Fracture

Beautiful terrible. It’s always beautiful, and terrible.

Scanned mice

No, it’s not too cruel. We let our little mice – Edie and Charlotte – take a spin on the scanner. They weren’t too phased by it, and now they are safely home again eating parmesan cheese slices. But they do make groovy art.

To the watcher

When you are being watched there is this crisp feeling, like the sensation of holding a handful of bark and slowly closing your fist.

I can feel you there watching me, just out of range and imagining yourself invisible. No, actually that’s not quite right. You know that I can see you, just out of the corner of my eye. You know if I turn my head I won’t be able to directly discern you, but you’ll be there. I know you are.

Umami

Katherine Tate was a square type of woman. She’d once been told she was Rubenesque and had bought a lot of red lipstick to complement her hippy, booby shape, but that was years ago. That was years before she was going to Change. The Change. What a nonsense.

Morning after rain

Clack-clack, sway

“I don’t know why you bother with him,” said her mother leaning over the bags that were placed between them. The reassuring clack-clack of the suburban train shuddered through Eliza’s feet as she frowned out the window. Outside frozen faces turned, bleached by sunlight, held for an instant then gone. Whipped trees. Lines of grass folding away.