MORNING SERIAL

WHAT comes into my head, as I hold the gun, is just fear. Is just whiteness, and pressure. I stand holding it, looking at Pigeon and then this:

There’s a light in the crooked house. I don’t want to see Him so I go past the house, and down the garden towards the shed, and that’s when they make sense, the noises. And that’s when I know. I know what they are. I’m not stupid. I can hear Him shouting. And I can hear the sound of hitting. But most of all I can hear Pigeon. And maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s that, that crying that’s like a kid, Pigeon, who I love, I love, crying like he’s just a kid, that makes me know I have to get in the way of Him just so He stops. I’ll make it happen myself.

I’m so quiet, and I move so carefully, it’s like I’m not me. I’m not Iola. I’m someone better. Someone who knows exactly what to do. She’s strong and careful and she moves up to the house, pushes open the door, hears His shouts, the sound of Pigeon crying, and then quiet. The room and what I’m seeing begins to make a picture.

There’s Pigeon standing in the room, and there’s Him holding Pigeon to the floor, and then I see it, Pigeon’s holding it to His head.

In the crooked house, He sees me. He moves. And He’s knocked it from Pigeon’s hand and it’s gone in the air, and then across the floor until it’s right by my foot. It’s like something that isn’t real, sitting there, by my foot. And He doesn’t care that I’m here, that I’ve got in the wrong story, He doesn’t care; He’s got Pigeon by the neck like a bird. Like Nain wringing the neck of a bird.

I know what I’m supposed to do. Something big. And I move so perfectly. So perfectly. I get it from the floor, and I lift it. I lift it. And I stand with it in my hand. It’s like something that isn’t real in my hand. He’s ignoring me. Focusing on what he’s killing. He holds Pigeon down by the throat, and Pigeon is changing colour. And I hold it. It’s heavy. It’s not like something real. I wait until Pigeon looks at me. Until he sees me, sees how I’m in on it this time, well in. Then holding it while it shoots is like holding an animal that’s too strong, holding a dog while it bites someone deep.

It was it, it was it. I didn’t think it would happen. Not in a real way.

> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian