Tunnel

The tenth of July 1985 .... Don't ask stupid questions .... I had nothing
else to do I was bored .... I had, I had not .... Fifteen weeks since the
light has gone, fifteen weeks with the same shirt on, a thousand bodies
stink and sweat and somebody's trying to roll a cigarette. Clean mister.
Clean mister. Clean missed her. Just relax and enjoy it, it's nothing
really. Let's get you out of those damp clothes, just life yourself up,
get those dreadful trousers off. You'll feel so much better afterwards.
Just close your eyes and let it ooze all over you. Trickling down your
back warm and sticky. Isn't that nice? No don't speak, just let yourself
go, sink, sinking down deeper and deeper and deeper. At 3 o'clock that
morning I awoke in an unfamiliar room .... in my hands like sodden paper
... a thick, glutinous pale green liquid .... sunlight through net
curtains. 6,000 miles an hour into brilliant white light. There's a brass
band playing somewhere. Roll on your back and wait for the talcum. But
what's that? Pull back the linen sheets to find the shirt they peeled off
your back only two hours before the bed tips sideways. No .... and to one
day woke up in green fields with the sky blue above me. And to be clean
again. But know I'll never be clean again.