“She reaches up and ties the strip of black cloth so that it covers my dead eye.“Now, go Arrghh.“Arrghh.She nods.“There. You’re a pirate.”

“There was light and there was darkness, and where once, so recently, he had sat at his desk bathed in that light, now he was clothed in the black cover of heartbreak.”

“Give me a number between one and twenty.”Unable to see where this was going, she shrugged. “Eleven.”“You lose. Now strip off your clothes.”

“Yet even so the darkness thickened, until it covered his eyes and filled his nose and stopped his ears, so he could not see or smell or hear or run, and the grey cliffs were gone and the dead horse was gone and his brother was gone and all was black and still and black and cold and black and dead and black…”

“I want to be a naughty pirate, because when I put on that eye patch, it barely covers my genitals.”

“Now that you’ve abducted me, does this mean you’re going to strip me naked and probe me?”