Playfair
Page 7
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. . . Hash rises, sluggishly this time.
The smell of burning flesh in his nostrils, feeling the shaking writhing man on the end of the big stick like an oversized eel. As a boy, Hash had never even caught a fish - he’d not had the heart to so much as pierce the worm to bait his hook.
‘Jesus fuckin,’ he slurs. ‘I’m so. I’m so fuckin sorry man. Jesus fuckin.’
He reaches down for a new spliff and builds it, quick and clumsy this time, trying to get his eyes to focus. His fingers fumble for sense, looking for an anaesthetic.
Finding one.
He sucks deep and hard until it’s all gone. He folds another. Smokes it the same.
And his eyelids collapse finally on peace.
His brain now beyond the reach of thought, of pain.
The little boat slowly rocks around on her anchor, soothing him further. The sun eating into the shade inch by inch like sand before the rising tide.
Hash groans and mumbles something, swats at the sky.
But he can’t reach the sun.
The earth rotates, the shade shrinks, the boat moves on her anchor - the sun edges up his left elbow and over his nipple, across his chest and into his face.
Anaesthetised.
Free from thought.
Course set for a world of pain.