1

At breakfast that morning Doyle found himself impressed by the smoothness of his hard boiled egg. It had the smooth burnished tan of a monk worked ten years over a hoe in a vegetable garden. In the line of a mans forehead, he thought, one sees all the nobility of the lineage. He hoped that age would leave him so sweetly scarred.

It seemed almost a shame to bash that expansive roundness with the top of his teaspoon, but bash it he did, exposing the soft pulpy yellowness of the yolk.

Isnt a mystery, he thought, that so many politicians have thick bushy hair and foreheads thin as strips of white tape. Perhaps there is something essential missing from the mix.

Damn good egg.

The morning newspaper had once again climbed through the cat hatch, scaled a table leg and opened itself seductively before him. Doyle hated newspapers. They brought the worst of people into his home like some petty old gossip hissing through the post slot.

He never read a paper without being horrified by the handfuls of muck that some benighted idiot thought worth scattering over a page.

Its the neatness of it all that fools you. The immaculate block print and the smell of squid that rises from the paper. You feel that somewhere behind all these words there must be a learned man. The mind conjures dusty libraries filled with old books, the scratch of an old feather pen.

To say that Doyle was concerned with journalism was too say nothing at all. Doyle didnt give a fig for journalism.

I wish the paper was thinner though, like the bible. Great for rolling smokes. Seems like a waste of trees really.

Doyle imagined an unbroken line of forest and then a conveyor belt filled with bouncing toilet rolls.

How is it that we are always reducing, reducing, reducing something great to something small, I do not care for it at all. I would not care if it was short. I would not care if it was tall.

Doyle pursed his lips and thought about the cat in the hat. When he was a child he was fond of saying the cat shat in the hat to shock his sister. A cat shat in that hat! Dont wear it, by god.

Doyle looked down into the empty shell of his egg.

Theres a certain something in the air today, Doyle.

He smacked his lips. Out through the window he could see his neighbor staggering out across the yard, thin wisps of white hair blowing in the wind. Her skeletal figure rocked

and bucked as if she were walking on the deck of a ship. He squinted and tried to imagine a pirates hat on her head instead of the tatty red scarf.

He could see the chimney stacks, the sloping line of a factory roof. Black smoke twisting in the sky like a ribbon.

He pushed his chair away from the table, stepped up to the sink and ran cold water of his hands. Doyle caught his eye in a pot bottom, studying his face.

Not the face of a stone cold killer. Not at all.  A cherubic face, the face of an old priest after a lifetime on the bottle. Fans of burst red vessels in his cheeks, a sharp, gristly nose. Tattery weak lips and a stubbled effeminate chin.

He leered and bared his teeth.

I .. kill... you.

2

Hup. Why the hell did  da send me to college. I'll never shake the existential hogwash. I could have been a chippy. Make park benches.

Nothing wrong with watching telly and making benches. My da was a happy

man and.. where in the name of hell did that key get too...  nope..

nope.. he gripped the back of his chair & felt the wood crack.

its always the case with furniture, you want to apply a little pressure.. but

then a little too much and hup.. the backing snaps..

key..  think...  

slaps at the counter, knocking over the toaster.

first FUCKING prize!

he puts the key to his eye. the bronze radiates coldness onto his eyeball.

we have a hole to dig, said the oilman to the farmer.

Removing the false backing and down into the tunnel, ten years to reach the thousand yards and real graveyard soil. I'll soon have my hands on you my pretties. Can hardly restrain myself from dancing a jig, all those cooling bodies just out of reach.