Witch way out of here?

"Oh! How daring..." came a voice from the hallway, and the next moment in strode a tall, well-dressed chap with short orange hair and a prolonged nose that ended with a slight point. "I daresay, not twice as extravagant as Mary-Anne's wallpaper, but thrice! Think of the scandal!"
"Excuse me!" Vincent called out at this point, bewildered and curious but mostly put out because he was in the middle of reading his favourite section of the newspaper: 'The Strodes', a fictional family featured every week who got up to blatant mischief that Vincent would never dream of. He normally read it without his trousers on, sitting comfortably on his favourite pillow, propped up in his biggest, most polished but least cleaned, armchair while the fire warmed his leg and navel hairs and the fan above whipped a cool breeze through his comb-over. However, being that it was below seven outside Vincent had elected to keep his neatly ironed trousers on and was suddenly overly grateful.
"I beg your pardon," he went on, shaking the paper for good measure. It was a famous move on television movies and he was adamant to obey the new trends. "Who are you? And why are you in my house?"
The orange-haired man said: "Oh dear, didn't Elena tell you?" and Vincent felt his face set into a hard line. He'd have a talk with that woman once she got home.
"No," he said gruffly, "daresay not."
"Well then! There's no delay!" the stranger swept his arm across his body in a flourish and leaned forward. "My name is Tarot-"
"Now there'll be none of that," Vincent said sternly.
The man named Tarot stopped mid-sweep and looked up. "Of what, sorry?"
"Of your feminine movements of woo. I am not a man with which to partake in your verbal dance! My clothes are staying on! Now... much to the dismay of my poor butler here, you're showing your clavicle in a room full of men."
Tarot swept back up and arranged his tunic collar, frowning at Vincent in a way that Tarot had never frowned before and that Vincent had never been frowned at before. It was a frown of great dislike and minor suspicion. As if Vincent had used some magic spell to move Tarot's collar and allow embarrassment to settle upon him like light rain on a spring day.
"I wish to inform you that you are being summoned." Tarot said coolly.
"Summoned?" Vincent repeated stupidly. "What for?"
"Do I look like I know?" Tarot said, still as cool as ever. "I am merely a man who runs errands and sometimes, when the feeling is mutual and the weather permitting, allowed to buy a bundle of string.
"String, ey," Vincent said conversationally because he was practiced at these conversational situations.
"Yes," Tarot said as he raised his shoulders in a proud way and tilted his head back. This gave Vincent the grand viewing point of up Tarot's nose. He was a funnily-dressed man, Vincent noted, in his orange and red tunic, brown tights and gold wrist bands. Perhaps he entertained. Perhaps he was one of them. Excitement bubbled up from his stomach and fluttered about into his chest.
"Alright," Vincent agreed gruffly to hide this childish emotion and stood up. He gave a great horse-like cough, with his double chin wobbling so hard it sent vibrations down throughout his chest to his humongous gut that started to slowly swing. "Where am I being taken then?"
Tarot stood, transfixed.
"Yoohoo, young man! Are you proper in the head? Hello!"
"I-" Tarot couldn't pull his gaze away from the swaying tummy that jiggled like a mound of pudding. He hadn't realised, of course, what with the newspaper being in the way. And unfortunately for Tarot, overly large men were something of a rarity where he came from. When one became only half the size of this man, they were sent away to a facility for either corrective procedures that could take months to perform, or used as research material and were hardly ever heard from again.
"I had an Aunt Betty," Tarot said suddenly, pulling himself out of his trance and into a memory. He raised himself a little taller so his eyes had further to travel, were they tempted to look down.
Vincent was frowning at this dimwitted jester."Did you now..." He must be having a turn, he thought, fearfully.
"She went away-was taken, they took her away-"
Vincent snorted. "Funny turns run in the-"
"She just ate and ate..." Tarot continued sadly, showing signs of things about him slowing down. A darkened shadow seemed to settle in the room.
Vincent glanced about wildly, "Now listen here-"
"She used to have cakes piled as high as this ceiling, piles and piles of cakes sitting on her table and kitchen floor and around her bed, like a cake museum-"
"I will have none of-"
"I had one fall on me, did I ever tell you?" Tarot asked in a drooping sad way, as if they were lifelong friends and he was recounting a story they both knew.
"Did you-tell me?" Vincent spluttered
"I was only nine at the time and I walked right by one of the stacks, a pure innocent babe as I was then, minding my own business-"
Vincent raised his paper, "Now listen he-'
"And right at that very moment!" Tarot burst out, almost leaping forth and flinging his arms out as if letting doves go free at a wedding, "The topmost croquembouche fell straight down upon my head! I had caramel in my hair for days!"
"Goodness man!" Vincent turned to the  butler, who had remained stationary throughout their entire interaction. "Are you seeing this display of madness? Cockery it is! Foul play! Now you tell me this instant where I am going and you tell me without your fancy do-hows!"
Tarot gazed sadly at Vincent and said: 'It is most certainly cockery, fine sir, you see how we live and the dangers with which we take threat daily. I am honoured to have your sympathy." he bowed. Vincent stared.
Then Tarot whipped up with a smile on his face and cried, "Alas we go now to the sisters and the brothers of the Way! We must help them untangle their own webs! Silly ones they are. You are Vincent the Nineth yes?"
Vincent said, "I rightly well am!"
Tarot beamed. "Well do! Let us make journey where you can use your magic once again. Reawaken those stale spells and wilting wonders!" he threw an arm around Vincent and steered the bewildered man out of the sitting room. "And you can explain to me the whereabouts of this extraordinary wallpaper! Oh do! Mary-Anne will be absolutely distraught with envy!..."

_______*_______

~Up next week! Does Vincent secretly know Avalon? Will he be able to tell Portle and Tarot apart? Can he really concoct the most spelliest breakfast to ever contain one hundred ingredients and charms that no magical being has ever been brave enough to try?
Stay tuned as Tarot hurls Vincent into the world of magic and we see if he sinks in the rising tide or flies on a strategically altered and heavily accommodating broom into the night.

!^__^! v

Where did Gerald actually go?

Hello there!
Welcome to Cerri in human form once again! It's been quite a while, such a long, long while that I started pondering all the things get pondered about when one is off and doing all the things ever to be done- which in my case has been nothing and yet everything at once, and which has most likely just been some of the things slightly above the average happenings.
Yes.
All of the above is one hundred per cent true.
Ok, moving on to things that make sense!
--__6v

I have been busy! Life has been happening! I have been moving! Sometimes at snails pace, sometimes like a gust of wind that leaves a swirl of scattered leaves behind, and at other times also I have moved like a regular human who does regular activities at the regular and appropriate speed. That is to say, I have participated in my usual occupation to earn the moneys at a slightly alarming pace not unlike that of a hurried hare. I have been told that I 'have a smile like sunshine', which I agree and accept with my usual grace, and then I have been scorned also that I 'do everything at a slight run' and that 'if I don't stop running I will gain no cooperation from the people I am supposed to be helping and who are supposed to help me'.
Well.
Alrighty then.
If that is how it must be.
However, I decline. And I run once more.

I actually detest being told what to do. And when you're under the pump, over the time limit, sweating like a rhino on a 100 degree day and listening to your stomach play the usual 'Hungry Now and Forever' and 'My Hunger Will Go On' as loud as anything, it gets to you. You start to dance. Perhaps hum along. People stare at you. They offer you numbers to therapists that 'they got from a friend' or 'for a friend'. Some of them hum along and then this great chorus of hummers accumulate in the one room as they work, scrubbing and preparing, and these people do not know what they are humming to, they just follow along as happily as ever, unaware that THE WHOLE TIME, they have been taking the lead from my stomach.

*Bows.
*Gets out number for therapist from a friend of a friend and squints at it.
*Realises number is actually a shopping list that reads:
1 tomato
7 Quince (quinces)? quincees ? Qui? Like in Oui?
Brown rice
Any herb that goes with fish
Beetroot but not the big can the littleish can is there a one can smaller size get that one

You will notice recently that my day to day logging has merged in with short stories, and that the stories have somehow, without my consent, taken full control of this blog. Power to 'em! Taking over a whole blog isn't easy! It's downright enormous. The effort it takes from all sides is enough to send one trembling, weak-kneed and blurry-eyed, to the bedroom ready to collapse into the never-ending pile of pillows. Why, I do that without the tremendous thought of hosting a siege!
As far as the big life questions go, I often find myself asking: 'Did I really decant rice into a jar with flour?' and 'Was I actually about to put a piece of fish into the frying pan that was heating dishwash liquid instead of good ol Extra Virgin Olive Oil?'
You know, all the important things.
But progress has been made! Here's a list to prove it.

The List of the Truest Progress That I Have Achieved So Far:
~ Bought a house!
~Took a year off Uni.. is that progress? It certainly feels like it. The sleep ins! (Bliss. Warmth. Maids who bring me coffee and play the cello while I awaken...)
~Went on a date with a fella so hilarious I forgot to eat (not even joking) and now we're dating!
~Attempted to knit a beanie. Yes.... It's still on the progress side.
~Took a road trip up to Melbourne to see my sister and drove back entirely in one hit for nine hours, stopping only three times to pee, fill petrol and buy food. #roadtriplife #lotsofcows #freecoffeeandwitches #thecoffeewasfreenotthewitches #i'mprettysuretheyweren'twitches #buttheyhadamazingpowersbecausethatcoffeewasTRIPPINBALLS
~Spent a great portion of my time cutting grass with shears. What a time.
~Consequently, developed an odd and horrendous tan which leaves me with no choice but to now cut and design my own weirdly shaped clothes so I can even it out.
~Absolutely REFUSED to pull the dish plug out of dirty cold water with my bare hands and became quite experimental with instruments that I could use instead.
~Developed this intense passionate love for cold tinned corn kernels. Fleeting, but totally worth it.
~Consumed a lot of pizza for no reason.
~Became at peace with wearing odd socks and doing the whole 'sitting down and the pant leg rises up showing them off' thing, and caring not a damn.
~Learning that tired can be a forever thing.
~Tried to say 'water' in French to a Frenchman at work and ended up just saying 'Oooooo' while he stared at me like a fish.

And the Big Ones:
~Said no and experienced no guilt or bad feelings whatsoever. A big one for me because I always feel terrible afterwards, but I'm at the stage of existence where people can live with it or FRO. Peace.
~Spent more time preparing meals. Also big because I hate cooking. But I prevailed, and because I did so I experienced a lot of unforseen disgusting mashups that gave me cause to quit cooking altogether and do the whole liquid shake meal replacements in chocolate and vanilla.
~Took part in trying to recycle everything. This is a continuous thing. Our waste has been cut down to about half and most of it is just being more aware of food prep and consumption. And frozen vegetables! What a life they lead! All frozenly wrapped up in their cold hard forms, chillin in the back, swapping stories of the outside and passing along tiny frozen marshmallows that get stuck to their tongues... absolute legends and so so tasty.

~But MOST importantly, I learned that you CAN put your pieces back together and that they might be chipped or need smooshing in some areas and taping up in other areas, and that strangers can actually be the best people to help you out, especially elderly women who don't necessarily care about how you got in the situation in the first place but who are happy to just have you keep them company and make you do the coffee runs.

Things I Plan To Do Now That I Am Hip Once More:
Or, you know, have a lot of free time...
~ALL the creativeness. Which includes but is not limited to: continuing with the knitting life, continuing with jewellery making, getting back into writing my novel that I KEEP SAYING I will do but never open the folder, sew clothes and items by hand,  continue drawing faeries and attempt to paint them, continue with my gnome infatuation because four is not an army, bake cupcakes and document the baking process and also experiment with different icing options, try to make baked clay ornaments.
  --Maybe start a vlog about all the projects progress.
~Put my pot plants back outside.
~Get my car serviced, visit the dentist, buy a new pair of glasses, tidy my haircut and buy one piece of new clothing.
~Start a vegetable garden.
~Watch every anime ever.
Aaaaand probably three thousand and seventy one other things that I'm too tired to think about at the moment, but there is a general list to start with.


>Let's smash this life out!
Peace.
And may the force be with you.

How shiny is my snake skin?

"Ava!" came a hushed and scandalous voice from behind Avalon. "You didn't!"
Avalon turned to see Beatrice staring wide-eyed, like a startled owl, a hand over her mouth and the tips of her orange bob tinged a white-ish gray that had just turned- with strands still changing even now- from what appeared to be shock. She sighed. Always with the dramatics.
"Sublime! Beatrice! How do?" Avalon slipped the little bottle she was holding into her dress pocket.
Beatrice stared very obviously at Avalon's chin in a way that was neither flattering for Avalon to experience nor pleasant for her to watch, as Beatrice's left eyebrow had a funny way of raising and falling frequently like a twitch and her face tilted to the side puffing out her cheek in a grotesque-like manner.
"You have!" Beatrice cried.
"Most likely," Avalon agreed. "And probably never again if it's as bad as you look."
"You've had it gone," Beatrice said more calmly and with acceptance.
Avalon blinked. How on earth did Beatrice know about the constant whistling from her attic? A funny feeling arose in Avalon's fingers and nose as she ran through a mental checklist of all the things Beatrice knew about her. Out loud she said, "Well they're not all that friendly once you get to know them," in a defensive tone. After all, how could Beatrice expect her to live in such a way that forced her to wear over-the-ear headphones 23/7? Electric shocks might have been entertainment Back In The Day, but those days had evolved to gargoyle making and gargoyle taming and there was no better way to enjoy a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Avalon opened her mouth to inform her just how old-fashioned she was getting and to recommend some places for her to iron out her creased youth, but Beatrice cut her off. "I just can't get used to you without it!" she said sadly, shaking her head, "All those memories, all those ointment making days..." (Avalon frowned at her) "...You even asked Fernd McMyer to the dance during one concoction!"
"Fernd McMyer was a tooty rave-head who smoked peppermint in his parents garage and shaved his speckled head so we all had to observe his speckles in the daylight sun. No one should have to witness that abomination and the amount of times I've had to cleanse my eyeballs is certainly not cost-effective to my daily living!"
"Oh!" Beatrice laughed. "He did!"
"Rather the misfortune for us," Avalon declared impatiently while Beatrice slapped her knee. "Well, I must be off-" she stopped as Beatrice flickered into her old self and back again. "Beatrice, honestly..."
"But do tell!" Beatrice grabbed her arm. "Why now? Why waste all those wart growing days if you're going to shave it off now?"
Just by gazing into those dark blue eyes Avalon knew that Beatrice had never once cleansed them and this information disturbed her deep down in the cobwebbed crevices of her unused soul.
"What are you blabbing on-?"
Beatrice flickered from her young, thin, orange-haired self to a thin, wrinklier, haggish, silver-haired old woman and Avalon said, "Splintering buttcracks, you're shifting charm is all wrong! Comes on!" and she hustled her out of the Vivaciously Herbacious apothecary and down the street to her own shop.
"No, no, it was a potion. I got this recipe from Portle-"
"OF COURSE you did," said Avalon Angrily. "The ONE ignoramus in town-"
"He owns his own stall!" Beatrice said defensively. "Down-"
"He sells flowers."
"He makes the potions himself! His great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a healer! It-"
"Oh he probably played the flute and wore those funny felt shoes and everyone thought him magical-"
"No, he was a fortune teller," Beatrice puffed, "Read the fortunes- Ava, can we stop... just here..."
Beatrice leaned against a tree, panting, and Avalon wondered if Snakeroot could be used in transportation spells while looking around for a public toilet.
"Portle has never heard of the common decency of sense," Avalon began warmly. She enjoyed conversations that started with how little the people of today knew, which was little. She conjured a floral-patterned teacup and sipped hot black tea with a squeeze of tears from the despaired as she went on, quite forgetting where she was and Beatrice's predicament. "He wears those atrocious headpieces- what are they...?"
"Beanies" Beatrice muttered weakly, leaning and flickering more and more into the tree trunk.
"Yes..." Avalon sipped quickly, taking personal offence at Portle's hat choice but shrugging it off because she disallowed strange negativity in her life. "The beanies. How my knee ached that day I witnessed him flouting one of those beanies in public, causing me to use ALL of my Eye Clenz solution at once in such haste. I lost sight, didn't I!" she exclaimed, "Fell down the stairs... lost all my teeth, all of them! Had to wait two days before I could see again and find them all so I could stuff them back in, and in that time all I had was those idiotic chattering bats in the attic, whistling and talking about the stupidest Dracula play they'd all had the pleasure of watching, how on earth they managed-"
Her teacup was suddenly flung out of her hand and Avalon turned to see Beatrice flickering at such a rate it looked as if she was connected to a light switch and being controlled by a playful child. "What in the black chicken...?"
"My Baby's Breath need watering!" Beatrice screeched.
"My tea!" Avalon cried.
Then Beatrice flickered into thin air.
"Shitsticks!" hissed Avalon furiously. "The work I'll have to do to find a switching person!"

----------*----------

~Up next week! Will Avalon be forced to spend time with Portle in one of his obscenely yet cleverly hand-made beanies to find her missing friend? Does Avalon miss watching her whistling bat comrades act out Dracula? What was she doing with Snakeroot in her pocket and where is it now?
Stay tuned for more Avalon adventures.

    &
(6__6)v

How many frogs legs in my brew?

Well! It was all save the souls of this one and heal the curse on that one, and truth be told, Avalon was SICK OF IT.
How on earth did she ever get any shut-eye with all this rukus?
"I've told you a thousand and twelve times!" Avalon snapped at a small boy, "They are not toys, they are voodoo dolls and they are worth seventeen dollars each!"
The boy snorted, which surprised Avalon as he looked only eleven, and said in a sneering voice: "I didn't come here for the dolls Miss, I'm shopping for wart cream." And he grinned up at her.
Avalon narrowed her eyes in suspicion at his clear complexion. Did he now...
"Yeah, and, and..." he cast his eyes around the shop, his expression lit up with a playful glee that Avalon found unsettling as well as appetizing. "...and  because my mam has these great big warts," he looked up at her then, straight at her own wart sitting peacefully on her chin minding its own business, and he smirked wickedly. "Great ones, all on her chin that she says are unsightly and heinous."
Avalon shrieked out a laugh. The fact that this boy knew a word like 'heinous' was far-fetched and hilarious. She felt like bottling this whole experience and using it for one of her midnight bath expeditions.
The boy snickered.
"You are a lying little brat, if you even are little, and I will have none of you fouling up my shop. Away." Avalon waved her hand and turned. Her indoor room of potted plants and herbs was calling out a soothing song to her wounded soul. Heinous warts... she ran his unthinkable words over inside her head. They aren't that heinous, are they? Cara said they were in fashion, part of the Autumn feel. The thought that warts were not in fashion flared up a fire inside Avalon's stomach- which could have just been a burning hunger for the little runt's words and ears but she doubted it as her eyes fell upon an opened, empty packet of infants fingers and she recalled her satisfying breakfast- and this gave Avalon a new task to set right. She needed wart cleanse tea, right now, lest she be seen out of the fashion loop and cast aside for that old Paypine at the Seventh house. She snorted.
"Miss, miss, I need to tell you something..." the boy whined.
Avalon said, "Are you still here?" as she ran her gaze along the shelves behind the counter. Who put this thing together? And who sorted all the potions, teas and herbs? Who was the imbecile that needed firing?
"Yeah, mam said she really needed that cream because she was butt ugly. So ugly-"
"I've seen bottoms in the Ready To Eat Fried Children menu that are more appealing than your mother's complexion," Avalon replied without interest. Oh, right. It had been herself because she'd fired her last employee three months ago. "Damn that sneaking Jouaul!"
"You look at bums!" the boy mocked with a laugh. Avalon heard him throw out his yoyo in a practiced way, heard the zzzzzzzing! as it unwound and then the zzzzzzzzooong! as it wound up and she whirled around with her finger pointed high. "I eat little bums like yours for breakfast, you snot-nosed, sliming, ant-faced hooligan of the modern age, and I can just SMELL yours from way up here!"
His face dropped but his smile stayed hitched as if pegged. "You don't, you're not a real witch."
Avalon laughed in an aggressive way. Her frown was starting to hurt her forehead and she was sure if she didn't relax soon it would stay there, like a line etched into her head, and she would be laughed out of the town. She hissed a spell in an old language, that was probably just a jumble of words and not old at all, and waved her hands in a theatrical way to appear fresh and contemporary, which clashed with her long black robe and haggish silver hair.
"No!" the boy cried in horror. "I haven't washed yet!" Avalon laughed again as he shrank down in size, merging into himself as grotesquely as any of these transformations were and with a great deal of screaming that Avalon could have done without. She sighed as she watched him. Did these things really take forever? She checked her wristwatch.
When the screaming had stopped she looked up to find a small green lizard baring it's open mouth at her and twitching its tail.
"Hello there, little rat bait." Avalon scooped him up and dropped him into a container, punched in some holes, and fell into a lawn chair that was set up behind the counter, lit up a smoke and took a puff.
Ahhhh, yessssss, she thought indulgently. He'll do nicely in preparing my wart removal tea.

---------- * -----------

~Up next week! Is Avalon the ONLY witch roaming around town without a wart? Has fashion in the witching world changed that much? Will the poor little boy return to his human form and gain revenge? Who knows! Certainly not I!
Stay tuned for more Avalon adventures.

@__-~

What would your third wish be?

A lot of things take place all at once. Or so August thought. He sat back in the spindly, cushion-backed chair and opened his newspaper. He liked these chairs. The black frame twisted into the shape of an arch around a delicate shaped flower made from the same frame, each chair had a different flower but each cushion that sat in front of it was encased in tight, grey, high-end fabric.
Yes, he had the pleasure of thinking as he scanned the notices page, I am rather fond of these chairs. My watch also, he realised. How he had come to depend on the simplistic clock-face fastened between two feminine, sleek but not shiny, black straps, it was a fine thing indeed. Rushing out of the house early morning, stepping over potted plants that leaked out all over the footpath, getting his tie stuck on the coat rack that always stood too close to the front door in the same spot- even after reminding Florence over and over again to move it and even after moving it himself on rare occasions-, dropping his toast slathered high with marmalade into a gathering of sluggish snails ambling silently yet as still as a portrait across the pebbly front path, all these horrendously insulting things were made better with a single glance at his watch.
"Flo, dear," he turned to the lady sitting next to him. She looked up from her book, tilting her head back a bit so the wide-brimmed black hat lifted and allowed her eyes to gain some vision. "Mmm."
"We must go car shopping."
She blinked. "Oh?"
August admired her pretty, small, pouty mouth for a few seconds before continuing. "We must. I am in dire need of a new vehicle."
"Today?" Florence queried. Florence was not one for the spontaneous nature of adventure. She simply couldn't understand why August didn't want to sit all day under an apple tree and read.
"We must!"
"Oh, well..." she looked over at the sky for no reason whatsoever. August felt himself lose interest in the companionship that Flo would have offered had she come. Perhaps she wouldn't have been so agreeable, or may have made a fuss over something small like stepping in dog mess, or complained of how heavy her new book was, the structure of her long black dress, or the way in which the wind moved.
"On second thought-" he hurried, but Florence was a natural at taking no notice of other people's discomfort.
"I think it should be a nice day for looking at cars," she said, turning back to him. August closed his mouth. Nodded. Took a quick sip of his cappuccino. Florence went back to her book.
Halfway to the first car-yard (August had planned a sum total of eleven inside his head. His favourite was the third one down on Penny Lane, but he had decided to search two mediocre ones first due to the fact they came recommended by his brother who was stuck in hospital with a broken arm and two broken legs. He felt content that there was now something he could talk to him about.) Florence told him to stop the car and he did. She climbed out carefully and started walking.
"Florence!" he called from the window. "Where are you going?"
"Inside to get an ice-lolly," she pointed with her book to the deli a few cars down. August sighed impatiently. He would have to cross at least one car-yard off the list at this rate. They had stopped earlier on to get petrol, and once more after that so Florence could collect a leaf to use a bookmark.
How she had seen The Perfect Leaf She Must Have Now Or Else Would Faint In A Spasm Of Despair while zooming down the street at seventy in a ridiculous hat that took up half the car he'll never know.
He waited. Florence returned and handed him a blue ice-lolly. This meant he had to sit and eat it.
Another car yard was mentally scrapped from his list. He felt himself break into a sweat.
"I'm not at all fond of the blue ones." Florence remarked while watching a family emerge ungracefully from their car ahead.
"Is that why I've got it?" August demanded.
"I'm not too fond of yellow, either," she mentioned.
"Then why did you get them?" August asked in a mellow form of rage.
"They're refreshing, aren't they? I like how they melt on the tongue."
He ate the last of his like a beaver munching on a log: mechanically fast and with indignation.
"Alright, and we are off." He put the car in drive and sped out onto the street at a high seventy-five. Florence held onto her hat.
When they had driven for about ten minutes or so, Florence delicately produced a camera and took a photo of what could only have been a blurry, lopsided, uninteresting scenic shot of a dirty apartment building and a stack of trashcans next to a vacant square overgrown with grass.
"Was the motion option on?" August asked.
"Hmm?" Florence answered vaguely, her eye still pressed to the camera and focused away from him.
"You know you have to click the motion option when you take a moving photo."
"Is it?" she took another shot, closed the camera and sat back in her seat.
August felt more sweat emerge.
They stopped so Florence could put their lolly sticks into a bin. They pulled over in front of a block of shops so August could consult his map, not because Florence had gotten them lost when she remarked the line of ducks waddling down a side street away from them would make a beautiful photo on the fridge resulting in a duck chase. They stopped shortly after that to use the toilet.
"Darling," August said pleasantly, his casual demeanor back in place once more, so casual in fact that one of his arms rested on the door window ledge.
"Yes?"
"Isn't it time we did something about that awful chair in the kitchen?"
"Which chair?" she asked sharply.
"That yellow one," he supplied, feeling sure in the knowledge that the first car yard was around this corner, and therefore content with all things.
"There is nothing wrong with that chair." She replied, and showed her finality of this matter by opening her book and tilting her hat.
"It's chipped," August said.
"So is the Great Wall of China," Florence said with heavy dismissal.
"One of the legs is missing," August carried on, dodging around her non-compliant tone with one of soft compassion, like one would use when telling bad news to a child.
"It's not missing, it's just shorter."
"Well it may as well be!"
"Mmmm."
August participated in the unnecessary task of re-positioning his hands on the steering wheel, mostly because he was sweating profusely but he'd also read online that moving hands about the wheel makes the driver appear worldly and well-endowed. "Well, no one really sits on it..."
"Its much too small for that."
"There's no airflow! You sit on it and your whole back gets sucked into it. And that's the end until you wrench your way out of it!"
Florence turned a page. "Yes. I remember that happening to you."
"And no matter how many times it's painted, paint does not stick to it. It's like a curse."
"Rather is."
"It's like the Antichrist of chairs!"
"I believe so."
"I just can't..." August shook his head in despair. His sweating was hindering his ability to get a good grip on the wheel at this point. He squinted. Surely the car-yard should be here somewhere, they'd turned the corner a good five minutes ago.
"I'm just saying," he started again, "That chair could be our very downfall and it should go, and I know you don't like it, you have ties with that chair, far be it for me to break them, but it has to go."
"Yes," Florence said, "I agree."
But August didn't hear. His hands slipped and the wheel turned left, altering the direction and causing the car to careen into a high chain-link fence. A bush of tall, out of control flowery weeds offered a padding of protection that August could never have dreamed of.
"Goodness!" he exclaimed.
"Oh my!" Florence scrambled out and lifted up her camera.
"ARE YOU USING THE ZOOM FUNCTION?" August called desperately from across her car seat. "YOU HAVE TO USE THE FUNCTION."
"Mhmm."
She took the shot, took another, then slid back into the car and closed her door. "Augustus," she suddenly turned to him as flower heads dropped slowly onto the bonnet.
August felt that he would combust from the effort of holding in all his sweat. His pores simply ached from it. "Dear," he answered curtly.
"We have to go back, I can't remember if I turned the oven off."
Augustus felt a rush of sweat wash over him so extreme he feared he would never be dry again. As a rule of men who sweat a lot, he glanced down at his pants to see if a wet patch was forming on his crotch region, and he caught a glimpse of his femininely simplistic watch ticking up at him.
All is well, it said calmly through synchronized mechanisms and intricate cog systems. All is well.

Judge me by my size, do you?

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you one HUNDRED TIMES, Mira…” Frederick started angrily.

“I don’t care,” Mira shot back, “I am never eating pumpkin stew again.”

“Well! Be it on your head then!”

“It will!”

“Yes! It will! Watch out for it!”

“I’ll do no such thing! YOU watch out for it!”

“Oh!” scoffed Frederick in watered-down disgust (because he had lost quite a bit of heart for this argument the moment Mira had mentioned stew). “Well if you’ll let me, I will very much oblige.”

“Don’t joke, Frederick, it’s never suited you.” Mira retorted, trying not to look at Frederick’s pants, because they were just too darn eye-catching and she would rather spend five days outside in the freezing cold eating nothing but cornflakes from the box than admit to Frederick that his pants were any good.

“I will joke, and YOU will listen, and I’ll record my jokes and put them on the internet and the WHOLE WORLD WILL LISTEN.”

“NO ONE WOULD EVER CLICK ON A LIKE.”

“There will be all sorts of clicks, Mira,” Frederick stared her down in a serious manner that was altogether too serious for this matter. “And some of them may be on a like, but others, well they will be on more interesting-”

“HA! The whole world will drop dead and then I’ll have to forage around in the apocalypse for food while you make haphazard conversation to wilting trees.”

“Don’t say the word haphazard, it makes your mouth move in an unflattering way. And trees do not wilt.”

“My mouth moves unflatteringly?”

“Very much so. I was afraid to tell you. Now I am not.”

But he did look a little sad. Mira could see the corners of his mouth turn down as he spoke, and a darkened shadow seemed to pass over his face, as if he had stood up without looking and his head burst through a rain-cloud. Mira straightened.

“Frederick,” she said as solemnly as her little frame and apparent ugly mouth movements would let her, “Know this. I shall never say the word haphazard again.”

“Agreed.”

“What, you too?”

“No!” Frederick exclaimed with horror, and hurried on with: “I’m in agreeance with your suggestion.”

“Oh, well…” Mira thought this through. Maybe she could get him to change a few things too. Some things, she thought irritably, did need to change in order for her life to run smooth, with course, and on time. “You could probably do with putting your shoes on in the correct order.”

“Correct order?”

“You know, left foot first.”

“What foolery is this?”

“It’s been proven!” Mira said earnestly.

Frederick thought this to be unlikely. He knew things. He knew of ways. He knew how the world worked and where things should be placed in order to maximise one’s own bargaining potential. There had been too many overseas trips where he had not received the correct price for goods, and this kept him awake at night. It irked his bedtime routine. It made him spread his lunchtime Vegemite sandwiches with the wrong thickness. His contacts had a way of feeling upside down. There always seemed to be gum wherever he sat or stepped. The elevator button always managed to be jammed when it was his turn to press. So, perhaps, this way of thinking was not unusual or something to laugh off.

“Mira,” he said gently and with the appropriate amount of mystery to catch her attention. He noticed her frown with suspicion and felt a little disappointed but pressed on nonetheless. “I have given this a great deal of thought-”

“Y-e-s--?”

Mira would never admit it but she was intrigued. She was so intrigued that she felt herself get a little wet. She clung to this captivation in a form of desperation so she would avoid Frederick’s pants.

Frederick was poised: one eyebrow raised, one side of his mouth perked a little in an anticipatory and celebratory grin, one foot slightly in front of the other (although that was just his natural posture, which Mira would have to also find time to correct).

Mira said, “And?”

“FENG SHUI” Frederick almost yelled in what looked to Mira like an oncoming spasm of anguish.

“A- what?”

Frederick lowered his arms and Mira realised he had raised them. Was there nothing he could do? Did everything have to be a form of ghastly re-enacted vomit?

“You’ve never heard of Feng Shui?”

Frederick should not have been surprised. He had often wondered about the limited space in Mira’s mind. It saddened him in places he didn’t know he had, organs he’d never heard of, it tested his patience like a melting ice cream on a hot day.

“I will tell you what I tell the rest of them-”

“Darling, Feng Shui is not something to be ignored.” Frederick could not believe that she had heard about it but was unwilling to partake in the sensational varying delights it offered. “There will be a time,” he breathed staring at her.

Mira rolled her eyes.

“There will be a time,” he repeated in absolution.

Mira remembered why she never talked about furniture in his presence. She liked to observe her nails in an obvious way whenever someone spoke about that Feng Shui nonsense. Any Ikea crap or motivational vase-placing, colour-matching, tea-stirring malarkey made her good vibes fall apart like grating a rusty pipe.

“Mira-”

“Frederick,” she spoke over him firmly, “Listen here. There will be no rug hung up in my living room (“our” he whispered), no thousand dollar cutlery set because the pattern is a carved lotus (“but they’re transformation!” he gasped), and definitely no three-hourly visits to a place of worship where we have to wear robes and kneel with our heads bowed over a dirty bowl of tap water praying for inner peace to a god that came from a fairy-tale book (“those gowns are made of silk” he inhaled a tortured breath).

While Mira was rattling off her demands, Frederick felt a new sensation. One overriding his current sense of doom. It was arousal. He stood in despair and watched her determined expression, her luscious hair falling past her shoulders, her one chipped nail from baking a batch of muffins earlier that day, and he suddenly knew. Feng Shui didn’t matter.

“Mira,” he announced in a flourish. “Let us bed with one another.”

“What?”

Mira often had the sneaky feeling that Frederick was a closeted stage performer. Every time he came bursting into the room where she was occupied, or started a sentence off with ‘sweetheart, there’s something important I have to tell you about my day…’ she would wait for him to confess his secret, and every time he did no such thing, causing her to enter a fury that lasted for days and that she could not explain to him for fear of sounding insane.

“I am turned on by you at this very moment,” he said in a low voice.

“Are you?” she asked, uninterested in his answer. She recalled earlier on having felt wet herself. She supposed one must carry on with that feeling.

“I am very much.”

“Well, I appear to be also.”

“Say it is so!”

“It is this very instant!”

“Let us go there!”

“Yeah, alright then.”

How do I get it to make the 'ticking' sound?

Paypine looks at me in a suspicious, narrow-eyed way for a very long time. I start to wonder if the egg in her sandwich is seeping into the bread, making it soggy and unappetizing.
"Well I'm sure there was nothing you could do," she says at last in an abrupt manner and takes a harsh bite of the sandwich.
I gape at the sudden turn this has taken. "I- I guess not."
"It wasn't a love connection," she says while chewing.
"Oh, of course not-"
"Not anything special or romantic, by the sounds."
I frown. "Well, there were som-"
"Entirely unworthy of mentioning, I daresay."
"Hey, it was a-"
"Totally void of worth. Can't imagine why I had to hear it."
"Oi! I'm sharing my experience-"
"Probably best you didn't, I'm a delicate thing."
"Delicate?"
"I'm old. Old things are delicate."
"Not all ol-"
"Avalon!" Paypine exclaims in a high rasp. "How startling to see you out here when there's church group going on."
I turn to see a tall, thin elderly lady with bright red hair and a black and white overcoat walking up to us, tripping a little as she walks, as if she's tipsy. Or having trouble with her high black sandals.
"Paypine! How gorgeous to see you! No, I don't see those old biddies anymore," Avalon says in a high and hurried voice. She stops in front of the bench and I notice a round wine glass in her hand half filled with some sort of pink liquid.
"Left, have you?" Paypine asks with scorn.
"Oh, Paypay, keep up, that was ages ago. Months and months. You'd know if you called, or came round, or even sent a letter, I do appreciate a good old pen to paper transaction." She turns her green eyes to me and asks in a hushed flourish, "My, who's this lovely young chicken?"
Paypine makes a 'humph' noise and puts on a great show of carefully arranging her sandwich next to her on the bench, leading to me announcing, "Cerri," at the same time Paypine grunts: "This is my bench friend Cara. She's telling me all about her little friendship with another girl."
"Oh! How quaint," Avalon exclaims jovially, swinging her glass to the side as she steps one thin leg across the other.
"It's Cerri, actually," I correct. Paypine looks up and runs her eyes over every inch of Avalon.
"Yes, I spoke to one of my good friends the other day. Paypine knows her, she goes by the name Caroline, but everyone friendly with her calls her Cara, because of that famous poet, what was her name? Cara something or rather, started with a P, long, Italian sounding..."
I watch Avalon's glass sway about. Some of the liquid sways merrily onto her pants.
Paypine clicks her tongue at the spillage. "Ava, you're spilling it all over yourself. Why must you drink at noon?"
"Oh! This is vitamins!" Avalon waves the glass with apparent ease and blissful ignorance.
"Will you be long? I'm eating lunch and my egg sandwich is going cold."
"Paypay..." Avalon laughs, "Always so squinty. Now, Cara, tell me about this lady friend. Had a tragic falling out over some boy, was it? Why I remember-"
"Let her answer, goodness heavens people should actually answer your ridiculous questions," Paypine interrupts angrily.
"Yes, yes!" Avalon says brightly to me, "Do go on!"
"It's a love story," Paypine cuts in as my mouth opens.
"Actually-" I start.
"Ooooh! Love. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, sweetheart. It makes you a fool- although I did get a Trolgar house and the rose bushes I always wanted from my first..." Avalon frowns at the grass as if in deep thought.
"First?" I ask, mainly to keep myself in the conversation and not because I need her to tell me she means first husband.
"Or was is Lester?"
Paypine picks up her knitting. "Husband dear. You'll catch on to these things when you get older and start having relationships."
"No, I thought Lester owned the boat house... out in Surryville. That cramped two bedder. Well!" she suddenly perks up with bright eyes, "I got what I was after in the end, not all men can give you what you want so you have to choose wisely, dear. It can sometimes take a few to get the right house- I mean car! I mean person!" She laughs and takes a gulp of her pink vitamins. "But do stay in touch, won't you, sweety? I'd love to hear how you get on with this boy of yours, here hold this."
I take the glass while Avalon whips out a pen and some paper and scribbles something.
"Oh, here we go," mumbles Paypine into her knitting, "here we go with 'the number' carry on."
"Actually, it's a girl," I say into the long-awaited silence. "I was seeing-"
"Here, love, here's my number," Avalon whisks the glass out of my hand and replaces it with the little slip of paper. I catch a string of numbers.
"I also put my fourth at the bottom, you know, in case you need an edgy hairstylist- he's the best." she leans in closer, "between you and me, I feared he was a bit that way inclined, he was just so good with my hair, but he runs it now, it's so chic. So sleek. Well! Must dash. Don't be a stranger Paypine, everyone loves your witchy comments, always such a laugh! Bye girls!"
I watch Avalon trip away through the park. Then I turn to Paypine.
"She seems nice."
"Oh, her?" Paypine replies airily. "I wouldn't have a clue who she is. Shall we get our coffees now?"