I am having a wee struggle at the moment. The foul beast of my mind is in residence once more, hence the lack of posts most recent.
You be the judge of my words below. Click the angel if you are beyond the read.
Hamish xxx
Children and animals know; they really do know.
Life and people are seen with extreme objectivity, and then they tell it like it is. The façade worn by angel or demon alike, counts for nought beneath their gaze. Both child and beast will keep a distance and a wary eye about them when such things are encountered. Animals may hiss and spit; charge perhaps. Children will scream, run, or remain glued to one spot, pants and a single sock dampening as a result of any of those three. Yet due to these responses, life and generations have continued.
Ϟ
Around morning tea time any number of years ago, Agatha McGuire, aged six and three quarters, an age when the ‘three quarters’ is still a defining part of being, had found a woman standing in her front yard. The woman, which she most definitely was, was old. Old in the mind of time lost, not old in the manner of grandparents; however, to grandparents, they would have called her ‘middle aged’, or ‘in her prime’. Yet, Agatha knew that she was older than the tales of the Pharaohs she had seen in her elder brother’s books.
The woman, who Agatha saw through her mind’s eye as ‘The Lady’, was swarthy on first glance; changing to heavily burnt by the sun when second glance’s caught up.
‘The Lady’ was dressed in the cliché garb of a witch the likes found within children’s illustrated versions of ‘Grimm’s Tales’. Creases and crags making her face the face of the first ever nightmare in the history of bad dreams. Her skirts were filthy and much patched; they dragged along the ground with every bow legged step she made.
Her back was the shape of a question mark.
More closely, the foul stench of her slid over all that she encountered, its grotesqueness clinging to bodies as crude oil coats sea birds. Her voice, a susurration from the crypt.
‘The Woman’ however bore garments of the kind associated with those of a more bohemian nature. Long dark skirts and colourful blouses; the tresses of her raven hair fell beneath her shoulders. She gave the impression of someone in a cliché role with a crystal ball before her. Her face was a mixture of beauty and handsomeness, chiselled and sharp, with no excess of flesh, a slightly over largemouth comprised of extraordinarily red lips setting off the whiteness of her teeth, and the pinkness of her gums.
‘The Lady’ on the other hand, and whilst the very same person as ‘The Woman’, was scrawny and haggard; no more than a skin covered animated corpse. Lank thinning metallic grey locks clinging to her face. The face misery forgot.
‘The Woman’ had a lithe appearance. Not the athletic appearance of a prepubescent boy, as is the trend these days, rather the litheness and shape of femininity. Breast and hip far from wanting. Both were oft the cause of a fathers increase in pulse; and more than one grandfather’s palpitation.
Ϟ
Squaring her small shoulders, Agatha said simply “you shouldn’t be in our yard”, at the same moment a black cat with white markings walked forward from behind an unidentifiable and equally unloved shrub, to rub against her skinny white legs. It then sat beside her right bare foot, fixing the lady with an unblinking feline stare.
‘The Lady’ rasped, “Stinking cretin, you dare question me?”
‘The Woman’ said in silken tones, “a fair statement beautiful child, why do you say such a thing?”
Ϟ
Click the angel.
The World Turned Upside Down 
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