In The Darkness, Hiding

ping.fmmming blogger, twitter, facebook and lj!

Sundown

A bird this deep in the heart of the city was a wonder enough for one day.

At first blink, it was a scrap of fabric or cardboard worn out of shape by heat and rain. At second blink, a sparrow. Trailing my fingers along the blistering shopfronts, blinking eyes open, eyes shut, I almost didn’t notice it had feathers in time to avoid treading on it. A dirty cock sparrow, grey with accumulated layers of dust, its eyes still wide and bright.

No sign of any struggle; it lay crushed and spent in a bend where the pavement was wider than normal. The hot wind, or perhaps the ceaseless movement of the crowd, had pushed it into a gap between two paving slabs.

Still available in Issue 0 of GUD Magazine!

The Grey

It was grey. It was grey when the sun was supposed to come up, and it was grey when it was supposed to go down. For days, we hadn't even seen the sun.

Christmas.

Eighty years ago, maybe more, maybe less, they had these fogs, or smogs. In cities. People wore masks, so they could breathe.

The day before Christmas Eve, two o'clock in the afternoon, and it's grey. The crazy thing is that although it isn't Christmas everywhere, and it isn't two o'clock, everywhere, it's grey, everywhere. On land. At sea. Southern hemisphere. Northern hemisphere. Everywhere.

Now available through AnthologyBuilder!

In The Darkness, Hiding

Saturday, 30 May 2009

0 comments:

In The Darkness, Hiding

About Me

Nuts

Squirrel Stories, etc

Links

just listen to those twits

Twitter Updates

Blog Archive

Sundown

The Grey

A reader speaks