Gone to the house his father had lived in.

Rented low down on Chautauqua Boulevard. He was on his way in a taxi, courtesy of the Beverly Hills Cab Company, and wondered why he had never gone there before; to where he used to stay whenever he visited.

The taxi pulled up three quarters of the way down Chautauqua, on the left towards the ocean. He stood outside looking at the remembered horrible paint colour. A painful yellow: it did cause genuine peeper pain. A colour that didn’t offer an acceptable position on the colour spectrum. Then, nearly tripping, he looked down at the curbside; smothered with rubber scuffs from wayward tyres was the number of the house. He had not made the connection, not retained the memory: 2027 Chautauqua Boulevard. 2027. 2-0-2-7.

He sat on the wall. Where the front door had been was now boarded up with nailed pieces of wood in a diagonal cross adding the final statement to its closure. He opened the gate, he was only going to look through the windows. There was no furniture left in the house, as far as he could see. The memories in the spaces of the rooms existed: where he painted; where he slept. The curtains were ripped and faded and non-existent in most places, he could see the water stains two feet from the wooden floor which was now twisted and buckled from the flood.

Was it Ever with his mother that had destroyed his father? Is that what he wanted to kill? The me in him, the him in me.

The me in her.

The umbrella still stood in the garden – down – but not tied tight against the wind, frayed with holes visible where the sun would sheer through at certain periods of the day, spotting the table, shafting the table, with hot burning light that his father in his later years stayed out of, having at one time lived in the sun all day long.

What has happened, Dad? Please can you tell me? Talk to me. What do you want? He thought this was taking place in his own silence, with the noise in his head, then he realised he was talking out loud, in the belief that his father could hear.

Why couldn’t he?

He could not turn it off. The same circle of thought. And he repeated the questions again, out loud, in an attempt to get a response.

None came; he felt a disappointment that he had not crossed the spiritual barrier. Incapable of transcending.