n
By now I must admit that this whole project is in severe disarray.
I am serious.
Don’t laugh or nervously nod, saying to yourself—oh I’m sure it will all work out. He knows what’s going on, where here is, etc.
It will not.
You begin by trying to talk about one thing and you proceed by talking about something else.
Such is the course of things that you cannot control.
Like trying to plug the great arsehole of misery that engulfs us.
The way in is the way out.
How ironic is that. That great cunt of death will open itself to me soon. I can smell it.
Onwards then!
To
How will it end? Should I know? With answers? No doubt not.
With results?
Of course.
We are fond of them.
Calculate it out and tell me the cross root of minus one. That should solve world hunger!
On.
I must have been asleep for days. Certainly in and out consciousness of some kind. For I was at pains to distinguish between the reality that I found myself in and the other vague, nebulous one that floats in and out of me.
Through me.
When I saw him, I only saw him vaguely, as if through a misted lens.
Yes.
He was the new warden—McGonagall. But I confused him with my father. His face was similar. It was the moustache, I think. The way it curled upwards at each end: very Victorian.
Nice sentence that.
When I awoke my room was spotless. It had been cleaned to a high specification with some rigorous cleaning prodcuts.
There were new pages resting on my bedside locker.
It seemed I had a new remit.
No one had told me this but I sensed it, just there, as one would sense one’s own approaching death, gladly, and with great haste.
I picked the pages up and held them in my hand. There were all blank, great sheets of white greyness.
It must have been recycled paper. Nice touch, I thought.
I should have shouted it out.
To my left, on the locker, lay a pen. It was a Bic biro.
I hated those pens.
Ever since my youth. Ever since my father sent me away.
—Write you little bastard! Write!
Could they not have given me a felt tip with a soft handle that fits smoothly in between your index finger and thumb? You know of the one to which I refer, yes, you do, it won European pen of the year not too long ago.
What a farce!
What will they think of next?
You imagine that it will end, that things will change, but they do not.
One warden replaces another, another matron likewise.
How long have I been here?
No matter.
Back to my new remit. I was forgetting I had a new purpose, something different to occupy myself. They are two good, really. To think I would have nothing to do with myself if it wasn’t for them.
Write.
Fill up those pages with your story and we will let you go.
That is what it said, or rather, what it would have said, if it had been written.
McGonagall entered hastily.
—Maximilian, he roared.
I cowered.
To be honest he looked exactly like Mister Licky.
Was this some sick joke on the part of the matron? To dress the living warden in the clothes of the dead.
There is no respect for death. They died in vain. Fuck them.
He slapped my once or twice on the head with his leather satchel. There must have been something hard it in, because it hurt more than it should have.
—Get up, he said. We’re going outside.
Outside?
