What happened, what happened? Vincent blinks. Nothing happened. Nothing ever happens. In the Big Nothing [ ... ]
The twisted fist in O's gut is pulling him down and in, sucked in flat; Pet Shop Boys pointed heads, reversed birth dunce, and click and whirr, and coils backwards contortionist, like a roll of celluloid film, vanishing clean over the edge; wet face flashes black and white, slides down the metal chute to the bone splintering, hulking embrace of giant Moloch hands [ ... ]
There's no way back. No you can't, of course you can't, old man; no way back to slender, skipping Troy and Marina's gigantic eyes; Oh Joe in the motorway cafe, the weep weep cradle song and the little girl lost; wide open to a sense of wonder, cheery smiles from a naked, nervous Willy and his wife, swinging in a cheery tree, to a yellow stripe on soldier blues and thick red blood runs down prison bars, as he strides beside redbrick mills; and hand in hand with his guardian angel on a mystery trip to see the mean, filthy Lowry chimneys from the green hills of a New Jerusalem [ ... ]
And in the end, grimly gathered round the final, suckling O of an old man's life, a Sillitoe Salford schoolmaster, fragrant pipe and pea-whistle pockets, steals seal silent down the wide open O, and lives a shadow show, exchanging soot-black Rosamund streets and gaswork ginnels for the bright, white light of the Big Nothing; hushed whispered litanies on hard wooden benches, tight lips puckered closed O to taste tart, tiny metal feet, white grey pungent plumes, dancing hologram ghost cones, and the metal rattle of the censer, for the nimble hot coals ballet points to cold marble Sunnah ablutions and closeted synchronised bending in pious manly rows, as clean, white feet enjoy the flock shock of thick, warm carpet [ ... ]
The Money God yawns, scratches, and stretches like a slack, sloppy cat, proudly smooths his paid-for Buddha belly, and smiles down benignly on fools who told his end would usher in a new beginning. You are mine now, Tina, he chuckles, and imperceptibly swells a little round the Pilsbury dough boy middle, and makes a slightly deeper dip in the soft cushions on which he reclines [ ... ]
And glancing down, O sees the big, white bird thrash and flounder in the dirt, and looking up, he sees the noose, and shivers [ ... ]
