Day 57: The locker

They kept the head out of sight. They chopped off the head but they kept it out of sight.

It was a bright and blown out day as I walked down to the house on the corner. The national football team had won that morning and there were groups of revellers still swaying out of the pubs, thumping one another on the arms and singing snatches of patriotic songs. Families bobbed down the hill on the way to town: mothers in sandals that slapped on the hot tarmac, fathers pushing prams with gaudy helium balloons tied round the handles. The warm weather had turned the city into a festival.

But as I walked round the high street the crowds began to thin. As the road dipped I passed into shadow and shivered, cold now I was out of the sun. I had been to the house before but found myself lost in the coiling warren of streets leading down to the valley, and I had to consult the map on my phone to find my way. Men taking advantage of the day to wash their cars stared up at me as I passed, their eyes suspicious under their flat caps. I nodded stiffly and continued on my way.

I heard the party before I saw the house. I heard laughter, the murmur of voices, the clink of glasses drifting across the little gardens with their hanging trees. Suddenly the side passage loomed before me. I steeled myself, and went in.

At the party were people I knew, and people I did not. I scanned the faces and saw gaiety, ease, yet underneath something else. It was subtle but it was there. I saw hunger.

None of the guests were eating. The host came out numerous times, then went back inside the house. Next door a family were getting ready to leave for an afternoon out; there was a picnic bag, cameras, games for the children, and I got the impression that our host was waiting for these simple folk to depart before he commenced our proceedings.

There was no mistaking it, a palpable air of anticipation now filled the garden. The house was built into the side of a steep hill, and the garden stepped down on crooked levels. The guests were congregated on the patio on the lowest step, huddled on chairs and stools. The positioning of the trees and fences meant that this small area was entirely hidden from the outside world. On the top step of the garden was a table with supplies arrayed upon it.

Between the guests and the table stood the locker. The host had brought this locker specially for the occasion. It was old and chipped. The inner shelves had been removed and discarded. The locker's door was closed tight, a deep colour smeared around the handle.

We waited.

Finally the neighbours left, and the host emerged from the darkness of the house. In one hand he carried tongs; in the other a large metal cleaver.

The door of the locker was swung open. The head had already been chopped off and was kept out of sight. The host removed the smoked body, and the party, held in check for so many hours, was now able to begin.

- - -

So that was a writing prompt I came across, an exercise that suggested writing about your day as if it were a mystery story (though I guess I wrote more of a horror?). Arron and Pat smoked a pig, is what happened, and had everyone round to Arron's for a barbecue. Being a vegetarian I wasn't exactly elated at the idea, but the animal had been ethically farmed, and I do think if you're going to eat a living creature it's only right that you take responsibility for that, are prepared to do the butchering yourself. Anyway, I ate veggie burger, hung out for a while, then came home. Now I'm going to leave this here because I've been going to bed way too late recently, and if I stop right now I can read for half an hour in bed and still get a good night's sleep before work in the morning, and to be honest that sounds sublime.

Ciao x