There Is More Light Than Dark

Chapter Eighty Six

Monday August 22

That dreaded realisation that my life is behind me and Mason can no longer give me any peace or safety weighs me down as I look out the window at the two who I should have known would always be my undoing. The podgy middle-aged nobody who has that hard fucking edge to him and the pretty bitch who wanted me hard at first and now only looks at me with disdain. I might as well jump out of this little, thick fucking window and make those arseholes clean up what is left of me, spilling onto the gravel and bricks some poor bastard laid a hundred years ago.

And I would do that right now if not for Lola who sits still and watches me and then the floor. She sips from her cup and puts it down onto the uneven bricks that have seen hard men drink and fall, weather thrash against the walls that would make your nose bleed and savage, passionate love when a keeper would catch something better than a mulloway. But I doubt those cold bricks have ever borne witness to a feeling like I have right now. I want to smash and bleat and burn and push the whole fucking lighthouse into the ocean. I want to grab any bastard who comes near me and smash them into the bricks on the floor until their blood covers the secrets I have shared with Lola.

But she is there and I have to find a way to keep her safe.

I have to find a way to keep them out and us in.

I have to find a way to be more like my mother and less like my father.

I have to find my own peace.

And I feel a headache coming on like no other and I am screaming into my arm and my hands but they are not enough to contain it and Lola is crying now and my fists are bleeding and my head is hurting more.

I am seeing blues and reds like they are falling from the sky and they are beautiful but they hurt me and they have a sound and a smell that makes me feel like they are mine. I don't know whether it is them that make me swirl or the lighthouse that feels like it is twisting and bending like it wants to throw me up but I am holding Lola and she is thrashing at the lights that swarm us. I hold her tighter and she starts to stop and my brain feels like it might explode now as I head to the window and look to see where those fucking cops have gone - but they are gone and the lighthouse heaves me towards the floor and I feel myself falling and something cracks underneath me as the lights all turn bright red and fill my eyes and my heart and my head and I am rolling up the wall to find a place I can stay and look down at her and be safe and still at last but I am falling again and something soft underneath me groans and I hear a voice outside calling to me and her.

Don't pass out and let him win you weak faggot!

I can feel his breath. I can feel him move inside me.

Somebody fucking help me!

Somebody fucking help me!

Somebody fucking kill me!