Decay Inevitable

We were friends by now. Fast and firm. We talked a lot, but he pretty much clammed up when the chat turned on him, his family, his loves. He got a cloud in his eyes when I asked him about his loves. Because I never saw him once with a lady on his arm. He had no tattoos proclaiming his desire for a Mavis or a Maude, or a Malcolm come to that. But we talked. One night he had had a bit too much to drink and the shakes were on him. I thought he was fearless, but this night he shook so much I could hear his bones rattling. He told me he was never going to be able to stop working. He was scared to stop working because he didn’t know what would happen to him. It wasn’t the poor bastards we visited that put the willies up him, nor was it the people he delivered the money to – what I thought was money. He said he was scared of himself. He had terrible dreams, he said. Dreams in which he walked through a corridor of mirrors and was terrified to turn to his left or right to see what kind of reflection walked with him. Ask him how he was feeling and he’d tell you that he didn’t feel himself today. Then he’d cackle to himself darkly for a bit. The drinking got worse. I drove him everywhere. But he got on top of it. Beat it, I suppose. Wrestled his demons to the ground like the hard bastard he is.

Doesn’t matter any more, he told me, when I asked him if he was okay. He dreamed of his corridor of mirrors and walked along it, smashing every one down with a baseball bat. Dead if I do and dead if I don’t, he told me. I never let it rest. I asked him to tell me what was going on. I dogged him. I went after him about the true nature of his work like a hound after a fox. I threatened that I’d leave him. He came round after that.

He showed me, one night, what the fuss was all about. We went out on a collection. A little house in Widnes. Old couple. Desperate for cash. Well, they’d got their bit of cash and Vernon came to balance the books. Instead of leaving me outside, he took me in with him. I wish I’d had a drink beforehand, let me tell you. What I saw... what I saw...