Switch Off the Current

Thanks, old chap, the man in the hat cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you? The shamble legged man frowned and clacked the light switch off with the heel of his hand, the one he used for rubbing balms and soaves into the rickets of his leg. I regret to tell you that I have the rickets, a bowing in the seams of my legs. Such as it is I will be unable to attend your birthday party, much as I would like to. The man in the hat felt that all births were the same, careening headfirst feet twisted into whalers’ bind, thighs wet with exhaustion and bad thoughts. His own mother pushed him out like a skink liver, an unwanted organ fen with wither and rot. His father, his hands reedy with tar, sat in the car heaving quarts of home-brew that he kept hidden in an apple crate at the back of the garage. The man in the hat thought that if he could conjure up someone worse off than himself his thoughts would stop, even were he to think himself senseless in the process. So by conjuring the shamble legged man he could throw himself headfirst into the day, his thoughts indifferent to rickets, palsy and clacking.