As 1951 surrenders to the first breath of 1952, Albert Burton sits hunched at his kitchen table, spelling truths for his wife with a near-invisible hand. How he is able to grip the pen, to touch it to the paper, he does not understand ... Because Albert has been dead for exactly seven days.
We’re in a labyrinth of ladders, arcing and curling around one another, following others’ routes, occasionally being given a hand over treacherous rungs. Some ladders lead to dead ends, others to platforms from where we can shout down encouragement, or ignore all beneath.
November 29th Pulse: frenetic Hair: resolutely static Unclear how body is capable of sustaining both states. Suspect insidious damage. Nevertheless, symptoms frustratingly slight and socially invisible. A has a story that she tells about heartbreak. It’s not a story, actually.
When she saw him, her heart did all the things a heart must do: it swelled, it leapt, it skipped a beat. She crossed without looking left or right and stopped directly under the ladder – because, of course, it had already happened to them both. The terrible luck.
Mind Old Ginger the gamekeeper. Myths abound where he’s concerned. Famous through the Borderlands, was Old Ginger; a legend to some, a purpling, heather-lurking menace to many more. Pheasants and pleasant folk stopping in their weekend homes feared him equally, as well they should have. For the wee man wasn’t entirely right.
The other day, my mother handed me a pot of yoghurt, cultivated from my great-grandmother’s vagina, across the antique wooden breakfast table, before I had had even the first of my morning coffees. But, of course, I tasted a spoonful out of politeness. It was gloopy and unpleasant.
Not long before leaving, she’d begun forgetting the words that produced her life. Simple words like saucepan, obelisk, masquerade and most recently, cufflinks, which she’d called wrist links, her mind toddler-fumbling with the picture-sounds till her husband corrected her with an unconcerned look on his face.
The Galactic Expressway Resort had been in development for just short of a decade when they celebrated their soft launch "Leave to Remain" on that fateful Friday of June 24th, 2016. The intention had been to establish a viable competitor for Dick Pickle’s Coitus Galactic, a flight service offering unencumbered views of our Earth to its ordinary citizens.
Piano notes floated like velvet cloth across the clearing, harmonies trailing in the wind, before receding into the darkness of the jungle. Only once had I caught a glimpse of her, flowing hair masking her face, as she merged into the valley.
