Running.

I wish I could come home to you, just to let you know I'm alive and that I love you. There are a few reasons why I can't, some I don't want to go into, not on here. There are a couple of other reasons, that I'm too ashamed to admit to you just yet. But I'm willing to say that if I come home, it would be dangerous for you and you mother. And also, I'm afraid that if I did come home, I'd have to face a few things. Things that my reported death has given me a cowardly way to avoid. Your mother and I tried to keep our, problems, from you. But I'm sure you knew. I think that might be one of the reasons you've been so distant lately and it's natural. We're the problem, Cassie, Jenny and I. Not you. Nothing you could ever do. We love you so very much.

I've crossed the border into Queensland, and haven't made it very far north. I can't be any more specific than that. I'm somewhere that's big enough to blend in, but small enough to hopefully be under their radar. I guess I should explain some of what I'm talking about.

I'm running, Cassie. I'm running for my life. Even though I'm not sure that I can, in fact, die, if anyone could prove it a possibility I have no doubt it's the people who are after me.

After I left the hospital I wandered around the streets for a while, staying out of sight and avoiding well lit areas. I've been doing a lot of things, instinctively. It doesn't make sense to me. But it's like I have something inside me, in my head or my heart, that is pushing me in directions I wouldn't normally go. I have a phobia of being discovered, of being caught. Even telling you this, I imagine being stopped by the police or being seen by someone who recognises me and my blood rushes in my ears so loud that I can hardly hear. I wake up, every few minutes of the day when I try to sleep, and I listen for any sound that could be my pursuers. I think maybe something happened in the crash, or when I, died, I guess. Something has made me paranoid. And I can't seem to control my actions, even though logically, I'm thinking that I'm being irrational. That night that I escaped the hospital, I wandered around watching people from behind bushes and darkened alleys. I found one of those charity bins for Lifeline or Saint Vincent de Paul. I was still dressed in my stolen white coat and disposable coveralls. I managed to squeeze into the bin through the teeter-totter flap that you drop clothes through. I was amazed I could fit with my gut and fat arse, let alone haul myself up to that height with next to nothing to hang onto.

The inside of the bin stank. The stench of old sweat, mildew and even a little bit of ammonia, possibly urine, made me gag and it was difficult to breathe. I was suddenly very angry with the good, kind souls who dropped such filthy clothing and bedding into these bins. Was it so hard to wash a handful of garments before giving them to those in need? I managed to slowly draw enough air into my lungs so as to not sting my throat on the acrid smell of humanity. And once I'd caught my breath, I felt a sense of calm, comforted and cushioned in this dark little cave, away from the eyes of the world. I could have slept in there, but I decided to look for a better set of clothes instead.

Rummaging around in the half light I found a set of jeans, but as I pulled them on I could feel that the crotch had ripped from the zip halfway up the backside. Who donates jeans that had split beyond any possibility of repair? I pulled off the jeans and hunted around for something else. I found another pair, jeans again, that were intact. They were far too large for me, but I could keep them up if I could find a suitable belt. I found a tie, and with no other alternative I managed to feed that through a couple of belt loops and tie it around to tighten the waist of the pants. I found a shirt and a jumper, the latter smelling of camphor, probably something that had been moth-balled for years. I also felt something soft, fuzzy, buried under piles of rags and sheets. I dug out the large, nylon furred teddy bear. It gazed at me with one beady little eye, the other missing. I thought of the girl in the morgue again, lying on the cold, stainless steel table. I brushed the bear, as if I could see dust on him in the half-light. I propped him up in the corner of the bin and pinched the mist out of my eyes towards the bridge of my nose with my finger and thumb.

I couldn't find any socks in the bin, which was annoying. The green gumboots I had lifted from the hospital weren't lined with any fabric and the rubber was wearing against the skin of my feet and pulled at the hair on my toes. I wrapped some rags, that seemed to have once been tea towels, around my feet and slid back into the boots. I climbed back out of the bin, making sure that there was nobody out on the street who could see me.

Over the past few hours, I could feel my insides twisting around, as if some animal was trying to find the most comfortable position to curl up inside me. Things seemed to be settling down now. I wondered, with a cold dread, if during my autopsy my organs had all been removed, examined and tossed back into the body cavity, and so what I felt were my guts rearranging and reordering themselves. Or perhaps they had just been removed and were somewhere in storage. Was I regrowing my internal physiology, or was something else growing there in its place? I did feel, lighter, less of a fat lump. In my younger years I had been a well built man, just ask your mother. But I had gotten a job where I sat behind a desk, I ate too much of the wrong food, drank too much beer. I patted my belly. I hadn't in any way reverted to the fine physical specimen that I used to be, but I had lost a few inches of girth at least, maybe more. Perhaps they had scooped out all my entrails and the outside had simply fallen in to fill the spaces left behind. I could feel my lungs swell with air, though, and the beat of my heart in my chest.

Perhaps none of it was real. Had I imagined the staples, the body bags. Had I just woken up, disoriented in a hospital bed, and hallucinated some horror that had made me flee?

A car passed by, two streets away and I dove into the bushes. Everything had just gone from my brain. A switch flipped and I was in evasion mode. If I was delusional, I should turn myself in, for my own health and well being. It would be in everyone's best interests if I just went to the police, maybe called an ambulance from a phone booth and ask to be picked up. Maybe flag down a passing-

Headlights. I duck. Squatting like a frog. Ready to leap. Ready to run. The lights pass by without slowing.

What was I thinking about again?

I had lost control of myself. My fight or flight impulse overrode any thoughts in my mind. I couldn't bring myself to turn myself in. Any attempt to even think about how I'd make contact with anyone looking for me, and I felt sick, like I was planning my suicide. The only person I could imagine reaching out to, was you. My Cassie. My dearest, darling, daughter.

After I was sure that there were no more cars, I stood up. Something caught on my leg. I looked down and saw that in my hasty dash for cover, I had landed on a cut back branch in the hedge. A sharp, obliquely cut stump that had pierced my skin, just above the cuff of my boot and driven deep into my calf muscle. I hadn't even noticed. I think I had felt it, registered the damage dispassionately, as if receiving a report that was of a low priority for the time being. Even now, I knew it should hurt, I think it did hurt, but I didn't feel one way or the other about it. It was nothing more to me than a resistance to my movement. I lifted my leg off the stump, about five inches of ragged stick slipped out from the wound with a wet, sucking sound. The hole in my calf began closing. The muscle knitting back together like interlocking fingers, then skin tightening and squeezing shut over the renewed flesh. I saw that the branch that had punctured my leg was blackened, like it had been burnt. Even a slight snaking wisp of vapour or smoke rose from the charring bark.

Putting weight on my leg, I found the muscle to be in good, working order. And so I put it to use, running through shadows, vaulting up walls and over fences. I felt my heart beat with a comforting rhythm. Animal rhythm. My instinct took control. Its goal was simply to put as much ground between me and the hospital as humanly possible. Actually I didn't feel entirely human any more.

I'm sorry.

I am writing this as a record of events for my daughter, Cassie. I know that the chances are you may one day learn of my existence and I want you to know what my intentions were when I left you and your mother. While my reasons were, perhaps, selfish, I do not want you to think that I chose to stay away from you, my darling little girl, without weighing up the consequences of whatever action I took. I had to think a long time about what I would do, what would be best for you and Jenny and me, I'll admit, though not as much as you might think. So this is my account of events.

I am alive. And though it may be difficult to explain, I honestly did not intend to deceive you or your mum. When the plane went down, I was on board. Please continue reading, even if what I am writing seems to make no sense. I swear to you, this is the truth. All I remember was the screaming, the panic all around me. Flashes here and there of the green patches of the fields coming up at a horrifying speed. My ears bursting as the pressure changed. I don't remember the impact itself.

I woke up, suffocating and constricted, wrapped in some sort of black plastic. As I struggled, I fell, onto a hard floor. I desperately scratched around the edges of the bag until I found the zip, then worked my way to the top of the bag and found a tiny gap where I could push my finger through. I managed to tug the zip open a little and then forced it down as I tore the flap open. My worst fears were realised when I saw that I was lying on the tiled floor of somewhere clinical, a morgue I guessed, and that the bag was indeed a body bag. I felt my stomach cramp and I tried to throw up, but I had nothing in my stomach. After a while, it dawned on me that as horrible as this was, I was alive. I thought there must have been some terrible mistake. They must have thought I had died in the crash and put me in the body bag and brought me to this place. My head still spun and my eyes took in everything with a watery, half focus. I was naked and it was cold. Trying to move I felt something catch in my chest, pulling painfully at the skin. I patted myself down for injuries, and that's when I felt the staples. Large flat staples like the ones they use to seal big cardboard boxes for shipping; steel biting into my flesh. There were a few, running down my chest and belly. I ran my hand down, looking bleary eyed at my beer gut, not really able to focus on something that close just yet. The staples went from below my navel up to my breast bone, then split into a 'Y' that ended at my collar bones. I tried to stand, but my legs just flopped around, useless as if the blood had been cut off to them and they had gone to sleep. I started to moan, and then cry out, trying to draw the attention of some doctor or attendant. I pulled at one of the staples but it was bent around the thick, fatty skin of my chest. I remember one year, when dad, your granddad, took me fishing and he sat on a fish hook. He had to get me to work the hook out from his rump. This was like that. But these were bigger than a fish hook and both ends of each metal pincer had been driven into me. I gave up trying to take them out.

I started punching my legs to try and get the blood flowing, the pins and needles prickling at the muscles. I tried yelling again, but ended up choking and coughing, short of breath. My eyes were clearing, but what I could see now, were dozens of black bags around me. Some on gurneys as I had been. Others stacked on top of one another against the walls and in corners. I dry retched again, feeling like a nest of snakes were coiling and writhing inside me. After a while I managed to haul myself up onto my weak and wobbling legs. I tried calling out but just didn't have the lung power to make a noise of any real volume. I looked around, for something to cover up my nakedness. A set of white paper overalls hung on a hook near the door. I waddled towards them, avoiding the black bags underfoot and clutching the workbench built along the wall. On my journey to the overalls, there was a sink in the bench, I stopped and drank from the tap, the water stinging my cracked throat. Each step felt stronger, and by the time I had made it to the door I could stand without the aid of the bench. I had to lower myself back onto the floor to pull the legs of the overalls on. As an item of clothing, it was ridiculously insufficient. The thin, disposable fabric did very little to cover me and almost nothing to provide protection from the chill air. Luckily it wasn't that cold. I was breathing fog now, but I wasn't feeling it enough to shiver.

Getting to the door, I thought I'd find it locked, but I was lucky. There was a large round dome that I pushed that unlatched the door. No doubt this was a measure to prevent anyone being locked in here. That level of precaution made me wonder how many times they had made a similar mistake in the past to the mistake they'd made with me.

The air outside the door was warm, almost hot. The light was bright to my gloom adjusted eyes. I hoped to find someone here, someone alive, that I could complain to and who could help me. I imagined their shock and I'd take it with an aloof, matter-of-fact detachment, like this sort of thing happened to me all the time. And they'd be amazed by my composure and impressed by my dry wit. But there was nobody living in the room, which looked to be some sort of operating theatre. But on the operating table there was a lifeless body. Small and delicate. So still. Just so still. When I had boarded the plane, there had been a little girl. She must have been about eight. She smiled at me, a cheeky little grin. I looked at her just long enough to poke my tongue out, such a dad thing to do. Her grin grew wide and I saw that her two front teeth were short, coming through after losing her baby teeth. I had only given her a second of my time on the way to my seat. I could hardly recognise her without that smile. My heart had left me. All I could see on that cold metal tray, was you, my Cassie. I felt weak again, like my legs could go at any second. I was 42, old, fat, and not much of a man. I'd lived a life. I'd missed so many opportunities, but I'd been there, had my chances. But, her. My eyes blurred again as the tears ran. I'm a pathetic, waste of human life. She was so very small. A deep cut in her chest, a letter 'Y', held closed by shiny steel staples. And that's when my slow, dull brain worked it out. The staples in my chest, in the same pattern as hers, were all that was left. They were the only evidence that remained of my autopsy. I didn't even have a scar. But as I felt the weight shifting inside me once more, I knew. I yanked out the staple below my left collar bone, and watched. Slowly, but not so slow as you couldn't see it happen, the torn holes in my chest closed and the dents where they had been filled in.

Looking down at the girl on the table, I squeezed my gurgling rage back down my throat, my body shaking, the tears now a flood. I clasped her tiny head in my hands and I willed whatever it was in me that had made me like this, out of me and into her. I pleaded with it, with God, with whatever. I pushed and tore at it within me. I imagined it flowing down my arms like a golden light into her. I commanded it, ordered it to go into her, to make her whole. I bargained with it. Let me fall down dead here and now, let me feel everything I did not from the crash. Give me the pain of every other passenger on the plane. Just, let her live.

But I still stood. She still laid. Nothing moved between us.

I heard laughter coming from the corridor. Footsteps approaching. And I don't know why. I really have no idea why. But I hid in the corner of the room. I watched them come in, men in white coats, still laughing. I wondered how they could be laughing. They walked over to the table and one of them said, “God it's a shame.”

The other nodded. “Had her whole life ahead of her.”

As they covered her face and transferred the girl to a gurney, I crept out the door. I found a white coat, one of many hanging on a rack and a pair of green gumboots. I walked, dazed, from the hospital. Nobody stopped me, nobody even cast me a glance. I thought I might in fact be a ghost. Then, in the parking lot I was nearly hit by a car, the driver angrily beeping his horn and yelling curses at me.

I ran scared, Cassie. I didn't know what to do and I had to figure things out before I did anything. So I hid. I'm sorry. I'm posting this blog from any internet cafes I find. I will try to write more soon. Take care of yourself and your mother for me.

Love,

Dad.