Quite
by chance he came upon a cul-de-sac, a horse-shoe of suburbia reminiscent of
his own childhood environs. Before sitting down on the kerb in a pool of
lamplight he unwound his naked stomach from the rope’s restraining length, the
exposed flesh he’d felt impervious when bound an irregular pattern of unfelt
impression and abrasion.
Using
a fat bolt at the base of the lamp-post he prised open the bottle of Moosehead
beer, breaking his fast with alcohol and a cigar he lit with one of the
remaining matches. He unfolded the pages from his pocket and each other to
smooth them out upon the curve of his thigh, his stare sliding and unable to
fix upon a single thing, eyes still firmly focussed on the past.
He
was found the following morning when an early-rising postman pulled his
curtains back upon October
cog
(screaming): JESUS CHRIST! JESUS CHRIST!
his
groin and thighs warm with the sudden expulsion of urine.
Illuminated
by the spread of lamplight, deleted name hung motionless from the noose
by his ankle, the trouser slipped to bare a purpled swell of fat bound flesh.
His face a bloated contusion, oddly flat and blackened on one side where it had
collided with the pole, that eye fused shut with damage and the open other
bloodshot full as if to burst. Worse yet: two congelations of dark brown blood
pulling from off either side of his broken head to their remnant below
spattered about the scatter of fallen coin, further weight to his written words
crumpled beneath the half-empty bottle and the unblown abiding ash.
