Read Online List of the Lost by Morrissey - Free Book Online Page B

overjolt of brown and white powder, both of which submerge like falling snow as they enjoy one another and whisper, I’m the right friend for you. Harri lies back in order to wait – on this very bed, bought so early in his teens, of nights that brought him a little of everything that over-active fantasy and imagination could possibly muster, and that were now only important as quaint flickers of flashing recall. Were you ever really that small, that trusting … that raucous tweenager? So loud! So loud! A flight of stairs with two leaps! Now, each fast gulp of the cloudy cocktail spared nothing, and three fierce swigs empties the tankard with an earth-rattling speed – even now, allowing contemplation no access. A sleepiness demanded further sleep. “I lived – here’s proof,” he said, smiling as he raised a boyhood pewter trophy before him to lovingly inspect, yet now realizing that he could no longer control the body that had earned it. In endless fidget he had shed all responsibility without losing trust in his own intuition, and for once he had no right to expect his body to behave well, for … why should it? There came a nobility to his expression as his head sunk further back into the built-up pillows, yet a loud and unpleasant ringing had begun in both ears. There was no way to get out of it now. The pulp of his hands were the pals of the dying, and suddenly his face was wet as his lower abdomen felt the punch of a fierce doubled-up bolt and a grinding, knotted twist. He was aware of the pain but also of its completeness and necessity. It was at once inhospitable yet he felt immune to enemy fire, because the now-rising screech in his head humanized him as his eyes closed like a book and he accepted that he was now behind it or beyond it and there was no need to think further on the matter and he was a child again on a bed of cast iron and there were waiting rooms of doctors and an elderly lady in black who was neatly dressed as she leaned over his bed and asked “Are you ready now? Are you ready to go now?” and he saw himself unborn and he whispered “Yes, thank you,” with an infant’s sigh, and there were no longer uncertainties about whatever was right or wrong as his eyes began to swell and something stronger than himself took charge, arranging him to a nothingness of abnormal heart rhythms and voluntary unconsciousness in which the mind’s eye saw a Sunday in a simplified life, always restless and full of fun, yet this woman in volcanic black returned unexpectedly with “Are you ready now?” and he remembered that he had already told her that he was, and the taste of the blood in his mouth only made him smile for he knew there would be no bouncing back like late-night waves unseen from the beach yet sounding as if all around, because, as the brain began to vomit, he was quickly beginning to die.
    Locked together in a triangular scrum embrace of strong arms and choked sobs, our heroes Ezra, Nails and Justy stood a few yards away from the gathered mourners of heads bowed, staring in shock at the lowered coffin as if imagining their inevitable turn within; we cry for ourselves when we cry for others. As the priest gibbered and jabbered his dutiful dribble, from the roadside came the blaring disco music of a passing open-topped car, and the skimble-skamble of senseless children from the funeral crowd suddenly broke loose and began to screech excitedly and run in circles. All at once nothing at all made sense. Even the clouds lowered unexpectedly, and the cluster of the knowingly nodding sympathetics moved stiffly, as if on their very best behavior, none knowing what to say in order to avoid even one misplaced word, all tripping gently as they moved away from the grave. It is a wordless day, in fact, for there are none to adequately sum it all up, for how could there be? The priest prattled confidently whilst reading a book of debatable origins, and