Bernard Lawson and Lynne Owens By Placeholder Bellybrain

Bernard Lawson defaced the books in his house by scoring deliberate contemptuous perfectly formed letters deep in their pages with a dark blue biro. He elevated some of these volumes to the status of holy incorruptible scripture and dedicated a room of his house to their exclusive conservation. Before parting their covers he performs complex ablutions and makes passes in the air above them. With a silver yad in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other he scrutinises their pages, word and letter, for hours, allowing eruptions along the lines of, Gabbling away, and, Beyond reasons grasp, to occasionally burst forth. Additionally, Bernard Lawson maintains he is the Property of Saint Malachys secondary school, Newmills. Underground dialogues are going on which hitherto Lynne Owens had given little attention. There is no telling how long Lynne Owens has unconsciously been eavesdropping. Lynne Owens barely registered they were there, whispering at the fringes, dissolved in tinnitus, gabbling away beyond reasons grasp. But a disturbance has spread through her senses. Lynne Owens now knows her nervous system is less a control nexus than a receiving station. The raw signal went unrecognised but now decoding is taking place. It manifests as a strain, pressure exerted through an invisible agent, a disturbance with a hint of urgency like a telephone ringing through a wall. Lynne Owens and Bernard Lawson have not spoken since the milk jug incident when they were fifteen. During a family visit Bernard Lawson was volunteered to do the washing up. Lynne Owens dried. Bernard Lawson was enjoying the odd feeling of rubber gloves in hot water when he mishandled a certain jug and snapped the handle off. Lynne Owens exploded in horror. After she was done screaming she demanded the remains. Bernard Lawson handed them over and she collapsed on the table and rolled around weeping, clutching them. When she had recovered she carefully dried the shards and with trembling hands applied glue to their joints. As she held them together, waiting for it to dry, she scowled at Bernard Lawson intently. The jug never recovered. Its days of service had drawn to an end and with all attendant honours it was retired to the high shelf in the living room, there to gather dust and desiccated spiders. To Lynne Owens it was a totem of her life s primary outrage. THE END