Read Online My First Colouring Book by Lloyd Jones - Free Book Online Page A

old gob – a high tide mark, foam? Medicine perhaps. Don’t go to sleep, you won’t ever wake again. Concentrate. What happened next?
    You ran out of the house, yes ran, you old fool. Haven’t done that for a while, have you? There was someone with you. Tall, dark, on the periphery of your social group. Peter? Paul? Don’t start searching your memory, for chrissakes don’t start the ABC thing now, we’ll be here for ever. Is that the idea? Stuck on a hospital ward for eternity going ABCDE what the F was his name , the tall dark boy who came after you through that massive front door, across the wooden footbridge clank clank clank, across the gleaming black pavement and into the road? Can’t remember, won’t ever remember again. Gone forever. He’s a silhouette now, can’t even remember his face, can you? Nice bloke, going out with one of the girls. Good manners, no trace of any dark matter swirling around him. Wholesome, that’s the word, he was nutritious. One day a middle-aged woman will snuffle into her handkerchief and say he was such a lovely man, he was the best daddy in the world. Could be happening right now: hundreds of weeping people, biggest funeral ever seen, popular figure, doting husband, greatly loved father and grandfather. Not like you, old man. So forget him.
    What’s that noise… is the Chinaman slapping his wok again, five doors down?
    No. It’s closer now. Systolic, diastolic. Dum-dum, dum-dum…
    The drum is beating again outside the trading post but this time the drummer’s right by your ear. They’ve wired you up, old man – to a machine. Your private spokesman is describing physical carnage and chaos, that final helicopter flight from Saigon. That faltering, diminishing beat is your own heart, loud-speakered out to those who can’t enter the stadium of death. And the medics, traders in turmoil, dealers in decay, are all around you, striking deals with your mortal friends. When the music stops you’ll be taken away. Swapped for a plastic sweetie jar full of the greyness extracted from you, your honeycomb shattered. Your body will be hot-wired by a gang of po-faced funeral directors, driven around then torched. Yeeee-haaa.
    But let’s stay in the past for now. Let’s go back to the accident outside your door, the rolling hubcap, the deathly silence immediately afterwards. You and the nameless, faceless one are standing by a motorbike which is lying on its side in the road. It’s raining slantwise across the orange streetlights so you pull your collar up and study the scene. There has been an accident. A man lies unconscious in the road, near the bike, which is still hot. You can hear end-of-performance, off-stage noises – clicks and clacks, the sound of a cleaner in the wings, sweeping up broken glass.
    The bike’s a 250cc two-stroke, you can smell the oil. But the engine is no longer running. The man-boy in the road is wearing black leathers and a full-face helmet. Peering into the visor (because you’ve been taught not to touch this prone figure) you espy that he’s wearing a scarf or a facemask, covering his mouth and nose. Bad news. You also see the band driving off into the night in a big black Mercedes van, their eardrums still too stuffed with noise to hear anything real. Finally, as your dark acquaintance runs into the house to call the emergency services, you notice a trickle of thick black liquid inside the biker’s helmet. The bad news gets worse. Let’s leave it at that for now, old man – you’re exhausted. Have a little rest while I try to recapture the scene.
    At this point I can afford to think out loud, since you won’t remember a word I say.
    You’re in a side room at the local hospital, it’s a hot and windless day, and your rickety old brain cells – in their piss-stained pyjamas – are having a final dribble up yonder in the Cranial Rest