On
hearing irregular footsteps, the nightporter emerged from the area behind
reception to see Brother Skunk crossing the empty lobby with something to the
set of his face suggesting an unapproachable gravitas.
The
sound of his boots, disturbingly loud at this hour beneath the high and quiet
ceiling, suddenly ceased as Skunk reached the carpet of the ground floor
corridor whose length he walked with the same grim determination, audible again
upon the concrete of the fire stairwell, mute along the third floor to her
room.
Inside,
he exhaled the breath felt held from the hospital throughout every step of
whatever random route had brought him back here over home.
Still
convinced of more wrong than that to which the hospital staff would admit, of
some revelation deliberately withheld from himself and ache1 both,
he had today provoked conflict between them, his premonition opposing her hope
of returning to the hotel in the next few days.
ache1 (vaguely sarcastic):
You should ask if they can give you something for that.
seeing passing nurse
ache1: Oh oh, nurse, NURSE!
cog (entering): Oh hiya. How’s you this
afternoon? Improved I s-... hear.
ache1: I’m getting there.
This is Skunk
cog (to Skunk): Hi there.
Skunk silently offers a little salute
from his forehead.
ache1: and we were just
wondering if you could prescribe something for his ahm, he suffers quite
dreadfully from self-fulfilling prophecy. Isn’t there anything he might
take for that?
continuing
to writhe even now, refusing to surrender up the anger at what he deemed the
failure of his resolve, and terrified too of every unthinkable complication as
might befall them this late in her pregnancy.
Brother
Skunk retrieved his washed shotglass from the bathroom and returning to her bed
and the bottle filled it to the absolute extent of its skinny meniscus.
Television
emptied itself across his exhausted eyes. On channel 16, some pornography they
had watched together the week previous could only assemble memories to
dissipate all the potential release and relief he had wanted from masturbation.
The
double shot still untouched in its glass, he sat lost in the roar of his
options grown only louder in their diminishing, until the ineluctable
mutilation allowed him quietened breath while his heart beat blood up through the
broken skin.
