Jack

Jack stared at the painting, he just stood there and f*cking stared
man, I mean, not just for a short while, but for eight f*cking hours.
It was wierd, for the past four and a half years that I had known him,
I'd never seen him do anything like that; he just wasn't that sort of
character.

He would often tell everyone how much he disliked art. So for a laugh
we took him to the local gallery, thought maybe it would be funny to
get him wasted, and watch how he took the p!ss out of the paintings.
You know, watch him make a twat of himself in front of those nerdy arty
types. We did it for a laugh...

And yeah, it was funny to start with, he was loud and obnoxious, made
fun of the few people who were there. He was as usual, being a prat,
but a funny one. Then he stopped to look at one painting, and he was
about to say something, but his lips began to quiver all strange like,
and his eyes looked watery, like something real profound had moved him.
It was just an abstract picture of a twisted human figure playing some
sort of music, vague and hard to pinpoint, a bit wierd.

"Jack?" I said.

He just stared as if he was frozen in time...

"Jack? You awright man?"

He didn't answer. It was like he was in another world. He was still
physically in this one, but his mind had gone elsewhere. It was freaky
and I didn't know what to do. Eventually the security came and tried to
move him along, but they couldn't budge him. It was like some
supernatural energy bound him there, glued him to the ground, and I
mean it was f*cking strange, there were five security officers there :
big universal bouncer types, you know f*cking hard bastards; but with
all their combined strength none of them could budge him...

I felt myself sweat watching this...

"Come on Jack, stop horsing around. The gallery is gonna close in ten
minutes... this just aint funny anymore."

I knew it was pointless saying this, Jack wasn't horsing around. He was
genuinely totally lost man, and I looked at the strange expression on
his face and felt scared. This man that I thought I had known all these
years; had gone down the pub with, played footy with on a Sunday, spent
hours waffling zombie fashion in front of the T.V. Had become a
complete stranger to me.

** **

Jack still hasn't come back since that day. They eventually managed to
move him, and he was put in a mental health hospital; where he now sits
in a wheelchair unmoving. He never speaks, just stares in a blank
trance. I don't know how they feed him but they do. They do everything
for him, bath him, clothe him, move him outside into the sunlight; but
he doesn't seem to acknowledge anyone or anything... and for all these
years I don't know what happened to him - nobody does.