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(Page 3 of 8) The Cuckoo pt 2 by Luke Allison The sodden air that coursed through my lungs tasted of shit and swill, cast up from a thousand homes and ten thousand bodies.
Down the track I flew, rows of brittle shacks and patchwork huts flitting by in my periphery, corners and turns appearing every few hundred feet.
Up a hill here, sloshing through a puddle of some unknown detritus, down a hill there, jumping over a figure who sprawled in the middle of the street drunk and unaware of the chase which cut through his world.
And, inexorably, I heard from behind me the wheezing, coughing, mucous panting which haunted my every desperate tread.
My mind began to process, even as my vision darkened and my lungs yearned for air. How much more alive was I now, having pushed through the door and come to brave whatever the city had to offer my innocence? How many times had my muscles protested for lack of purpose even as my Mum cooed and attempted to hem me in with love and despair? How many could greet the Artist and say that their lives, however fleeting or perennial, had ended as breathlessly as this?
A huge grin began to twist across my bile-smeared lips even as I passed through the ramshackle gate which marked the end of Heel Crescent and my tattered shoes began to slap on the splintered corduroy road of The Slake.
Where the area surrounding my house had been abandoned but for voices, The Slake was spattered with various examples of life, and several windows framed candles which cast a soft glow onto the timber path before me.
Tall, narrow buildings crowded in on me from all sides, and as I passed by a dimly lit doorway, I heard a voice yell out from beneath the stoop and a hand came out of nowhere to narrowly miss my face.
"Keep running, slag!"
I spit towards the barking man who crouched nursing a jug of some homemade grog and then obeyed him.
Behind me, I heard him growl, "Rapine," then louder, "Rapine!"
From my left, a reedy female voice repeated the call, followed by a cry from one of the upper stories above me. I stopped and turned, glancing back over my shoulder to see the sweat-beaded figure of my pursuer crouching at the lee of the entry gate. He was indeed a man, fully formed phallus hanging flaccid between bow legs, cratered chest heaving up and down, and face hidden effectively by the shadows created by the candles which now appeared in the hands of several people who were emerging like ants out into the street. To either side they stood, two men and three women, wrapped in ragged clothing, hair tangled, thrusting the flames forward into the womb of the enticing night.
"Rapine," said the dirt-smeared woman who stood closest to me.
"Rapine," echoed the dessicated man to her right. He swung his candle towards me, and my night-eased eyes watered fiercely in the light. For a moment, I felt something strange enter my being. A glimmer, a fleeting shape.
Hope. Hope in my fellow man.
Then he drew from his belt a jagged blade.
"I have fourteen on the boy."
"Fuck your fourteen," said a stocky man who wiped a string of saliva from his shirtfront.
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