And that is the God-given beauty of it. Listen.
Ah can hear cars. Cars and pick-ups. Ah can hear their horns blaring, their avenging engines revving. Ah, mah executioners. Mah killers. They are converging on mah shack.
Ah can hear their shouts right now, at this very moment, carried on a boreal wind over the swampland – this fortress of trees and tangled vine – and down into its hypaethral capsule of mud – this bogdom – this murky kennel – this coop into which ah am disappearing – melting, melting away.
They are confused by the presence of the great wall that surrounds Doghead – confused by its daunting dimensions and its ferocity.
Bang! Now they are trying to break down the gate. Bang! Now they are ramming it with a vehicle.
Ah hear a c-c-crash. Thanks to God and his big heart.
Two things have happened. Just as ah planned they would.
First off, they have broken down the gate.
Secondly, they have pulled all the wire-mesh fronts off the cages in the process. Ah rigged up a simple device, last night, using a few pieces of rope and some pulleys. Now they have some kinda trouble. Believe me. Now they have some kinda trouble.
Mah dogs! Ah can hear the sinister music of mah dogs. Ah can tell that they are mah dogs and not theirs because no dogs sound like mah dogs. Mah dogs do not bark. No they don’t. When mah dogs bark, they whine – a chilling, high-pitched hummance – one long extended note but very loud. When they are hungry, mah dogs, and ah mean blood-hungry, they pull back their lips and bare their mangled teeth and from deep within their knotted bodies comes this weird sound – all at different pitches like some eerie satanic canting.
There is fury in the air. Ah can hear it from here. Evil radar. Mah dogs are sending some very unfriendly transmission. Making bad waves. And it ain’t no hamster that they’re looking for.
Oh bounty hunters. These are mah dogs. Hobbling from their kennels to meet you.
As the eastern flank of the valley smarted with the new day, the fading night could be seen to crystalize, infused with minute greyish grains of visibility, and it was into that semi-obscurity that ah dragged mah crucified body from beneath the bridge.
Looking back at it ah marvelled at the neat little funk-hole ah had found, fashioned by the very hand of God, for He had surely poked his little finger into the damp earth, pending mah persecutory flight and subsequent hiding out – hidden behind a wall of thorn and bramble, impervious to all but me – the one who has lived a life of briar and thistle, whose every path was choked with nettle and thorn, he whose very head was crowned in the stuff.
Ah stood by the creek and plucked fat grey slugs from mah naked body, and ah was touched by the way each slug clung to mah skin, holding on for dear life with their big fluted feet and producing a soft smacking sound as ah peeled them off.
‘Does a kiss feel like this?’ ah thought, as ah placed the slugs carefully on a handkerchief ah had laid out on the ground. And ah thought of Beth and how she had stood on the bridge above me in slippered feet, and ah imagined the breeze pushing the thin fabric of her nightdress against her body. For a moment ah thought of going back to the crawlspace, but dismissed the idea just as quickly, as ah didn’t have a lot of time left before the citizens would be out and about – and ah intended to be well and truly inside the confines of Doghead by then.
Ah tied the corners of mah handkerchief together, hooking the weighted pouch of kisses from mah belt buckle, then set off by way of the creek, following it up to the refinery, then round the back of the crops, leaving the creek to meander up the side of the valley. Ah approached Doghead from the east, and instead of walking around to the front gates ah entered mah Kingdom by way of a secret door ah had fashioned in the wall, just in case anyone had staked the place out and was waiting for me to return. You can never be too careful when you’re playing for keeps. That was one of the first things God told me.
The secret door was based on a simple horizontal winch system that hoisted a corrugated iron panel set in a modified window frame – like a guillotine – just enough to crawl through comfortably. Once ah had disconnected the net and the leaping pitchfork – ah told you about the leaping pitchfork, didn’t ah? – sure, sure, of course ah did, it’s one of mah favourites – so simple, but what terrible potential! – and had crawled through the wall unscathed, and once ah had watched the corrugated panel close behind me and the steel skewers rise up from the ground and all the booby traps had been re-set, and once ah had sauntered down to the still and filled a bottle with the last of the brew, rolling the two empty barrels against the wall for added fortification and scattering the piles of cold ash about the place, yes, once ah had done all that, ah walked blithely over to the old Chevy, leapt up on the bonnet, took a deep and well-deserved slug of the Jesus, kicked mah boots high into the air and banged them back against the battered bumper, did it again, kick bang, kick bang, kick bang, slugged Jesus again, rocked forward, putting mah head between mah knees, fell backward so ah lay on mah back upon the bonnet, kicked up mah legs, banged down on the bumper, rocked forward, fell back, kicked up, banged down, rocked, fell, kicked, banged, rocked and rocked, laughed and rocked and laughed and laughed and drank and rolled and fell and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and said, ‘Atta boy, Euchrid! You made it. They tried, O how they fucken tried, but they didn’t get you. O fucken no. They fucked right up. Yes sirree, they fucked right up!’
And ah stood on the bonnet and climbed on to the roof and, still laughing, ah took another slug at the bottle, then began jumping up and down, hard and loud as ah could, yes, up and down – bang, bang, bang, bang, spinning mahself around and around – saying, shouting, ‘That’s right, you stinking fucken cunts! Come and get me! Ye-e-e-a-ah! Ye-e-e-a-ah! Beat me down! Beat me down! Ye-e-e-a-ah! Just try and fucken beat me down!’ And me thrashing the whole fucken world with mah giant sickle, heads rolling, heads rolling down, rivers of blood, sewers of gore, oceans of the wicked, headless, limbless. Slash! Slash! Mass extermination, mass death, mass bloodshed, by mah hand. Slash! Slash! By mah own hand, slash! slash! at mah own slashing, silver, sickled hand.
And suddenly, from the corner of mah eye, ah saw it – a flash of scarlet smeared down the back wall of the shack, and the sight of it damn near knocked me over. Someone had infiltrated mah sanctuary, mah Kingdom, mah refuge, and left a hideous sign of their trespass!
Ah climbed down off the roof of the Chevy, mah eyes riveted to the wall, took another slug from the bottle, corked it, and walked bravely forward.
It took some seconds before ah realized what it was.
‘They have chosen to violate mah property, and there is simply nothing ah can do about it,’ ah thought. ‘Nothing.’
And a multitude of chattering voices, imps and gnomes and trolls gnawing at mah brains, needled me with their solutions. A solution.
Ah scooped up a hammer all covered in blood and ah gripped the handle tightly in mah fist.
‘They come and mock openly without fear of reproach. Soon they will tire of it all and stop with their toying and simply put an end to me. They will come here – three, four, ten, twenny, ah don’t know, but they will come and kill me. If God had not willed it that ah spent last evening unner a bridge instead of here, then it could have been me they nailed to the wall,’ ah reasoned.
And ah took the hammer and prized the three six-inch nails out of the crucified she-bitch and let the stiffened decollated carcass drop heavily to the ground, rolling on its back in the blood-hardened dust. Its front legs – arms – had been splayed outwards unnaturally, while its hinds had been broken at the thigh and lay in the dust at impossible angles like the hands of a clock. Ah did not find its head until later that evening, bludgeoned to paste and alive with ants at the bottom of the incinerator.