The Man Without Quotes

“ANTONY REMEMBERED Val’s kids being taken away, one after the other.
Mikey, Barry, Lily.
Lily was the last to go. She was only a few years older than Antony, but when he screwed his eyes up tight and tried to remember her face, he couldn’t. He remembered the nickname she’d given him though: Spug. Because he loved birds so much.
Her scratchy voice, full of wires and string. Her screams before she started to fit, that cacophony of vowels and white noise. Little Spuggy. Sparrow boy. Lily. Feral fitting girl. The pissy smell of her. He remembered how terrifying it was seeing her hurly-burly. That unmistakeable sound, a liquid hollow sound, of a human skull hitting the concrete. Her body churning, shambling, gyrating – how life would take a sudden detour. Like there was some enormous struggle going on inside her body and she always lost the fight.
She didn’t have epilepsy; it had her.
— Little Spug.
The day she was taken away. The jealousy he felt.
Lily had escaped.”
― Ray Robinson, The Man Without