“Here, young’un,
Here!
Your dad won't see.
Here!”
I'm looking around.
Sunday morning.
Hating being there.
I squirm in my clothes against the institution that repels me.
I want to run away, but the elastic of fear, repulsion and beholding keep me back.
He's sidling over—a small figure, wizened, in a heavy mac and a brown cap.
I'm glancing over my shoulder, looking for safety.
There's none.
Now he's holding my sleeve—tugging at it.
“Here! Here!”
He adds my name—the familiarity draws me in.
Is anyone looking?
I need to know—if he's an outcast I might be rejected with him.
A sudden fear comes over me—a perversion; of being thrown out by the institution, cast out by the horror.
Now he looks like an ancient wraith—a revenant.
He brings the shadow with him—the dark and secret place that absorbs competing control; a wonderful freedom.
Yes, now I’m in his shadow I'm hidden from it all—the terror of it all: the institution, the religion, the church, the spectre.
“Here! Look here! It's alright. They can't see.”
Is he saying the institution can't see me?
Is that possible?
Has my fear of it been misplaced?
Freedom to act—it exists.
And I'm acting freely—shifty, yes, secret, yes, but not fearful.
My fingers stretch forward.
Trembling.
Waving in front of my eyes like clammy, white tentacles.
Dare I?
Dare I?
“Go on. Take some.
It won't hurt you, young’un.
No one will know.”
No one will know.
I reach out to it.
Extending my tentacles.
Still trembling.
“Like this. Look!”
He shows me how—his stained fingers closing against it.
I stare at it.
He’s exposing me to years of knowing—I sense experience, and age, and the history bound up in times gone by.
I follow.
More instruction.
Delightful secrecy.
Secret delight.
I take it and follow his instructions.
I sneeze!
A huge, raucous, uncontrolled, attention-grabbing sneeze.
I'm seen!
And one by one everyone stares—the institution has found me out.
Snuff!
