Singe

We’d – well – she‘d frightened off the workers.  Two kids against two tonnes of round men, who knew?  She did.

Find me a branch she’d barked at me.  When I found something on the floor, she slapped my face.  A BRANCH.  Not a FUCKING TWIG.  Oh.  Okay.  Something else then.  My cheeks were red, one with cold and the other with the slap.  I found a thick length, taller than me, and I held it to her apologetically.

She looked it up and down.  Yeah, it’ll do. 

I held it whilst she squirted the lower half with lighter fluid.  When she stood back and lit a cigarette, I didn’t realise what you’ve already guessed.  With a flick of the wrist, the smouldering dog end left her fingers, and the wood flared into life.

We stormed the building site.  She flashed that flaming torch in the faces of the confused workers, shouting that we were both covered in petrol.  Then she sat down on an oil drum, her heels clanging against it.  They backed off.

The plan was to bring out the site foreman.  My biological father.  Who’d left me as an infant but who’d named me after him, so I could become him, and continue his miserable line.  The selfish cunt.  It worked.  Out from a portacabin slammed a door and I saw my face but decades older.

She pressed a knife against my palm, her sticky lips to my ear, whispering… Cry Havok!  And Let Slip The Dogs Of War…

Author: jimmicampkin

Writer and photographer (and occasional other things) currently living in the North East of England. Everything is my own unless otherwise stated. So blame me. View all posts by jimmicampkin