'38 Rue Utopia ~ Ep.48

Nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop
And an illustrated book about birds
See a lot up there but don’t be scared
Who needs action when you got words
~ Meat Puppets ‘Plateau’ 1984

xxx

Eva checks the map ref again; she’s followed the track marked out by the old steel poles heading east toward Bigmark, the map ref is now glowing in the right-hand corner of her eye; if she doesn’t reach a crossroad soon she’s gonna have to consider going off-road.
In her ears the rush of solitude presents her heart with a tightening; a feeling the dictionary that Joe had lent her would probably define this as joy. The immensity of her situation spices this joy with fear, a condiment ground to acrid powder by the demons of ancestral survival and uncertainty of the darkness that inevitably splits the days from one another.
She sits against one of the poles, knees up on resting wrists, breathes a breath of mud’s perfume before foraging in her bag amongst the provisions she’s packed; food, her found-objects; the zip-gun Daniel had helped her create; the bottle of potato djinn she’d nicked from Joe’s stash in the back of the larder.
The alcohol burns into her upper chest, presenting her outside with a bitmap of her insides, lifting her spirit, deadening the fear.

Meat Puppets
Plateau