Tuesday 11th December

THIS BROKEN BENDY MAN:

His texts came in at 1:00am, saying, ‘thank you’ & ‘goodbye’.They found him
lying in a field, close to death, more from hypothermia than the overdose
he’d taken. The incident number was ‘1’, it wasn’t a busy night, but the
ambulance took longer to arrive as he’d picked his spot right on the border
where it couldn’t be agreed whose jurisdiction he fell under.
No one would move him until the ambulance arrived, so they laid a blanket
over him & he continued to die, freezing like a supermarket chicken
on the frozen grass. But though his injuries were deep, they were merely
emotional & the upside of the vast quantity of cider he’d imbibed was that
he had become endowed him with the properties of India Rubber, making it
much easier to lift him into the relative warmth in the back of his mate’s
estate car, but only after it was pointed out that he’d be dead before the
ambulance arrived if they didn’t get him off the ground. Then, when he saw,
through blurred eye’s, the bright & flashing lights all around him & the
brightly coloured clothes of his companions he began to smile,
building boxes with his numb & bloodied hands, thinking for a second
he was back-in-the-day.

(K)