Horrible Rodent

Horrible rodent, you've got a lot of nerve coming in here with teeth bared and bringing us your rot. It's a gloomy kind of Sunday in this city of ghosts and all the raindrops have been collected and sorted by the gleefully damaged. Unearthed bloodworms lay strewn about the town square where we sit on cinder logs, swinging buckets between splayed legs, and watch the buses lumber past like domesticated animals. The cold sun is concealed by coughing clouds and a tremendous wingspan, accompanied by an unholy flapping. Insects emerge from the pores of the city, clamoring for food. The organ grinder's monkey goes around the square taking donations for the funeral.

Here comes Tom Mustard, lost in deep smoky wonderbout, his skull trapped in a balloon. Up to his old tricks again, it seems. Time to feed the parrots and teach them dirty words. He knows what makes the clock tick as well as tock. They say he once released the hounds on his own daughter. Imagine that level of disassociation. Electroplated memories in the sawdust cellar. Surrounded by the smell of fermenting money. No one raises their head as he strides past and disappears down an alley which leads presumably nowhere.

There's a pawnshop on fire down by the broken drawbridge. Someone pawned a grenade and evidently the heat from the store room radiator was too much for it. Ladies conceal blades in their garters but gentlemen prefer bombs. Lethargic firemen carve salami on the running board of their truck. They've given up the fight. Meanwhile traffic signals go dead within a vulture's radius and faces go grey as gauze. Across town the funeral is over and all the mourners gone home to sleep or play cards.