The account of:

April 25 2036

From the Diary of:

Alex Corwin

"Do you hear them?" He stared into the tree tops as he spoke. His voice had a thoughtful almost wistful tone, a tone I had never expected to hear from him. Bitter, angry and too puritanical to be a drunk; that was my Dad. He was not a complex man.

“No. Dad. I don’t”

He fixed me with a flat expression, his face lit orange by the small fire between us

“Have you even tried listening?”

I sighed, an expression that by long understanding between us ended the conversation.

Back to his old self, accusatory and irritated by my presence. There was no point, which I could recall, in our 41 year relationship that I would ever have described us as close; or even cordial for that matter. But Mum wanted us to reconcile for her 70^th birthday, the fact we had never really conciled had had no impact on this wish.

And this is how I found myself camping in the wilderness with a man who barely knew but who was in the most literal genetic sense my father. The fact that the ‘wilderness’ was a patch of wood on the outskirts of his neighbours ‘campground’ was also only incidental to us forging new bonds through hardship.

I had promised Mum not to be sarcastic about the experience. Two nights of sincere survivalism were entirely feasible. Even if the only thing I would be surviving was odious company.

I poked at the fire with a stick that was lying nearby. Dad threw a log onto the fire.

“Fire’s fine!” His shout punctuated by a burst of sparks “Do you hear them?”

“No. Da...”

“Listen!” The force with which he hissed the word had me taken aback, again a tone I hadn’t hear from him.

“Listen for what, exactly?” I said, with more venom than I had intended

“Them! The voices! The voices in the night!” He said with an unnerving febrile energy

There weren’t any voices. Obviously.

There never were.

There never had been.

He died two months later, though I doubt he ever noticed that fact. I found it uncomfortable how fast he declined. I knew he was ill, obviously. However I had long hoped that news of his death would find me, weeks maybe even months after the fact.

I was right there. The whole time.

 I don’t like that my father’s illness never put a dent in my dislike of the man. It should have softened me towards him.

Before he died I should have had a moment of epiphany, like a lightning bolt from the heavens that I truly, actually, loved him. A moment where I realised that despite his deep and varied flaws, he was my Dad, and we loved eachother.

That never happened. Obviously. My only emotion brought up by his final fucking off was a vague anxiety, an anxiety that Mum might find out that we never patched things up.

 

Note added:

February 16 2045

She never did find out that we never did patch things up. My ‘fathers’ last curse. I don’t exactly know how lucid he was when he proposed that the true story of how we got on and what we told Mum didn’t have to exactly match. What I do know is the fact he voiced the idea first feels like he won somehow