When they came finally to his Road Scarton was almost too afeared (sic) to get out of the car. He thought he could feel his heart pounding and he did not want to move. The driver said ‘but you have to go’ so Scatron stumbled out on the gravel drive, the tears streaming onto his weathered skin and running down as he shook the drivers’ hand and made his way to the door where the ghost of his father was waiting, and the ghost of his mother and the ghost of his sister and it was only then really, only really then, that Scarton realised it was him that had died, not Sophistia, that it was him that died a long long time ago, most likely in that garden of Lisboa of the peacocks and the fading fado sound he thought and he felt happy then, when he knew that, finally, happier than in other times, relaxed and steady in the certainty of his own end, wrapped in his cold mothers arms, in the stare of his cold father, in the tears of his cold sister.

And for the rest in Endland (sic), well, it was just like normal in them Total Bargain Dayze with the snowball contests and the waterboarding in the doorways of abandoned shops and the Holly and the Ivy and the online gaming and the fixed odds betting machines and the men yelling in Scouser accents from the house next door at regular irregular intervals telling their Wives to ‘Shut Up’, and ‘Beast Wars’ was popular and Chinese Money flooded out the markets and the memory of what happened at the Peace Talks was fading anyway and Keira Knightley was arrested for Crimes Against Acting and Nitrogen Cocktails were still all the rage, a la mode and de rigeur in the Pubs of Londone and of course children slept easy in their beds because they knew that The Saville was dead and it could not come to scare them anymore with its howz about that then, its glittering eyes, yellowed hair, sunglasses and exploding cigars. And all over that country when the nights fell, people joined together in song and others dozed in front of TV or looked up at the stars and wondered which were probably satellites.

Scarton dead meanwhile, made instant coffee for his father. Drank a bottle of the old Halifax Lager flavoured with Enzymes from Rhodes. He stared in the scratched mirror of his childhood, brushed away more tears, examined his Tattoos of Excalibur and the Dam Busters, sighed a sigh of oldness, lusted for forgetting and sobbed for Lisbon/Lisabon and Sophistia, dream or no dream.

Anger is Just Sadness Turned Inside Out

Anger is Just Sadness Turned Inside Out