There was a year or so when I thought I might be dead. I spoke to everyone I met about the whole of it - how it was impossible to prove we were alive and kicking. Voltaire took the easy way out, but I know I might still be dead - Everyone looked at me strangely. I understood this was not a question they intended to explore deeply - most people never know if they’re alive: not even when they die. I asked them to show me if I was alive, and no answer came, save from a pinch, a beating, and once, a kind blow job while I cried. So I believe in a soul now, though I can’t imagine a single person ever having one … the Dead “Hello” in the morning, the Dead “good night” when the lights go out, the Dead stares on Public Transport, the dead lives etched out in echoes of fights and orgasms left over from teen-age fantasies that have yet to come to life, all of them riding buses into offices where death is doled out in the interest accrued on welfare: that welfare of bullets and weaponry.
screaming at low volumes
