Julia’s Reviews > Prophet Song > Status Update

she searches under the duvet for her mother's hand and Eilish grasps the hand knowing she is false before the children, false with nothing to offer, no comfort nor succour, only lies, distraction and evasion

In the afternoon she sits by the bedroom window waiting for a detailed report on the BBC while Ben naps in the cot. The news comes on and she turns it off shaking with rage, thinking, thi is not the news, this is not the news at all, the news is the civilian watching the soldier outside her home as he lolls on a sandbag playing with his phone, the news is the assault rifle resting against the sandbag

he's in decline and has no awareness of his illness, sometimes it seems that he suspects something is wrong but cannot see his own mind so he turns that suspicion onward, if he's not false then it is the world that is false, there is always someone else to blame

Bailey takes a drink of milk and asks if the country is now at war and Eilish studies the milk moustache and the question in his eyes. They are calling it an insurgency on the international news, Molly says, but if you want to give war its proper name, call it entertainment, we are now TV for the rest of the world

What I see, Eilish, is a black hole opening before us, we have passed the boundary of escape and even when the regime has been overturned the black hole will continue to grow so that it will consume this country for decades

Sooner or later pain becomes too great for fear and when the people's fear has gone the regime will have to go

she goes to bed and cannot sleep, lies watching her fear parade before her like some wretched spectacle, a small voice that wants to speak is shouted down. ... It is then she sees that her fear is gone, this feeling of relief in her body that something now can be done

2/2 Memory lies, it plays its own games, layers one image upon another that might be true or not true, over time the layers dissolve and become like smoke

It has been a long time, she thinks, standing alone outside the office building, sliding a cigarette from the box, fondling the paper skin, running its odour under her nose. The cottony taste of cellulose acetate as she lights and pulls the hot smoke into her mouth, recalling the day she last quit, this feeling of some younger self, perhaps Larry was with her, she doesn't know. 1/2

your husband is where he is because he is an insiter, an agitator against the state during a tim of great threat to this country, you people have no idea what's happening outside in the world, what is coming our way, you will see us all destroyed, this should be a time of unity for our nation but instead there's civil unrest up and down the country and we have to face down the likes of you