The Emerald Lie

A new storm of epic proportions was forecast and this one, they promised,

Was

  The Big One.

Batten down the feeble hatches. I met with my rent-a-thug and, after a lot of haggling, got the old revolver I wanted.

Cost

... a lot.

The guy telling me,

“You gotta pay for class.”

An indication of its vintage was he could procure only five bullets. I said,

“Should be sufficient.”

Got the look and the question,

“What are you killing?”

Asked in half-jocular fashion.

I said in a similar tone,

“The past.”

Back at my apartment, I dry-fired it, needed some oil. Like my system. But it had the resounding comforting click of the hammer dropping.

A bell tolling.

Told myself,

“Least now I never have to read Salman Rushdie.”

I was on countdown to the end. The pain had upped a level and I was gut-swallowing painkillers to a limited effect.

A side effect of this intense medicine was, according to my doctor,

... Mild hallucinatory effect.

Mild!

I fucking beg to disagree.

A bitter cold day I stood on the rocks over Galway Bay, thought of James Lee Burke and his ghosts in the confederate mist. I saw

Tall ships

... Breaking on the turbulent waves.

Could read their names:

These were the famine ships,

Known as the coffin ships.

Between 1845 and 1850

These ships had serviced Galway in a desperate bid to save the starving, dying population.

I shook my head and the visions evaporated.

I felt a speech or some sort of spoken words would be fitting on the day I finally

Dropped the hammer.

My mind resonated with the most powerful death passage in movie history

... Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in Blade Runner:

“I’ve seen things like

You people wouldn’t believe:

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion;

I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the the Tannhäuser Gate.

All those moments

Will be lost

Like tears in rain.

Time to die.”

The image of Roy Batty dying in the rain seemed so damn apt.

If you want to tear the very heart from your chest. Watch the clip

On YouTube.

I had allowed these words, this image, to sear into my psyche. I almost lived the end of Under the Volcano where they dump a dead dog into the hole after the body of the consul.

On the edge of the Claddagh Basin, I met Cathy. The woman whose daughter, Serena-May, had died on my watch.

In a life-affirming book, the type of shite that would get you on Oprah, Cathy would have embraced me and cooed,

“I love and forgive you.”

Right?

She spat in my face,

Cursed,

“May you never have a day’s peace.”