Copper watched the
road they’d come from. Keeping an eye out for the creature that had
been watching them. Iron continued fiddling under the dash of the
car. An occasional whir and grind came from the engine.
It reminded Copper of the one car she’d driven. It would always stop working during the hottest hours of the afternoon. She couldn’t stand that Ford Siesta.
Iron looked back up the road, eyes narrowed. Copper followed Irons
gaze. She saw movement on top of a building in the distance. A spot
of black with two shining eyes.
“Do you see its eyes?” asked Copper.
Iron cocked her head to one side and gave her a nod.
“I do like an eye pun,” remarked Copper. “The cornea the better.”
Metallic fish were strewn across the street outside the chip shop. Iron nudged the handlebars of a motorcycle with her nose. ‘Triumph’ embossed on the petrol tank. The rest of the bike had sunk into the dirt road.
“On Fridays, two shoals of robot fish riding motorcycles or mopeds would come here and have a dust-up,” sighed Copper.
Iron dug around the tank. As she loosened the soil what was let of the bike sunk below ground level. Copper pulled Iron away from the sinking vehicle.
“It was very seventies,” she continued. “Codrophenia.”
They passed a
building that had no roof. Iron recalled a story from this corner of
town. Eight women built a rocket in their attics over the course of
six years. They wrote a book about their exploits, sales of which
went through the roof.
The ladies managed
to get their rocket launched. Unfortunately, they never returned. It
was presumed, they were loft in space.
Man, I still feel awkward with the ‘through the roof’ punchline. It doesn’t matter how far detached you get from the original joke, it’s always there at the back of ya mind.
Iron marvelled at
the multicoloured liquids bottles inside the window. Every colour she
could imagine. Deep reds; Berry purples; Sunset yellow; Burnt orange;
Apple green. She was in awe. Cocktails from around the world
preserved inside.
“I think I knew
the barmaid, a hulking great spider robot,” pondered Copper.
Iron raised up on
her hind legs, front claws against the window to get a better look of
the inside.
“She quit bar
work,” continued Copper, “and become a web developer.”
Sorry for the squiffy posting times this last week. In-laws went down with lung and heart troubles. Been in and out of the hospital and looking after the fam at their home. The missus has moved back in with her mum for a bit while I double down on work to pay the bills while she’s a full-time carer.
If you fancy helping her out while she’s giving up work to look after the family, check out her Society6 store: society6.com/donnamariestrachan
Glass shards and sculpted steel reached up out of the ground. Clawing upwards towards the sign for the financial district.
Broken screens ticked from within what remained of the buildings. Mannequins stood beneath the screens. Papers in hands, and endless cry for more money.
Iron spotted the sign for the stock market. She wondered if they sold chicken, beef or vegetable broths.
Soup is a staple for the frugal, like me. My soup is roughly 1 500 g bag of broth. 2.5 kettles of water. 4 chopped carrots. 4 chopped onions. 4 vegetable stock cubes and 4 tablespoons Bistro veg gravy. I freeze it in bowls and heat them in the microwave. It provides between 16-20 bowls.
I follow a lot of vegetarian food blogs, and sometimes, I do wish posts could be as short as that. I get that your mums, cousins, twice removed niece is coming for the holidays from the Bahamas. I understand she’s bringing her cat, Floofoo who’s hypoallergenic and once had the mumps. And I totally agree that the new DeviantArt eclipse is awesome.
But I don’t need sixteen paragraphs of it before you tell me a recipe for simple soda bread. For love of all that is good and natural, learn some conciseness people!
Little Fears 