The first three chapters of The Last Of Logan, a novel about grief, video games and toxic masculinity.

1

Mr Beech knocks twice on the door and double maths is paused as the room falls silent. The eyes of the class fall on him, then me, as he hooks a finger in my direction and tells me to follow him. Howls of derision chase me from the room and each knock of his walking stick on the floor of the deserted corridor pounds against my ribcage, so that by the time we reach his office and he ushers me inside, by the time i see them sitting there smiling desperate smiles, I almost don’t register the shock of them holding hands.

They tell me to sit down as Mr Beech slips out of the room and the air solidifies as the door clicks shut. They sit opposite me, bodies folded awkwardly on tiny chairs meant for primary kids. Dad leans forward with his elbows on his knees, breathing heavy, staring at the floor like he is counting ants. Mum also leans forward, but she takes my hands in hers and rubs her thumbs over my palms. I can feel her soul shaking. She takes a deep breath, but the words are trapped, and so she swallows and tries again and this time there are words, and she picks her way through each and every one of them, so careful, so caring, of me and the language, with each word more deliberate than the last, and they gather and drift in the air between us like dust in a sunbeam, until the world feels spongy and diffused, like wearing headphones without any music, unreal, so that just like that, you are ripped away.

No sirens.

No trauma.

No hysteria.

Nothing you expect.

Just a banal muffled quiet in an office.

Mum keeps talking, but the room glitches and her words fall away, it all just starts to fall

away

sorry

gone

peace

sorry

love

sorry

love

and then for a while

forever 

there is nothing 

no time no history no future no language no chairs no tables no desk no floor no walls no windows no door no school no cars no houses no people no fields no sky no nothing

just a vast silent unimaginable black

a universe without stars

a void

the world on the point of a needle

it is like this for a long time

who knows how long

but a long time

until finally there is something

a moment when that point of the needle begins to shimmer

so tiny

so feint in the distance

but it is all I need

it is all we need

a tiny point of light

0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 is better than nothing

it gives us something

so that somehow

between the three of us in this small vast black 

we find a way to reconstruct all that surrounds us

the walls and the ceiling and the chairs and the carpet and the little bobblehead of william shakespeare that mr beech has on his desk and mr beech himself and dogs and pizza and feelings

it all needs to be rebuilt so that time can again exist

and we can move forward

and we do it

just

or at least we do enough between the three of us so that there is a dint in the black

a dint of knowledge

maybe not even that

maybe just an awareness of what isn’t here anymore

of what has been lost

a huge black fly with a body like a furry raisin crawls diagonally across the window

it whistles as it does so but when it reaches the window frame it sighs in resignation at a journey wasted

it does not move after that no matter how long i stare at it

no matter how long mum and dad stare back at me

waiting for me to say something

you got me past the zelda boss but i wasn’t there and i don’t know how you did it

but I don’t say that

it is dark outside by the time we leave

2

stories are supposed to have a beginning middle and end

but i think we’ve already reached the end

everything that came before made sense because it was part of our story as a family

every argument 

holiday

hug 

they all told the story of who we were and what we were supposed to become

everything was in the right order

in its right place

but now everything is scattered

disparate

absurd

bound only by one thing

it comes after

and nothing that follows makes sense

we are the aftermath of a firework

firing off in separate directions and making our own individual trails for everyone else to stare at

if mum knew i was talking like this she’d smile and weep a little bit and cuddle my head and say you’re just like your brother

but then everyone always did say i was just like you

and if i am like you

then i guess this story is about whether i can change the ending 

or whether we are inevitable

3

my bedside clock ticks and its luminous hands tell me that in our corner of the world it is 7.28pm

the boiler stirs and whirrs for a few seconds before clicking off into silence

a car moves past outside and its driver-side wheels drop into the small pothole that has appeared in the last week 

a lorry does the same and makes the house shudder

i hope the house is more resilient than me

i hope the men who built it were diligent

what if they weren’t feeling great the day they set the foundations for 61 nicholson road

it was built in the 30s during the great depression

what if they were worried about hitler marching into the rhineland

a direct contravention of the treaty of versailles

something like that would definitely distract me from my homework

light razors through a gap in the curtains from the streetlight outside and exposes a crack in the ceiling but i haven’t been conscientious in measuring it so i don’t know if it is getting larger but it must be

cracks don’t get smaller

my bedside clock says 7.30pm

my bedroom ceiling has 142 stars stencilled on it from when i was a kid

they are in the correct constellations because dad made sure of that

he didn’t just stick them up there willy-nilly

of course he didn’t

inertia

in ertia

inert ia

iner tia

inert gases don’t react with other substances

their 

atoms

are 

not

interested

in 

combining

with

other

atoms

stasis ensues

stasis ensues but stazis pursue 

haha

in east germany in 1975 there lived a woman whose father was born in 1799

this is my favourite fact don’t @ me saying it’s impossible

i forgot her name and i can’t find out who she was but it is a fact because i choose it to be a fact and the only thing i know with any certainty is that that woman

who was still alive when dad was a little boy

could have asked her dad about the industrial revolution or napoleon or the german equivalent of the corn laws

he was in his sixties when she was born and she lived to 110

the maths adds up

my ceiling has 142 stars

142 stars and 17 moons

but what am i supposed to do now without you 

am i supposed to just lie here and count stars and moons