The Beginning
He was dead and I was 7. I could tell he was dead. It was pretty obvious. So it intrigued me at the time that the rest of the family (who were grown-ups and supposedly should know better) were insisting on thumping his chest and blowing into his mouth whilst screaming and crying at him that he can't die. As if he would pay them any attention.
"You dare die, you fucking dare!"
To be honest, if I was him, I wouldn't come back with all this going on. I heard myself think as I stood watching the madness. At least he has stopped making that ghastly sound though. (The 'death rattle', as I was later to learn, is a very real and very disturbing side effect of passing to the other side, where the remaining air leaks from every possible crevice it can, often giving the impression that the deceased is still breathing and very much alive.)
My mother shouted at me to go. It was such a wretchedly given order that I paused uncertain for a while before grudgingly obeying and turning to head to the lounge.
I was bored and Grandma's tiny flat had nothing in it of any interest to a 7 year old. Except one VHS tape of Short Circuit 2. It was recorded off the TV back in the day when you could only record the channel you were actually watching at the time. There were clumsy cuts in the film where whoever was taping it had attempted to hit the stop record button when the adverts came on. There was that ...and an empty Quality Streets tin which doubled up as both an alien space station and a fortress for my imaginary magical frog kingdom. I did consider asking Grandma if I could watch the Short Circuit 2 tape, but decided against it on account of her crying and screaming.
So I lay down on the sofa with my scrawny, bruised legs high in the air, socks pulled up to the knees, and attempted to see how many of Grandma's tasseled cushions I could balance on top of my feet. I think I managed three.
The last thing I remember about that day was Grandma, after what seemed like forever, bursting out of the bedroom in floods of tears with her arms waving about. Somewhere between then and when I'd first started my ingenious cushion balancing game, a team of paramedics had arrived to lend a helping hand. I guess I was too busy to notice them. They worked out straight away that he was dead. Of course, I could have told them that.
And eventually everything turned into morbid silence. Except for me and my game.
He's just meat now. Meat for worms. It changes nothing. Keep on playing. Everyone else will keep on playing long after he's rotten. Long after we're dead and gone.
That of course is probably not the beginning. It is simply the first time I can recall, with any real certainty, a time when my thoughts were not particularly my own. But this has to start somewhere and it's as good a beginning as any other.
"You dare die, you fucking dare!"
To be honest, if I was him, I wouldn't come back with all this going on. I heard myself think as I stood watching the madness. At least he has stopped making that ghastly sound though. (The 'death rattle', as I was later to learn, is a very real and very disturbing side effect of passing to the other side, where the remaining air leaks from every possible crevice it can, often giving the impression that the deceased is still breathing and very much alive.)
My mother shouted at me to go. It was such a wretchedly given order that I paused uncertain for a while before grudgingly obeying and turning to head to the lounge.
I was bored and Grandma's tiny flat had nothing in it of any interest to a 7 year old. Except one VHS tape of Short Circuit 2. It was recorded off the TV back in the day when you could only record the channel you were actually watching at the time. There were clumsy cuts in the film where whoever was taping it had attempted to hit the stop record button when the adverts came on. There was that ...and an empty Quality Streets tin which doubled up as both an alien space station and a fortress for my imaginary magical frog kingdom. I did consider asking Grandma if I could watch the Short Circuit 2 tape, but decided against it on account of her crying and screaming.
So I lay down on the sofa with my scrawny, bruised legs high in the air, socks pulled up to the knees, and attempted to see how many of Grandma's tasseled cushions I could balance on top of my feet. I think I managed three.
The last thing I remember about that day was Grandma, after what seemed like forever, bursting out of the bedroom in floods of tears with her arms waving about. Somewhere between then and when I'd first started my ingenious cushion balancing game, a team of paramedics had arrived to lend a helping hand. I guess I was too busy to notice them. They worked out straight away that he was dead. Of course, I could have told them that.
And eventually everything turned into morbid silence. Except for me and my game.
He's just meat now. Meat for worms. It changes nothing. Keep on playing. Everyone else will keep on playing long after he's rotten. Long after we're dead and gone.
That of course is probably not the beginning. It is simply the first time I can recall, with any real certainty, a time when my thoughts were not particularly my own. But this has to start somewhere and it's as good a beginning as any other.