What feels like hours later – though I’ve no real way of telling; darkness seems to hold its own kind of time – I give up and flip the torch on. I rove around the space, my breathing starting to speed up. There’s got to be something. I remember the rent money I’d stashed in the old paint tin and, with nothing better to do, try and locate it. I find it and prise it open. The money’s there, but so too are a couple of joints I’d rolled ages ago and then not smoked. I’d put them away and then totally forgotten about them. I pocket the money and look around for the blowtorch. I find it over on the other side and pick it up. Then I hesitate. I try to put it down. But before I do I bring it back up again. Part of me is saying no, don’t do it. Another part is whispering sweetly that it’s the only thing that will help. I’m caught between them, like an innocent bystander. I have no say in this. I’ll simply do whatever the winning voice commands.

Soon I find my finger pushing the button. The blowtorch blazes into life. The flame’s bright blue and heats my face as I light up. Ahhh … this is Sour Hound. I recognize it straight away. Torch off. Darkness. Just me and the Hound, its glowing tip dancing in the dark. By the time I’ve smoked half of it my brain is freer, less tethered. I pinch out the joint and stop trying to think. I need to let my mind free, free to do its own thing. It darts around, chasing idea to idea in a sequence that seems unrelated. But I start to sense something, a shape almost, a possibility. Random facts, connections, the THC firing up my lateral thinking, allowing me to see what I couldn’t see before.

I’ve lost all sense of time here in the dark, so I don’t know if it’s taken me minutes, or hours. But I’ve got it now. It’s there. I can see it all.

I pocket the half-smoked joint and the unsmoked one, the money and the torch. After a little thought I select a couple of tools I can carry with me easily, a screwdriver and a small wrench.

I breathe in a couple of times, then head towards the door.

It’s time.

It’s time to make this right.

Moonlight