the bearded lady

He thought it was a nice day for it. He’d been lying on his back in the park for an hour, two hours, watching clouds dissolving in the acid blue sky. He saw dragons chasing themselves into mist, and heard the grass softly growing underneath him. He heard it. And he thought, I’ll do it today.

There had been other acts of violence. He’d taken out his own teeth with a pair of pliers; an excuse for drinking whiskey when he couldn’t think of a better one. This was different, though.

It wasn’t warm, especially, lying there on the grass. But he was wearing his coat, his woolly jacket of many colours. And in his pockets were the magic things, things he had found and been given, things he had quested and fought for. He’d travelled to the well of eternal youth, but he never drank the water. He’d saved his friend’s soul with a spell. He’d painted his stories, tapestries telling of his conquests and defeats, which no one but him saw and understood in all their complex connections.

Hospital, medicine, therapy, prison – he had tried them all. He’d been in all the lonely, dark places, the insides of boxes and the insides of bottles. He had been treated. He had been named. But he still kept his secrets, and told no one, except for Blue.

In the end, it was missing Blue that did it. There was nothing as lonely as that.

He had got into a fight with his neighbours. He’d painted runes and arcane symbols on the door of his house, played his Pink Floyd records over and over until the walls shook. They had warned him. They’d come after him with their church god, so stern and rigid. And when he was evicted from his house, they took Blue away, too. They said they wouldn’t re-house him if he had a dog with him. They never re-housed him anyway.

Lying there on his back, he could already feel the soil gently holding him, the grass growing softly through the vacant space inside him. If Blue had been there, sitting patiently by his side, or rolling her fat little body around in the sunshine, maybe he wouldn’t have noticed all the empty space he had to fill. Maybe he wouldn’t have thought of anti-freeze; he might have stuck to Special Brew that night. Or maybe he had always intended this. Maybe it was just the right time.