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sight of her getting out of
another taxi outside another expensive clothes shop. Last time I hadn’t been
paying sufficient attention; next time I would make sure.
    Finally she came back, this time
with a friend - some other bored middle-class hausfrau looking to spend her
partner’s hard-earned crust on a late-night shopping trip. When she stepped out
onto the rain-shined pavement, I turned quickly away, employing peripheral
vision.
    And there it was, sitting on her shoulders
like a grim little monkey: a heavily creased, semi-transparent entity, beating
her about the head and the back of the neck and trying desperately to gain her
attention. Its face was small, dried-up and wrinkled like a raisin, its hands
twisted into tough claws. It was a part of her that was now lost forever, a
single shard of her psyche screaming into the void that was slowly swallowing
it up.
    And my ex wife couldn’t see it at
all.
    I walked away into drizzle and
near-darkness, catching sight of my reflection in a wet shop window. I watched
myself watching myself, taking note of every detail, each tiny flaw in the sum
of my parts. The picture that stared back at me seemed to intensify briefly,
gaining substance for a moment. Then the traffic noise and the toneless chatter
of those around me pulled me back into the land of the not-quite living. The
reflection was simply that: an inverted image of a dirty man on a wet street.
     
    ****
     
    There is hope left for
some, the one’s whose ghosts are reasonably intact, and who are aware enough to
nurture the essence of what it is to be truly alive. But for those whose
humanity is already frail, battered and etiolated, there is no hope left at
all.

PUMPKIN NIGHT
    “Men fear death as children fear to
go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales,
so is the other.”
     
    Sir Francis Bacon, “Of Death”
    Essays (1625)
     
    The pumpkin, faceless and
eyeless, yet nonetheless intimidating, glared up at Baxter as he sat down
opposite with the knife.
    He had cleared a space on the
kitchen table earlier in the day, putting away the old photographs, train
tickets, and receipts from restaurants they had dined at over the years. Katy
had kept these items in a large cigar box under their bed, and he had always
mocked her for the unlikely sentimentality of the act. But now that she was
dead, he silently thanked her for having such forethought.
    He fingered the creased, leathery
surface of the big pumpkin, imagining how it might look when he was done. Every
Halloween Katy had insisted upon the ritual, something begun in her family when
she was a little girl. A carved pumpkin, the task undertaken by the man of the
house; the seeds and pithy insides scooped out into a bowl and used for soup
the next day. Katy had always loved Halloween, but not in a pathetic Goth-girl
kind of way. She always said that it was the only time of the year she felt
part of something, and rather than ghosts and goblins she felt the presence of
human wrongdoing near at hand.
    He placed the knife on the table,
felt empty tears welling behind his eyes.
    Rain spat at the windows, thunder
rumbled overhead. The weather had taken a turn for the worse only yesterday, as
if gearing up for a night of spooks. Outside, someone screamed. Laughter. The
sound of light footsteps running past his garden gate but not stopping, never
stopping here.
    The festivities had already started.
If he was not careful, Baxter would miss all the fun.
    The first cut was the deepest,
shearing off the top of the pumpkin to reveal the substantial material at its
core. He sliced around the inner perimeter, levering loose the bulk of the
meat. With great care and dedication, he managed to transfer it to the glass
bowl. Juices spilled onto the tablecloth, and Baxter was careful not to think
about fresh blood dripping onto creased school uniforms.
    Fifteen minutes later he had the
hollowed-out pumpkin before him, waiting for a face. He recalled her