Gone South

The last voyage of Jim O’Donnell

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It was shortly after losing her that he began to lose himself.

Just little things at first. He lost words for days at a time, only for them to return unbidden. Familiar faces became difficult to pin a name to.

Speaking of pins: he stumbled over a PIN while accessing his bank account, and then all at once forgot the bloody lot. They just fell out of his head.

One day he couldn’t even open his phone. The fucking thing wouldn’t recognise his face after restarting and wanted a passcode. ‘I don’t KNOW!’ he roared, then sat in his armchair sobbing, desolate, for an hour.

The odds and ends of knowledge generally came back, at least the ones that he remembered forgetting. As for any others, who knew? He started to dread fresh lapses. Words, dates, numbers — they were no longer reliable, constant.

More terrible, his sense of self started to fade. His inner voice became disordered at times. No longer a steady monologue: a babble of strange voices that had no business being in his head.

He wasn’t going into that place. The one that they took her to in the end. When he could no longer look after her. When he failed, shamefully, in his duty as a man and a husband.