There was a picture of dad too – a blunt try at painting something tangible of J’s world but dad in the picture was blurred and waterlogged, lacking definition. Dad swamped in the green blue colour of bad dreams.

*

A week or 2 passed. J and O learned stuff at the school, Harry cried and Dad bought an illegal patch for DOOM that changed the faces on all of the monsters stalking its dark green corridors into his own face. No one mentioned the nite-picnic, no one mentioned the rain which really seemed to start on that nite and never found time to stop. And no one mentioned the loss of KANGAROO.

Dad’s patch for DOOM was a passport picture for the country of distortion and death, scanned in and replicated a thousand times so that in the hours and hours of his playing he killed himself a million times, splattering his own blood to four corners but playing and playing again. Dad all fucked out with lack of sleep, his own face wounded in the mirror of the screen.

There were no more night-picnics and no more songs. There were no more phone calls from Mum. But there was a spider web of tension in the house where the curtains were always closed, a spider web of tension linking everything, wound tite between the furniture and caught into their clothes.

One morning Olivia found Dad crying again at the breakfast table – there was a gun (or something shaped like one) in his hands. She were too scared to tell anyone.

*

Some conversations.

(a) Do you think he’ll make it type stuff.

J pessimistic. O trying hard.

Harry just crying.

(b) On the nature of physical reality.

J asking O questions. A dream he had one nite about a man whose eyes were spinning saucers like an olden cartoon.

*

Daze of school daze. In biology O closed her book (a picture of dissected twins) and walked with Mrs _________ to the office, not knowing what to expect but knowing that the world was changed or changing as she walked. Outside the office was the usual collection of children that could be found there, many of them wearing dunces caps and J too (but not wearing one). O coughed and the dunces sniffed or looked bored or whatsoever they supposed might be best and O sat down besides J and the 2 waited.

In the office J asked what it was and Mrs ___________ said their Dad was not feeling well and flipped out at the factory and hospitalised in tears and was there maybe someone else who could look after them for a while?

Olivia shook her head. Mrs ______________ made a phone call.

And then the new days began.

NEW DAYS