Bringar was cold, which was odd because it was a\nwarm summer day. Even amongst the pigeon guano and moss atop Town Hill water\ntower nearly six hundred feet above Swansea Bay the sun bathed everything with\nits glow. But he felt cold with the chill of a life reaching its conclusion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It had not been a good life, although he had lived\nit as well as circumstances allowed. In truth that amounted to keeping himself\nfit with night-time exercises in the privacy of his room, reading the newspapers\nhe found in the bins, tending to the old man\u2019s needs when called upon, and\nsuffering the beatings his daily failings earned him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
He looked down at the city, its bustle not truly\npart of this life, for he rarely ventured far from the home they moved to some\ntwenty years earlier. It looked so alive and he felt so dead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He wondered if his father felt dead. Do the dead\nfeel anything beyond that explosive moment when their biological functions were\nno long sustainable? He looked over at the still form of the young police\nofficer lying face down on the roof of the tower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere do you think you\u2019re going?\u201d he asked as he\ntried to pull Bringar off the ladder. \u201cC\u2019mon get down from there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The look on his face when he saw Bringar\u2019s\nblood-soaked shirt was a picture, but it would be his last expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry, officer,\u201d Bringar replied before\nswiping his forehead with the spanner he brought to break the lock on the tower\u2019s\naccess gate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUseful things, spanners,\u201d Bringar said to himself\nas he pulled the constable to the top of the tower, a feat which taxed even\nBringar\u2019s strength and tenacity, but he made it, and no-one saw him. This, he\nmused, was a good thing: he was not making a statement, just a pact with\nhimself to end this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Killing himself was harder than he thought it\nwould be and he stood at the edge for long minutes steeling himself for that\nplunge into eternity. He closed his eyes, listened to his breathing, the sounds\nof the wind and the birds. Then there was silence, save for the flutter of\ndistant wings, a few at first then thousands of them as birds took flight. Then\nhe heard a scream, horns honking and a rushing wind whipped his face. He opened\nhis eyes and before him was a sight few live to relate. Towering above the bay,\nalmost a mile wide and seventy to a hundred feet high, was a wave sweeping\nacross the channel like some watery Malak al-Maut. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDear Lord,\u201d he breathed as it tore into the bay,\nships, boats and fish alike cast aside in its wake, washing up the long\nforeshore, drowning, smashing and seething along streets. Windows smashed, cars\noverturned, people swept like twigs before its foaming magnificence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bringar watched as the wave wiped the slate of\nSwansea clean. He watched as lights went out, as houses crumbled, as buses\nbobbed. He watched as it flowed into his road. He could see his house being\ncrushed by the millions of tonnes of water smashing down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wave swept on, around his station, scouring\nthe land and Bringar smiled. He looked down from his perch at the swirling,\neddying current and at the broken branches, broken bodies, broken everything\nand decided to live. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He heaved the police officer over the edge into the\nshared watery grave, then squatted on the edge and waited for the sun to\nreturn. He was renewed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Epilogue<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bringar sat in his cell writing limericks. He had\nbeen seen murdering PC Alan Singh through the binoculars of two bird watchers and\nalthough his father\u2019s body had been battered by the sweeping tidal wave, he had\neventually washed up, been identified and a post mortem examination established\nthe pattern of his cranial injuries matched that of Bringar\u2019s spanner. The\njudge sentenced him to a lifetime of penal servitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is one of Bringar\u2019s limericks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They called it a swnami<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It left me terrified<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wiped out the Jack army<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gone with this flooding tide<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A flooding, blooding, breaking tide<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of foaming, dirty water<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They called it a swnami<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But twas Satan\u2019s bloody daughter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bringar was cold, which was odd because it was a warm summer day. Even amongst the pigeon guano and moss atop Town Hill water tower nearly six hundred feet above Swansea Bay the sun bathed everything with its glow. But he felt cold with the chill of a life reaching its conclusion. It had not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,21],"tags":[25,26],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-october","tag-bringar","tag-renewal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-19","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}