If I saw anything at all, I saw you. You stood out from the crowds, waving your sore thumb at me: you had evidently hurt it in the fight.
You may not have realised, but I had witnessed the fight from relatively close range; and I think you put up a good show, despite your obvious shortcomings; though some of your tactics were a bit near the bone, don’t you think?
Well, I think the sooner you clean your teeth the better. I’m definitely not going to kiss you, until you’ve gone through them with a fine tooth comb. I’ve just had my breakfast.
*
Out of the sky, there came the ‘copter which had evidently been surveying the skirmish from an air-pocket.
Its blades worked a grinding siren and a most searching headlight picked out those considered to be the prime stirrers - my girl friend included.
I tried to warn her, because I had seen all of this coming a mile off. But all she could do was grin a wild, fateful, almost loving smile, with tatters of raw scrotum still hanging from the teeth - and then she was picked off like a sitting duck.
You did not die straightaway. I’m sure you felt me kneel beside your body. I kissed your brow.
The paddles of the ‘copter churned towards the distance but were sent peculiar in mid-flight by a sudden vacuum - the ‘copter flopped to the ground, where its blades froze but its body still wheeled like a dying bluebottle.
You opened your eyes, or so I thought. You sucked your sore thumb, like a babe just born.
The breathless air - your dying whisper - the dispersing crowds - all is like a photographic tableau.
When I got back to civilization, I checked that my hotel room had not been rifled in my absence. The heat was over-bearing and the room was full of the fattest fucking flies I’ve ever seen; and some were evidently feeding off each other.
I crawled on all fours under the bed, to hide my sorrow and my shame: for I had last seen my loved one picking her way towards the sharp remains of a twisted ‘copter: to suck the blood it had toted far in the belly of its engine.
(published ‘Something For Nothing’ 1988)
