Now there’s one soul less
On your fiery list
~ Triffids ‘Hometown Farewell Kiss’ 1987
On your fiery list
~ Triffids ‘Hometown Farewell Kiss’ 1987
 |
| Franciszek Starowieyski |
The nagging behind your eye clears as you realise the umbrella stand in the entrance contains only umbrellas.
The short string of seashells that hang from the broader top end of Ellie’s staff gives off a flutter in harmony with the vibration emanating from the staff itself – vibrating at the broad end; while hanging from the narrow end is the body of what used to be Giles, the staff has passed through him at the most personal of places; through his face and into the polished plascrete of the guest suite’s living room wall.
Giles’ fingers twitch as if to signal his final thought, a set of random commands from the misfiring synapses in his dying brain.
“…---” his fingers type “…”
His face has been pushed inward to the centre of his head, leaving a puckered orifice around the shaft of Ellie’s Staff, a blade has been used to separated his clothing left from right, sliced a deep gash from clavicle to sternum; gutting him; smells like a sewage farm; his innards spilling from his centre.
You take in the whole room while registering these details, all your training straining to register beyond the vibrations, beyond the corpse, the smell of fresh death, to register the rumpled bedclothes, the knocked-over wooden table having thrown a contrary, unbroken glass from which has spilled a fan of wet across the white woollen carpet.
This act has been completed fairly recently but you suspect that the staff has been deliberately twanged upon your arrival in order to get your attention.
You move sideways from the doorway through which you entered, your back now against the wall ready for anyone following you through.
Nothing.
The staff’s vibration dies out to leave the room silent but for random drips from the corpse.
The short string of seashells that hang from the broader top end of Ellie’s staff gives off a flutter in harmony with the vibration emanating from the staff itself – vibrating at the broad end; while hanging from the narrow end is the body of what used to be Giles, the staff has passed through him at the most personal of places; through his face and into the polished plascrete of the guest suite’s living room wall.
Giles’ fingers twitch as if to signal his final thought, a set of random commands from the misfiring synapses in his dying brain.
“…---” his fingers type “…”
His face has been pushed inward to the centre of his head, leaving a puckered orifice around the shaft of Ellie’s Staff, a blade has been used to separated his clothing left from right, sliced a deep gash from clavicle to sternum; gutting him; smells like a sewage farm; his innards spilling from his centre.
You take in the whole room while registering these details, all your training straining to register beyond the vibrations, beyond the corpse, the smell of fresh death, to register the rumpled bedclothes, the knocked-over wooden table having thrown a contrary, unbroken glass from which has spilled a fan of wet across the white woollen carpet.
This act has been completed fairly recently but you suspect that the staff has been deliberately twanged upon your arrival in order to get your attention.
You move sideways from the doorway through which you entered, your back now against the wall ready for anyone following you through.
Nothing.
The staff’s vibration dies out to leave the room silent but for random drips from the corpse.
| Triffids | ||
| Hometown Farewell Kiss | ||
1 comment:
Months back, before I’d written this episode, I wrote this note to myself:
DON’T FORGET THE STICK
I had at one stage wondered what purpose Ellie’s stick would play in this story; perhaps it would serve no purpose at all but to remain in the hall with the umbrellas an irony since the umbrellas have as much purpose in Kulture’s underground bunker as the stick would have had in the story.
Anyway, as the saying goes ‘The devil finds work for idle hands’ and so the stick has now found its purpose.
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