Grig Risoll
Contents of jacket pocket, 4 May.
Raised on nails, he grew up stuffed behind the oven in the kitchen of a mental clinic, munching on scraps and pills and other found matter for which there is no name.
Punch drunk aged seven, barrel-chested, legs short and plucky, arms like pistons in a hijacked steamship. He is a sort of unofficial boxer. One punch. One punch is all he needs.
He felt happy to collect beer caps but his stash was ransacked. He has a lucky penny but it's all rubbed out.
He once drank slime for a bet. It was resting in a pipe which rolled from under an abandoned hearse. He brought it on himself by earlier sabotaging the Bathfield Crematorium for letting him down over the matter of his pappy. These things are chains.
He became the butt of a joke about a eunuch amongst a group of men he took to be his friends.
Tricked out of six months' savings by a bogus expedition to a Polynesian spice mine. He did not need that. He did not need that at that time, my friend.
How can we blame him? He is one man against the world. Against the Angel's Fin Mental Clinic of Calorica Falls. Against the Bathfield Crematorium. Against the Hupert L. Chinelion Oceanic Exploration and Mining Corporation.
Why does he sob into his glass in the shadows of lonely stink holes and wonder why he cannot change his ways? Why do his eyes feel like shards? Whisky is his favourite liquor. He will have no strangers, only friends he hasn't met.
Do not be a fool. Let him come now. Let him come. Into your arms. Let him cry upon your shoulder. Give him love. Give him all your love and he will follow you forever.
What things you might achieve!