wytchcroft

Three:

Like the breaking of a fever, the thing called time - fractures, cools, ebbs away, a wave in retreat. There is debris left behind all the flotsam and jetsam washed up. There are husks of butterflies everywhere; dropping like leaves from the edges of windows, from the fronds and trellises of bush and plant, from the walls and the trees. They crunch under foot.

“Ugh,” the girl exclaims twisting her foot to peer disgustedly at the sole of her boot, “disgusting!”

She looks up again and at the old man. “What is it?” she asks with an exaggerated wrinkle of her nose.

The man waits, toying with a broken I.D. disc – one of the objects found in his evidence searches, of itself just a small piece of twisted metal, the old man has decided to give some meaning to the object, to the name stamped on it – Lee Chuang.

The girl blinks and asks slowly. “Who – are – you?”

It could go on forever like that.  

Islands

There's a scraping, he is, a scraping away, I can hear it, I can see him, scraping. He thinks, I have never been so awake. I have never been so aware. The pale girl is staring at him as he scrapes at his plate with the blunted cutlery. She says, “I think something bad happened here.” But it doesn't feel that way to him, it can't do, must not do - this sensation, this miracle awakening. That's all he has to hold onto.

That's in the kitchen, if it is a kitchen. Somewhere else there is a garden of sorts,, a neglected scrub of green at least, and there are cliffs, a wide lake. Sitting by the edge she says the same thing again.

“No,” says the old man. “I don't know about that...”

four:

once upon a time there was a girl and a ship and once upon a time
a girl in the water.

But when you float, everything is far away.

( Read more... )

two:

"What is that, like, a mantra or something?"

Listening down.

Whispers.

"Leachers, Seeders, Feeders, Breeders.” Just whispers, repeating.

“Maybe he’s crazed.”  and the other voices...

“Maybe you hit him too hard.” are louder.
( Read more... )

one:

"Woah - hold up!"

i said, panting slightly and resting my hands on my knees. That's what they tell you, right?
If you're dizzy, feel faint, bend low and breathe slow, it's the truth i know - i remember it from... somewhere.

The wind is barely touching the sand.
( Read more... )

Two: The Island

The proud dark ship slipped into the harbour like a cold hand stealing into a glove – waiting for the soft surroundings to warm the tense flesh. Around the shallow inlet there were tropical leaves and petals from a dozen different varieties of flower and tree, layer upon layer, the sunset splashed red and rich and so the dark ship waited for colour also.
( Read more... )

That was back in the war of course.

The old woman finishes her tea with a slurp born of indifference to me and my colleagues - indeed to people in-toto.

Weren't you all evacuated back then? I ask. That's what we're always told.

Well of course, what with His Nibs and the boys up to no good on land and sea and - d'you know why my generation all hate clowns? It’s the balloons see? Just like the bloody King's. Him and that bloody bitch of a Queen lapping up the Empire between them like hungry dogs to a dish.

Mind you, that was after...