The stomach beetle

Imagine you had a small beetle in your stomach. It slept most of the time, for your stomach acids kept it slumbering, but occasionally, when the floodwaters of your body receded, it was revealed in all its hideous glory.
I imagine it would flash green if examined in the light; the glint of a torch beam reflecting a gleam more powerful than emerald. You may feel like bowing low before this scarab. But it wouldn't stay in the open air for too long, it must swiftly find its host.
Inside the sanctuary of the stomach its carapace armour lifts and beats, causing it to zoom and fly about your innerds. With each pulsing stroke of wing, the air within grows foul. It churns and farts within this chamber and seeks a tunnel, an escape.
The scarab lands on slimy wall and digs in with clamping feet, drawing blood. Pincers work on soft tissue and the internal stabs cause wrenching then wretching.
Some beetles may spray strange toxins, acids and heinous clouds of choke from their base orifices. This action is translated and replicated by the host. A sacreligious act, one of the sociopath, one to cause derision and even blind panic upon the underground train.
Ride the wave, though. Ride the crest of the nausea, of the sweaty seance of the long night, of the dread deluge, and hide 'mongst unclean sheets. For the seas will once more rise, and the scarab will be covered and will sleep once more like foul Cthulhu. Remember your trials, remember how you survived. Prepare for when he comes again.

The Flower

The afternoon is like the open ocean - it has very little life.
So let me tell you a funny little story about a teenage guy named Pepe. He was French, but his family dubbed him Pepe - after the little skunk in the cartoons.
Well, Pepe one day sniffed a flower and began to grow fur. It was a gradual process but one he loved. He would feverishly scratch at his skin as the hair follacles opened up about his body. Black fur here, white fur there, it really was an enjoyable process and a fascinating colour scheme to Pepe.
His family were little amused by this growth and proceeded to call in the eminent Dr Wenders. The good doctor had built up a reputation after treating a boy who thought he was a cat, and went on to successfully rehabilitate two young children who had been reared by wild dogs in Belarus. He had, however, once failed to help a young girl who grew hair like a monkey and was determined not to lose Pepe like he had done Brunhilde on that fateful spring day in 1983.
Wenders concluded, after his first meeting with Pepe, that his was a particularly unusual case and that his hair growth was so rapid as to suggest purposeful experimentation or the intervention of Jehovah himself.
He worked closely with the young man, encouraging him to shave where possible and resist the urge to spray effluent at his parents when they came too near. But Wenders was driven mad over the course of the next year by his failure to save the boy's humanity and was committed to the asylum of St Malo in September 1995.
Around a month earlier Pepe had escaped from his bedroom cage when his nurse came to feed him one morning. His parents decided to leave the barred windows on the house to remind the children and other young men and women of the neighbourhood of Pepe's plight and of what might happen if you go around sniffing flowers.

Conversation fuel

“Pirates are comical creations,” said Ginny. “All day long swinging from ropes and having cutlass fights. I haven’t much time for them.”
What does she mean, ‘she hasn’t much time for them’? Has she ever met a pirate? The only pirate she’s met is the Chinese guy who comes around when the football’s on and asks if you’d like to buy a knock-off DVD.
I know Matty is thinking the same thing. Good old Matt, good old Matthew - he always wears his heart on his sleeve and has scrunched up his face like he’s been dealt a terrific fart, face-first. That means he thinks she’s full of bull.
Susan is next. She sits primly, her hands about her legs. I’m sure she wears stockings under that polite exterior. Little minx - she taunts us men with her sexuality, never quite boiling over so that we’re never sure - perhaps she is frigid? Perhaps Dean is correct?
I think Dean tried it on with her - it doesn’t matter, does it? Dean’s not here and I am and so are you.
So, who else is here? Well there’s Pollo, yeah you think you know about him already, but you’ve never seen him at a party. He looks like a suit, but he’s a parlour demon. I once saw him cupping three asses and not one his own!
Heggarty is behind the bar tonight - did you notice? Yeah, he’s been watching you, but he hasn’t served a drink? Maybe he’ll serve you? Go over and see?
Ha - as if you haven’t got money! I’ll swap whatever’s in your pockets for the contents of mine anyanyday! You crack me up. So tell me what the big man said to you when you asked to know the rules of dice.
Yes! Funny as… You can’t help yourself can you? Just like the time when that band stopped playing and asked you to stop singing along.
I know, it’s not the same at all, but I just wanted to bring it up again.
“Hey you guys, did you hear about the time when…”

Borrowing time

I plonked myself down on a plastic moulded chair.
The library, such as it was. A meagre array of workstations full of kids wanting to surf the ‘net for pictures of their favourite bands. A collection of slightly out-of-date reference books, their almost still factual information rendering them, in fact, completely useless.
Behind me I could hear the jabbering of a male teenage student. A highly impressionable girl had sat opposite him and was taking great delight in being regaled by this lad whom, it became apparent, was named John.
I returned to my book, as far as I was able. I managed to block most of the sound, or at least stop it from registering as coherent information, until a young Chinese student broke my concentration.
He seemed to be asking John if he knew where ‘Beccy’ was. John was polite enough but seemed slightly embarrassed in front of the unnamed female. He got rid of the other male.
“Howd’ya know him?”
“From music.”
“What’s he like?”
“Alright, like.”
Later they left and I looked up pictures of Chinese people on Google.
I don't remember how long it was until another person entered the room. I wish I had somewhere to be.

The hellhound trail

Over the clunk of the denk, black moor came the barghest, following.
There was a change in the weather, perhaps rain, and the night birds stirred in the hollow trees and the leaves very quivered.
Singing fur rustled as the first drops of rain fell bluntly on the runk black dog. His howl came bellowing like a rusted tuba; was he in pain, did God’s water threaten his eminence?
Into the tree cover padded a wheezing gentleman. He slobbered and spat his effluvium onto a blistered trunk. The barghest was almost upon him and he felt its powerful sight splitting the atoms of the wood surrounding, not even straining to peek.
From the woodland edge, he could see lights whizzing by below at the foot of the moor where the A-roads bled rubber and the dwellings began.
A viscous growling bent through the bark and swirled a cloud of greasy panic about the wood. Nature sighed and passed out as the barghest set foot in the glade.
A turn of the head - what a foolish thought or action when terror can guide you home - to see remoteness and infinity bearing splintered fangs and auburn eyes.
A freezing step is managed before the ice clamps its vice about you. The barghest bites once and leaves. The man tumbles down from hillside to roadside and sleeps among such tall grasses that can choose to cover bodies from urban eyes.
But he wakes. Wakes into a world where the rain has caught fire and is drenching him so that his spine very creaks.
He staggers across busy road and lives. The fox that follows is cut in two by a bus.
Through the park and play-area, filled with frogs croaking a path to the housing estate, he knows he must be bleeding but the rain has stained his clothes so.
There is one light on in his cul-de-sac, and but one door left ajar. It is his house, and his wife waits up for him.
He knows she smiles as she calls from the lounge that she’s kept his dinner warm for him. The kitchen table is lit by candles. Upon a silver dish and carved for two is a man’s soul.
This man sits down and waits for his wife to enter the kitchen. He strokes his sopping scalp and waits for her to serve.

Working late - the journey

Hideous sweat stinks all over me.
Summer evening, getting out of the city. I worked late. Somehow this means I have to stand home. It's a familiar journey to most. Strange to say that if you connect soon after five, when the underground throngs, you get a seat. Hell, you get a train every five minutes, six coaches long!
Now, merely 30 minutes later and we, the hard working dregs of society have to mix with the scallies and shoppers coming through from Central.
Listen hard, listen for something discernible. Listen hard, but don't throw up. You'll hear the boring, the obtuse, the obscene and the contrite. On a train you'll hear everything the city has to say. You'll see a fair amount of it if you just sit and ride for a day. I read some shite like if you sit down for long enough, everyone you know will come by. There's some truth in that to a local stuck on a Merseyrail train.
Tonight I zoned out most of the vocal fuzz. Headphones, however, where spitting out the high range into the air. A design flaw gives most of the best part of the music to one person and the flotsam to the majority who might surround him or her.
I would test myself against the bleeding eardrums of my carriagemates. Working out songs from the beat, or a guitar solo here and there. In the case that it wasn't dance music this is an easier task than it may sound. People tend to listen to a very small amount of the music that's out there. They will have been force-fed this by a radio or TV set. Does looking at the person help? It can, but generally no matter how interesting a person looks they still have the tendency to disappoint. Their ultimate lack of original thought is boiled away and stares at you through vacant eyes through the window as you walk on - bland platform becomes blander high street, and on and on.

The nature of significance

"What did the text mean?" she asked, a purple scarf wrapped coyly around her face so that her eyes were partially covered like a belly dancer's veil.
"I don't know, or I'm not sure, anyway." That was his answer. She knew he would stare now. At the wall, the floor, out the window maybe, but he wasn't looking, just staring. But he never stared at her, he only ever looked.
She got up from the armchair were she had adopted a semi-Lotus position and immediately dropped to the floor. There was some rice from yesterday on the carpet, she noticed but ignored it. Instead, she crawled or shifted, uncovincingly, but somewhat snake-like, towards the couch were he sat and pondered a relevance, or a significance, or the nature of significance, or something else - hey was he watching the TV? No, his eyes weren't moving, though they were transfixed on the wall behind that girl. She's wearing a gold bra and a thong and he's looking at the wall. She's moving around so much and he's not even seeing it.
The snake moved toward the TV set and unbuttoned its blouse. 'He'll notice me though,' she knew.

Lost Cities

They would worship that golden disc for hours yet none understood its significance. No-one knew what it now meant, nor what it had meant to millions before them.
The amp buzzed and then clicked. It was then kicked and sounds spewed forth, fuzzing and fizzing to an almost visible degree. Strings split and skins cracked. A guitar came down upon a wooden floor and splintered. Seemingly moved by its re-union with its long lost cousin it sobbed, and its cries echoed throughout the auditorium, passing without friction between the ears of the breathless throng. Some screamed, some applauded, others lost their tears to the thirsty sloping floor. All were open-mouthed.
The damned and dishevelled ambled from their pedestal, their devices of aural torture drooping lifelessly from their arms or lying bleeding on the sweat swept stage.
The lure of the suburbs; a dog called Lydia and a wife named Lucky. Such a fly might entice the more common of fish, but it wasn’t sparkly enough to catch a pike’s eye. It was too real, there wasn’t enough lead weight on the line, and besides, most pike prefer bottom feeding.
So the phenomenon rolled on, much like the grey coach that passed through centres of culture in a haze of abomination. The fish would peer from their bowl every now and then to blink at landmarks before swimming in circles some more, their nine second memories doubling those of the angelic fry who cradled their furry image hourly via the plastic dish cemented cockle-like to the rocks they lived under.
How long the phenomenal golden light blazed it is difficult to remember. No doubt it flared and flashed for what seemed like years, but those years become but seconds to the Ray-Banned world. That brilliant energy tore through creation like at Nagasaki, and few survived. When the burning stopped we were ready to ride the pain to freedom, providing insanity grasped us meekly, but we could not escape the fall-out.
Some all but melted in the immediate wake of the atomic tide, while the unlucky lived out their days in cancer-ridden remorse. The nuclear winds sent us apart and it was upon one such draught that I was carried to this studio to face the twisted praise of an unoriginal elite who considered me their god. I had to hold aloft that shield which never rusted and was rarely dusted and explain its obvious power.
There was a reason that they failed to understand its purpose. That was of course the fact that it clearly did not have one. So I made this known to the natives with voice of thunder and lightning gaze. Thus I broke the disc asunder and cast it down before their fearful eyes.
Their sun had died and I feasted on their cries amidst the dawning darkness as one screamed: “Cut to commercial!”

The downpour

The rain hammered down. Thick droplets of water drooped lustily from James’ hood and splashed onto his prominent nose. He hurried towards sanctuary.
As he approached the bus terminus the light from the assembled street lamps thickened and reflected off brown puddles in the road. He jogged across the doughnut-like slip road, used by buses to drop off their special cargos and then turn around, and saw the bus shelter ahead. James usually avoided walking through the bus shelter itself and tended to try and go round the side. He told himself it was to avoid people, avoid brushing against anyone in there, but he avoided it all the same when empty.
Today a local drunk leaned against the railing and blocked his usual route through to the high street. Seeing James, the bum held up a can of Tennent’s lager and purred. James stepped to the side and into the shelter.
Once inside, the rain thudded heavily onto the plastic roof of the shelter. Water ran off inelegantly into a street drain. In the empty high street a rat scampered northwards, towards the river.
Now temporarily dry, James surveyed his options. Make a dash for the covered and well-lit railway bridge and then into the station to buy a ticket for tomorrow morning (meaning an extra five minutes in bed), or just plough on into the deluge and get home. He could see his house from the bus shelter. It looked, from where he stood, like he’d left an upstairs light on.
A bang on the Perspex of the shelter. James turned in fright to see the drenched and leering face of a mad tramp pressed against the shelter. It was inches from his face, yet it was on the other side of strong casing, like a cobra in a zoo.
Still, this cobra had the option of attacking from two unprotected sides so James made a dash for it. He hurried toward the protection of the railway bridge, which was only 50 yards away. He turned in horror to see the crazed hobo floundering after him. A swift change in direction and a nice turn of pace saw James sprinting right and then left, over the road bridge, before making a sharp left into his street.
Heart pounding and rain filling his eyes he dropped his keys in his front garden and scrabbled in the flowerbeds to find them. Click, open, slam, in.
James paused for breath on the good side of the door. Then he made the journey upstairs, to his study. Here he found the light was indeed on, and the blinds were not drawn. He must have been lit up like a flash-filled portrait, for anyone outside who wanted to see.
Lurching forward to close the blinds he couldn’t resist glancing at the outside world to check the whereabouts of his pursuer.
Backlit under the spotlights from the railway station, clambering, kneeling, now staggering, was the silhouette of a man standing on top of the railway bridge. The outline of his body seemed to face the light of the window (though he could easily have been facing away from it). Blood pumped and throbbed in James’s temples as his eyes charged with available light. A slip, a correction, a slide, a drop from the stage.
James shut the blind. In the morning the trains ran on time. A half-empty can of Tennent’s Super stood at the side of the bus shelter and wasn‘t removed for three days.

An unquiet

“Sleep now, honey. It’s time to rest. The worst is over.”
The last clear thing the little girl heard. She felt her mother’s hand upon her forehead and then the hand seemed to turn white. Then it became pure sweat.
The drips of the hand covered her face and she felt alive with the flood. The water condensed around her eyes and she saw, with a new valance, the strange lights and shapes that now danced around her room. Strange that she’d never seen them before.
There flew a dandelion pig. The most remarkable piglet she’d ever seen. She tried to blow him away across the room but with the smallest breath his body disintegrated into a thousand seeds and scattered across her vision.
Everywhere the floating seeds landed, there grew another creature. A wealthy tiger, beside the bed, whose body was made of flaming pound notes; a pelican, on the windowsill, whose tail rattled like a snake’s; a red monkey, on top of the bookcase, who threw flowers at invisible enemies; a cunning anteater, in the middle of the floor, who played a ukulele and sang in French.
Katie sat upright in bed. Her mother may have been trying to lie her back down but she didn’t really see her anymore. She wanted to watch the menagerie that had blossomed in her room. She clapped with glee.
The anteater was attracting the attention of the other animals with its singing and playing. The pelican seemed to join in, rattling away an offbeat percussion, and the monkey (now blue) threw flowers gently which fell onto the anteater below.
The tiger approached the anteater slowly and the money on its back blazed brightly. It extended a paw, as if to offer the anteater a shake of its note-filled hand. Its head lulled from side to side as the music seemed to entrance it.
Then, with a sharp “TWANG!” the most tightly wound of the ukulele’s four strings snapped and the music bitterly ceased. The tiger leaped with sudden venom, biting and mauling the anteater. The monkey changed into every colour of a jellybean, flashing yellow, then white, then green and hurled its own eyes at the brawling tiger. The pelican let out a colossal grunt that made the monkey lose its balance and fall into the pit with the tiger. All of the pelican’s feathers then dropped off and turned to pepper.
Katie’s eyes widened. Her arm pointed and shook.
The tiger, now finished with the tasty anteater, turned its attention to the mewling monkey. The pelican attempted to fly from the scene but dropped clumsily instead onto the bloody carpet.
The little girl screamed as the fire from the tiger burned a terrible golden yellow, then so white that it scorched her entire body. She screamed and bit and scratched the invisible hands which held her down. “Help them,” she howled. “Help the pelican to fly away.”
Outside the room her mother was consoled as a syringe was prepared. “It may be a long night,” said a grey man climbing the stairs.

Ctibor's Carnivale

Seventeen times the axe came down on his neck, and 17 times the blade left little more than a red mark on his leathery skin. Ctibor loved to prove that he was the toughest clown in the show.
His travelling troupe, ‘Carnivale Grotesque’, was made up of escapees from one of the last circus freak shows in Russia.
For ten years he had paraded before aghast spectators who stared and pointed and even wept when confronted with his crocodilian skin and bat-like wings. Ctibor, like his freak friends – Jiri, The Volcanic Boy; Kseniya, Daughter of Wolf; and Pyotr, The Kid With A Breast For A Face – was exhibited in a cage, in case this strange demonic beast should choose to run amok, flapping around the big top and dropping onto pregnant women to devour their unborn.
The cage was really just for show, and Ctibor's wings were actually useless sheets of skin which billowed in a strong wind. Behind the scenes he and his fellow freaks were just another act, just another group of performers. They weren’t feared by the other circus folk but they were seen, at best, as the bottom rung of talent. At worst they were despised and spat upon by the strongmen and acrobats. Even the dancing bears would receive dinner before them.
While each member was a free citizen, the ringmaster and circus owner, Vladimir Lebedev, would tell them when they complained: “You’re free to leave, of course, but who would love you, who would protect you as I have? You will be hunted wherever you go. The Furies of society will pursue you mercilessly, like Frankenstein pursued his damned creation. Stay in peace, with me, the only father you’ve ever known. Your needless ends will only make my sorrows longer.”
Master Vladimir had a Siren’s tongue, at once preaching fear and love. So many times he had quieted the rage of his mutant family. So many times he had coaxed them back into their kennels.
It took the events of a drunken night in the wilds of Rostov to snap the freakshow from the bonds of their travelling companions. Alexei, on checking the snares he always set around the campsite, found that he had caught a beautiful she-wolf. A proud and furious animal, the lion-tamer dragged the netted creature into the ring created by all who had gathered to share vodka.
Jeers filled the space. Stones, sticks and empty bottles were tossed towards the creature. Kseniya screamed at them to stop the torture. She clawed and bit the men who held her back; she howled and sobbed. The party ended with the wolf being thrown into the lion’s cage. In the early hours, three friends, three brothers, consoled the wolf-girl and prepared their departure.
Setting out into the night, they existed among ancient Russian forests for eight months, shunning a society that meant to destroy them. They survived on berries and squirrels, but as the winter began to bite the only sustenance offered came from Pyotr’s frozen nipple. Jiri offered them what heat he could, but Ctibor knew the time had come to lead his band once again, just as he had for so many years of their circus lives.
He took them to the Czech border, he made sure they all crossed into Czechoslovakia. Then they headed for a town, a place on the borders of all they had known, at the edge of society. A wolf dog was sensed by Kseniya and the gang followed its tracks down to the outskirts of Ostrava.
Much occurred, of both horror and sorrow, joy and victory, before the birth of Carnivale Grotesque and the success of the popular touring show we can all enjoy today (albeit in a tamer form to its earliest incarnation in the taverns and theatres of Ostrava).
He may now be a star of the internet and small screens across Europe, but Ctibor will never forget where he came from and how much he owes to that special group of freaks he calls family.

Entropy

He looked to heaven, as if the watching hordes of angels could halt this pain, could prevent his very dermis being sucked into hell.
His tongue had long gone, but the surprise had not been the suck and pop of its demise but rather the continued sucking and tearing of whatever was attached to it.
As the lining of his mouth shifted convincingly towards the back of his throat, so his lips and the skin of his face followed. Each flowed over where the other had been. A slow tide of sludge, as muscle seemed to absorb into this mess-like paste and join the flow. As if agonising, blistering rivers of molten ash, his body choked. A volcano in reverse.
His vision condensed as liquid flesh poured its mould over his sockets and dragged balls and eyes to their eventual demise.
He seemed aware of less and less pain. His body was mostly touching the ground now. Bone and muscle was breaking down and his form had become simple jelly.
Before his nerves and brain joined the chum, he was aware of an amazing feeling, as every part of his body seemed as one cell, one sensation. He may have known everything about sensation and, in a moment, known nothing again.
Teeth joined hungry Charybdis. The sucking demon seemed hungry for the world but soon there was nothing external.
Merely a thick tube led to a grotesque sack. Bulges travelled in the pipe - a python crushing its prey and forcing it ever onwards. Mucus there was, but mucus too joined the vaccuum; the pipe itself drawing eternally internally.
Everything became the sack and the sack, everything. It would have swallowed the sun and drank all the seven seas had the child not merely chosen to swallow himself.

Stranger Tom

“All the best, son,” the man in the bus shelter called out. “Enjoy yourself.”
Tom looked confused. The man slouched back against the Perspex shelter and raised his beer can in celebration. Tom was carrying two bottles of wine. “Happy New Year to you too,” said Tom, extricating himself from the discomfort of the situation.
More and more this was happening to him. More and more he was misreading and misunderstanding the world. People - strangers - were coming up to him, speaking to him. Had he become somewhat approachable in the last six months? Had the tried and tested frown begun to slip? Had he in some way encouraged this aberrant behaviour?
Just last week, coming home on the train, he was reading a new book by one of those suddenly widely-loved authors named Jamie Austin. The short novel, called ‘Into the Everdark’, exposed the reader to the shadowy underworld of an unspecified city neither present or past, just sometime, somewhere. The heroine, Miss Nowhere, is revealed to the reader in snatches, much like the brooding city itself.
Tom must have been halfway through the story and the author was yet to allow him to know anything concrete about Miss Nowhere or her circumstances. It seemed at times that the character herself was not sure, that she was searching for answers as much as the reader, perhaps as much as the author too?
Putting the book away into his bag and standing, ready for when the train came to a halt, a voice reached out before him, saying: “What do you make of Miss Nowhere then?”
This strange phrase had somehow leapt from the imagined realities of the page and now inhabited the train with a fearsome magic. Tom lifted his eyes from the flap on his bag to seek the owner of the tongue which questioned him about Miss Nowhere. Who was this dark conjurer, this possessed mind?
A man, tall like Tom, with a smart coat and a black woollen hat pulled tight over his head, grinned back at him. Tom said nothing, his mouth slightly open but not really feeling like doing any work, his arm though still jerked to grab an overhead bar as he felt the train decelerate.
“I got it for Christmas,” the smart man said. “I love his other books, but I’m not sure about this one.”
The train stopped and the door slid open.
“I’m liking it, liking it.” said Tom, suddenly deciding to take part in this play. “I’ve not read his others, though. Sorry.”
The man beamed and leaned back against the Perspex divider in the carriage and Tom hurried from the train. The wind blew in icily from the coast, attacking his ears, so Tom pulled on his woollen hat.
“Something’s very wrong with me,” said Tom to himself.

The Real World

A cloud of steam enveloped the bridge. Susie couldn't see and the warm rush around her made her spin and look up to spy where the sky had gone.
She didn't know whether to keep holding onto the railing before her and hope the strange smoke passed or perhaps run to the edge of the steam and hopefully out into the world again.
Below her, in the real world, on the ground, passed by another train moving in the opposite direction. She heard a whistle and the clouds thickened around her. She screamed but she couldn't hear herself over the peeping whistle. She wondered if it was her own mouth producing that shrill note. So she let go of the rail and ran, back the way she had come, back to the things she knew.
In all things now her beliefs were shattered. In terror, her senses had failed her. She stepped were no platform rested and her foot tumbled into airy space. Her body followed after it.
Tripping and skidding, and even thudding, down the blue stairs of the railway bridge Susie landed, a grazed and bleeding mess, at the foot of the flight. Her eyes filled with water but she did not fully cry for she knew nobody was around to hear her. She tried to push herself up with her wrist, but it did not seem to work any more. Her feet were still above her, on the second step of the bridge. She moved to bring them down to the ground but a crunch caused her nerves to burn and a darkness to cover her eyes.
She awoke to dusk. The sun had crept below the treeline of the wood that the railway ran through. Her legs now rested on the dirt path that ran between the bridge and the farmland beyond Sort's Wood. She decided not to make the mistake of movement again and instead lay quietly and listened to the increasing hum of the summer night insects. A centipede crossed from the grass on the right side of the path to the left, passing inches from her nose. She neither screamed nor tried to move away from the unusual creature. The insect seemed to regard the fallen girl for a moment and then passed on to whatever hollow awaited him. As he reached the edge of the path though, he changed direction and followed its border towards the trees and on out of sight.
Susie then heard the sound of a nightjar nearby. She could hear this creature from her home but he was impossible to see, said her father, unless you were prepared to wait and watch for a very long time. A tawny owl spread its wings wide and smoothed its flight 10 feet along the route of the path. Two young squirrels fought noisily on the railway line before scampering around her and on up the path.
The little girl shifted her weight and found that her left arm and leg no longer throbbed. The arm even seemed to move a little. She propped herself up and placed her weight on her left side. The left leg held, though gingerly. She sat back on the railway step.
Then, a fox. Auburn light seemed to irradiate from it's body. It paid Susie little mind, though its ears were pricked. It turned, as if to cross the bridge, and saw the girl now calm and staring in wonder at the wild creature before her.
The two waited and watched each other, unmoving and in thrall, for that length of time a mind finds hard to quantify. A nightjar flew between the two figures and broke the gaze. The fox turned around and slowly padded off along the path through the woods. Susie gamely rose and limped on behind, into the veil of trees. Always, in the distance, she kept some sight of the auburn fox, until she shambled clear into a moonlit meadow. Then the fox was lost among long grasses.
Susie saw torchlight and heard people calling her name. Now she began to cry.