Version 1 after first round with Editor
Dressed in faded denims, he wandered past bottles wrapped in shining glittered paper for the connoisseurs of fine liquors. His shirt was stained and punctured with wear. Jeans stretched, they hung loosely around his buttocks and were frayed at the ankles. Sweat gathered in black shavings where the plastic straps of his thongs rubbed his toes. And he shuffled around the aisles, parted the hair away from his eyes and stared along the display for the right whisky.
Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels, saturated. Free to use, no attribution required. Was Alice right after all?
And the blossoms swung gently descending, gently suspended and gently falling through the air until they slid to a halt on the floor, each laid open and silently breathing.
A Thai soldier adjusts his steel-rimmed sunglasses. He stands legs astride, feels the tension in his thighs, holds the gun from the hip. He raises a bottle of whisky to his lips, eats glass he does and watches old American war movies. Likes to sprinkle bullets in the air when he's alone, and when he's not he fucks with boots on. She can see her face in the shine.
To the left, the broken dam had caused the valley flood… The water chased the road around each curve, disappeared behind cleared out mounds of mud then came back to swamp them in a pall of grey mist. Black trees stuck out leafless and drowning, isolated stick creatures stretched out as frozen cracks on the surface. Wooden huts sat like fat shining slugs on gnarled logs in the water, some huddled close, linked with rotting planks, while others were pushed away from the pack, as if they had quietly lost their mooring and had absent-mindedly floated away.
Penang, Malaysia
“Cholera is not that serious. You can cure it easily…”
A pale moon, the color of muslin, lit the town with the soft touch of cat’s fur. It remained un-wavered by thin grey wisps of cloud that passed in front; the streets were dark with shadows that bulged and re-formed as the figures moved through them, slow stately figures gliding like statues on air, and the women treaded with the soft pat of thongs as girls who kicked puffs of dirt around them flitted this way and that behind serene mothers.
It was on a new continent that I pushed past the hustle and bustle of the main streets and followed the line along the shore. Further from the town piles of rejected drums lay like scattered rocks by the roadside. The Garifuna are famous for their drumming. On a boat to Caye Caulker a man had advised that the only good accommodation was three bamboo tree houses hidden away in a small bay further south; he kept repeating, “Go to the tree houses, go to the tree houses.”
Photo by Shankar S. License CC BY 2.0 DEED
Rory sensed that I wanted to be alone so he arranged to meet me later that evening, then he flagged a jeepney to take him to Smokey Mountain. I just wandered around town.
Karin was with a friend. They came over together, grabbed another chair for our table, and then they sat down. Karin looked pleased to see me. Her friend looked at me with contempt. I didn't look pleased to see Karin.
Karin skipped through the barriers and past a security guard. She took one final look back at me, over her shoulder and her eyes were green as the misty slopes of her Cambrian childhood, glistening despite the cold neon lights.
