Tormented
by melancholy and self-wounding as his summer of bereavement wore on and on
into autumn, his condition made worse by whatever it was he sought in a
near-constant state of intoxication, Skunk found himself to be enduring a
miscellany of hallucinations e.g. a thick and weighty ledger of accounts bound
in stiff black leather, her name embossed in gold leaf upon its spine. As he
watched, the tiny numeral stretched and bent itself into a 2, and when he
opened up the tome to her photograph pasted there inside the cover, he saw it
twist and change into the image of himself; her lovely hair turned black and
ragged as if burnt; the perfect pallor of her arms now tortured and boiling
with sores and bloody tracks.