The Night that Jimmy Died

"Think of a dark day in summer when the sun shines on all the things you hate to see and the scum crawl out of their corners and spoil the world by moving through it and every one of them has a lover and a child but you and you’re too drunk to be a man and not drunk enough to sleep so you have to watch it all. You’re dirty from working and sticky with sweat and you have to drink beer when you want cool water and you don’t want trouble but there are too many of you all together to get out of the way if it comes. The sun goes down and it’ll come up again soon and the world will be waiting for you to do all those things you don’t want to do and in the dark the lights come on so nothing can hide and the trees are green and happy but the grass is dead and the storm to the west is coming your way and you hear it with dread. You know it won’t come alone. It will bring a piece of hell with it and you will be caught in that hell and it’ll kick you and confuse you and take the little you have and roll away, clever enough to know what it’s done, too stupid to understand. There are many days like that and they all learned to be that way from one great day, an evil day that came this way many years ago and left a lesson that the evil days have learnt. There are few truly evil days waiting to drop poison on the world but they are enough to threaten the sanity of a man who remembers their master. They have no compassion, no feeling, no love at all. They are the bastard children of that monster day that came before them, the day of the night that Jimmy died..."