Lockdown Day 41: Saturday 2nd May, 2020 Terry manicured the blankets with his typical attention to detail, smoothing them out from the centre towards the corners of the bed as far as he could reach, showing great attention to camouflaging his wires, tubes and catheter in valleys of cotton. Always start your day by making […]
Category: God means to kill us all
clear skies, open roads and no borders
Lockdown Day 28: Sunday 19th April, 2020 Jesus, Trick. You kept that quiet. All these years and you never cracked a light. Is that it then? The reason for all the wildness, madness, restlessness, the endless road? You feel guilty? Guilty? You can’t carry guilt around with you for twenty-five years. It’s not […]
a bit Bride of Chuckie
Lockdown Day 18, Thursday 9th April, 2020 A new nurse wandered in as we chatted into the night, scowling twice at us, tut-tutting the roadkill mess. We ignored her and carried on without acknowledging her downer presence. She took this personally, so when she tut-tuttingly tut-tutted louder, I stood smiling and grandiosely swept up my […]
Lakeshore Drive hustled Lincoln Park
Lockdown Day 6; Saturday 28th March, 2020 Lakeshore Drive hustled Lincoln Park twenty floors below, late-evening traffic clogging the highway from the Old Fashioned grandeur of the Drake hotel to the malt liquor melee of the Addison turnoff. Lake Michigan sparkled in slow evening light, the twinkling rays of the retreating sun fading across that […]
liquid sunshine bound by the sky’s tears
Lockdown Day 5: Friday March 27th March, 2020 Uncle Lachlan Ruadh? Whisky – liquid sunshine bound by the sky’s tears. The water of life finished him off young before I was eight. He was always fun, the Big Bad Wolf of eager infant imagination. He never opened his mouth without a joke to crack or […]
Capstan full-strength fog
Lockdown Day 4: Thursday March 26th, 2020 Next? Grandpa – emphysema. I was seven by then. He was bedridden as long as I could remember, wreathed in a constant Capstan full-strength fog, assuring the doctor on his frequent visits that he’d really, really given up smoking this time despite the dead-give-away haze you could […]
she’s still dead
Lockdown Day 3: March 25th, 2020. I paused to marshal delinquent thoughts.“This is a pretty unusual way to pass the time, Terry. You sure this is what you want? It’s not very… uplifting.” He nodded, rigid shoulders framing syncopated breathing, “Humour me.” “Humour you? That’s easy. What do you call a Glaswegian in a […]
The Book of the Dead
Lockdown Day 1: Monday 23rd March, 2020. God means to kill us all “I’m collecting dead people, Trick.” Terry grinned eerily across the stark neon room as he said it. “Strange occupation for a scouser like, you might say, but it don’t mean that I’m robbing graves and selling the body parts. And don’t […]