The mice ran in circles around the feet of old man Discharge who carried a tallow wick candle that guttered and snickered like the cough of sick children in the ailing light. He pushed his wrinkles into the semblance of a smile and cracked his teeth together. His laughter ran like pneumonic plague; a contagious rumble that flew with the bats to the eaves of the tall, dusty, tumbledown building. He scratched his undercarriage and belched; a hollow sound that ricocheted from cross beam to rafter.
“I remember the first outbreak of influenza,” he thought and then corrected himself, “might not have been the first outbreak but it killed maybe fifty million people. A bit like my last wife – lethal.” He laughed again, a dry rattle that made him cough.
He took a swig of his dandelion tea, farted and skittered across the room.
Madam Discharge gathered the cobwebs that hung from the ceiling and placed them on her materials table. Her frock coat spun legions of spiders that ran willy nilly at her feet. She slipped her hand beneath her skirts and removed her vicious shears. A sharp pair of scissors that cut like time. She glimmered into a section of the house furnished with brass fittings and a long table shaped like a Viking long boat. She whistled a low note and a host of crows flew about her shoulders freeing her tar black hair that flowed like the Thames behind her.
As with conversations, life goes in circles and the Mother and Father of Discharge knew this all too well. Madam Discharge dispensed a fruit lozenge into the corner of her mouth and smiled a wicked smile.
“History repeats,” she thought, “But not the children of Discharge. They run riot with the fictions of creation.”
"Outside in the cold distance a wild cat did sit and growl, a ‘bunch of people’ were approaching and the wind began to howl."
Here is the final post for this 'volume' of The discharge series. You will now find us here: discharge 5 - Saint Peter's Working Institute
May whatever god's there are grant us a creative future and if they won't god help them all.
