Signs

Finally, it all starts to make sense. I've been blind - blind. So obvious.

The birds are signalling to me. The gulls.

Last winter, at the reservoir, as the last of the sun pierced the dusk with cold white shafts of light, the gulls wheeled and spun over the water, white breast feathers flickering in and out of the light. Morse code. And I was too stupid to see it.

But now...now they've found me again, and they're speaking more clearly: last night, as I sat in the garden - ten gulls went over, in a vee. Tonight, ten gulls, in a dead straight line astern - the letter 'I'. V. I. Words forming: victim? virgin? virus? victory?


Or is it a number code? V and I. Five and one. Or six? Hmm. Think, think: Ten gulls, twice, is twenty. Plus the figure 'one' from tonight...twenty one. Multiply by the number of nights - two - and you get forty two. Ringing any bells? Forty two: the answer, the ultimate answer, to life, the universe, and...you know the rest. Signs. Signs in the sky.

Tomorrow night will make things clearer. I'll be watching the sky.