Rain is pounding on the cobblestones of Place Luxembourg as people cluster to the bars around the square for an after work drink. Colorful umbrellas alternate with newspapers hastily turned into makeshift headgear and the occasional “Merde!” can be heard when a passing car splashes water on a pedestrian.
It’s three feet farther to hell from New Town Bridge. The city recently installed an eighteen-inch “safety” extension to the pedestrian rail. Since it opened in 1978, at least twenty persons have jumped off the ugly gray span and found death waiting two-hundred feet below in the beckoning Philo Bay Narrows. Northern seas swiftly kill the pain; and when that comforting certainty outweighs the threat of damnation, I don’t see another foot and a half up, and down, getting in the way.
Beachum stops at the Bi Lo to get his latest prescription filled. While he’s waiting he looks for something to kill the cat, some kind of poison. He looks up and down the aisles. It appears that grocery stores do not carry poison anymore.
“Where would I find the poison?” he asks the pharmacist
“What kind of poison are you looking for?” asks the pharmacist. He acts as if the mere contemplation of such a question has given him indigestion.
“Something that will kill a cat.”
The pharmacist sighs. “There are many things that will kill a cat,” he says stapling a sheaf of instructions and disclaimers six inches thick to the bag containing Beachum’s prescription that no one, least of all old Beachum, will ever read.
“Can you recommend something?”
The pharmacist shakes his head sadly. “No,” he says.
Lelia Allison reckons she has found a cure for melancholy of huge proportions with this story. This is what she said:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – the Fifty Dollar Sewing Machine by Mitchell Toews”
We are now at week 208. How time flies when you are having fun. I suppose it depends on the fun. If it is backwards time travel, would that phrase still be relevant? I watched ‘The Inglorious Bastards’ the other day. Wasn’t Rod Taylor a handsome man? I mean in ‘The Birds’ and not as an Australian Churchill.
Continue reading “Week 208 – Writing, Typing And Refusing The Nipple.”
This story has been removed at the request of the author
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Well here we are at week 207.
It must be a good seven days since our last posting. (Or a pish seven days for those readers in Scotland.)
I was listening to some Blues when I began to write this and John Lee Hooker came on with ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’ and I just thought that this was in the wrong order. The Bourbon would argue with the Whisky and you would end up enjoying neither of these. The song should be ‘One Bourbon, One Beer, One Scotch’ that would be more tasteful.
Continue reading “Week 207 – The Blues, A Hangover Cure And Bedding The Elderly.”
Steam played across the water’s surface in lazy swirls, nudged by the breeze and stretching away like cigarette smoke. Behind the hedge, lips pressed to her kneecap’s polished, taut surface, she could taste salt on her skin and, somehow, it mingled with the vision of dragon’s breath steam above luminous water to punch a sudden ache in her throat. Smelling chlorine, she longed for the sea, for sand that grew cool as she dug her feet deeper, and her father’s hand on her bony, eight-year-old spine, walking her towards a quiet tideline.
Here we are at Week 206!
Like ‘Gremlins – The Next Batch’ – We’re back.
As in ‘Poltergeist’ – We’re here
And like ‘The Fly’ – If you send us Romance, I’ll ‘Be afraid, very afraid.’
I’ve been watching a few films lately, just to get the days in.
It was good to see the old site creak back into life on Monday.
Continue reading “Week 206 – Returning, Shitty Tinsel And A Lactating Dilema”
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