    That week, the people at Tom’s workplace mocked him. Word had got around, as it does. Each ugly faculty was given the chance to reveal the inherent sickness within. There was an insipid cowardice in the air above the desks, hanging there, swirling above everybody, choking them as once it had choked their own long abandoned dreams. A life of vicarious enjoyment was all that was left to them now.
     
    “He’ll be back in the morning begging for his job back,” they all squealed from their processed song sheets.
     
    And so what if he was?
     
    So fucking what?
     
    Saturday morning was fresh and tranquil. As Tom awoke from his bed on the ground, he felt somehow relieved. Indeed 'relief' was the overwhelming feeling that had assailed him each of the previous few mornings. He had survived another night. He could never work out how or even why. Time would be his saviour. Time would see him through. During the daylight hours, he could take in the sights