But it wasn’t him.
How could it possibly be him?
Ronan runs.
You can’t run if you’re in a wheelchair. It wasn’t him.
They told me that he wouldn’t be the same as he had been when I last saw him. The same as what? The same as himself? Then who would he be?
Whoever they wheeled into Mrs O’Neill’s room that day wasn’t Ronan, I knew that.
Ronan could talk.
This one in the wheelchair had its head all lopsided, causing the right side of its face to bunch up, pressing in to its right shoulder. Its eyes wandered in a baby-like gaze but didn’t seem to hold focus on any one thing. Its mouth was drooped and wet from a tongue that slithered over lips that lay loose at first and then stretched as its jaw unhinged in slow openings, closings and half-circle grindings. It didn’t speak a language Icould understand; a broken moaning yodel gurgling from its throat. Sometimes the mouth would pucker up tight and the face would crinkle and redden like an infant’s on the verge of bawling, except it didn’t burst into a bawl, it made the noise a weightlifter might make when lifting a barbell. It hissed the air out of its flared nostrils and the face drained of its redness and a trickle of pasty gloop came snailing out its nose and onto its upper lip – it made no effort to wipe the gloop away. In fact, its hands looked withered and cramped, as if it couldn’t grip anything but it might be able to swing the whole arm if it wanted to. Better not get too close.
No. This was not Ronan.
They said he would recognise me, but how could I believe anything they told me when this obviously wasn’t him?
And yet its eyes.
They settled on me.
And the mouth; it moved into a smile.
Smiling at me.
Smiling because he knew it was me.
And me?
I didn’t smile back.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t because I knew it was him.
9
There is a type of insect called the emerald cockroach wasp. It is absolutely nothing like the wasps of the yellow and black kind. The emerald cockroach wasp is the green colour its name suggests. It’s also venomous. It doesn’t use its venom on humans but, again as its name suggests, on cockroaches.
First, when it attacks, it injects its venom into the front legs of the cockroach, disabling it, so it can’t run.
The cockroach is immobilised. Phase one complete.
The wasp then injects a second serving of venom through the cockroach’s head into its brain.
The cockroach cannot think. Phase two complete.
Then, for reasons unknown to science, the cockroach begins to groom itself mindlessly, as if making itself as beautiful as it can for its master.
Then the wasp, like a band captain, leads the cockroach and the cockroach follows because it can no longer act independently now or ever again.
Onward they march to the wasps’ burrow and downunderground. Once there the wasp lays an egg right on top of the zombie-like cockroach.
One single egg.
The wasp exits the burrow and seals the cockroach inside. A living entombment.
