THROUGH THE FOG.

There was an old red phone box in the small village in Kent where you spent your teenage years, next to the tiny village shop and postoffice with dusty tins and dead flies in its window. When you ‘went out for a walk’, armed with a pack of Rothmans and a disposable lighter, you’d sometimes take shelter in it if it was cold or raining, obvious to the fact that you were basically bathing in smoke and would stink of it when you came home. One November night, you weren’t going to bother, just mooch around the streets, but the temperature dropped and kept dropping so took the lane down to the shop and your little red sanctuary. By the time you got in your fingers were so numb you struggled to get the cigarette out of the packet. When you lit it and looked out through the little dirty panes, you could hardly see the shop a few yards away. A fog had stolen in, just in those few seconds, as if it had risen up from the ground. You take a drag, and as you add to the smoke inside the fog outside wraps itself around the phone box and you can’t see the shop anything more, can’t see anything, the fog pressing against the glass as thick as cream. You finish your cigarette, and reach to push the door, but hesitate. Instead you stand, under the weak light above you, and stare out for a minute or two. As you do, the fog starts to thin, looking as if it is sinking back down into the ground. You watch it until its gone, and there is just the empty night. The light above you flickers once, twice. You push the door of the phone box open, and walk home. It’s not as cold as it was, but there’s a strange smell in the air, as if a box of matches had all been struck at once. Decades later, you still don’t realise how that two minute hesitation saved your life. If you’d walked out of the phone box, you’d have met what had risen up from the ground and walked through the fog.