It was in the eighth year of her life that Becky truly became obsessed with The Tall Man. His coming, his arrival, was all she had to fear in the world. He could be upon her at any moment. Becky turned her mind away and sat Indian-style on the floor, playing with her dolls. She wondered if she would ever feel safe.
imagination
Week 179 – Borders, gateways and tales to tell our children
In my quest to find something interesting to say in Hugh’s absence this week I did a quick Google search for the significance of the number 179.
As you can imagine the results were thrilling.
I can confirm 179 is a prime number – an Eisenstein Prime no less as it is indivisible even by complex Gaussian integers, and Chen Prime because it is 2 less than the next prime number.
Word Puppet by Nik Eveleigh
Right now. Right at this very moment. The moment we are sharing through the medium of a page and the words it contains a man is washing blood from a nine inch blade. His hands are shaking and not just from the chill of the brown water that alternately dribbles then vomits from a rusting tap.
The bathroom is stark. You know the type. Single, naked bulb throwing diseased shards of light into your brain, alive with a frequency on the ragged edge of your hearing. The floor tiles might be white under the patina of despair, shit and god knows what else. The ones on the walls are much the same but with more graffiti to hide their shame. The mirror above the sink keeps showing the same re-run of a man washing a knife. He looks familiar but he’s changed. Hollowed out. He has no idea why he is cleaning the knife but he doesn’t stop.
