The Action Man - a Short Story

The Action Man

I am pedaling towards a village. It is a small village with a church, a pub and a pond, and not much else. It is like a hundred other villages I have passed through in the fifty days I have been pedaling, like the thousands of villages that exist in this country, that I could pass through if I could keep pedaling. This is the last village I am going to see however, because after fifty days and fifty nights I am going to have to stop. I don’t want to. I love pedaling on my bicycle. But I am not going to have a choice. I can see them already, waiting for me. They are waiting and they are not going to let me leave. They want me to stay in the village forever.

When I started fifty days ago I didn’t want to leave the village. I was a scared little boy. I didn’t think I would survive out there. As I pedaled I could see the corner shop where I used to steal sweets, the playing fields where I had mud kicked at my face, the lake where I had capsized Vanessa Angel’s boat, and the local pub where I had enjoyed a final pint before the landlord kicked me out – what a cunt.

This was my home, I couldn’t leave. I was a man of the village.

I cried for a few minutes as I pedaled out. The fields were strange colors, the roads loud and crowded and trees leaned over to strangle me and stop me from going on. Everything was new and uncertain. I wasn’t going to survive. Why did leave? Why couldn’t I go back? But then after the first day and first night I began to feel good. There was more to me than just a shop and a green and a school and a prison. I was a traveler, an adventurer. I was a free spirit.

I passed another town and another village, with another shop and another church, and I felt nothing. I wasn’t scared and I wasn’t curious. I’d been to villages sand they weren’t new anymore. I wanted to keep riding.

I didn’t want to hurt anyone and no-one could hurt me.

The villages spread into towns and the towns spread into cities. There were rows and rows of little shops and little pubs of little houses all around. I pedaled down roads the size of the sky before a storm and saw more faces than I’d ever seen in my life, and the noise! It was like the loudest storm I had ever heard. Everywhere there was something happening. Each mile was like one of those war films, where the guns are firing and the bombs are falling and the hero is running in slow motion. I was that hero. I was the hero riding into the fight.

When I slept at night I thought back to the village and thought about all the faces that I used to know. I thought about the landlord at the pub and the older children shouting at me, and I thought about Vanessa - the boat and the lake – and how white she looked when she fell. I thought about how simple it was, and how small everything that had happened there had been. In the city then no-one would have cared. It would have been like stepping on an ant or shouting at someone in the street. No-one would have noticed. No-one would have looked any different.

I kept on pedaling and soon I was back out in the country again. It wasn’t as good and I started to feel bad again. The fields were okay, and the dark lanes with trees, and I particularly liked it when it was almost dark, and you could hear all the birds and see the lights in the distance, but it wasn’t good when I had to stop. I didn’t like the little shop and the village green and the church. It made me start crying when I left and I didn’t want to cry anymore. I wasn’t a boy. I was a man - an action hero.

I think that was why I killed the dog when it ran for me after I’d finished my lunch. Now I was free and an action hero I didn’t want any other people taking me back or standing in my way, but suddenly, when it ran behind the bike, barking and trying to bite my bags, I felt like I couldn’t move. It was the same as being trapped back in the village again, locked up and tied to my bed. I could hear her barking at me. I could hear them all barking.

I told the dog:

‘Get away! Get away!’

But it wouldn’t stop. It kept running around the bicycle, barking and making me stop.

‘Get away and leave me alone!’ I shouted, but it still wouldn’t stop. If I wanted to keep going I was going to have to make it stop.

After this I pedalled as fast as I could until I reached the next city. Then I could breathe again. Only then could I pedal around and be free; me and all the guns and the bombs and the soldiers running around. I was where no-one could hurt me.

The thing was that I had to keep moving, and this meant I had to leave the city again, and go back to the fields and the meadows - and to the village. And then there were more dogs and more barking, and there were people barking this time to.

I didn’t understand it. I was an action hero and a free man, and yet all these people would look at me and bark. What was wrong with them?

I wanted it to always be like the city. I wanted to stay there and be ignored forever, but I couldn’t stop. If I stopped then I would back at home again, and people would make fun out of me, and kick my face on the field, and I would have to kick them back and throw them into the lake. I had found myself and it was a self that moved. A man of action. An action man.

They don’t want the action man to keep going though. Fifty days. Cities, trees, fields. Village after village. I have kept going, but now they will not let me go any further. After all this time I have found myself and now they want to take it away – take me back to the little shop, and the church and the lake.

It’s funny because as I sit here now, on my bike next to the village green, it’s a bit like being in the city. There are people everywhere – men shouting, lights flashing – there are even guns being pointed around, and I am in the centre, I am the hero. But I am not an action hero. I can’t move. And they are all looking at me. And I don’t like it.