As I walked down to the water’s edge I knelt and plunged my right hand in,
increasing the rivers density, I watched my hand dance until I thought the river may
run dry, that my hand may never return to me.
I was wrong, my hand soon returned and it hurt like hell.
Then the river dissipated, cruelly, as I was now struggling to comprehend
dying among the scorching sand-dunes.
In the peripheral
Of crescents
Cul-de-sacs
Disrespected alleyways
Lost behind dull signs
Fleeting
In reflections
The unfathomable
Memory Vapour
Often distant
Sometimes fading
Throbbing vibrantly
Forever fading
In tangent
With the pulse
Of those
Who
Project them
Still touch
The finest hairs
Of the passer-by
The unknowing
“I see.” Replied the Apprentice, he was unnerved.
“No, I don’t think you do see! I’m not dead yet! Get me…to…the…Hospital!” croaked the Dying Man.
His apprentice did as he was told; he hadn’t driven for a good few years, but felt the time was right to get back behind the wheel.
The Apprentice held the Dying Man upright, until he threw him into the backseat of his car, the Dying Man was now semi-conscious; with his treatment that bore resemblance to raw meat on a butcher’s slab.
The Apprentice then drove to the hospital with extreme caution. Slowly through the traffic he went, every wrong turn possible, he even began to enjoy the drive, he slipped an old John Williams Film Soundtrack tape into the cassette player for old time sake.
The Apprentice screamed, “Yeeees!” Suddenly, maniacal to the nostalgic sounds of Indiana Jones; whilst somehow, simultaneously, surprising himself at his over-reaction to joy.
He sang along, “Da dadada daa da da, dada dadaa da da da da da!” He cracked his imaginary whip out of the driver’s window and bucked his hips into the distressed driver’s seat of his knackered Ford Mondeo. The Apprentice had become somewhat hysterical; a middle-aged demon away with the fairies.
The music, so thunderous and active, so out of sync to his Mondeo’s pathetic speed that a mini epidemic of voyeurs were gathering like bacteria, and with more pace than the car itself.
Finally, two hours later they arrived at the hospital, music still blaring.
As soon as the passenger door was opened by a passing paramedic, the paramedics face rippled with distorted brass notes as she then bellowed, “He’s dead!”
As the day’s passed the result from the autopsy concluded that the Dead Man wouldn’t have died had he not spooned his own eyes out with his seat belt latch plate, and consequently stuffed them into his despairing ears; he simply lost the will to live, his illness was a mystery to all except one.
For many years after the Dead Man’s death they continued with their tempestuous relationship. To the Dead Man’s indignation his colleague had become one of the most successful entertainers on earth, and revoltingly rich.
The Apprentice was no longer the Apprentice, for he had gained worldwide fame and made an absolute killing from his live and often violent televised séances as Jenson De’ath.
I Eat Let.ers 