Hayley Spurway creates a disturbing image of a man who violates our sense of right and wrong, the ultimate conflict.
He watched the view from his bed through a milky film. His cataracts had long since started to close his eyes on the world – the smaller his tunnel of vision to the outside, the wider the aperture that peered inside his degenerated mind. The windscreen wipers of old age had rinsed away many of his recent memories, giving him a clearer view of his youth. The days that turned him into the man that lay here dying.
He looked up at the machines that only prolonged his death. Trying to focus his thoughts on his daughter. His granddaughter. His brother. The people he should miss. But he only wanted to remember her.
He never wanted to forget her hair that smelled of talcum powder. Her eyes that she never raised to look into his. The knee-length checked skirt that she never let him lift. The beige school shirt that hung off her adolescent breasts. How many times had he imagined the soft, young skin that lay beneath. He watched her everyday for the three whole years of the life they spent together. He always sat behind her, never next to her. Behind her where he could smell her hair. A smell that would never escape his fading memory. He could smell it now, even through the hospital disinfectant.
The beeps of the machinery around him were muffled. He tried in vain to conjure up an image of his daughter. He couldn’t bear another visit from her; to endure the air of contempt she left lingering for hours after she’d gone. He’d rather be dead. Would he find redemption once he was gone?
The only face he could see wasn’t that of his daughter, his own flesh and blood. Even after everything it was her. One more glimpse of that peachy skin, one more sniff of her hair, would still be his dying wish. Skin unblemished by the hands that would one day touch her and change her life forever. Change his life forever. She was the first. She was the temptation he’d followed from the top deck of the number 73 bus. He would never forget her.
