John Fellenor

You must listen intently to the sound in your ears. It’s a carrier signal. The message is layered into it.

Yes. It was the Werewolf, he said. I ask him what happened.

How much further are we going? She isn’t really asking me. Just thinking aloud.

There was a boy once upon a time who lived in a small village with his mother, this father, and his sister.

So this man lived once in a fairly clean house, up along a good road. A good neighbourhood. This was the man I told you about.

Where did those men go? What men? He says he didn’t notice; had his eyes closed listening to some music the barman had put on.

Fade out. The music fades out. I say you’re a strange girl. She doesn’t reply immediately so I stay: switch channels.

Three black bags lay on the table and the telephone was ringing in the back. That’s where it was.

So in this photograph are a boy and a girl. The boys sits on the ground to the left and the girl lies on the ground to the right.

The point about the Werewolf is this: a popular conversation about categories of things.

This guy works in a store. He has a bulging gut but his heart was in the right place.

And off we set with the black bag in the trunk of the car. The drive to the restaurant is some two hundred miles of desert, mountain passes.

I was wrong. It did change. How can you hear the cries of others and not listen?

I get flashbacks of war. But I wasn’t there

Now see what you think about this: a man up along a road stood next to a tan colored car.

Letters. The writing on the brown envelope said: photocopies as requested.

As I mentioned, this isn’t my natural line of work. I just fell into it.

Every now and then the old man would rock back on his heels. Every now and then.

You must listen intently to the sound in your ears. It’s a carrier signal.

March the seventeenth. Thinking about the body guard: got shot.

I spent two weeks in the hospital. I can remember getting there.

There’s a spider crawling on the counter.

I awake with a start, and then slip back to this time.

I stab the cherry tomato with my fork; trying hard to not let it shoot off the plate or squirt seeds at me.

People get killed. Are hollow. They come up to me like clear outlines with no insides, no complexity.

The dirt falls from the shovel all too slowly. I swear it doesn’t want to cover her body: it keeps slipping off to the edges.

People talking in the hotel bar. A couple maybe mid-sixties.

I wait here every day for somebody to come in.

And after the bar? What happened after the bar, he asked.

We stop at the next bench, only a few yards away and she sits gently.

On the edge of a main highway that runs through a small desert town.

This acts as some kind of nominal starting point. Because it was.

It’s a bit embarrassing. I’m worried about stretch marks on my back.