27 October 2021
Wednesday. Twelve weeks of coffins and I have a problem: the pairs who get out are far too pleased with themselves.
They climb out, they brush off the soil and they walk into the night as if the matter were closed. It is not closed. I have decided there must be a sequel, and that it must be worse, and that it must involve paperwork.
So tonight I drew a corridor. A long one, at the back of a prison that somebody ordered shut and nobody came to empty. Cells down both sides, a steel door at the far end, and behind it something I have only sketched in outline, because even I found the outline sobering.
Down the corridor walks a gaoler with a ring of keys and a ledger, and I find I rather like him. He is not cruel. He is merely punctual. He has a date written beside every name and he has never once let a date slip.
The studio looked at the drawing for a long time and said “not yet”. I have filed the corridor in the bottom drawer, under the spare hat. It will keep. The Keeper, I suspect, is very good at keeping.
— U.
