The Quacking Ducktective

Source: Dennis Potter, “The Singing Detective”

“My name is Louie, yeah, you got it, Louie McDuck. Old Uncle Scrooge died decades ago. Donald passed away from high blood pressure, now it looks like it’s my turn. Not a gangster’s bullet or a police set-up, as you would suspect a hard-boiled detective like myself would go.

I have this disease: all my feathers have fallen off, no kidding. If I wasn’t in the hospital I would have frozen to death. I feel terrible: as cold as I am I have high fevers and delusions, it seems.

They say an egg-state duckling has no memory, but as I lie here all day I remember. I remember everything. I was in the egg and I could hear the man duck consorting her. Though I didn’t really know what was going on I was upset. They were trying to make more eggs and I wasn’t even hatched yet.

Oh I know now that they were just playing and not serious so I have to smile a little at that hapless duckling, and yet I have to take him seriously because he was me and those are my memories and that experience help set the tone of my life: occasional desperation and insecurity coupled with constant frustration.

Maybe my body just got tired of the weight I made it carry around and it dropped my feathers to get rid of me. God, I feel so terrible: no one wants to look at me. As soon as they see there are no feathers on my face they know something is terribly wrong. I wish the nurse with the quackerunies would come around and give me a sponge bath. There I go, off again.

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