Once A Week

A Detective finds himself in the woods. He doesn’t have to be a detective, he can be anyone, but these days, in crime thrillers, they are always detectives, aren’t they?

A detective finds himself missing in the woods. That’s even better, isn’t it? How can he find himself missing? I know the answer to that one, because quite often I’ve regained total cognitive consciousness while realizing I am lost somewhere. It’s as if someone had earlier unplugged me, spun me around, and dropped me in a maze on the edges of suburbia.

I wouldn’t go so far to say as that it’s always happening, far from it, but I’m no stranger to the phenomenon. I did also, incidentally, think of myself as a pretend wannabe detective at the time, doing the Lord’s work.

I’ve now got an image of a man stood lurking around in the woods. It’s half me and half not me. I like being a man walking around the woods. I like everything about it, as long as it’s not dark and scary. I read a book once where the detective lived in a shack in the woods, all he did is make phone calls. His ringtone was going constantly. I swear, the extent of his capacity was making phone calls in the woods. Far from being boring, it has actually inspired me. Sometimes, the simple images, the most basic notions, are the best.

I remember he was speaking to a lot of people who didn’t really matter to him. Casual acquaintances, mostly. It was all to do with work. The thing was always out of his pocket and jammed against his ear. One odd night he broke into another shack he came across in the woods and searched it thoroughly for special evidence of some sort with his phone pressed against his ear the whole time. I think he was conferring with someone high up in the police department. He left without making it look obvious there was no sign of forced entry and hopefully there was no harm done.

On one extra special occasion he was hunkered over a silver rolling stream on a rickety rope bridge with his mac blowing around his knees in the gust, smoking. He was taking his time with the cigarette, it seemed to slowly burn down forever, he hardly took a drag, just the odd toke now and again, it was his first smoke in six months but he felt no guilt or regret whatsoever, he was doing nothing more than enjoying it a lot.

One of his shoes was balanced on his toes, he was wriggling it around off from his ankle. I don’t know why he was doing that. He seemed distant-minded.

I learned that he was talking to somebody very unusual and important. I think it was his niece. It just goes to show. You do a similar thing all off the time, and it means nothing. And then something comes along, dressed up like everything else, and it means all. Funny, isn’t it, how we react to stuff like that? Someone once said that certain things only come along in life once or twice.

He gave her one final penultimate instruction that she must always persistently live up to right until the end of her days. It was this unflinching demand:

_________________________________

That she text him

but just once a week, 

to let him know 

she was okay.💗

_________________________________

No visits in the 4x4 with any amount of screaming nippers children, no bus rides to the beach together, no going out for dinners in tuxedos, no pen pal set ups…just a plain and simple text message, once a week, to keep him going.

errPIEJUSTBALDor /****7097.7#^#####.70TEXT~~ATD~~~%01_!1ME.”/e.x1906FLEXDONEGAN.sONCEemi^{errorlogicalhardwiringnonAaplliccable 77.7.7errorTERMINALRWEEKESOLUTION77.907.770%01_!1.”/e.x16speed.sem}