Lovely, Dark and Deep…

I started conversations with the nurses when they passed my room. I wanted to ease their etched concern with a cheery word and a smile. I could see suspicion ripple beneath their nervous smiles. I smiled some more and they hurried off to perform some new and, seemingly urgent, exercise. For a long time, I was left to my own devices and I busied myself with ploughing through the remaining pages of The Stand, the bit where the Devil’s representative on Earth comes face to face with those ordinary humans who are prepared to risk their lives to defy him. I had read this book many times but never in a plague-induced lockdown and that fact added some context. Where the survivors of the apocalypse had Randal Flag (the anti-Christ) to deal with, I still had the midnight wanderers. I smiled some more.

As the evenings drifted into night, I…