This version is adapted from a never-fail lemon curd recipe I found... somewhere... maybe online?  I dunno.  I think it'd work with any citrus fruit, possibly even grapefruit, if you're not into limes or can't obtain them.

A small word of warning to the susceptible (you know who you are)- this stuff is like crack and once you've had your first bump, it's allllll over.  Forget calorie restriction, forget social responsibility, forget your firstborn... you can try to hide it at the back of the freezer, but it never sets deterrent-hard and is always cooing to your lizard brain about that time you guddled the last bit out of the jar with your hands naked at midnight and how fucking good that was (I regret nothing).

Then add the eggs, roughly one at a time, to the butter and sugar, mixing thoroughly in between.  Cut the limes in half and squeeze them hard until you have your two-thirds of a cup of juice.  Try to exclude any pips.

Vikingskipshuset: Osebergskipet II by Nordfjall / George Hieron

Maori legend associates the Piwakawaka with boldness (it is almost completely fearless, to be sure, sometimes even landing on you) and death, via its betrayal of Maui as he sought to kill Hine-nui-te-po, goddess of the underworld, and thus end human mortality.  Quel dommage.

Personally, we regard them with extreme fondness.  Their nests are tiny conical structures spun with spider web and laced with lichen and the fantail sits tucked into the top in the most snug manner imaginable.  When broods emerge they often hang out together over the warmer months, invading the garden in bossy little gangs of three.

Anyone familiar with this bird will know The Lovely R did very well to get these images since the Fantail rarely holds a pose for more than a moment.  A group of them clustering around you, fanning busily and singing as you trundle along a bush path or disturb the insects hiding in the garden is one of the nicest things about summer.

I was trying on a pair of black or khaki shorts that seemed far too small for me, but they fit really well in an odd way.  Then I was sitting on the verandah of a log or wooden cabin type house on one side of wooded valley at night.  The forest was kind of munted and previously logged and ragged looking and the owners of the cabin were down at heel and sort of desperate.  Across the valley a huge oversized dead tree the length of the hillside virtually had fallen over and lay silver amongst the darkened vegetation; the people were talking about how disastrous a fire would be when I saw a glow starting under the huge dead tree.  Somehow we made a violent emphatic gesture which snuffed out the flames from afar, and I saw two deer through the trees indicate that someone was moving on the hill above them, looked up and saw four figures sprinting off toward the top of the ridge in the darkness.  Two dark- haired males and two females, I thought.  We screamed after them about what we do to arsonists around here, like maniacs.

The next day I thought I could identify them in the town nearby, so I went to the school and started looking around and asking the teachers who would fit the description.  I remember also looking through yearbook type things containing weird pictures of people at various ages in their lives.  It turned out to be a fifties style classroom and the two girls indicated were bad girls, their faces heavily made up and their hair and clothes strangely stylised in a manner I can't really describe.  I started asking them if they knew anything about what happened and they were initially rude, then offered to show me something secret; we went somewhere else, and one of them opened their white nurse-like dress and showed me her breasts, which were very large and white; she took my hands and put them on them and I remember being turned on but also really swirlingly conflicted because there was something about her that repulsed me, and I knew our association would be negative.

Remarks To be fair, we were extremely baked last night so all this could just be the good shit talking.
The shorts thing is just because I've lost weight and all my clothes seem too small now when I hold them up in front of me.  The rest of it feels sexualesque to me, the dead tree was pretty dick-y, and the lighting a fire with it was erm... yeah... and the nasty girls responsible were definitely up for it.  I don't know why it seemed so sort of conflicted and almost repressed, because my dream sex is usually straight up and graphic, and I don't really have any (well, many) hang ups or no nos.  The whole thing had a really strange and unfamiliar feel.  There are theories positing that everyone featuring in your dreams is actually you; I don't subscribe to this usually but come to think of it, those nasty girls look and feel a bit familiar.  Was I tracking down and talking to my gamey side?  Was I repulsed by my own boobies?  Am I unconsciously thinking about writing cheques my arse can't cash for the first time in a while and that's tweaking me in unexpected ways?  I have been wearing purple lipstick.  So many questions.  

“During the gross exam of the tertiary female we found exposure to a prolonged perimortem assault.  There was complete... and I mean total, cervical displacement, of a kind rarely seen outside automobile v pedestrian... the force required to effect this trauma is... very, very considerable..."  The speaker turned back toward his audience, poorly-concealed delight in his expression between the concessions to his raw throat.  "Which is, I think most of you will agree... very exciting.”

He coughed again, into his fist.  The silver-walled auditorium was a house strictly divided, though its intimate dimensions enforced proximity upon both factions; they sat on either side of the central aisle in their labcoats and baize-red biohazard scrubs, consuming every detail of the dissertation.  Shaw sat before the fixed seating on a separate chair.  He turned and glanced toward the rear at Josephine while the balding senior technician charged with oversight of all incoming materia ceased his sonorous account and referred to the projector, stepping backward from the whiteboard.  He flipped through anterior and posterior views of the cadaver, through images of oxidizing reds and marbled blue-greys.  Where asphalt had worn away the skin, the evening-primrose hue of subcutaneous fat formed broad quilted fields, giving way to shaggy, flaccid muscle, then glistening bone.  

“Rachelle Addison Whateley, age twenty seven, nulliparous Caucasian female.  Toxicology and biopsies indicated sustained abuse of scripted synthetics but no major pathologies.  Some of the damage you’re seeing was post-mortem... all is consistent with the report submitted by our witness.  None of this looks ritualistic or sexually motivated, so we’re happy that this is just the result of a disorganized opportunist attack.”  The man slid his laser pointer into the pocket of his trousers.  “I’m aware that there has been... criticism of the decision to relocate the material immediately after the exam."  He waved down the hands that rose in response to his reference.  "We were labouring under a number of constraints in real time, but samples were taken and submitted... and as you may have already heard, we found something of considerable interest."

Checked once more by his throat, the man coughed loudly in the midst of transferring further data to the projector and took a moment to gaze down at the screen of his laptop, its glow reflected in his eyes while the auditorium returned to silence.

“Taken from inside an open crush fracture of the Atlas arch.  It’s at two hundred times.”  He squinted up at the intricate retiform pattern, picked out from a complex of interrelated translucence by the paler green delineating its interlocking diamonds.  A minute circle pieced the middle of each tiny scale so that the configuration, taken as a whole, resembled the layered thatch of a butterfly’s wing.  “Epidermal material... from one of our most elusive target species.”

The speaker slid a chair out from the desk beneath the projector and selected a face from amongst those clamouring for attention on the right side of the room, taking his question with a slow nod.

“This is standard polarized?” 
“It is.  The first of three fragments we extracted from the cadaver, all from digital contact with the fractures in the victim’s neck.”
“Did you get any into a stain before degradation?”  Two hundred gazes, both glassed and naked, fell to the senior technician.
“We still have the samples." the latter replied, succumbing to dramatic timing.  "They’re proving stable.”  Another, half-skeptical silence broke under the weight of two hundred competing demands.  “There’s some nominal enzyme activity, but it’s profoundly retarded, so we finally have our pound of flesh... so to speak.  Yes...”  He indicated another inquiry.
"They’re sclerodermous?”
“I think it’s safe to say that this argues against the conventional mammalian theory.  They’re been assigned to the C class of catalogued anthropomorphs, and given the species number five.”
“So... the lizard guys win?” exclaimed a technician sitting behind Shaw.  Leaden, humourless acrimony was exchanged as parties settled wagers, some refusing to accept the prima facie evidence and weathering the disgust elicited by their intransigence.  Above the noise generated by this process another member of the audience assumed priority, using his imposing height and forbidding, lantern-jawed countenance to quiet those around him.

“Yeah hi... Bateman, Anatomy.”  The petitioner’s attitude expressed itself in the dry, muttered pitch of his voice, his wrath almost seeming to presage the sudden emergence of spines through the fabric of his pale blue lab coat.  Though Josephine had not seen him enter, O’Connor buttoned his jacket as he stood up in the front row, assuming a sanguine, reciprocal precedence.  “You're presumably aware that we've been hammered for our description and at the same time denied access to this thing from day one of this project... presumably you understand the need to describe something before you can patent it.”  The technician removed his glasses.  “If you can't give me an immediate assurance that someone has been tasked to yank one off the sidewalk, I’m going over your heads with my concerns.  If we've got this stuff, its just a matter of time til someone else does.”

“No one is more aware of the need to acquire this material." O'Connor assured him.  He allowed his dark, glassed gaze slow play across the seated mass.  "You can rest assured that the logistics of a live capture are being considered as we speak."
"See, I find it ironic that the musculo-skeletal scope of these things has been slapping everyone in the face for the ten years spent developing the ADMs... they're not bigfoot, we had the footage the whole time, and if you couldn't sell this before now that's systemic failure." Bateman contended sourly.  O'Connor wrung a black smile from his own thin features.
"If you can cite some other documented incident of gift-wrapped human material containing chunks of our target species I'd be happy to explore why it wasn't kicked up the chain.  When we have a C5, Anatomy will be the first to see it.  In fact, you can come on down and help unload it if you like.” 

Biochemistry enjoyed his riposte far more than those seated in the saturnine ranks behind the complainant, the latter’s box-cutter stare darkened further by the remarks at his expense.  

“Laugh it up like that when the PLA or Kliner-Gentec or Kraft beat us to market, asshats.” he told them from his plastic seat.  From the back of the room, Josephine glanced down at O’Connor’s position; he was looking back at her.  She stood up, slid her laptop bag across the seats and climbed the aisle toward the rear exit.

She had parked her jeep in the section furthest from the windowless complex and facing the closely-spaced cedars.  Shaw walked toward it quickly upon emerging from the last security cordon and climbed in alongside her, thunder-faced.

“Bateman carved us up for not securing the unknown sub.  Stood right there in his geek scrubs and told us exactly how it would have gone down if only he’d been there with a damn goldfish net and a garden hose.”

Josephine wiped the dust from the dash with a slow hand.

“Bateman’s always been a psycho shut-in.  He and O’Connor should get engaged.  The two that fled on Swiss papers a while back flew in three days ago, so you'll be seeing them sooner rather than later.” she assured him.  He shook his head at the prospect.
"I don't need any more crap right now." Shaw muttered to himself inaudibly, regarding her obliquely and running a hand over his crop.  "O'Connor's been poking it with a stick, wanting to know why I didn’t get a crew out there while it was happening.  You need to think about where you were on the night in question, and get your story straight, because I'm not getting hung out for something I didn't initiate.”  The heat of his status as unwitting catalyst prickling beneath the collar of his white shirt.  "And if you still got anything from the blacked-out female, flush it when you get home.  There’s no way in hell they’re not going for a live capture after this.  Jesus christ... no proven ballistic heat, no clue what meds will drop them... I'm gonna get chunked out there.”

Keeping her eyes on the windscreen, Josephine edged her hand along the dark twill of her skirt toward the compartment between their seats, knocking back the lid and delving into it.  Almost unwillingly, Shaw looked up and saw the hard, dark, die-stamped regularity of the shapes that had attracted her attention through the windscreen.  In the last row of ashy green conifers stood three black figures, taller than they should have been, their body suits like slick marine skin, excluding the afternoon sun that reflected in the thick shielding glass of their visors.  A bright red point slid off the windscreen glass before her and descended the bonnet of the jeep, dropping out of sight where the steel curved down toward the grille.  The ADMs were difficult to visually extract from the dark monotony of the surrounding branches, and by the time she had drawn back the slide of the gun in her lap they had returned to their sinister union with the trees.  

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe do not reproduce

Image: Laura Michie with thanks to Dr Alex Ball for permission to use the confocal microscopy facilities at The Natural History Museum.
http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/news/industrial-biotechnology/2012/121128-f-meet-the-gribbles.aspx

So, Die Antwoord.  Flipping off Lady Ga Ga after she offered a support spot on her last tour (no I can't name it, no I don't care) certainly landed them a few glistening tonnes of global eyeballs but some of us were onto them before that and feel a bit above all the hissy hoo ha.  I love the Antwoord unreasonably because they are the lost twin to the paint-huffing retard taking up far too much square footage in my psyche.  They feed it and caress it.  I love Yo-landi's boobies and Ninja's chatty penis.  Zef Side is the way a large chunk of the Southern Hemisphere looks once you've stepped away from your resort; the twitching remains of colonial experimentation, like Frankenstein's monster smeared across the landscape.  I love them for celebrating that.
C L I C K   F O R   M O R E...

Yesterday was a good day to be alive.  It's been raining for the best part of a week.  Everything is soaked through, the air is one-third water and the birds emerge at the slightest break in the clouds to trill defiantly. There was a break in the clouds but it was still thundering almost continuously and spitting whiplash spokes of lightning at the hills over the horizon.  I took the camera onto the road outside our house at about nine pm.  I'm really glad I did.  Breathing this in was a privilege.   I even found some love for powerlines. 
C L I C K   F O R   M O R E...

This has long been one of my favourite works by a New Zealand artist.  I know virtually nothing about its inspiration and execution and even less about Bill Hammond himself, other than his being a bit of a recluse (whatever that means) or at least not given to airing his figurative underwear in interview.  But when it comes to images, I've learned to trust and even prefer this ignorance; the only requirement I have of art is that it speaks for itself.  There's not much worse than coming to an unknown work loaded down with other peoples' praise and slag. C L I C K   F O R   M O R E...

The psychology of disgust and rejection is an interesting subtext in perfumery.  It is beauty's shadow, the necessary companion of any allusion to desire or allure, and I'm always perplexed by the unquenchable need of so many to uncouple them.  What is one without the other, after all?  Having spent five long years on a professional sensory panel, I can tell you a thing or two about pungency, overload, anosmia and characterization; this experience, coupled with wide culinary and environmental exposure, means that my spectrum of tolerance and active inquiry is possibly broader than most.  When I became interested in the idea of Miel De Bois and began to peruse the reviews, I was intrigued by the violence of the language and reaction it seemed to inspire, but then I'm always surprised at the space disgust occupies in peoples' personal real estate.
C L I C K   F O R   M O R E...

As a child, I was once asked to choose a ring from amongst the massed rows of cheap silver on offer to the beach-going tourist in Bali.  I chose a cuff-style piece with a single table-cut carnelian, unsure why I had done so in the midst of my infant personal aesthetic, but certain it was what I wanted.  The ring has long passed into the yawning oblivion that trails us all but I have since learned that it was probably Afghani, traded southward from its Tadjik origin during the drug-greased Eighties and ending up on the black sand of that Hindu island.  And when, much later, I thought about the kind of portable wealth that would hold the respect of the nomad brothers at the centre of The Blackthorn Orphans, I knew immediately that it would be the fabulous gilt and inlaid silver of the Turkic tribes that had once surrounded them in the remote lands of their birth.
C L I C K   F O R  M O R E...

This superb datura is a sensory banquet, possessing all the delectable qualities you could possibly wish for in a companion plant (to call it a 'pet' seems so patronizing) except, ironically, the empyrean perfume for which its compatriots are so renowned.  But let us not quibble; it is a beauty and a luxury for any self-respecting floraphile and I am more than pleased to finally have one in my garden.
C L I C K   F O R   M O R E...

To the far right above.... erm... yesss.  A less innocent tableau; we have a much abus'ed and forlorn old Aloe somaliensis colony, veteran of some shocking mistreatment.  It had been knocked over/shoved back in three times over summer with very few figs given, losing more soil with each incident and its poor roots getting more and more parched and broken.  I've taken this guy for granted for years and it's time to do the right thing by it.

We'll do the harlana first.  It's just a straightforward rehousing job and because this plant is not particularly fussy or showing signs of stress I'm putting it into a much larger pot, which it will fill out by this time next year.

You can use a smaller grade.  I find it compacts a wee bit, and I prefer this size as a top dressing since it tends to stay put.  I like to shake some old soil from around the roots of the plant in question into this new mix; it's probably just a superstition but since it preserves some of the microflora/PH from the previous environment it might just be beneficial.  Who knows?  Don't do this if your plant is struggling or displaying rot; you want a fresh start in that case.  I am an incorrigible over-waterer so I always use ceramic pots and an open soil mix to give my collection a chance to survive my attentions.  If your vegetable children are faced with a very arid, hot and/or neglectaroony type situation you might want to ease up on the drainage amendments.  But to my eye, below right is some hot looking dirt, and if I were a xeric plant in a bar, I would definitely sway drunkenly toward it.

Below- Let's move onto the poor somaliensis.  I'm choosing a luxury plastic pot for this guy, even though I hate them with a white hot passion.  This species is a survivor and I don't tend to overwater this specimen for some reason.  It's pupping away too; multiple plants and busy roots mean there's less chance of soggy empty soil.

Below left: Brush all the soil and pumice out of those leaves or you're setting your plant up for some unsightly fungal spots.  I keep two sizes of paint brush exclusively for dusting junk from my succulents; it's generally not a good idea to draft one in from your DIY stash as any solvent residues can burn your plants.  And finally, below right: the finished product.  Some grateful potted-on aloes beside their former homes.  Only another two dozen or so to go.

The Lovely R and I are more than uncool enough to admit to loving this track and dancing around in our dressing gowns shouting the lyrics at one another between mouthfuls of toast on a Sunday morning slash afternoon.  Hi, neighbours!  Have you seen Dig?  We recommend you do so now, especially if you've cohabited with a musician or been any kind of band affiliate because you will lol your arse off and love every stupid, pointless moment of it.

Look at Courtney strappin lo.  I'll always have a place in my heart for that shit right there.

I didn't think I'd last a whole year; well... I questioned whether I would, but as it turns out, this blogging lark is gently addictive and a great way for a superopinionated egomaniac to thoroughly baste the collective unconscious with their viscid cognitive juices.  You're welcome.  Recording and sharing your various processes is a sure way to confront yourself with the reality of your own existence; the good, bad and indifferent and their respective proportions.  I know I've bored you with my depressive bullshit and subjected you to morbid poetry, but then you'd probably do the same.  Some shit can't be helped, lol.

To mark the occasion, both the Lovely R and I will be regaling you with our personal perspectives re text and images; I'll report some good stuff you might have missed from the early days of this mofo and we'll add our few cents worth of advice to the novice blogger etc.  

We both hope you're still enjoying The Blackthorn Orphans.  I know we are.  Every day it's totally fucking fantastic to remind ourselves that people are actually reading the book after all the years of dithering and uncertainty.  90 000+ visitors is a good start.  


So thanks again, constant readers and casual-type bitches.  Don't go changing.  We heart you back.

“People would rather live in homes regardless of its grayness. There is no place like home.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by Heiko Mülfarth  (heterotopian.tumblr.com)

The heat of the afternoon did not intrude into the shade of William’s bedroom, though it glowed in streaks of theravada orange through the drapes drawn back toward the glassed doors by the breeze.  The same lazy air conveyed the smell of long grass, working in gentle concert with the sound of running water to excavate her from the depths of repose.  Sunlight slanted downward from the hole in the ceiling overhead, dropping a dusty, golden shape onto the floorboards that dimmed slowly with the passing of clouds.  Susan lay on her stomach in the midst of the enormous mattress beside a welter of bedclothes almost the same size as her body.  It was cool and shaded beneath the canopy and she was not inclined to move, except to slowly advance a leg across the sheet to discover if she was alone.  From the door the curtain billowed in and brushed the sole of her foot where it hung from the edge of the bed.  The ticking of avian tread upon the boards mentioned the pheasant stalking beneath the bed frame on an inquisitive foray.

The tilt of the mattress roused her a second time, the structures in William's shoulders hissing faintly as they rotated, allowing him to bend and press his lips to either of the half-moon dimples in the small of her back.  He lay down on top of her, setting his head in the crook of her neck.  

“Get off me or I'll wet the fucking bed.” she groaned, unwilling to relinquish her pellucid monopoly.  “My arse feels like a mashed banana.”

He moved his hips against the afflicted region, enjoying its tempting, cushioned amplitude.  

"Seems perfectly normal.” he smiled.  Susan rolled over beneath him, though she kept her pillow to her face to exclude all possibility of daylight, complaining when he pushed it back over her forehead with his nose.  Her dark eyes enjoyed a smoky margin of fugitive mascara.  She squeezed them shut, pressing her lips together to contain a smile while he licked her chin.  
“You’re not allowed to look at me til half past ten.”
“It’s half past two.”

Glancing at him finally, she reached back for her pillow, sighing through it. 

“Why don’t you look all seedy and hungover?”
“I thought that’s how I always looked.”
“You look like a virgin... baby... daisy.” she told him wearily, lifting handfuls of his hair over his head, daylight falling through it in glowing, rose-red fractions.  “What are you going to do now there's no icecream on the horizon?”  He replied with an indolent kiss, drawing on her tongue then sliding back onto his knees, his mouth dwelling on her breasts, either side of her ribcage and navel in a descent that concluded between her thighs, which lay in careless dissociation.  
“I think it starts with C.”
"It should start with F for fatal, because I'm going to have a heart attack if you do that one more time..."  She sucked in a breath, feet curling tightly on the sheets as she covered her face with her hands and then lapsed into inertia, his attentions possessing both the private comforts of her own hand and a stranger's unimagined expertise.  It took a long while for a distant noise to distract her, intruding intermittently between her whispered exclamations until she opened her eyes.  “William..." she murmured.  "Something’s overflowing.”

He turned his face against her leg and listened, pondering her enigmatic statement before rising to his feet and hurrying back to the bathtub that had begun to disgorge water onto the white floor tiles.  

“Stay in there.” she called, lifting her arms together and laying them back on the mattress as she listened to his immersion, the aqueous notes rippling along the ceiling like reflected sunlight and tipping the balance against her boneless sloth.  Slowly she rolled to the edge of the bed, groaning all the way, a quick survey of the floor reminding her that she had left her best underwear in the Japanese garden.

The bathtub barely contained his louche entirety, its water threatening the lip of the enamel; Susan grimaced at her own reflection in the cabinet mirror, sitting down on the edge of the bath at his insistence and warning him sternly against temptation though the water flew up over the tiled wall and slopped onto the floor as the caution was disregarded. 

"It's freezing!" she shrieked.
"I know." he laughed, winding his arms about her until she swore softly and grew still, forget-me-not blue bleeding from her hair into the water.  Its cool acceptance of her weight began to ease the grainiest aspects of her hangover, and silence settled, her body warming a shallow gradient around her, the surface rising and falling slowly with her breathing.  William touched his toe to the spout to prevent the drip intruding on the hollow, peaceful rhythm until she turned to lie with her face against his neck, closing her eyes.  "Christabel..." he said quietly, after an interval.  "How do you like strange?"
"It's alright." she murmured.  Her fingers found and followed the figures on his back, the water an intimate liaison, allowing a new appreciation of the work that was so strange a marriage of art and living flesh.  "It tastes nice." she added, contemplative.  He felt a question move her before she had drawn the breath to ask it.
“My name is Sachiin.” he confided, smiling at the sound of it in her mouth as she lifted her head, her inability to correctly direct the sinuous vowels drawing her gaze to his and soliciting guidance.  “Two syllables is perfectly alright.”

Susan spoke both of his names twice over.

"Which one should I call you?"
"Ça m'est égal.  I'm used to both."
"I think you're still William to me." she confessed, growing still again.  The pheasant peered through the doorway and strutted over the tiles to sip from the puddle at the foot of the tub, tipping back its head to swallow.  "How do you like normal?"
"That wasn't really the word I was thinking of..." he smiled, sucking in a breath as she bit his neck.  "It's magnificent..." he added swiftly, squeaking tautly when she reached between his legs.  Chuckling, Susan wrinkled her nose at the sight of the skin puckering the ends of her fingers and tapped her toes against his shins, signaling an impatience that eventually hauled her free of the tub.  With a towel tucked around her waist she stood before the basin, pulling out its single drawer and rifling its contents, finding a bundle of strange, pale, withered roots, a bar of clove soap, a silver veterinary implement and a heavy-bladed knife, selecting the first item and holding it beneath her nose.  
“What're these?”
“Licorice roots.”  His reply did nothing to mitigate their mystery.  “For cleaning your teeth.”  He mimed the action to clarify their mystery.  “You chew them.”
“This?”  William pulled a reluctant face, and she waited, examining the implement herself.  
“Orthodontic pliers.”  She shuddered and returned them to the drawer.  He slid beneath the water briefly, looking back to her as he re-emerged with eyes swept by the action of their glassy haws.    
“There's that thing... god, that’s well creepy...” she observed as she bent down at the side of the bath and scrutinized him with a conflicted fascination.  His fingers emerged from the water and slid up over the edge to touch her chin in his peculiarly affecting way, a hundred words enfolded in the gesture.  "You do look like a Sachiin." she sighed, letting the word slide through her teeth.  “And you can start teaching me the rest of it.  I hate not knowing when to butt in.”
“You don’t want to go round talking like a hillbilly snakeface Christabel, believe me.  We don’t win popularity contests.” 
“Really?  A lot of people seem to want to do things to you.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Well...” she sighed again, looking around.  “I can’t deal with the sight of myself for much longer so I think I’ll go back to my room and have a bloody lie in.”
“I’ll come up later and help you move your stuff.”
“Move my stuff where?”
“Here.  I’m moving you down here, in there, with me."  She set her hands on her hips, and William shrugged.  “You just bought the cow, cloudcheeks.  You fucked me, now you have to marry me.  It’s in the bible... Colostomy ten, verse sixty nine.”  

Susan laughed and leant against the door frame.

"I was sort of thinking that I might just want to um... use you for sex?” she suggested.  “You only want me down here so I’ll clean up after you.”
“I’ll hire a maid.  Know anyone hot?”  He laughed at his own drollery.  "Poupée... I can do monogamy.  I've been practising."
"Monogamy reminds me of mahogany which reminds me of sideboards which reminds me of shrimp paste sandwiches and lollies stuck together in a bowl." she smiled.  "And promising never to have sex with anything else ever again is the easiest thing in the world after fucking your brains out for twelve solid hours... my brains are as fucked as the rest of me, and yours probably are too, so it's not really the time to be talking about it."
"You're not... into exclusivity?" 

She folded her arms in reply to his diffidence.

"William, you're a slapper.  I don't actually mind that... it's sort of part of your charm, and I don't want to be the girl who bottles you in nightclubs because you've got your tongue stuck in something else."  
"I think we should keep it biblical." he asserted, examining a thumbnail.
"How about don't ask, don't tell?"
"Biblical.  For now.  We'll review the policy going forward."  She rolled around the doorframe into the bedroom.  “You’re losing precious packing time.” he called after her.  Susan marched to the bed and flung herself down, dragging the sheet over her head.

On leaving the bath he discovered a fresh article of clothing and crossed the hall to Edward’s room, where he padded past the bed and whipped back the curtain.  Lilian lavished bitter curses on his person and rolled away from the window, curling up beneath the counterpane.  William stooped, peeled the piece of blackened tinfoil from his damp foot and sat on the side of the bed.  

“Drugs are bad, mmmokay?” he told her.  
“What the fuck.  You better be wearing clothes..." she groaned.
“I’m so far ahead of you it’s practically futuristic.”  He indicated his jeans with a lush wave of his hand.  “Frosty, if Ed was my boyfriend I’d probably want to kill myself too, but I wouldn’t do it playing ghetto roulette with other people's delicious morphine.  Just ask him for a payrise... he’ll dig a nice big hole for your body and everything.”
“Christ... will you just get the fuck away from me?  I’ll pay you.”  
“Does he know about this foolishness, or are you still blanking each other on the stairs?”

She emerged slowly from beneath the quilt and reached for his cigarette.

“He knows.  He came home last night, rolled my ass into recovery position and everything.  I kept thinking there’d be a screwdriver sticking out of the back of his head.  I wasn’t trying to do myself... I was trying to get some fucking sleep.”  Something about the way he was composed, like a smiling Madonna, prompted Lilian to sit up, frowning at his complaisance.  She pushed back her hair and kicked him through the bedclothes until a likely cause presented itself and she sighed, leaning back against the wall.  “Don’t just fucking sit there, drop the dime.  Was she conscious?”  
“She nailed my arse to the wall.  Like a tiger.” he laughed, running his tongue over his teeth.  Lilian shaded her eyes from the window as she considered her companion’s felicity and the small things that had so contented him. 
“All those dirty ways..." she murmured.  "She’s gonna smack them out of you.”  He shrugged, picking at a fraying thread on his knee, and her stare narrowed.  "She already hit you with the slut kryptonite, didn't she?  Oh baby, I don't wanna shut you down, just don't bring it home." Lilian laughed.  "Your fucking brother does me that way, and you can't unhear that shit.  Before you know it, you're turning down total strangers and coming home early with takeout."  

William smiled faintly to himself.

“For her, anything.  I don’t care.”  
She shoved him with her foot and he rolled slowly sideways.

Susan stepped back into his room on hearing someone ascend the stairs, thinking that she would wait, in the interests of discretion, until Edward had returned to his suite.  She counted to ten and walked out into the hall, dragging the dress up over her shoulders with her free hand, but to her dismay he stood at the head of the stairs with a paper, dressed with uncharacteristic informality.  His gaze descended to the scars upon her bare arm, and she pressed past him quickly, glancing back to find that his frown had followed her in an unsettlingly owlish manner.  Edward’s expression darkened again at the sight of his brother’s garrulous communion with Lilian.  He unfurled the newspaper and tossed it down onto the bed.

“Why is the housekeeper fleeing your burrow in a welter of shame and confusion?  And you will respect the rhetorical nature of that inquiry.” he muttered while Lilian cast an eye over the front page.  She preempted his explanation with a string of incredulous obscenities.

“Fuck me, you got lucky like you would not believe last night.” she told William darkly, turning the paper toward him.  “Someone eighty-sixed your hosebeast.  And took a picture so it’d last longer.”

William’s eyes had always disassembled halftone images into their tiny composite elements, making it difficult to perceive their content at a glance, and he took a while to put the shaded pieces of the cover shot together.  Rachelle Whateley’s naked back was ringed by floating bottles and plastic shopping bags in a stagnant oxbow of the city river, pendant arms and legs blurring away into the drab green depths beneath it, long hair lapping at its shoulders in a loose, stained tangle, as though she had been dropped out of a black sky.  The text beneath eschewed detail of her injuries in deference to her influential connections and satisfied itself instead in flensing local law enforcement for their ineptitude.  He could find no consoling finality in the wretched spectacle, recognizing far too many of its jagged little aspects.  Lilian scanned the article, shaking her head at the triteness of its speculation.

“Here’s me hoping you were gonna make her chain-fight your new piece.” she muttered.  “Check it out... they’re trying to make this fit that freak who drains pier girls... fucking morons."

Edward subjected the picture of Rachelle's body to a dispassionate examination from his remote vantage, its empty flesh reminding him obliquely of Hindu conflagrations, of the chants and screams of widows and the smoke rolling from the low, sooty pyres with their oily orange flames and stench and suffocating black heat.  He felt the weight of a horsehair swat in his left hand, and heard the infernal whine of fat, sanguine blowflies.

“I’m only going to ask once if anyone here has anything to say about this.” he informed them.  Lilian shook her head.
“Faceplant... ladyland.” she mused, manually referring to herself and her preoccupied companion.  “If I’d done Rachelle, I’d be on the horn with a voice mod, skullfucking those Homicide douchebags with my batshit manifesto.”  
“I was with Christabel all night.” William agreed.  “We never saw her.”  
“Think that’s gonna stop them taking a run at you for this?” 

The trio exchanged looks of varying type and intensity until William broke the silence.  

“I was with Susan, you two were here... it happened in the city so... none of us are good for it.  Let’s just leave it alone.  Maybe she’ll rest in peace.” he suggested.  “Hey, you’re reviewed...” he told his brother as he took up the paper and folded it in two.  “At the... blah blah... Lamb’s forté is clearly the drama inherent in the purest visual mechanisms, the vexed, penetrative anatomy of act and consequence, his savage chromatic vocabulary underscoring the lack of human scale, of comforting textures, these things excluded as if they do not exist for him.  Jesus fucking wept... These troubling decisions inform our reactions without delineating new perceptive boundaries; they are an introversive commentary, leaving us to negotiate with our own collective absenteeism, the tragedy of our commodification.  His works hang like a judgement on the walls of the Aldrich Gallery, shrewdly juxtapositioned against it’s language of excess, a token of reform conspiring with the vernacular, using... blahdy blah blah... He insists where others intimate, and many will find this certainty, this overtness challenging, even unacceptable, and for that, perhaps, we should be grateful... there's more, but I just can't.  I think you have great success, but I’m not sure.  I think I’m going with dramatic absentee textural clusterfuck.  What the putain is introversive commentary and how do I tell if it's happening?"  He looked to Lilian.
“They’re totally skinning their dicks on your awesomeness.” she told Edward, who smiled back at her sarcasm.  
“There’s something here just beside all that awesomeness about the Aldrich Gallery getting smashed up by gatecrashers who then er... battled police, and set fire to vehicles outside the building...”  William leant over the paper, squinting as he continued his narration.  “Until someone in authority agreed that the art was eye-raping rat scat, and they’d been overcharged to see it even though admission was free...”
“Aprés moi.” Edward explained.
“Opal’s going to rip you some sticky new ones when she’s done choosing caskets.” 
“We no longer enjoy a professional relationship.” he admitted.  Lilian looked up, absorbing the news in silence while Edward stared at his brother.  “You left something in my car."

His gaze returned to Lilian as she alighted from the bed and walked into the ensuite bathroom, where she pushed the door half closed, her shadow cast in elongate detail onto the floorboards by the mirror light, disrobing with her.  William switched to their native tongue to address his brother in her absence.

“Opal probably did Rachelle, for fuck’s sake.  I hadn’t seen her for weeks... I don’t even know who she was running with.”
“Clear your voicemail, get rid of your phones, say nothing to the maid and get that body out of my car before I shoot out your knees.”
"That’s like bitching because someone left a bottle beside your glass recycling plant.” William told him, rolling up the paper with both hands.
"I saw the girl's arm."
"Don't stare at it, blaireau.  She already thinks you're some kind of daywalking goatsucking maniac."
“Get out.”
“I find your savage chromatic vocabulary unacceptable.”  Edward stepped forward; William rose from the bed.  "Pet's here." he called, making an exit under his own steam.

In the shade of her apartment, Susan peeled off her weary dress and scrubbed at her head with her hands, watching tiny maple leaves fall from her hair onto the floor before the window.  The sunlight delineated a cherry-coloured mark on her right hip, though William had left no other aides memoires beyond the placid, emptied weariness she wore beneath her skin.  She sagged at the sight of her bathrobe, loath to shrug on its dead weight but even less inclined to look beyond whatever came to hand, drawing it over her arms and shuffling into the crowded little bathroom.  It was oddly dark; having tugged the light cord, she found herself blinking down at a shape in the white tub.  The soignée Russian vampyre lay stretched out upon her fox coat in its cool depths like the body of a sacrificial virgin.  The little leadlight window had been blacked out, a pillow stuffed into its square frame, her red-trimmed suitcase jammed between the taps and the adjacent toilet suite.  

Susan stepped back against the wall.  At first glance the creature seemed like some enchanted archetype, but her exanimation was a profoundly pervasive agent.  It smelled of ice and grave dust, sucking the colours from the light and casting out the vernal spirit of the day, replacing oxygen with a destitute ether.  She ventured forward haltingly and leant over the lip of the tub, peering more closely at its occupant.  The vampyre’s eyes were closed, hands turned against each other on her breast; the digits of her right hand lacked three dainty nails, and blank skin had replaced them.  She took a great step backward, retreating quickly and drawing the door shut as silently as she were able, holding it fast with both fists.

“Is there a spider in the bath?” William whispered over her shoulder, bending beside her to peer through the keyhole.  Exhaling in her redoubled fright Susan released the handle and shoved at him, before clasping his neck and pulling him lower.
“There’s a...”  She pointed through the door.  "Vampyre..."
“One we know?”  
She nodded, grimacing slightly.  
"Will she wake up?"
“You’d need a five foot gong, a Boucheron credit or a loudly sobbing infant."  He nodded slowly, and then narrowed the darker of his eyes at her.  “I don’t see any suitcases.  I could always bring my stuff up here and we can fight over your bathroom.” he suggested.  Susan took the newspaper from under his arm, sitting down on the bed and glancing over the front page.
“Here’s me thinking you were so bloody desperate to get me down there because you couldn't live without me.” she muttered.  “When it’s really about you not wanting another dead girl floating around and making you look bad...”
“I’m not asking because of Rachelle... yes, okay, now I’ve seen the paper there’s no way you’re staying anywhere on your own, but that’s not the point."
"What is the point?" she demanded.  William slapped his hands over his face.
"Christabel... look what I've become.”  He gazed around the room and found her suitcase on top of the wardrobe, pulling it down and dumping it on the floor before her.  “I had to wait all this time to find out there was a birthmark on your arse that looks like Luxembourg and that you’re a biter and you snore and drool and like to squash me into the headboard because you're a mattress nazi... I fucking hate waiting and I've waited so long and now I'm a whiny needy freak, so please... just be my fucking girlfriend so I don't have to come up here and use your clothes to masturbate while you're in town.”  
Susan folded her arms and gazed up at the ceiling.
“I’m not a biter... you just make me want to bite you.”  He sighed violently.  "Oh for god's sake... alright, yes, I will nag you and use all the towels and throw half your clothes away.  But you're doing the packing.  I'm off to find a shower."  

Grinning, he pulled the top drawer from the dresser and tipped its contents into the suitcase.

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

Lurcher, Wessenden.  "I had a chance encounter with this dog and its owner.  We didn’t speak.  Over a year later the owner John Hadfield contacted me to say that during his research for inspiration for his paintings he had found this picture.  We are now very close friends." - Robert Norbury rnorburyuk

I was hoping for a grown-up neutral pink but Beatrix is a sheer little bitch and in that respect I am somewhat disappointed.  Think your average lip gloss as far as pigmentation goes.  The hand swatches average two to three passes for the comparison shades whereas Beatrix ceases to yield any more colour even after eight or so layers.  You could expend half the tube trying for more opacity to no avail; prepare yourself for stubborn translucency.

The characteristic Guerlain odour which is supposed to be violet-esque but can make you feel like you've just licked a random Nana's wrist is particularly pronounced in this shade; I'm smelling and tasting perfume even after an hour or so.  If scent bothers you, the Rouge G range is definitely one to avoid.

Babies, eh?  Can't live with them, can't sell them on the open market despite the undoubted theoretical propriety of such a measure.

This is Rita, my latest niece, grasping a Lindt wrapper and regarding the camera with innate suspicion, so she must be related to me.  Rita enjoys bouncing, jewellery, staring and sticking her tongue out which again confirms our genetic association.  I'm not really too keen on subadults (or adults) as a rule but Rita and I did enjoy something of an immediate rapport, which is cool.  Babies might not know shit, generally speaking, but they have eerie powers of emotional perception and their approval means you're probably not evil-crazy.  Possibly just more benign-insane.

So thanks, Rita, for the staring and the eeearrgghss and ugghhhhugghhs hugggh huhgs huhggs.  I promise I will publish Tiny Little Dinosaurs and spend all those massive royalties buying you the biggest fucking xylophone and a bass drum with an eye movement sensor and maybe something with a siren on it, lol.  

Beauty was still something but not everything, the way it seems these days and if you were standing behind an amp, we were waiting for the shit that came out of your mouth, not wondering which procedure you'd endured to get it looking like that.  The way you looked was just as self-conscious as it ever was, but far more autonomous, far more about the self and far more rejecting of the expectations of strangers.  Not a lot of people can really put their finger on why they don't like Love, but I can; she dry-humped feminism while it paid out for her, then got a bunch of nose and tit jobs once she'd buried her meal ticket and that's not the contra she wore like a cheap fucking suit- it is sniveling compliance.  To this day I think she mourns the attention more than anything else.

It's hard to lose an intimate companion but that shit doesn't make you a toxic waste dump; more often than not it just tears away the tarpaulin.  That's not to say that surcease beatifies Cobain in my personal estimation.  I'm sure he was a selfish cunt and a perverse interpersonal scientist with far more power than was good for anyone involved.  It could be argued that he was just as much a stunt queen as the dreadful Love; that he was so intelligent and cynical makes me strongly suspect him of this, and also of allowing her thirsty antics to catch the flak that should have been due to them both.  Femme terrible/longsuffering boyfriend is an immortal theme.  Suicide has nullified the test of time that would have outed him either way and that will always play in his favour.

Neither the Lovely R nor I really cared too much for Nirvana.  The idea that they or even grunge per se defined alt music in the 90's is completely untrue and a product of the (admittedly fond) revisionism that has gathered pace ever since.  They were pretty fucking commercial and no one with extra-mainstream taste would have admitted to buying their shit back in the day.  I don't mean that disrespectfully, since Cobain's legacy has definitely been pervasive since then, but I feel it's more honest to say that most indie/freaky bands and fans expended far more effort attempting to distance themselves from and define themselves against Nirvana than identifying with them.  Like it or not, The Cure were far more fundamentally influential; I mean, prove me wrong.

Kurt's life and death have always moved me, though, from a misted remove.  Who doesn't empathise with an overactive IQ and intrinsic liberal militancy born into post-industrial sludgetowns and societal herniation?  We're all his brothers and sisters in that ambient respect.  I defy anyone to sit through the doc About a Son and find no moment of associative melancholy.  Cobain's personal struggles and intractable despair are far more emblematic of the time and generation than his music.  They are still my own companions, for worse or better, and had he lived to see his daughter enter her own third decade, I am sure Kurt would have reflected on how little really changes in the course of a lifetime.  I once dreamt I had a long conversation with him in which he expressed regret at his own death and the loss of fatherhood and I don't bear anything like as much judgment of his suicide as I did at the time.  There but for the smallest twist of fortune go so many more.  As I may have said before, it's unspeakably strange to have gotten old enough to be the mother of all these lost young men we knew and loved and spectated and embraced or deliberately ignored.  So much of our collective potential has been extinguished.

These days we don't roll so many eyes at or fast-forward through Nirvana tracks the way we used to.  I'm not entirely sure why that is.  I've only ever really enjoyed Smells Like, Polly and the unplugged version of Man Who Stole etc and my appreciation of them has remained largely static rather than garnering any especial retrospective glow.  Nirvana were and still are overrated and I don't think Kurt would disagree.  He seemed to have had a gutfull of the whole shebang by the time he died and who can blame him?

RIP.  Here's Polly for your consideration.

DEATH IN LIFE  Teagan White  Harbors & Gambits

For the Gallery Nucleus show, “Terra: Artwork Inspired by Nature”.  14”x17”, Gouache on paper.

Like a cowhand in a yard stocked with beasts accustomed to her presence, Opal made her way between the ranks of bared and semi-celebrated shoulders, past the shrieking dresses that fought so violently with the drab favoured by midlife creatives, who were themselves strictly demarcated from their younger contemporaries, the latter boneless and scrawny in their entropic knitwear.  Their disregard was nectar to her ruling animus, if not quite so gratifying to that portion nourished by supplication.  Edward appeared to have slipped the noose she had fashioned from the person of Leighton Sotherby-Aldrich; she found him in a distant corner beneath one of his own monolithic works, standing like a polar animal inside the clothing of the people it had devoured, thrown into blatant contrast by the indifference with which he regarded his own cursory impersonation. 

Her bee-line was abruptly severed by Siobhan’s fanged and intersecting smirk as the latter lurched in front of her, dragging Leighton Sotherby-Aldrich toward the ladies’ room by her wrist and cackling like a pantomime witch.  Opal turned to scan the crowd again as she stood alongside Edward, their association flagged explicitly by the black, descending strokes of the graphic overhead.

“I think we can do this here.” she began without looking up at him.  “I’ve negotiated an offer with the Prague contingent.  The first, and last."  Anticipating an objection, she tossed her head at the gatecrashers that had flouted what security remained and suffused through the invited guests like an infective agent.  "Look at these idiots.  Half of them would stab each other before they came at me.  None of them would thank you for siding with them if you turned the local reservoir to bourbon for your second miracle.”  Opal cracked a smile at a pair of passing benefactors.  “In return for your active assistance in implementing domestic policy, you'll receive tithing rights over your local precinct... needless to say, any declarable income will exhibit a robust respectability.  I don’t have to tell you about their impeccable track record with snuffling bureaucrats.  When you want to stretch your legs I think you’ll find the local hahdris will meet your recreational needs... that kind of acreage is wasted under tin-licking alujha and they won’t be needing howling room where they’re going.”  On the other side of the room, a resounding crash set off a ripple of discord, though they could not perceive the nature of the incident from their position against the wall.  “Your immediate household will be black-stamped against shrinkage, so you won’t need to fret when your sweetheart wanders away in her underwear.  In fact, her days of wandering anywhere without your approval will come to a blessed conclusion... they provide intensive supervision of all junior family members.”  Her head turned toward him, though her unblinking gaze remained upon her guests.  “Before you convince yourself you’re far too principled to accept, you may as well know you won’t be answering to me, darling.  You’ll be directly responsible.”  Her anger at the refusal told in his every element proved difficult to conceal, though she held onto it grimly, the effort pinching her face laterally.  “Don’t try selling me your not caring either way about your nasty princess.  You didn’t keep her home because you like the sound of angry whore.  I could go on like a Bond villain about what happens when you sit in your room like a spoilt brat, but if you can’t work it out for yourself, at least you’ll recognize the body parts in your mail box, once they start coming.”

Edward saw the bottle in the hands of the dark-haired witch who had pushed through the crowd toward them and made no move to avoid it as she loosed it at them, his eyes remaining on hers as it crashed into the wall by Opal’s head.  Oily red sloe gin ran down the plaster while the dissident spat on the vampyre’s dress, including Edward in her denouncement with the vehemence of her stare.

“E vin yet naat affri ya vech.” she snarled, the words white hot against their skin.  Caleb appeared at her shoulder and drew her back into the knot of piping socialites while Edward looked to Opal in his grasp of the ancient anathema.

“She said may you die with your gold still upon you.” he told her.  “Pass that on for me.”




Josephine wiped back hair from her face and glanced down at her watch again.  Beside her, in the double darkness beneath the elms, Shaw nodded an acknowledgement of her grievance and folded his arms.  The long grass stroked their crouching legs, growing damp as the night cooled.  
“She’s not going anywhere, she’s high as a kite.  Put me out over the wall... my ride’s half a click down the road.”  
 
He shook his head emphatically.

“She’s going to see you and talk about it.  She’s winding down.  Give it another five.”
“I say you walk me out right past her... I’m your girlfriend, whatever.  She's too far gone to care anyway.”
“She’s too damn vocal.  She’ll raise hell, and whatever just went in there will come back out again...”
They both hung their heads as Rachelle recommenced her wailing, pressed to the bars of the gate, the keening pitch of her voice carrying it past them into the rear garden.  
“Okay... your way.” Shaw conceded.  She caught his arm.
“Jesus, did you see that?”
“See what?”

Josephine's gaze returned to the gates and the silhouette of the figure still demonstrating against them, the scene drawn in black and orange.

“There it is... top of the gate, go across the street, come up half a foot... right over her head.  Retinal flash.”  Shaw saw nothing remarkable until a tiny catch of brighter colour sparked amid the darkness of the trees hunched on the far side of the road.  She seized his arm.  "It's green.  We need to fall back.”

 


Half-doubtful, Susan watched William sort through the ring of heavy, varied keys in the shadow of the tall red gateway, glancing upward at the features of the terracotta dragon hunched upon its tiled eave.  After a moment with the lock he eased the gate forward and admitted her to the walled enclosure beyond.

“I’m not even going to ask how you can do this.” she sighed.
“You buy the keys... a good collection's fucking pricy, but I like to think it’s worth every cent Ed paid for it."  He flipped through the various clavicles, reminded of their corresponding venues.  "He’s got everything... Lichfield Arboretum, the Merchant Theatre, Modern Art basement access, the Weaver Building, the old library... et voilá, bot gardens...” he added, smiling around himself.  “They’ve got a great kaiyu-shiki.”

She stood in the middle of the pebble lane with a bottle hanging from her right hand.  The pearly, polished gravel glowed cooly white and clicked softly beneath her feet as she slipped off her shoes.  In a pale path they swept away into an elderly stand of Amur cherries and tiered azaleas, but before them a black pond reposed around a strange, gnarled omphalum of planted stones, occupying the low ground at the foot of a bank of sloping velvet green.  A maple stretched its spotted limbs over the grass like blown smoke; its leaves adorned the bank, minikin stellae in flat lacquer red arranged like the night sky that lay in cold, inverse perfection on the water of the pond.  Susan stepped over the edge of the path onto the slope, tucking her dress beneath her and sitting down, loosely cross-legged.  She handed the bottle to him when he joined her, shedding his jacket and reaching down to pluck the laces from his shoes so that he could shuck his feet free of their detested confines.

“It’s like going to the dentist every fucking day." he admitted.
"God... look at them..." she laughed, leaning over to examine them; grimacing, she picked up a little stick, then set it down in a concession to his dignity.  “Why don’t you wear... I don’t know... really thick comfortable socks, or something?”  She laughed again at the stroke of visible dread the suggestion inspired.  William shuddered and took a long draught from the bottle and for a brief empathic moment she experienced the sense of fibrous stricture that so appalled him.  “Everything must be so strange to you.  Why do you live?  You must get so sick of people... we’re everywhere.”
“I do get sick of myself.  But... life is only given to you once, at least I always thought that, and I suppose it’s true for most of us... to live is to thank the fairies for all those things they left under the tree for you.  When some miserable prick complains about their life we say so thii siith savih is’e... remember how you came by it.  Not that it ever shuts anyone up.”
“Do you...”
“So many questions.”
“You could at least be flattered that I’ve taken an interest in you.”
“Christabel... your interest is not something I take lightly, and in fact I’m well aware that it’s curiosity more than anything that gets you into my car alone at night, but there’s just something about your questions that makes me feel like I'm the stupidest débile ever to walk around Eurasia with their head up their arse in the last two thousand years.”
“Are you?” she chuckled, raising the bottle to her lips again.    
“Why ask me?" he laughed.  "One free shot.  Come on.”
“What’s the most pr...”
“Merchant of Venice.”  
Susan spluttered and wiped at the vodka that disappeared into the neck of her dress.  
 “Don’t be a dick.  Just listen.  What I want to know is... what is the most... profound, amazing thing you’ve learnt?  About yourself.”

Lying back on the grass, William crossed his arms behind his head, clasping each pointed elbow and regarding the distant stars with a sigh.

“I’ve learnt that I’m a slow learner.” he confessed, turning his head to watch her chuckle at the admission, her hair falling in tendrils over her forehead to curl back toward her nose.  Her dress puckered across her belly as she planted an elbow on her knee and rested her chin on her hand, arranging leaves into a circle on the grass before her.  
“Do you have a birthday?”  He shook his head against the ground.  “Do you want one?”  Stretching out his arms, he left them on the grass with palms upturned and she smiled at the subtle, persuasive disarmament implicit in their repose.  “You can share mine if you like... if you don’t mind being an Aries.”
“I thought you were a Gemini.”
“I lied on the form.”  Susan leant forward and tucked up her dress, rising unsteadily to her feet and walking in a slow ellipse around him with the bottle under her arm, glancing down at his face as she negotiated the deceptive slope.  Exhausting her circumscribed route she stepped over him and sat down on his stomach, leaning back against his knees as he drew them up for her.  He watched her fumble with the buttons over his navel.
“What's an Aries?” he frowned.
“The ram.  Don't ask to be a unicorn."
"I want to be an elephant."
"Why?"
"They never forget."
"I’m glad you have a belly button because I forgot to check." she laughed, tongue tucked into the corner of her mouth as she applied herself to the remainder of his shirt front, opening his collar and laying each half of the garment aside, sitting back to satisfy her gaze, then her desire for all that it enjoyed, her hands passing slowly from his neck to the bright skin of his stomach.  “You could be an evil spirit... how do I even know this is your body?  You should be much fatter." she sighed.  "It's not fair..."
“I keep it tight with lots of booze and cigarettes and three hours of no pilates every day, no excuses.” he assured her.  She attempted to work the garment from his arms until she gave it up and leant sideways to kick off her underwear, tossing it away over the grass, supporting herself on both elbows as she toured the peculiar symmetry of his features with her lips and fingers.
“What will I do if I can’t go back to my own kind?”
“You won't need to.”

She shook her head down at his smile.

“You'll regret that when I’m throwing chairs at you and pushing your new slapper down the stairs.”  The length of his arms almost frustrated her second attempt to divest them of his shirt, but she tugged it from his wrists and passed her hands over his shoulders, delighted by their acquisition.  “I don't have the faintest idea what you like...”
“I like everything.” he sighed, drawing the zip down the back of her dress, the panels falling away from the warmth of her body; she reached up to pull the pins from her hair, the small ruby leaves pressed to her arms where they had lain against the grass.  He stroked the pliant length of her spine and the soft width of her hips while she opened his trousers, throwing his belt in the direction taken by her underwear, then bent to kiss him, but he turned his face toward the grass.  

"Susan, you can't fuck me until you trust me."
“William... that’s not even your name.  I trust you." she promised, leaning her hands on his chest as she availed herself of him slowly, descending into a breathless, senseless pleasure that redoubled as the same submersive luxury enclosed him, pressing his naked back into the grass and closing his eyes.  From it he rose and folded his legs beneath her as she closed her own around him, her dress heaped like the smooth pelt of some shape she had discarded in her lap.  She looked down into that plain within his gaze on which the secrets roamed, luminous and defiant in their liberty, and closed her arms about his neck.  "If you tell me what you’re really called, will I have power over you?”

He sighed.

“I think that horse has bolted.”




Shaw killed the narrow jet of water in his left hand and stowed the pistol in his right, walking the garden hose back to the corner of the house.  Taking the torch from between his teeth he played it over the wet drive and into the trees on the far side of the road, scanning them carefully.  The sensor in his pocket sounded a discreet warning as a car drove by its station; crossing back over the grass, he unlocked the gate and walked back the panels, watching Edward's sedan slide by him without slowing.  

By the time the Jaguar rolled in, the garden birds had already begun to chime from dripping branches in the heron-blue gloom.  Shaw remained beneath the elms while William got back into his car and allowed it to ghost further down the drive.  Sitting in his lap, Susan kissed him intemperately between smothered laughter, her dress hanging inside out from both elbows; he pushed open the door and pitched forward with her onto the lawn where she exclaimed at the dampness of the grass, cackling as he bore her to the porch.  Struggling with the keys while she murmured against his ear, he abandoned the task, returning his mouth to hers and his hands to her body, their embrace once more overtaken by heat and urgency.  They left the door ajar behind them in their immodest haste.

Having secured the gates Shaw leant over his torch in a last inspection of the driveway cobbles.  The water had soaked away into the lawn, leaving them clean and gleaming and revealing a tangled hank of blonde hair snagged in one of the dark clefts.  He took a pen from the pocket of his suit and teased it out from between the stones.  A little piece of scalp and glistening fragment of bone caused it to swing from the end of the ball point.
C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce