Distraction

There’s no accounting for the way the brain works, for how childish imagination can make something out of nothing,  sometimes to tell a story, to distract from external things that are going bad, to make the world seem right again, even if only for a little while.   And sometimes, most times, that story was just enough to let enough time go past so that things outside the door of his room – white painted, dark blue dressing gown that he never wore because it was too tight, but it still stayed hanging there on the brass hook – to settle down, for the voices to stop shouting, for things to be back to normal.

Sometimes imagination did take over, did tell him stories of bad things, told them so well he didn’t always know they were just stories, found himself believing in lines of witches, in robots shouting in metallic voices ... until it started to get light.

But today, just when it was starting to get light, he remembered that view from his bedroom window, and knew that the most terrifying thought of all had been terrifying because it had also been a prophecy, which somehow he’d always known, had always half-believed.   Even while he didn’t believe it.   A prophecy of the firing squad which, as soon as the sun was fully up, would shoot him dead..