Cirrhosis

The air glides over his teeth as he inhales through pursed lips.

“Dear, dear,” he tuts. “You’ve had some cowboys in on this. Trip to India, was it?”

My response is kneejerk. “I’m sorry but if you’re going to engage in racist tropes –”

“You misunderstand, mush,” he soothes. “This bears all the hallmarks of a local bodge-job. I’m simply wondering if it was a trip to India got you hooked on spiritual makeovers?”

I pause. Recollect the heat, the colour, the food.

“Couldn’t get visas to Nepal,” I eventually admit.

“Fair enough,” he shrugs and taps something onto the tablet in his hands. “Not that it matters in the great scheme, but data collection. You know how it is.”

I nod.

It tends to do the trick.

He laughs to himself.  

He talks softly.

“See, most people think of the soul as a fixed item. To be bought and sold. Lost or regained. Truth is, it’s far more fluid than that. Constantly in flux, adapting and anticipating from cradle to grave. What you experience as loss or joy or grief or hope are merely the ceaseless growing pains of the eternal ineluctible.”

“So there isn’t really a problem?”

“Oh, you’ve got a problem alright. Kirlian photography don’t lie. Your aura is – as they say – pretty fucking fucked.”

He places the tablet on the breakfast bar.

“Old story. You’ve jetted off to the subcontinent for a tune-up and those guys are good. The sadhus, the swamis – top of their game. But they deal in balance, not repair. So for a few weeks, maybe six months, you’re all om and zen, then all of a sudden –”

“It felt empty again.”

“Precisely, but that’s the natural order of things. People like you, though, you don’t do emptiness, do you? Can’t pop across half the globe every time, so you check out the local options. Shiatsu, crystals, angel work. Feels good at first. ‘Course it does. Like the buzz of a couple of pints. But when it wears off you try more solutions. Stronger varieties. Reiki. Astral projection. And now… Your problem, mush, is you’re suffering from cirrhosis of the soul.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I doubt it. You’ve wandered too far into yourself to care what anyone else thinks. Your empathy’s shrivelled to the size of a peanut, and without empathy –”

“I’ve got empathy,” I insist. “I’m in Amnesty.”

“What’s my name?”

“You never said.”

“You never asked.”

“But there’s a cure, right?” I gabble. “The fact you’re here. That I’ve called you?”

He smiles. “Just because you know the Titanic’s rusty don’t mean it’s any less sunk.”

He reaches into a blue tool bag. I don’t remember him bringing it in, but suddenly that doesn’t seem so surprising.

“Fear not, mush,” he says. “There is a reset.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He pulls a curved blade from the bag. Its jewelled handle sparkles in the autumn sun. The air glides over his teeth once more.

“Cost you, mind…”