Tomorrow morning, I am to be packed away to the Dundee Home for the Irretrievably Demented. Within those walls, there is no form of access to the outside world, so until I can work out a way to escape, I will be unable to update this electronic diary. For this I apologise. In the mean time, I suggest you read over some of my earlier diary entries a day at a time and pretend they are occuring in the present. Until I can escape, I must bid you farewell.
But before I bid you farewell (in retrospect, I should have saved such bidding until the end of this entry because this appendment now appears amatuerish and somewhat embarrassing), I will tell you of some good news that has befallen me. Yesterday I received a visit from my ladylove, my dove, Carol Doocot. She called in at my house, looking careworn but succulent.
"Horton," she said, "I have brought you something."
Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music, with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony. Have I said that she is beautiful? It can convey no faint conception of her. With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet darkness of the East Neuk of Fife, and red lips so tremulously near to mine, she was the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon. In that moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man who had bartered honour, country, all - for a woman's kiss. She had a couple of spots on her chin though, which let her down a bit.
"I cannot help but feel responsible for your recent hardships," she said. "It was I who encouraged you to explore your passions for the purposes of Art. Those passions overflowed and turned against my economics student boyfriend, but had I not forced you to unearth those passions in the first place, none of this would have happened. I didn't know you were...unequipped to deal with those emotions."
Here she handed me a bag.
"I made this for you," she said. "Take it with you to the Dundee Home for the Irretrievably Demented. I hope it brings you some peace."
She left. Inside the bag was a lump of clay in the shape of a fat dove.
Some might say that this is a piece of sculpture conveying the theme of peace, created by a well-meaning art tutor to gift to a poor, bewildered lunatic. However, I know different. It is surely a hollowed-out container housing Doocot's child, to which I am the father. She has placed the baby in this clay womb because she trusts me, the father, to look after it. Inside the clay dove, the baby is in a state of suspended animation. Clearly, this gift is meant to give me hope. Hope that when I finally escape from the mental institution, Carol Doocot will be there waiting for me. Together, we will crack open the dove with some manner of hammer, and we will start our life together as loving and devoted parents.
It makes perfect sense. I knew I was not mad. Now, I must bid you farewell again.
