SICK UNTO DEATH?

Sonia was on her way back from the bathroom when she saw it on the doormat. Empty bowels and two more tablets of Fluoxetine hydrochloride. Her hands were still wet - she had never quite mastered the art of completely drying them. They were chapping now. She picked up the paper and unfolded it. The message smudged under her thumb and forefinger.

Her mental state was crumbling and she seldom left the sofa nowadays except for toilet visits. The cushion and the upholstery was now Sonia shaped. She flopped back into the still warm womb. On the coffee table in front of her was a chaos and somewhere in that confusion were her spectacles - she'd given up on the contacts days ago. She felt them out and, adding further smudges to the lenses, she slipped them onto her prominent nose. She looked at the paper and turned it back and forth, puzzling over both sides as they flipped past. Her eyes slid into focus and she zoomed in on the spiral text. She found her eyes drawing her being into the maelstrom - round and down - and she could not draw herself back. Her head spun and a wave of nausea washed over her as a vertigo overcame her. She vomited into the mess on the coffee table, her mental confusion mirroring it.

A copy of the spiral text had been delivered to Bruno but Bruno was still out working.

Two further copies had been delivered: one to Mr Power and one to Mr Lory.

The final copy had been delivered to the apartment of Alex G.

Charlie was still studying his original. He had lifted much of the staining with a moistened cotton swab and was copying the text that he could decipher onto a yellow pad when it finally dawned on him: this was his script. Or at least it was the foundation, the skeleton of his script.


(TBC)