5. Channel 9

I’m thinking about this book… and the other night when Dad gave it to me. It’s doing my head in. Last Friday if I remember correctly. After a 3-hour reading stint I could no longer take it and shuffled downstairs, chewed up a couple of aspirin and fell down into the groove I’ve carved out for myself on the couch.

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The contrast between the interior of the living-room (dark, cool, silent), and the interior of my skull (bright, hot, raucous), was not lost on me and the shadow of something remotely resembling a slender smile passed over my mouth. Suddenly overcome by a premonition of imminent death, I struggled against the sinking feeling that any minute now a hand would fold over mine, tug me out into the night, lead and feed me into the hungry mouth of a Blackhole where you forever disappear falling down spiralling into the pit of its belly, sucked backwards spinning into its annihilating womb. Never to escape from its tomb.

Boom boom.Many dead.Tonight it could be you.

The Mother of Blackholes.

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In search of distraction I felt around the coffee table for the Universal remote control, sky of my mind turning coalblack, riddled with thoughts descending like a murder of crows inking out light. Thoughts wanting entertaining - like unwanted guests at a wake. Feel of remote against fingers pulled me back into body and the here and now. Fumbled to turn TV on. Flicked through countless channels, finally settling on a black and white movie on Channel 9. Fingered the mute button: wished I could find and punch the mute button in my head. Apparently, it was going to take more than two lousy aspirin to stop the cacophony exploding in the amphitheatre of my skull.

Aimed remote at stereo and the radio came on, playing something… Turned it up. Sang along. Reached under couch and pulled out an upside down Frisbee that held all the makings of a ‘doobidge’ – as Mikey, my bespectacled friend likes to say. Yeah, I thought, that’s the ticket! A big, fat doobidge just might be what the doctor ordered. Paper. Tobacco. Lighter. A small bunch of greenleafflakes. Flame and smoke. Slicked lips and tip of tongue wetting line of gum. Rolling and sticking. Sucking and filling lungs deep and wide. Just like that church song – deep and wide, deep and wide… And it was.

Just what the old doc ordered!

Thoughts – like scared crows - scattered and hid in distant corners.

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A gangster in the movie took a slug in the gut. With his back to a brick wall, he slid melodramatically to the concrete, to his long, drawn-out death.
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The sense Death is closer than ever keeps growing. Creeping nearer.