Water

Water. Flowing forth from fountain faucets. Bringer of life. A medium for sustenance and aesthetics, irrigation and cooling. It flows. Everywhere. It was in water the found her, an earth goddess corpse.

Clover

Clover covered everything like a moss gone mad, but it wasn’t clover like you’d find on the fair green isle, nor like the pastoral “red” and “white” common to the sun burnt land, no! this was “Four-Leaf” clover, big! Leaves like the size of tractor tires. Clover never grew like this, anywhere on that once, blue-green ball of rubble that sat, “third rock from the sun”.

Going Bush

“Lying in the dark is an easy thing to do, especially if you are by yourself,” said the Ranger, “and around here there’s no-one for miles; the only trouble is staying alive, or safe, ‘til dawn.” Someone chuckled in the dark, mirthlessly.

Why?

“It’s colder than Winter…” sang out a voice from a dusty radio, lying in the corner, on its side. Beside it lay knick-knacks and collectables, memorabilia from a forgotten childhood – cars, lead soldiers, half-chewed plastic ones, pictures and newspaper clippings… “Why?” thought Dougal, “Why paper clippings?”

Screams

Screams. Screams in the ark and squeals of laughter. For days and days now, with relentless abandonment, an anarchy of celebration eddying through the town with each change of form of merriment. Christmas and New Year was never so frightful, when I was young.

One minute

10:55AM. Half drunk cups of coffee compete for prominence amongst the breakfast detritus, lying on the table. Sunlight streams in, not for the first time to engage in shadow-play again amidst this unchanged scene. A body, once ripe and bloated lies prune-like in a shroud of dust. 10:56AM. The first knock on the door in six months.

The mouse detective from Bologna Beach

Slashes of color riot in a whirlwind of dance and movement as she sashays from table to table, her dress the object of everyone’s attention – even Monsieur Michail’s, the mouse detective from Bologna Beach.