For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins

pink, marbled-looking veneer inspired – it says in the brochure
– ‘by the unique scrotal surface of the tumour’.
It seems that the folly squats in a slight culvert of the grounds,
and is shaded by the splayed limbs of a line of oak trees. It’s
muggy out tonight. You creep down the decline approaching
the folly and pause on the edge of the grass – on the threshold
of some tacky decking that’s incongruous to the rest of the
design – perhaps added by the estate agents in an attempt to
expand a demographic, to downplay the more recherché aspects
of the folly. You wait, breathing heavily, and the security
lights go off, and you’re plunged back into the black, the folly
now perceptible only as
a black mirror on a black
ground that appeals
not to the eyes but to
that edgeless ache
that radiates out
from the tumour-
ous core of your
body; a kind of
echo-location
that reports that
the folly is either
microscopic, or
that your tumour
is now roughly the
size of a garage.
You can’t help but
let out a yelp that,
though almost imme-
diately stifled by the
hot night, sets a dog barking somewhere and, after a moment,
a light to appear in a previously unnoticed window on what
must be the first floor of the folly. Net curtains obscure the
detail within, though a figure is discernible in silhouette,
sitting up suddenly – rearing up as if from a nightmare, like a
felled tree played in reverse. Something about its shape – its
sloping shoulders and bulging head, its flimsy, oddly-jointed
arms – what appears to be a mouth, gaping – something
about its movements – panicky, to say the least – turns your
stomach. Anyway, it’s up now, staggering somewhere – presumably
to see to the dog. You can hear it, the figure, talking,
whispering, mumbling, perhaps to itself, perhaps to the stu-