Pongo #52

Pila

As unpleasant as they are, it's nice to lie back and let these memories wash over me in a dark sweep. It's like a dam that I thought was secure has burst, and I'm not drowning like I thought I would. It's nice too to lie back and feel my bones ache a little. Rather like the pleasure from prodding at a yellow bruise.

It's positively enjoyable to lie here, the fans' breeze cooling my skin, and not fret about covering up. I may make a gauzy bonfire of my scarves when they let me out. I'll hobble round it in a knock-kneed dance, like some old witch casting a charm on a heath. I'm white-haired at last. I'm positively crumpled and sunken and sucked-in and it feels great.

I was mid-twenties when they approached me. I'd just starred in my most successful film to date: Beck and Sprawl, and had begun to notice with fear the kind of gossamer-fine lines older women pray for. I was leaving a confidential derma-consultation with the foremost seaweed therapy expert in the country when Parjet invited me for coffee. On a whimsy, I took my life in my hands and went with the stranger.

I suppose I was a talent scout of kinds. They sent me out to pick subjects we could have without comeback. Take them from smackheads, desperate women, mothers who worried they were bad mothers. Prey on that ' drive a wedge into any crack and take what you find inside. Three were found. Danver and Fembs ' well their mothers were willing, but Saren, she toddled by one day like a plump little elf. Right into Pyrin Alley at dusk. Didn't seem perturbed at a strange lady lifting her up and talking to her. Must have been about three. She was beautiful: her fluffy chocolate hair framing seal eyes and a perfect soft pink giggle. As I held her, I thought of the way she would grow up, warp into an acne-riddled screwabout teen, fuck up in any number of ways, learn the word fuck. I realized I was crying, and her still looking at me, all blue corona'd long-lashed eyes. And closing my ears to the cries a street away of a sobbing woman searching desperately for her baby, I hurried her inside.

A full medical report: I have ulcers like chickenpox. My heart is break-beating like it's full of cats, my respiratory system has packed up and my liver's waving the white flag. Years of decadence all come back in a very physical visitation. I have a few weeks to live.

Somewhere across the country, someone, my umpteenth replacement sweeper, is waking up with a full head of honey hair. Their cheeks have filled out, their tits risen from the tomb. They don't squawk when they speak. Each breath no longer sounds like that of a broken accordion. They can run metres and suffer nothing but ruddy cheeks and a giggling fit. They are proud to stand on the bus, exchanging a seat for the resurrection of a pert behind. It's a shame back payments can't reach the dead. I can imagine my past umbrella children rising up like a macabre sunglasses advert, clawing their way out of graves with beautifully smooth hands marked only by the lush red scratches incurred in tearing at the lids of their coffins. The slogan would read "Everyone Wants Into The Sunlight with Mirrexas.

I've been walking around inside a skintight coffin myself. I wrinkled my face. It uncreased when my back was turned. I dreamed about liver spots. I prayed to be allowed to stop being this mannequin, this Russian doll: a crone inside a nymph. If only I'd known how simple it could be. But then, it probably wouldn't have helped. I was both afraid of and enchanted by death, but the idea of killing myself ' well, what a waste, and how could I, before discovering my past? You can pack a suitcase tight, but sooner or later, the zip will break both ways, and then everything must be unpacked and examined. It was surely only a matter of time.

Don't ask me why that knife did what it did. Maybe my subscription was so old-fashioned it wasn't stabbing-insured. Maybe it punctured me like a cat balloon.

Who knows, but bless it anyway. Bless it for letting me die at fucking last.