wytchcroft

(another find)
warning; contains swearing. please remember - i am NOT my characters. 
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Concepts of ‘Englishness’ bothered Gerry, bothered him in the same way as blurred patches in his peripheral vision, the kind that didn’t go away but, however much he wiped his specs, just sort of smeared out on the edges, to the side or below. The same annoyance as a paper cut. Paper cuts always come with the jeering promise that, no matter what you do, sooner or later (in fact just sooner), you will be forced by the generally malign nature of things to use the wounded finger and repeatedly so. With a pair of specs it would be email, bills, files and forms from work, a laughing commuter thrusting out the funny pages of a daily paper – or else road-signs, bus stops, unexpected waving friends, yapping dogs, darting cats or footballs out of nowhere, billboard adverts, lurching cars at T-junctions, attractive women, all would remorselessly have to be looked at through the smear. Gerry disliked having to turn his head and he disliked having to deliberately look down or to the sides – and he hated flicking through pieces of paper, whether this was an innate thing, a natural quirk, or a borderline phobic reaction to 30-plus years of dirty glasses and sore fingers, Gerry wasn’t sure.

If the brain, as so often claimed, is but a large muscle, then, Gerry supposed, the mind was but a red edged finger in a dodgy pair of specs.

Or something. Anyway, yes, Concepts of –

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“Harry?”

“Harry?”

She remembers the old saying; dead men tall no tales. But people are fools and a dead man can tell a lie just as well as any other man. Karin looks at her hand. It has frozen in mid-air.
I was to going to strike him, even her own inner voice sounding dulled, numb now.

It must be reaction, such an irrational urge, as if she could slap him back into breathing, like a mid-wife.
She had played that role once; her older sister Rheya sharing the same cramped compartment and with one child already to show for the affections of her husband. He was a good man but she had barred him from the occasion, exiled him to the same small cupboard as their fractious mother. She was wailing loud enough for them all.
“Dear God, another child! What shall we do? How are we to cope, to raise another one - infants, children? My God!” 

All the while her sister gasping like a steam-press but calm, issuing out her instructions; more towels, more water, fetch a painkiller, fixing her with wild, wild eyes. “And remember Kari’, slap him, a good smack mind you, on the arse, ok? He – gasp! – has to – gasp! – breathe!” A shriek then, the last subterranean motion and suddenly Karin is holding something red, slick as an oil fouled bird... 
...and her free hand had frozen for some reason, she just couldn’t do it, could not make the hand connect with the slippery thing clutched so inexpertly in her arms.  

No, she couldn’t do it then and she cannot do it now. All she can do is stand and watch that hand of hers, frozen in mid-motion, perfectly stilled, not even a tremor. Her nails, she can see, are remarkably clean – all things considered.

And then the long elastic moment reaches its end at last - and time snaps back into action.
She is a metal girl again, once more carrying out her task like a machine, like a robot.
Brushing the dust from an old chair she seats herself before the disused control desk, scanning the dials and switches then twisting and clicking them one by one, row by row, and at the last, the lights. 
Such a complete darkness.

“Honestly,” she chides, “you are becoming a melancholic, we’re shut up like a couple of old cats!”

Her fingers are fumbling for the lever. Ah, here it is. “Probably a lovely day outside, come on, let’s see shall we?”
There! The windows of the apartment fly open their shutters and the blind whirs away back into its slot, the bright sunlight pours in.

“See? Now, that’s enough of your silliness Harry, it’s time for breakfast!”

She smiles indulgently as she turns to him where he sits looking pale and bemused at his own sudden end.

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