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‘An intolerable state of affairs,’ said the Yellow. ‘Greys are as indolent and untruthful as they are lazy and obstinate – sometimes I think they die on purpose, simply to vex us.’
The ‘Days since Swan Attack’ sign had long ago reached 999, the highest it could be, and had stayed there, never reset. ‘You are indeed fortunate,’ he said. ‘A swan swooped down and took a toddler in Greensdale-on-the-Vale only a week ago. We must remain perpetually vigilant.’
‘I wish you the best of luck,’ said Mr Celandine without any interest at all. ‘If there is any way at all I can assist in this effort, please keep it to yourself.’
‘That’s the one who killed my son,’ said Mrs Gamboge, pointing a bony finger at me. ‘Note him well.’ ‘I despise him already,’ returned Mr Celandine. ‘You have my unwavering support in this matter.’ ‘I thought this was to be a fair and free hearing?’ I said as I placed Celandine’s valise on the ground next to him. ‘How dare you?’ said Mrs Gamboge. ‘Your suggestion of a predecided outcome is insulting, demeaning and unruleful. Your book, please.’ I sighed and handed over my merit book and was fined twenty merits for ‘impugning upon the reputation of an elder’, ten for ‘speaking out of turn’, and
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Martin Baker, which had been painted on his metal seat.
Ejection seat
‘It’s possible pockets of Previous survived,’ he said, taking the skull and running his hands over its peculiarly rounded shape, small eye sockets and lack of a bulge at the rear.
Although most former towns and villages were covered with several feet of accreted soil, remnants of previous habitation were easy to spot: intriguing grassy mounds, street lamps poking out of the earth, the odd building still standing, that sort of thing.
Her overriding interest at present was the mechanism by which lightglobes shone, Everspins rotated and hotpots boiled water – all without any apparent method of energy input. She thought this energy was transmitted invisibly though the air by something she called ‘harmonic resonance’.
Speaking of which, any ideas how I can stop Tommo proposing to me? It’s been going on weekly since we were nine, and although he’s not bad looking, has a useful greased-piglet way of getting out of trouble and somehow always has some cash, being married to Tommo does have one massive drawback.’ ‘The “being married to Tommo” part?’ ‘In one.’ ‘I could tell him you died.’ ‘I’ve tried that. He’s very persistent.
The Mildew had a dark secret in that it wasn’t a disease at all – it was the body’s reaction to a colour – and most chillingly, it was administered clandestinely by the Collective once certain key parameters had been met, usually as a way of disposing of the old and broken, societally useless or those inclined towards criminality, idleness or independent thought.
If you lift the carpet, all you ever find is dirt.’
Ted Grey: Twenty Years Among the Chromatacians
The urge to look up a fictional book
‘What happened to “pumpkin”?’ she asked. ‘I thought you said pet names were nauseatingly pointless?’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve never had a boyfriend, not even a starter one. I’m trying to readjust. I may call you “googly bear” if I can bring myself to say it without vomiting.’ Clearly, the fine details of our relationship were a work in progress. I started again: ‘Hullo, pumpkin,’ I said, ‘how is retail suiting you?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Never call me pumpkin.’ ‘I thought—’ ‘—I changed my mind. I was right. It is nauseatingly pointless.’
‘Talk retail to me,’ I said. ‘I love it when you talk retail.’ ‘We have a special on scented candles this week,’ she replied in a husky whisper, our lips still close, ‘only ten merits each. Something for the special one in your life, or simply to relax in a bath of mandated duration and mandated temperature with your unmandated partner.’
persuading Violet to like or respect you is going to be quite a challenge.’ ‘Any suggestions?’ ‘Being as uncaring and high-handed as she is would definitely turn her head. And I don’t mean pretending to be mean and nasty when she’s watching, then rescuing puppies from storm drains when she’s not – Violet would see through that little caper in an instant. You can’t just do obnoxious, you’ve got to be it and live it and embrace it.’ There was a hollow pause as the next thirty years of my life suddenly took on the air of something closely resembling my very worst nightmare – being the person I
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Our names and our contributions may not even be recorded.’ ‘So we could be actually doing something that may make no difference, might have already been done and no one will ever know what we did if one day someone succeeds?’ ‘Something like that,’ she said with a rare smile. ‘Still on board?’
‘Clifton was until recently her Grey-on-the-side,’ said Jane, meaning her brother. ‘He answered back once and she hit him with a shovel while he was getting dressed. We never found his tooth. I think he swallowed it.’ ‘She keeps a shovel in her bedroom?’
‘I valued him less than the steam from my gran’s piss,’
She was a good-looking woman, even though possessed of a nose which was barely anything at all, and wore her hair in Female Style #3: bunches.
‘We’re going to be so very happy together during our short marriage,’ she whispered tenderly in my ear, ‘and I shall be devastated when you are sent to the Green Room. In public I shall be inconsolable, but in private I shall use your tallow to grease my door hinges.’
short vignette extolling the simple elegance of monogamy, and another warning that although youknow could be purchased from the Riffraff for as little as half a cabbage, the certain outcome would be a large and painful wart that might damage marriage prospects.
although I’d heard about it and performed in the musical Red Side Story upon which it was based, I’d not seen it before. The players began with a prologue: Two households, opposite in colour, In fair Violetta, where we lay our scene, From ancient and very wise taboo breaks to new stupidity, Where uncivil hues make civil hues unclean.
With a ti-tumpity-tum-te-tum sort of rhythm to the speech and a clear and fluid understanding of drama, The Tragedy of the Chromatically Non-compliant and Clearly Idiotic Romeo and Juliet was oddly hypnotic and powerful – clearly the intention, as it depicted in unambiguous terms what happened when complementary colours ignored the social stigma attached to opposition and indulged in behaviour considered quite outside the bounds of polite acceptability.
Personally, I thought the play dangerous nonsense, obviously penned by an insanely rabid supporter of the Colourtocracy.
The interior was opulent, and I presumed in degrees of purple, although to me it looked like varying shades of dark red. The effect was a sense of abject sombreness, like the colour of blood in different stages of drying.
‘I’ve seen the sea three times,’ I said, ‘so I’m something of an expert. I’ve heard of the Sea Beasts.’ ‘The fishermen rarely go far because of them. Giant tentacled creatures with eight legs that can crush a fisherperson’s head with one bite of its mighty beak.
It could find its way into people’s houses and was oddly sticky, and would attach itself to anything organic. Once it had, you were pretty much incinerated alive, and not quickly. But of all the nasty ways to die in Chromatacia, ball lightning still only came in about sixth.
Writings from the pre-Epiphanic era spoke of ‘millions of lives being lost on the roads’, so it was a fair assumption the Previous fed their roads daily with human sacrifice.
For the first time since I was nine, I felt uneasy about swans. The swan was following us, and I thought about what my mother had said about gloves making us invisible. It didn’t make sense, but it would, in time.
Barcodes
banned technology. Bunty was the chief prosecutor in this case, which centred around a working gramophone, something I had seen in Cobalt’s Museum of the Something that Happened, and advertised there as the last working example. Cassie was also found in possession of a circular musical playing disc by a performer named ‘Rick Astley’.
Lol
no other option but to invoke Special Ruling 1796-b/D whereby the guilty parties are to be bound hand and foot, have their eyelids stitched open and be dragged slowly through the Green Room on a rope attached to a donkey.
We saw its empty enclosure, the actual dandelion leaf it choked on, and a short play with a man in a rabbit costume demonstrating the rabbit’s last moments as interpretive dance.
