Shooting in the Dark

about to write had an artist who was going blind as its central character. The half-blind man was an essential eye-witness to the murder of his wife. JD relished the thought of playing with the metaphor of blindness. He had been researching how expressionism developed out of naturalism, and how the naturalists were insistent on getting the object down on the canvas in complete clarity, while the expressionists were more interested in observing it with half-closed eyes.
    There was a kind of faith in expressionism, a distrust of the obvious, of the objective. Expressionist artists and writers wanted to use distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect. Like Hammett. He would write an expressionist novel like Hammett.
    When he opened his eyes and put his glasses on, he couldn’t hold the world still. It danced away from him. While his eyes adjusted to the light, the scruff in the mirror could have been someone else entirely, some thing, an angel or a devil.
     

3
     
    I’m going to be quiet and remain hidden, and remember the first rule of a policeman: ‘Never forget to keep your eyes open.‘
    She is a silly woman. She has no eyes, but neither does; she have insight. She begins to suspect that she is being watched. For the past week or so she has felt my eyes on her. But she has no idea that my eyes have been on her for almost all of her life. How could they not be? Where else; would I look for satisfaction?
    I am the watchman, the sentry. I have kept my vigil, and will remain at my post until the scales are balanced.
    We have to learn how to value a human life. People I don’t care about this. They say that they care, and the people who run the organizations that prop up our society, they say the value of a human life is the most important thing in the world. Politicians and churchmen, especially, always have something to say on this point. But they are talkers, propagandists. They don’t believe what they say. They don’t have a tool with which to measure the value of a human life. They haven’t taken the time to develop, to invent a tool that would do the job. That is how serious they are.
    God makes those judgements every day. Two people are on a motorway. They hurtle towards each other in separate vehicles, each unaware of the other. When one of the vehicles crosses the central reservation there is a moment, before they plough into each other, when the eyes of each driver make contact. They have never seen each other before. As far as they are aware, they have nothing in common. And a second later one of them is dead. We don’t know why. It isn’t because of a lack of seat belts or SIPS or air-bags. In our materialistic way we pin all our hopes on the mechanics of the situation, believing we can avoid future occurrences if we understand how metal and rubber and plastics react in relation to each other and to velocity and mental stress.
    But the answer to why one human life is saved and another taken away lies in the mind of God. God can look down on the people in those vehicles hurtling towards each other, and He can say the one heading north is worth more than the one heading south, therefore He will save the one heading north.
    God is the one in control. He is an artist. The rest of us are characters He has created. This world is God’s fiction, and He has created each of us to provide the narrative and the drive and the interweaving plots that make up His final vision.
    The church doesn’t know this.
    Neither does the government.
    They both believe that God is dead.
    But I am the watchman, and I know. I can value a human life.
    For example, take Miriam. I go in this tourist-trap on Pavement most days, buy myself an all-day breakfast for a few quid. I get two sausages, egg, bacon, hash browns, fried bread and beans. When I’ve had that I have a cup of tea. And Miriam serves me. If one of the other girls tries to serve me I wave them away. Usually they don’t try any more, because they know I want Miriam to do it. And they know that Miriam would rather serve me than anyone else. Miriam belongs to me. This is not entirely of my own making, this situation, this state of affairs. When I first went to that place one of the other girls served me. I think it was Debbie, the one with long hair in a pony-tail. But Debbie never looked at me. While she was working there, in the café, she was always somewhere else.
    I noticed Miriam because I saw her watching me. She’d give me a glance as she walked past