e
Bollocks to this whole thing.
I should take this pencil in my hand and crush it. Break it. Rip all these pages to shreds. To smithereens!
Take every word I have written, and the ones I have not, and blacken all them out, so that nothing remains.
But I do not.
Why, you ask me.
It is a reasonable question. And I owe it to you to answer it. Locked in a room, there is very little else to do other than answer you own questions. Cut yourself it two and play the game of two dumb puppets. The father and the son. Why not?
Why fucking not, then?
It is my father in me, the inquisitive and desiring one. He is deep inside me, buried in my own private hell. If I could, I would cut him out of me. But no knife could get in there. Believe me, I have tried.
Bastard!
If it were not for him I would happily hand myself over to them for the sacrifice. Allow them to drag me by the legs up to the high alter.
Take out my heart.
Then chop off my head.
Oh yes!
Watch it roll, people, all the way down through the dirty sewers of time.
But because of him, because of the ways in which he was, and in a sense continues to be, I cannot.
I must not.
His insane passion of never finishing a single thing has driven me to this point.
To this place.
Look up.
I do.
I see a thousand tiny rivulets bearing down on me.
Father!
Father!
No.
You are not here.
The lights, the scurry of feet, the soft intimation of tiny voices: what is all this?
Do I imagine it?
Have I let my imagination get the better of me, again?
Get back to it.
Tell your story.
Let them have their fucking pen and paper.
Bray.
Yes.
That is where I was. Before I came here. I am sure of this. Sure as certainty itself.
Bray.
With my uncle swimming beside me.
Bray.
With my father’s sister waving to me from the strand.
Yes.
You could call that a childhood, of sorts.
But where to go from there? Back to my father? To Connemara? Or did he come to me? Wresting me from my wife and child and slaughtering them in the process?
Or is this fancy?
I am missing a lot of information, to be sure.
Shh.
I think they are watching me.
Well then.
Watch a fucking way.
Perhaps if I give up this inane game at this stage they will let me live. But on the other hand, if I did, surely they would have been in to me by now.
As I said.
Bollocks to this whole thing.
