I
(At home eating breakfast)
Gerard Graham Kelly pokes at a string of porridge suspended from the large spoon with which he is to eat his breakfast—the spoon being no more than an inch aloft above the steaming surface, and the slimy string, which extends unbroken from spoon to bowl (in keeping with the deliberate consistency of the porridge) homes to the mother meal until he waylays it with a finger—around which the porridge winds stickily—before he laps it off with his tongue and confirms to his satisfaction that it is fit for eating.
(On the way to work)
There is absolutely no possibility that Gerard can both listen to the radio on the bus and also maintain a properly functional level of mental coherence. What makes the situation even more critical is the negative feedback loop whereby once he has been decohered by invading memes, his judgement is likely to be impaired to the extent that further decisions regarding psychological protection are rendered dangerously less reliable, potentially resulting in days of close-to catatonia while his body processes out the memetic confusions, the “dark seeds”—as he has dubbed them—of the polluted sociocultural soup in which he is submerged. From a pragmatic point of view, the concentrated rehabilitative processing time required to thoroughly exit such a debilitated state and the concomitant absence from work effected is something he cannot afford to regularly risk, particularly considering the current financial demands upon him, and so he carries not one but two sets of quality in-ear headphones (the type that even without any music on at all can act as reasonably efficient earplugs) as well as a spare battery for his mobile phone on which a number of grindcore metal albums are stored and constantly played while he is subjected to the sonic caprices of the public transport system.
(In the office)
There are certain interactions at work which must be avoided at all costs. Any contact with Killian being one. Killian had the other day told him he was a Nazi (exact words ‘National Socialist’). And though he had emphasized he did not support killing all the Jews and that it was mostly an economic thing (as well as, of course, concerning immigrants and being white etc.) this was not very reassuring. Neither was it reassuring that he pointed this out not at all apologetically, but in the most matter-of-fact way. And no response that Gerard could think then or afterwards seemed appropriate. He had at the time only moved his mouth slightly, opened his eyes wide, and smiled reflexively, but could not process anything further (and this while not even being mentally decohered as a mitigating factor). Killian had just looked at him, not long in the greater scheme of things, but too long in the moment, and then had moved on with a patronizing tap on the shoulder and a casually imparted, ‘Talk to you later.’
(In the bathroom at work)
Not only is there a huge mirror in the bathroom that stretches above the line of sinks like an ominous crystal sea threatening to drown him, but inside every toilet cubicle, there is a further mirror behind the cistern, elongated and wickedly ornate. And on entering the cubicle, he must lower his head and look downwards at an angle such that the toilet bowl there fills most of his vision and the reflection from the mirror cannot therefore invade his carefully cultivated peace of mind—the outer mirror threatening to shatter the inner, the two out of alignment, and the result of any forced realignment being a level of brokenness and depression that may, for days, crush his will to do anything but lie alone in bed. Of course, the situation is unsustainable and the constantly renewed hope of a satisfactory realignment, irrational. But it is only that irrational hope that buoys any will to be at all, and if to live is more rational than to die, then he must go on, even if that makes him, for now, a slave.
(At the local shop)
The only hope Graham holds of freeing himself of his multiple neuroses (neuroses he is well aware of and must be in order to keep them under control) is to deconstruct the sociocultural prison that has foisted them upon him. And regular exercises of shoplifting contribute to a systematic effort to do so. Such efforts are calculated to avoid prosecution, and so he restricts himself to pilfering inexpensive treats, and further to surreptitiously returning the produce afterwards, so no lingering moral qualms may disturb his sensibilities. Here, he wins doubly, effecting a cathartic infraction that tears a seam in his moral fabric to allow some of the burgeoning gases of spirit escape—thus relieving the fear of a pressure-induced rupture—but also immediately restitching it lest it degrade to the point where all ethical shape is lost. And shape must be maintained in the centre, the integrity of which is crucial to buffer the effects of poisonous memes, and dangerous ideologies, and the asymmetries and distortions imposed by the physical self as reflected through the medium of socio-strategically placed mirrors, and so on.
(At home with his dog)
Gerard’s dog is a Pomeranian, a stupid dog really, of the utmost simplicity, but therein lies its special worth. It sees straight to his centre and sees nothing more. And from there he is able to love it purely and directly. He cradles it now as he walks up and down the hall outside his bedroom. His exercise regime calls for 10,000 steps a day and these must be completed before midnight and the time is almost on him and the steps are not complete. But the dog gives him comfort, yaps from his arms and bobbles around, unaware that one errant move could result in it dropping head-first onto the hard-tiled floor over which Gerard’s feet move now hurriedly, anxiously. He hugs the dog close, as determined not to let it drop as to reach his goal before midnight chimes.
II
The Last Will and Testament of Gerard Graham Kelly in the Form of a Short Story Featuring a Character of the Same Name – By Gerard Graham Kelly
I’m not a frightening man, not at all. I would say the term ‘mild-mannered’ would be more apt. In fact, when I met Josie in the pub, I said to him, I said ‘Josie, am I a frightening man?’ and he said, ‘no, Gerard, you’re not. In fact, he said, I would think the term ‘mild-mannered’ would be more apt.’ So, we agreed on that at least.
There was a lot of smoke in the pub. That was in the days before it was banned. In those days you wouldn’t even notice. You only started to notice when it was banned, but then after it was banned for a while you stopped noticing again. It was only really noticeable around the time between being there and not there. Like a lot of things.
‘So,’ I said through the smoke to Josie, ‘would you ever do it?,
And he said, ‘well, that depends.’
‘That’s exactly what I thought. Good man,’ I said. ‘Will you have another?’
‘I will,’ he said.
There were a lot of women in the pub and I did notice them even though they’d always been there. Most of them I knew but some I didn’t. I had no woman of my own at the time, and so I didn’t feel guilty looking at them and imagining things about them, and I wasn’t a bad looking man, so there wasn’t much to stop me having one of my own. But it never seemed to happen. It seemed to be that the pub was a place to go just to look at the women and to imagine things about them, but anything beyond that was unimaginable. So, you were in a bit of a bind, overall. But everyone seemed to be in the same bind. Everyone I knew anyway.
‘So, Josie,’ I said, the next night in the pub, ‘under what circumstances would you consider doing it?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘well, that’s a very broad question.’
‘It is.’
He thought for a minute and said, ‘I think it’d have to be something fairly serious. You could cripple it like that.’
‘You could,’ I said. And I ordered another pint.
There was a woman in the pub I was looking at that was very close to me, closer than usual. She was tall and had straight blonde hair and big earrings and a white T-shirt that had something written on it that I couldn’t see from the side.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Hello.’
‘Can I read what’s on your T-shirt?’
‘You can,’ she said, turning around.
Her T-shirt said, ‘Fuck Off’.
I turned around to Josie and I said, ‘Josie.’
‘What,’ he said.
‘That woman…’
‘The one whose T-shirt says, “Fuck Off”’?
Yes.
What about her?
She has a lot of hair for a woman.
‘What do you mean, a lot of hair.’
‘I mean on her body.’
‘Does she?’
‘She does.’
After the pub I went home and went to bed.
That’s not the end of it though. There were other things that happened that hadn’t happened before.
I didn’t spend all my evenings in the pub. Some evenings I’d spend at home watching telly. Some evenings I’d read a book. And some evenings I’d go for a walk around the village.
This was one of the evenings I went for a walk around the village.
It’s not very well lit around here, so when I see people in the evenings when I’m going for a walk, very often I can’t see who they are. I might know them, and I might not, and when you’re in that situation the best thing to do is to say ‘hello’. That way if you do know them, they won’t think you were making out you didn’t. Now of course they might also know that as it’s dark your reason for not saying ‘hello’ could be that you don’t recognize them, but knowing that they’d know that you’d say ‘hello’ because you’d want to make sure they didn’t think ill of you whether you did know them or not, you’d know they’d expect you to say it, so no matter what way you spun it, it was the sensible thing to do. And that’s what everybody did.
So, I was passing Frank Lonegan’s place and there was music coming out the window (and though it wasn’t so loud that it would bother you, you could still hear the tune). The light was on in his the front room, and I supposed Frank was drunk because he tended to stay home and drink a lot in the evenings So, even though the road outside wasn’t very well lit, the bit of light coming out that window was enough for me to see that a man was walking towards me on the other side of the road, but it wasn’t enough to know who he was. So, when he came within a short distance I said ‘Hello’.
‘Woof!’ he said. Now I’m saying he said ‘Woof’ though he didn’t really say that but barked like a dog.
I didn’t say anything but just walked on wondering if the music had put my hearing out. But I couldn’t figure a way that the music coming from Frank Lonegan’s window, which wasn’t very loud anyway, could change a man’s voice into a dog’s bark. The fella must have been drunk, I thought, and left it at that.
‘Josie,’ I said at the pub the next night, ‘have you ever barked at anyone?’
‘Barked like a dog, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t,’ Gerard. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘You might be drunk.’
He considered this for a moment and took a swig of his pint.
‘There’d have to be a good reason for it even if I was drunk. I mean I wouldn’t rule it out, mind you, but to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never done it. To another person anyway. Now, I might have barked like a dog to a dog, drunk or not. But sure, everyone does that.’
‘They do.’
I ordered a pint. I noticed that the bartender’s nose was black, and I thought about telling him to go give it a wash, but I didn’t. And I didn’t even mention it to Josie as there were other things to talk about.
The next day was Monday and that was a work day, so I went down to the site and did my morning’s work. At lunchtime I sat on a bench and ate a sandwich. A fella I hadn’t seen before sat next to me.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Hello,’ he said.
The fella got out a can and a can opener and opened up the first with the second. The can had a picture of a dog’s head on it and there was written in big letters ‘Pedigree Breed, Supreme Beef’.
‘Why are you eating that?’ I said.
‘Oh, I don’t like the chicken,’ he said.
There’s not much you can say to that, I suppose, so I finished my sandwich and went back to work. I asked Josie later his opinion about what the man did, and he gave me as reasonable a response as ever. It doesn’t get you very far to talk to people sometimes. You have to figure things out for yourself. I’d say there’s not another soul in the village who’d support that kind of food for a lunch. You’d have to go miles. And you learn nothing from people who agree with you.
Well it went on like this for a while. On Tuesday I saw a woman walking on four legs. On Wednesday there was a fella pissing against a lampost (which wouldn’t have amounted to much except he’d been sniffing it before). And on Friday I saw a man bending over and smelling a woman’s arse. Now, I’d heard of a theory that says when you expect to see something you see more of it, and there was a while when I was thinking that that might be it. I’d seen a couple of strange things by sheer coincidence that had made me think so much that I’d started noticing things like that even more though they’d always been there. But then I decided that they hadn’t always been there, or I would have noticed. And that put paid to that theory.
Well, it made me not want to go out to be honest, and on Saturday evening I didn’t all day. I didn’t take a walk and I didn’t do the shopping and I didn’t go to the pub. I stayed in the whole time. Then at about nine o’clock after I’d got the fire going and was about ready to settle for the night, there was a knock on the door. When I opened it there was a woman there. I think she was one of the women from the pub.
I said ‘Hello,’ and she walked in past me without a word into my front room. When I followed her in she was curled up on the floor in front of the fire.
‘Are you alright?’ I said.
She didn’t answer.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ I said.
She didn’t answer.
It didn’t seem right to lift her up and throw her out, and I didn’t know what I’d say if I called someone, so I just sat there on my chair looking at her until I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, she was gone.
It gets to the point where as much as you’re fed up with a situation, you don’t know what to do and you end up doing nothing and just accept it. I was hoping that after a while I wouldn’t even notice, and sure, what was the harm really? It might even be a big joke. It might be a candid camera show like on the telly. I saw one once where they made out a flying saucer had landed outside a woman’s house. And I’d say she was even more shocked to see aliens in her garden than I am now at all this. Well, it might be that, but it probably wasn’t.
‘Josie,’ I said, ‘have you noticed all the people around acting like dogs?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I haven’t been on the lookout for it.’
‘Well, will you keep an eye out? Half the time I think I’m seeing things.’
‘I will.’
‘Thanks. Let me get you a pint.’
‘Oh, I’m off the pints,’ he said.
‘Are you?’
‘I am.’
‘What’ll you have then?’
‘Some water would be grand.’
Josie was on the water for the night and I had a few pints. I was hoping someone in the bar would do something the same as I’d been seeing, so I could point it out to Josie, especially as he wasn’t drinking and could give me his sober opinion. And they did a few times, but every time I pointed to someone, Josie just looked at my finger, and even when I said, ‘over there, Josie,’ he took an age to turn around, and then it was always too late. He didn’t say much either. I suppose he wasn’t in the mood. Maybe he’d had enough of the whole thing. I surely had by the time of my third pint, and decided to be off, so I paid the barman the tab and told him he should wash his nose and said good night to Josie and went off home.
I was half expecting a woman to be laying in front of the fire again when I went in, and after the few pints I thought I wouldn’t even mind it—I was having a few imaginings on that score. But there wasn’t any woman there anyway, only when I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, what did I see but Father William in there and him with his skirts up around his waist and taking a shit on the floor.
‘Hello,’ he said.
Now normally I’d answer anyone a greeting and especially a priest, but I just turned my back on him and went upstairs and locked the door and went to sleep. In the morning, he was gone but the shit was still there and the fridge door open and the cold chicken gone.
It seemed ignoring things only made them worse. So, I cleaned up the shit and resolved to go to the Garda station. Now I didn’t want to get Father William or anyone else into trouble, but I felt it my duty to myself and to others to report this behaviour and to find out if anyone else had made similar reports. That would be a load off my mind for sure. On the one hand, you think you might be imagining things, you see, and then on the other hand there’s a big shit on your kitchen floor. And then you’ve not much choice but to do something about it.
So, I got to the Garda station, and there were a couple of Gards there. The one on duty behind the desk was Mick Skelly, and that was a relief because I knew Mick well and he knew me well, and he was a reasonable man and would hear me out. I was walking towards the desk when another guard behind Mick said, ‘Mick,’ and Mick looked around, and the Gard threw his stick past Mick’s head and past my head and out the door. Well, in a shot, Mick was up and over the desk and running out after it. That stopped me in my tracks.
The Gard who had thrown the stick out the door said, ‘Can I help you?’ and I said I wanted to talk to Mick. And he said, ‘Oh, he’ll be right back in, don’t worry.’
Sure enough, before he’d even finished the sentence Mick had run back in stick in hand and he jumped over the desk and ran up to the Gard and gave it back to him.
‘Thanks, Mick,’ said the Gard.
Mick turned around to me and said, ‘Well, how are ya, Gerard. What can I do for you?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘Mick…’
The stick went out again flying past my head and Mick up and over the desk after it.
‘He’ll be straight back, don’t worry, ‘said the same Gard who’d thrown it again.
‘Sure I’ll come back later,’ I said.
‘Oh, grand,’ said the Gard, ‘we’ll be here all day.’
Mick ran back in again and jumped over the desk and gave the stick back to the Guard.
‘Good luck, Mick,’ I said, but he didn’t answer me.
Well, in a situation like that you’re really in a bind. If the thing you want to report to the authorities is something they’re at themselves, there’s no point reporting it. And you wonder then, if everyone’s at it at every level, is there even any harm in it? But having said that, you couldn’t call it normal. And it was at the stage now where you’d think you’d never could. With priests shitting on floors and Gards fetching sticks, it had gone too far. You couldn’t be getting on with it.
Well, this would be one to tell Josie down the pub and there’s no way he couldn’t say now that something was wrong. So, I gave him a call.
‘Josie.’
‘Hello, Gerard.’
‘Will you be down the pub this evening? I want to tell you something.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Ah, where’ll you be?’
‘I’ll be having a run around the park, I’d say. I’m off the beer anyway, Gerard.’
‘When will you be down to the pub?’
‘I don’t know, I’d say. I go for a run now of an evening every evening.’
‘Well, I wanted to tell ya…’
I heard a voice in the background, a woman, ‘Jooosie,’ and then there’s a noise like the phone being dropped.
‘Josie?’
But he was gone.
Josie’s never been a great man for exercise or water. He’s always loved the pub and his pints. So, again I was in a bind and wondering if he was gone like the rest of them. Mad, that is. I’d always been brought up to think that this kind of thing was mad, and I had no real reason to change my opinion. Things change, but they don’t change that much, I thought. Then I thought about going to visit the local TD and asking him about it. That’d probably be my last hope. I hadn’t seen any of this on the news, so I supposed it was a local thing and he might be able to inform the government that there was something wrong and get them to sort it out. That is if he wasn’t gone like that himself.
I turned on the news. There was a story about the new monument in the capital. A huge spire. Must be hundreds of feet up. Can’t say that sort of thing does much for me normally but it was impressive enough, I suppose, and the camera was moving up the length of it, up the whole way, and you saw it get thinner and thinner to its peak, and then the camera was moving down again to the base where there was a small crowd looking up at it. At the back of the crowd, one woman turned away from the monument and got down on all fours and a man came up behind her and lifted up her dress and started to do something unimaginable to her. Then the newscaster stepped in front and started talking about the spire, and you could only see the woman’s head sticking out from behind making all sorts of expressions.
I turned off the TV and got a book instead, and soon after fell asleep. When I woke up, I thought I wouldn’t bother with going to the TD. It seemed to be a national issue, so I supposed they knew and were taking care of it. I’d lock up everything well anyway to keep the priest out. And the woman too, though I didn’t mind her as much. That Josie wouldn’t be at the pub was a shame, but I knew plenty of others would, so I’d go there anyway, and surely find someone to have a chat to.
So, I went down there that evening and the barman still hadn’t washed his nose, which if anything was blacker than ever, and his nose hairs were growing out and around it, which made me worry about the hygiene of the whole place.
Next to my usual seat where Josie usually sat was the woman who was wearing the ‘Fuck Off’ T-shirt the other night I was in. I thought I’d have a chat with her even though she wasn’t really my type.
Well, I sat down next to her and said, ‘Hello, I’m Josie’ and offered her my hand and she looked at it and bent her face down and gave it a lick. I was a bit taken aback I’ll admit but had my wits about me enough to laugh shortly.
‘Well, you’ve had a few I take it.’
‘No, she,’ said, ‘I’m on the water.’
Well, of course, I thought. She wasn’t much to talk to after that.
No matter who I talked to there were ever only two types. There was the type who were gone, and you couldn’t really talk to them and there was the type who weren’t and who tried to be helpful and said they’d be on the lookout for the other type but didn’t seem to credit you all that much all the same. So, you never got any satisfaction really no matter what type you met, and that left you not sure if you just wanted it all to stop or to get so bad it couldn’t be ignored. It was the strangest thing to be stuck in.
Anyhow, I went to Mass on the Sunday and Father William was saying it, the same Father William that had shat on my floor, so that was bad enough. But I sat through the sermon anyway. Then towards the end, when the altar boys were lined up with the communion, one of them jerked his head forward and bit into the vestment of the boy in front. Well, Father William, didn’t he run down from the altar and give the fella a smack on the side of the head, and the boy ran off back into the vestry. After that, the service went on as usual and no-one remarked on the incident at all. Not that I heard anyway. And I didn’t even bother bringing it up myself as I was resigned to the whole thing.
Well, I was at a dead end and walked home depressed. The cool evening air blew through my hair as I headed out the back road to my cottage walking slowly and watching the dusk dwindling away and the stars peeking through the falling light. The evening was silent except for the wheeling birds on the last of their flights, and I watched them as I turned the last bend before my house. Then I reached in my pocket for a smoke, and as I did I heard a noise I hadn’t heard before. A low deep noise.
I stopped and listened.
It was a low deep growling, angry and growing, and was coming from behind the wall at the side of the road. I stayed where I was holding my cigarette, afraid to move as the noise grew louder and angrier, and angrier and louder, and there seemed now to be not one growl but many, and whether walking further along the road or back would take me away or towards the noise, I knew not, so neither way I went but stepped instead slowly out from the wall, slowly out and away, but not more than a step had I gone when from behind the wall the first of a gang of figures jumped out and more quickly followed, and I had no time to think or run and they came for me barking and growling and biting and scratching, and I fell to the ground and closed my eyes, and they were on me.
III
The spot of light on the eye of the deer bust on the wall of the office is incongruous, and if you were to notice it there, its source would require some sleuthing; and with the blinds closed and no obvious fissure in any place through which such a focused beam of natural light could travel so serendipitously as to illuminate perfectly the black centre of the deer’s left eye—such that the pupil sparkles to give an eerie impression of animation—the light might even seem mystical. Unless, of course, you are probate solicitor Phillip McBryde (of McBryde and McBryde) who purchased the bust and the subtly placed illuminators that went with it, only one of which (that aimed at said left eye) is functional. And this asymmetry is not at all lost on our Phillip, who is a fastidiously observant individual and almost put out enough about the imbalanced oracular illumination as to mention it apologetically to his visitors, so that the effect of its incongruity might be mitigated and not reflect in any way on him personally or professionally. His present visitor ought not worry him though as she does not notice the spot of light or anything else, except the document in front of her, in which she is engrossed, a document which had been discovered lying next to another stuffed animal—this one a Pomeranian dog—found on the mantlepiece of the front room of the house of Mr. Gerard Graham Kelly, missing and presumed dead.
In front of the woman is a cup of coffee into which she dips a finger, and from which she greedily sucks the warm liquid as she reads the text. Phillip McBryde watches each dip and suck with something approaching fear and this distracts him from his contemplation of the contents of the script which he has earlier himself read. The woman, who is also a lawyer, has been brought in to help, and he is hoping her conclusions will resonate with his, but he is now close to regretting her involvement.
‘Mad,’ she says.
‘Excuse me, Ms Linares?’
‘Utterly unusable as a legal document.’
‘I see. I have to say I concur. There is nothing we can do then.’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘We agree.’
‘Yes.’
While Phillip McBryde stares into Ms. Linares’ eyes, as is his habit with those from whom he wants information, he notices an incongruous glint in the pupil of one, and while he stares wondering what the light source might be for this glint and marvelling at its coincidence with his thoughts concerning the deer bust, Ms. Linares slips a pen from his desk and puts it in her pocket.
‘Well,’ she says.
‘Well,’ he says.
Phoebe Linares leaves the office, goes to her car, drives to Gerard Graham Kelly’s house, enters it, proceeds to the front room, goes to the mantlepiece, takes the stuffed Pom in her arms, and leaves the house.
Later, at lunchtime, she brings the Pom when she meets Kyoko at the Oriel bar.
‘Mm. Where did you get that?’
‘I stole it.’
Kyoko looks incredulous.
‘Fuck off.’
‘I have to go now.’
‘You just got…’
Phoebe enters a restaurant and looks around for a seat, avoiding a stool in front of a large mirror that extends along the wall. The last thing she wants to know now is what she looks like. She makes instead for a small table by the window from which a man and a woman holding a baby are rising. The table is a mess of spoons and forks and plates of discarded bones and gravy and sauce and half-eaten vegetables, some of which have escaped their porcelain confines and lie scattered about, along with several crumpled yellow and brown balls of tissue and two tall, almost-drained, glasses with dregs of chocolate milkshake creeping down their thickly obscured sides and a small oval of sticky orange liquid pooling on one end of the table that is likely an emission of the chubby pink-cheeked child in the woman’s arms—who is staring steadily now at the Pom as the couple begin to clean up the mess.
‘Not to worry, I’ll do that,’ Phoebe says, and puts the Pom down on the floor beside her.
The couple murmur their thanks and make to leave, but the baby, bobbing up and down over mum’s shoulder, still all wild blue-eyed stares, screams suddenly, and they stop, and the baby points down at the Pom and screams again, and the mum says shush, shush, and they walk out—the baby’s face all the while fixed in a deep purple howl.
The waitress ambles over as Phoebe sits down and they clear the table together, the waitress making displeased tut tut noises. The plates, tut tut, the glasses tut tut, the orangey liquid, ttttttut, tut, and wiiiiiipe.
‘Take your order?’ she says to Phoebe when they’re done.
‘I’ll have the lasagne, please.’
‘Chicken or beef.’
‘…Beef.’
‘Drink?’
‘Water.’
‘By the way,’ the waitress says, noticing the Pom on the ground.
‘Yes.’
‘We don’t allow dogs in here.’
‘Oh,’ she says, looking at the Pom, ‘it’s ok, it’s dead.’
The waitress bends down and extends a finger towards the stuffed Pom, prods it gently.
IV
(In his car)
Gerard realizes too late he should have brought the leash to tie her up. He’s put the Pom on the front seat and she’s jumping around trying to get on his lap, so he uses one hand to bat her away while he keeps the other on the steering wheel as he speeds through the countryside. With the rain smashing down on the windshield and signs hardly visible but appearing through the soaked glass only as wobbling shapes flashing past, he wonders if he’ll even make it.
The Pom makes a hacking noise and fires a goo of vomit at Gerard’s flailing fingers. He looks down disgustedly, and this expression is still fixed on his face when he looks up and sees the stationary vehicle in front of him fill his view as he piles into its rear.
The Pom had, Gerard is later informed, bounced violently off the shattering windshield like a furry projectile emitted from a cannon, its skull mirroring the glass’s destruction, and though the bone retained, like the windshield, most of its original shape, its fracturing caused brain contusions and hemorrhaging of a severe enough character to lead very soon after to the dog’s demise.
V
Phoebe sits in the front room of Gerard’s house. It’s night. The Pom is on the mantle. Phoebe is writing Gerard’s final diary entry:
The exit of the Pom’s life force into the ether, its dissipation into the great ineffable state of things is only the first stage of its mark on the world. The second is the gathering of its force in two complementary modalities: the first, concrete, and the second, abstract. The concrete reconstruction of the Pom with the help of a professional is the easier of the two tasks and the physical form of the dog stands again with full integrity before me. The abstract is the more difficult—a matter of intense concentration and clarity, a drawing back from the ether its life force in linguistic form as interpreted through my own relation with the world. This net of self will capture the substance of the Pom and in doing so be testament to the success of my disentanglement from the degraded cultural context in which I am embedded. The net will gather, and—if it can gather fully and in an effective enough manner to integrate the Pom’s life-force into its own structure—it may even be enough to effect a complete abstract and physical disentanglement for both of us and what then but…
What then but…?
From outside the window there is a noise, a low growling sound. Phoebe looks instinctively at the Pom, and then out the window, and then back at the Pom, who stands frozen, majestically, on the mantle.