Nineteen Eighty-Three (Red Riding, #4)

by David Peace

the faded poster warning against the perils of drinking and dying at Christmas, contorted and screaming and howling, the smell of dirty clothes and unshaven faces, contorted and screaming and howling as you took down their names and their memories, telling them of all the hells they were in and all the fresh hells you’d bring, how damned they truly were, but they just sat there silently waiting for new hells to come to their houses and flats, to take them upstairs and fuck them on their bed with their eyes open wide and their mouths shaped like fish, the whole house silent but for her, her mouth open, contorted and screaming and howling, her husband rotten in his box, already on his way back down underground, a tie around his neck and truncheon by his side, stitched up stones for his teeth, as you flew across the church, tried to reach across the pews and grab Badger Bill, to kill him here and kill him now,