Molly's eyes had burned when she'd got up to the roof. The snow. So bright. Her thin clothes were too small. Her muscles had withered; she'd almost been too frail for the escape. For an hour, she cowered, shivering. She looked up. Another set of footprints. With shoes.
Gripped by gnarled fingers on the pier, I saw opaque nails like broken shells. The crone pulled me into her tent, eyelashes encrusted with salt, tendrils of seaweed matted in her hair, and spat out my watery fate. Palm uncrossed with silver, she toppled me over the rail.
#field
Ella watches a red-shelled ladybird, lit like a ruby. The heat hangs so still and heavy that thirsty birds have swallowed their songs and the grass has hushed, expectant. Stringed with gold, she sleeps in the field, dreams of thunderstorms seeping into the cracked earth.
#flowers and #mayhem
Beth had found a stash of old demi-johns nestled in the long grass behind Victorian Alfred. Scrumpy!
They danced and spun with dead flowers in their skulls, dropping phalanges here and there, finally stumbling back into the wrong graves.
Utter mayhem!
#flatline and #chocolate
The patient had flatlined. Once pronounced dead, the theatre emptied and Nurse Heidi set about cleaning the instruments. She licked the blood as though it were chocolate.
Hardly ever able to wait, she found standing on the O2 tube, or flicking a switch, always helped.