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Like the man say's
Welcome back to the ring our first contestant...Lady Warbleon
LOST-AND-FOUND BOYS
Everything in the world is broken except for us. We are
kings, reigning over a landfill empire. We make thrones of pocked appliances, build
castles in the hollow hulls of old Teslas. We spend our days hunting for treasures
in caves carved of trash. Once, this would have been called make-believe, but
now that’s all there is.
Boys are the scarcest treasure of all. Some were killed over
food, and some to feed the war machine. And then there are my boys. Princes of
the apocalypse. Guardians of the junkheap. My boys: Andy, Logan, T-Dog, Blub—the
last so named because he cries at night. If the others do, they know better
than to give it noise. Crying is not allowed here. Lying is not allowed here.
Cussing is encouraged, except for one word:
Gr*wnup.
We don’t care to remember them, and we will never become
them.
Tonight, Logan snares a rabbit, and we dance in celebration.
Though it scarcely softens the hunger, we go to bed with greasy smiles. T-Dog
tells us a story of a Cyborg who falls in love with a mermaid and is thus electrocuted.
He says it like that too: is thus electrocuted, as though he’s some kind
of scholar. Our laughter echoes through the metal turrets long into the
night.
As I drift off, Andy whispers, “Crow.” I’m so named because I’m
a scavenger with a sharp memory. “I think we’re gonna be alright.”
I smile but don’t agree; lying is not allowed here.
In the morning, we wake to the smell of burning rubber. This
is the smell of men.
“Raiders,” my boys hiss. I’ve known they would come. We are
too happy and they won’t abide that. The Raiders were never boys; they were men
who went to war and brought it back with them. They talk out of steel mouths
with gunpowder words. They want our treasures and our youth.
They will get neither.
Instead, we launch fireballs at their fleet from catapults
made of shovels and bungees. A few land true and we howl in triumph, louder even
than the gunshots.
“Never!” we yell, to the Raiders, to fate. We defend our
kingdom like it is our heart.
Burned and bested, the Raiders eventually retreat—a glorious,
if temporary, victory. We are drunk off the adrenaline of it, all of us bubbling
with laughter. All but one. T-Dog leans against the makeshift battlement with a
hand to his belly, blood spilling between his fingers as oil through an engine
gasket.
We carry him to his castle and try to remember what
comforting looks like. He tells me he’s afraid. He says it like that too: I’m
afraid, as though he’s just a boy. So I tell him a story of a knight who
falls in love with a fairy and flies away. It’s a love story, or maybe an
adventure.
Cat
Show
Emily Parker had a lovely garden.
“Ooh, isn’t that lovely?” she’d hear
passers-by exclaim on a summer’s day – especially when the blush pink roses
were in bloom and tumbling round the cottage door. Sometimes they’d stop, inhale its beauty, and
take some photos to post on Instagram. The pictures would capture the exuberant
jumble of hollyhocks, foxgloves and columbine that filled the borders, as well
as the honeyed shades of the old stone walls – but, somehow, they never seemed
to catch so much as the outline of the woman forever sitting sewing by the open
window.
Emily Parker had lovely cats too. Cats who would fastidiously wash their paws on
the front step, or sit in a sunbeam on the grass, or settle down to sleep
amongst the forget-me-nots. Young cats,
old cats, neat cats, fat cats, fluffy cats – all rescued, well fed, and
thoroughly contented. The villagers –
those few who noticed her – nicknamed her ‘batty cat
lady’, an archetype of eccentricity in shapeless clothes, which were surely
fur-smothered.
“Well, she’s got inherited money, I reckon.
Spends all her time gardening and looking after those animals.”
“No, she’s only early ‘50s,” said the even
fewer who knew her name. “Seems to take in a bit of sewing.”
“Bit sad, really.”
And that was as far as it went.
Seated at her window, Emily Parker would
hear these scraps of conversation as she stitched and snipped and mended; would
breathe in the scent of the blush roses as she created dreams from soft lengths
of velvet, satin, and lace; tied exquisite bows from silken ribbons; and fixed sparkles
onto bustles, and delicate pearly buttons onto bodices and gloves. Every so often, she would slip a finished item
into a protective cover and place it in a bag or cardboard box, cocooning her
creation in a nest of tissue paper. Any cats tempted to turn one into a bed were
gently shooed.
That was daytime.
The evening was rather different.
For, a couple of times a week, when Emily
Parker had finished her sewing, she would leave her seat by the window, water
her lovely garden and bring her cats indoors to be fed. Then she would go upstairs
to her bedroom, pack a suitcase, and slip out. Nobody ever seemed to notice as
she stowed the boxes and bags into her little car – or seemed to see her as she
drove out of the village. Once she
reached the city she’d park, gather her belongings, and disappear into the side
door of an unassuming building where she’d swiftly distribute her creations.
“Oh, it’s gorgeous.”
“Just what I asked for!”
“Darling, you’ve mended it perfectly.”
We’ll be back next Thursday with the final 1,000-word battle.
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