'And this,' said the tour guide, 'is known as The Street of a Hundred Cries. Bad children were caged and fed by a stick. Often the morsels dropped, especially for those further out.' His foot crunched and he tossed the tiny finger bone aside. 'Just a story, of course.'
#carrel
Invariably, Mr Fry is found at his walnut desk, glasses askew, tufts turned white by literature. Or he coughs in the aisles, wafting away the clog of words cluttering his path. The carrel is stacked so high, they would choke him. He plucks another metaphor from his hair.
#cacophany
She rises, rattles into shape, teeters, lurches forward on to two willow sticks, two of bone, knotted in purple. Clicking sticks, sticking slippers, a cacophony of coughing; small face, lips like string, marbled eyes in sallow skin, she weaves her way to him.
#corpse
He was so gentle as he washed her face with a warm, soft flannel. And so careful not to pull on any knots as he brushed her hair. Getting her into the car had been difficult, but there she was now, sitting on the sofa in red lipstick, his new, favourite corpse.
#cat and #vengeance
She was so scatty! She'd put her wand on the hedge between her and the neighbour while she coaxed out Magic, her cat, and had clean forgotten.
Now, Mr Perkins was stirring paint with it. Ruined!
Vengeance would have to wait until the next Amazon delivery...
Just after he'd kicked her, he slumped into an awkward sleep, drooling liquor-soaked saliva.
Her orange eyes watched a glowing coal topple in the hearth; gently, she batted it onto the rug then tipped herself out of the window like the spilled ink of an untold story.
#cemetery and #toxic
During the post mortem, the incisions oozed; pewter gunge crawled over the pathologist's glove. The funeral was sparse: one mourner and a priest. Now, every blade of cemetery grass grew black; the soil was toxic, and the ground gaped like dark, hungry mouths.