And how might one ask, with all requisite deference, of death itself a favour?
deleted name (frustrated, pressing the fingers of each hand to either side of his head): I don’t know, I don’t know, something like...
thinking
deleted name: Christ, ..something like...
failing in the moment to conjure anything appropriate, or rather, to say them aloud in presence of
deleted name: look, you choose, you know better than me.
now uncapping his fountain pen with one hand to save in writing both as immediately came to mind upon a sheet of lined notepaper
deleted name (writing): caput mortuum, charon toll
and out loud
deleted name: Just... put her in a hospital. Mark her body, and put her in a hospital.
and then emphatically
deleted name: Do not touch the E.T. doll.
the while listening opposite, and absent the imagined redundant flaps of gristle, a skull embracing the very skullness of itself and them both all of a piece, a shared inseparable plasticity and lack of hue, offering only in the violence wake I think I broke a finger, maybe two on account, perhaps, of the rain, where much becomes less concrete and more subject to that random element of abstraction, the accuracy or its lack of a connecting blow, meted out upon and, as a result of which into, the very bones.
Flesh upon muscle upon ligament upon tendon upon bone, until
deleted name: You, death...
pause
deleted name: ..or damn near,
scrabbling amongst the detritus littering his desk, up from which he collects the moose head quarter
deleted name: there is a postscript.
the silver coin catching and reflecting the light as he moves it this way and back between his own fingers and both their faces.
ache¹ (narrating): The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman..
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and again
The naked man fastens his fingers upon the throat of the naked woman.
and so on, and so on.

 

 

 

 

 

                                      Note for photograph: 

Vertical format, snow falling upon a statue of the crucified Christ. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

deleted name (writing): located somewhere between fetal aclohol syndrome...
The doorbell’s first ring sounds initially as if from within his dream, and is as such ignored; it is the second burst which alerts him to its actual occurrence in real life. Brother Skunk clambers frantic out of bed and down the stairs, aware that at this whatever hour after midnight the noise is loud enough to wake those several houses adjacent on either side. Mercifully his landlord is absent, summer holidaying at his sister’s.
He finds her stood holding a half-emptied bottle of Moosehead in one fist
ache¹: This was supposed to be for you but
holding it up to examine its remnant
ache¹: I I, well I finished mine on the way and then I got ah, I got thirsty, so...
she shrugs and he reaches out to usher her quickly into the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. Her other hand is occupied with the little vinyl E.T. doll, in whose carrying is manifest her full faith in that relatively recent stitching that continues holding it together regardless.
ache¹: Hang on though hang on, I brought something for you,
correcting herself
ache¹: for for us.
dropping E.T. now to the floor and then rifling through her coat and trouser pockets, drunk enough to lack any method that would prevent her from re-visiting those whose lack has already been confirmed.
ache¹: Fuck sake, they’re here somewhere
setting the green glass bottle aside on a conveniently nearby table to continue her pursuit now with both hands, which does eventually yield a brand new deck of playing cards.
Skunk (bewildered): This, you
then as if in the sudden realisation he is awake
Skunk: Wait did you walk here? Did you walk all the way out
ache¹ (oblivious): Stole ‘em from the hotel, I thought we could play poke-, strip poker
Skunk: Jesus Christ I don’t, do you even know how to play
watching her pitiable struggle to slit the fresh pack’s little paper seal with a fingernail just that degree too short for the task.
ache¹: I’m, well,
handing him the deck
ache¹: Here, you, we could even, we could just cut cards
Skunk: That’s not, and even, how’s that fair
indicating his pyjamas
Skunk: if I’m wearing exactly two pieces of clothing?
ache¹: Well hang on hang on, just...
carefully lowering herself to the floor alongside E.T. and then taking an agonising amount of time to remove the shoe and sock from first one foot and then the other, before standing unsteadily to
Skunk: Don’t do, don’t, come on
unhearing, dropping her coat to the floor and next lifting her t-shirt over her head and pushing her jeans down to her ankles, from which she struggles to extricate herself
ache¹: Wait... wait...
finally stood now in those two items as remain and as constitute her underwears, the faded welts even yet still much too visible across her stomach.
ache¹: Okay? So now we’re even? Proceed.
Brother Skunk bends to gather up her discarded clothes and shoes
Skunk (sympathetic): Come on, Jesus, you can borrow some of my pyjamas.
taking her arm in his and helping her climb the stairs.
ache¹: Okay okay...
laughing
ache¹: ..as long as they’re Levi’s pyjamas.
deleted name (writing): ..and immortality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

attrition 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 deleted name: You know the received wisdom about grief, Skunk, that there are five stages?
unwrapping his hand from the breakfast coffee and lifting it into the air as a fist, opening thumb and subsequent fingers for each counted off:
deleted name: Denial,
thumb
deleted name: anger, 
index finger
deleted name: bargaining, 
middle finger
deleted name: depression,
ring finger
deleted name: and acceptance.
little finger, gesturing with his now open palm,
deleted name: What’s not there, what’s missing?
Sensing this to be rhetorical, Brother Skunk awaits the answer.
deleted name: Understanding. Comprehension. You will long have exhausted your capacity for grief before you ever understand it.
pause
deleted name: Because you will never understand it,
shrugs, collecting up his mug
deleted name: “said Elvis.”
Neither speak her name. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

As if waking to exit her perpetual sleepwalk from out the site of trauma, she comes suddenly conscious of herself in new surroundings, unaware she is in fact already embedded here in the very seat of her oncoming madness; herself, with too her infant son adjacent, and somewhere a door shut tight and double-locked to keep those others out.
Sat on the floor of this new bedroom, her apparent calm has been usurped by the just now discovery of her dead husband’s gloves inexplicably salted away amongst her own things, on what exact circumstance she cannot bear to contemplate, the entirety of him having been, much as she understood, removed while she herself remained in care and convalescent.
She must force herself to focus on the momentary provision of herself’s everything to the absolute not of their wearing, as if in such her actual sanity was subject to being culled in a cruel slow motion, but then sped up to overtake her in real time: somehow her small hands are already engulfed in their pale and unmarked leather.
The only item of clothing she had known him to possess not entirely functional, and though worn so infrequently as to remain unbroken to that unique contour of his hand, still they retain within their interior the faint and distant scent of his hair oil, absorbed from out his fingers; never having seen him with them on, this her sole confirmation they were ever worn at all.
Thus gloved, both hands lie folded in her lap. She watches them worry at each other, swallowing themselves, imagining her limbs now puppet to his will, as if she had of them relinquished all agency, confirmed as one rises to the involuntary wiping of her face and the fabric’s texture simultaneously both rough and smooth.
It is her own demons as exhaust her back into sleep.
When she wakes, she wakes still propped against the bed, and looking down to ascertain the alien sense of her hands sees, crawling slowly across the back of one of the gloves she still wears, a wasp, its movement hesitant, sluggish.
Quickly she claps the other hand down upon it, cringing at the revealed smut of its smashed abdomen, the smeared pulp of black and yellow, remembering again the sense of herself as puppet in the pristine leather spoiled.
Removing now her hands from that brutal echo of his own, she collects the gloves together and takes them down to the kitchen waste-bin for their shedding.
For now at least, she cannot recognise the need for fire. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fact she is now absent her own dreams determines that degree to which Brother Skunk understands she appreciates hearing the relating of his own. But still too knowing how tired she is from today, and listening to the rasp of her every exhalation as it arrives in its cycle, he opts on this occasion at whatever hour of the morning not to wake her.
Being too important to lose, however, he feels he must still speak through this particular dream as aide memoire, to fix it for himself at least to some degree of permanence, and doing so in something less than a whisper; he forms the words from little more than the rhythmic sound of his own breath, his lips’ separation, and the dry movement of his tongue between.
Skunk: I dr- 
attempting again to swallow
Skunk: I dreamt I was writing letters to old friends, from from, I think starting now, with friends now, and working my way back, letter after letter after letter, and then eventually I came to one friend, who eh, he was, he had been my best friend at primary school, and about, from when I was
having to focus
Skunk: from when I was... maybe eight? and about halfway down, when I was writing, about halfway down the page, I suddenly remembered he was dead, dead in real life, he’d died... he’d killed himself a number of years ago, but in the dream I just kept on writing in the letter to say “I’m so sorry I forgot, I’m so sorry” and then it dawned on me there would actually come a day where this really would actually... become a a a... a not infrequent occurrence, where time and again I would find myself thinking of friends or people I’d known as if they were still alive, only to then remember that they were not.
He listens as each breath and its subsequent exits her body, unaware for now she will never number among those, her own eventual identity as ghost to be for him so absolutely fixed he will not ever even once mistake her for otherwise, her and too that child the conception of whom neither of them could in this moment possibly entertain.
His grief is already something to be experienced at one remove.
On the edge of sleep himself he comes suddenly awake, aware of her hand moving up and onto her stomach, the nails raking across and down into her flesh, creating in their wake an awful sound impossible while conscious, like the high and abrasive whine of grinding teeth, haunted as she is by that tiny ghost of her own making.
Brother Skunk reaches over to gather her vicious clawing fingers into his, to lie on awake wondering about that time, those few friends he has, and how it will be when waiting upon their collective spirit to tap upon his shoulder, or take his hand, to time and again remind him

cogs (ensemble): We are not.

while he himself still was.