Sometimes the children would come out and play for a few minutes before they found another body in the playground’s sandpit and they had to go home. This pleased Larry greatly. The sound of children screaming always meant that another meal had been left out for him. He didn’t care much for sand, but he cared very much for brains.

The days would go by very much the same. The sun would rise, Larry would try to eat the faces of pedestrians, poop on cars and generally just be a massive arsehole. The sky would turn from black to red to orange to blue and find solace again in the dark. The sun would move across the sky and Larry with it, across mountains (of concrete) and streams (usually of urine).

And now Larry sat atop the office building looking out, preening himself with his manky foot that most pigeons seem to have for some reason. Soon the office workers would go home for tea, to eat, to sleep, to invariably dream about ending their lives, to wake up and come back tomorrow. Larry had made a right fucking mess of their roof. He was an unwelcome sight and an unwelcome smell, just the way he liked it. He was covered in what can only be assumed to be layers of shit, but he did not mind. This roof was his kingdom, dead rats and all.

Then Tim, Larry’s pigeon friend, flew over and landed beside him. Tim was one of those pigeons that was born with the unusually common trait of stealing chips from children.

‘Wanna see something awesome?’, asked Tim.

‘Yeah, alright’, said Larry.

Larry watched as Tim flew away from the rooftop and directly into the wall opposite. Tim slid down the wall and landed on the pavement with a satisfying thud. Larry flew down and looked at his friend smeared all over the wall, brains all over the pavement.

‘You’re right’, Larry said as he was getting ready to eat Tim’s brain, ‘that was pretty awesome’.

The old Asian man behind the counter didn’t look up from his paper as I put the milk bottles on the counter. I had a quick glance round the shop: booze lined the walls and a thin carpet of shit lined the floor. The newspaper headline read Sweetcorn Shortage in Russia gets Worse, and there was a fridge full of sandwiches just behind me. He said, ’That’ll be £4.83’ and I gave him the money for the milk and left the shop.

It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

The next day I ventured once more into the newsagents to purchase a sandwich for lunch. Going to the shop was a short journey from my office and coupled with the fact that I wasn’t yet too au fait with the city and was afraid of being stabbed in the face, it was the best place to go. I chose a cheese and ham sandwich and put it on the counter. He didn’t look up from his newspaper, this time emblazoned with the title Russian Politician Replaces Penis with Broccoli, but commented ‘£2.65’ absently. I placed the money on the counter and left the shop.

Each day I would return, and each day I would be silently updated on Russia’s vegetable situation. He would never look up from his paper, but would always inform me of how much currency I owed him: I bought the same sandwich every day and his phrase never changed. It was a workable relationship, steady and monotonous. Exactly the type of affair you want to have on your lunch break. I was practically ready to make love to him, until one day… there were no more sandwiches.

‘The sandwich people are on holiday’, he said.

Shocked and  a little bit terrified by the fact he had opted to say something other than ‘£2.65’, I turned round from the fridge to face him and his paper-face: Petit-Pois Destroy Kremlin: Russians Peeved. I had no time to laugh. This was a desperate situation.

‘What… all of them? All of the sandwich people?’

‘Yeah, pretty much’

And that was that. I wasn‘t able to buy a sandwich. Nor the day after that. Nor the day after that. There was a sandwich-shaped hole in my heart that only this old Asian man would be able to fill. My days would be filled with regret and hunger.

It had been approximately a week since the sandwich people had gone on holiday and left me cold and alone. I had taken to inserting Frazzles between two pieces of paper (which turned out to be marginally better than the sandwiches from the newsagents), when one of my work colleagues asked me what the Hell I was eating.

‘I’m eating Frazzles and paper. Obviously’

‘You do realise you’re the only person in the world who buys sandwiches from that shop?’, she replied, with only a hint of sandwich smugness.

‘Well, where do you guys go for lunch?’

‘There’s a cob shop round the corner from the newsagents. They’re much nicer and they don’t make sandwiches out of shit’.

It sounded amazing.

Thus, the day after I walked past the newsagents and saw the old man sat behind his paper once more. I continued to walk a little further on to the cob shop, knowing in my heart that these cobs would never be as good as the terrible sandwiches from the newsagents, served with a side helping of cold indifference. I purchased a cheese and ham cob, and then took a bite… oh dear God of all sandwich awesomeness. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it genuinely wasn’t made from shit, but was instead made from real cob-like materials. Sheer joy had me walk past the newsagents without even looking in on the way back to the office. Had I done, I might have seen the newsagent glance up from his paper…

The next day I went to the cob shop again. Their slogan ‘It’s a cob, not a bap maaaayte’ filled my heart with glee as the chubby cob woman filled my bready buns with cheese and ham goodness. This time I didn’t look into the newsagents, so engrossed by what can only be described as the face of God having been grated and put in my sandwich. Had I looked however, I might have seen that the newsagent today had not picked up his paper at all, but instead had watched me from the window…

And the next day I went to the cob shop again, having experienced cob withdrawal symptoms during the night. I had only been able to rub a piece of bread on my face in the morning and now, by this afternoon, I was hungry for my daily dose of cob greatness. This time I ran past the newsagents back to my office without even thinking to spare a glance to the man I had left behind. These cobs were too fantastic. It was as though they had been made from cake and biscuits, only in the form of bread and sandwich filling. I loved them and the hole in my heart had been filled! Never again would I look into the window of the lowly newsagents and the old man; yet had I done, I might have seen him pawing at the window, hands brimming with sandwiches, and eyes filled with tears…

Archbishop Hatto looked upon the scene with coolness and disinterest upon his face, yet upon his heart danced a fervent awareness. He saw the bubbling of flesh and the blackening of bone; heard the screams of the beggars growing more incomprehensible as their bodies grew more disfigured. Some carcasses shrunk with the heat, others still barely alive fought against their restraints. The flashes of fire licking at the heels of the persecuted reflected in Hatto’s eyes, and suddenly he could not control himself. He had burned these men, and they were leaving this life in a horrific and violent fashion. He rose to his feet…

‘Listen to my mice!’, he exclaimed with delight, ‘Listen to my mice squeal!’

The night brought with it dreams of fire and demise. Rolling in unconscious ecstasy, Hatto recalled the screams of the beggars as their skin grew tighter and burst, exposing their innards which trembled under the incredible heat. He dreamt of their faces melting and their mouths, dripping with skin and blood and fear, trying to scream, and producing only gargling noises as the acid from their stomachs boiled and rose into their throats. Hatto yelled at the crowd to hear his mice squeal, his subjects to listen to his rodents die in a fit of fire and anguish; ‘Listen to my mice squeal! Listen to my mice squeal!’. Utter pleasure, unmitigated joy! But then another dream… Hatto felt the drone of the town square fall further into the distance and he was pulled backwards into the very room where he slept. He heard scurrying at the door, hastening and frantic. All of a sudden the mice were upon him, clawing at his face and gnawing at his clothes. There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, and he ran- not to escape the mice, but to feel the excitement of the chase; the cheap thrill of his impending doom.

Hatto ran to the tower in the middle of the Rhine and  began to ascend the stairs. Behind him he could hear the violent scurrying of his pursuers. He slowed as he reached the top, afraid that they would not catch him, but he need not have worried. They swamped him at the final step, engulfing his body in the warm embrace of  a cruelly delightful end, fabricated with teeth and claws.

And alas, Hatto sharply awoke from his dream, but in a haze of nausea and satisfaction. He would say that punishment of the body rectified the soul for the union with God. The lewd smile upon his face told of other intentions.

The next day the Archbishop gave the order for the tower in the Rhine to be coated with pigs blood; an unusual request by most standards, but logical when weighed against the peril of burning. The servants climbed to the very top of the tower, slitting the throats of pigs and allowing the blood to ooze down the stairs. The servants found themselves swathed in blood, and many slipped and fell to the bottom of the tower. Death awaited them here, nestling in the blood of swine. Hatto did not find reason to have their bodies removed. They were dead, they would attract the mice faster. They would serve their purpose in death more so than in life.

As evening fell, the servants were ushered from the tower. Hatto remained at the top, heart palpitating with the knowledge that soon his body would be ripped into pieces. His torch illuminated  his platform- the cold tower below his body felt like a stage from which he would make his way into death, into everlasting life, into an eternity filled with pain and misery. The servants left the doors to the tower open as they left, displaying the inner sanctum of the tower filled with blood and the bodies of their fallen friends. Many wondered about the intentions of their Archbishop, and many knew that the blood would attract the mice, almost too large in size and ferociously hungry for human fatality. They waited patiently for the piece to commence.

By nightfall, the hordes began approaching from the sewers and from the barns. Attracted by the scent of blood and decaying organs, they made their way to the foot of the tower. The doors had been left wide open and the stench of death had made its way across the town.  The villagers did not shut their windows in disgust, but instead watched with morbid curiosity; they had finished making love, their appetites were ravenous for death once more.

Atop the tower Hatto had fallen to his knees, looking down the staircase with eager anticipation. He could hear the mounds of mice crawling in, such as in his dream, crushing the bodies of the fallen with their tiny feet amplified by ten thousand. He lay himself down where the trail of blood ended, and waited. And here he waited, eyes so awake and resting upon the moon which flew above him, soon to be clouded by the gentle ripping by fur of death.

And so an hour passed, yet the mice had still not come. Numb from the cold night air, Hatto found his feet and peered into the tower, yet the darkness had made it so that he was unable to see the glorious wreck of human life which lay at the bottom. Knowing that should he approach the hordes himself that his dream would not be realised, Hatto took his torch and threw it down the centre of the tower. The villagers watching intently from their windows would see flashes of light as the torch descended, though the slits in the tower’s exterior, punctuated by intervals of cold stone. And upon reaching the bottom, all including Hatto could see the grotesque display: thousands of gorged mice, feasting on the remnants of the deceased. Their eyeballs ripped from their faces and lips torn away and devoured. Little remained of the bodies, and those rats which had gorged themselves first had fallen lazily to the bottom and had been crushed by those above; exploding casually and combining into a great mire at the bottom of the tower. Those mice still alive were too engorged to climb the stairs and instead lay in the repulsive soup of human organs and mice remnants. Hatto’s position revealed to him a great, writhing mass of death that he so wanted to be a part of. The villagers instead saw a pool of innards and blood, pieces of hair and skin, and bile and fat congealing and trapping alive mice; their rampant squeals not unlike those of the burned beggars. To them, it was exhilarating… the torch suddenly ignited the pools of human and mice fat which swamped the tower, setting the entire scene ablaze. The tower was alive with the burning irony of death. Many of the villagers applauded.

Hatto felt nausea overcome his body and he backed away from the apex of the staircase, unable now to watch his glorious death being decimated. His reality had not lived up to his fantasy, and suddenly this impossible realisation had caused  the Archbishop‘s soul to become troubled. He staggered back in the dark, and without the glow of the torch now eradicating the bodies of thousands below him, he found his way accidentally to the very edge of the tower. Here, he teetered and wrestled with his great weight, unsure of whether he had ever woken up from his dream; the Rhine below him was welcoming and unforgiving. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to fall backwards, dreaming of a death that was long and sorrowful. This was his dream. This had been what he had lived for. As his body smashed on the rocks below the tower however, his death was cut short. A sharp crack to his skull caused his brain matter to seep out onto the rocks, attracting the gulls and other scavengers of tragedy. His fantasy was not realised, even in his very last dream. His death had come too quick.

The mice had driven him to his death, and for days the villagers crowded around the tower and watched his body decay  upon the rocks. Their executor and architect of murder had gone… and by this, they were greatly saddened. But still, his body provided a means of entertainment during the hot summer weeks.

Once he had decayed completely, they would go back to fornicating.

To my left the windowsill beneath this picturesque scene was adorned with books: children’s hospital books, of different sizes and colours. The title ’13 O’Clock’ drew my attention. A paradox to a 7 year old; a clock that reached 13? Decadent, interesting. To my right 12 junior doctors smiled at me with a romanticised patheticism. I wondered if they’d ever heard of a clock that had reached 13. They would see many after me, but today I was one of their firsts. One of a hundred thousand… though it always hurts the first time. Their white coats, rugged clipboards and bespeckled faces were the very height of nineties medical fashion. Later they’d retire into the staff room and fuck each other until the windowsills were dripping with sweat. My windowsill was covered with books.

I lay in my white vest and pants and wondered at the marvel of the hospital. I had been here before, but never to be seen, to be treated. It was an adventure. The orange streetlamps had glistened in the window on the drive, the faint hum of Queen fading into the distance with every frantic turn. Here my bed was my ship, the junior doctors my crew. They took notes not on my medical requirements, but on how to drive a harpoon into a giant octopus’s eye. Their smiles were not of apparent total disinterest, but instead had developed from years of seafaring and general exploration. Their smiles were of the weary and battle-hallowed, and I was to trust them with my life.

They stuck needles in the back of my hand and drew my blood every hour, on the hour. My parents offered me Pepsi that tasted like blood, and kept me waiting with promises of Christmas Eve. The night bought with it majesty and darkness; the x-ray screens would grow dim and then bright with the passing of time. In the morning my Father asked if I should like to read a book. Picking ’13 O’Clock’ from the windowsill, the excitement caused my vision to swim, and my heart to begin screaming yes. But with the defiant perseverance of a seven year old waiting in the hospital, I abruptly found my mouth mumbling no.

Reading would hurt my eyes, tire my brain, I said, swell my heart, relieve the ache of my illness. This was my ship and I was it’s captain, I would sacrifice my joy for the sake of my crew. I didn’t think I was ill, not really, but the promise of blood Pepsi for every minute I lay in my vest was too alluring. My sacrifice would gain their respect and loyalty. I would refuse to read but consume their attention willingly.

We returned the book to the windowsill.

Thus, years later it would be proven not be the thousands of needles which would penetrate my flesh, nor the blood tests which blackened the ends of my fingers which were found the most painful. The quiet acceptance of a lifetime of the strange would be acceptable by comparison to the ache of the book long lost, a regret at the futility of a seven year olds logic, punished by the sadness of a lifetime. I had stood proudly upon my ship as it had sank to the bottom of a lake filled with blood Pepsi. 14 years later I remain, drowning leisurely.

The streetlamps had glistened on the drive home. They did not shine as brightly as before.

Working class women love karaoke. Ka-ra-oke. A curious proposition. Stockings and wine. White and red faces. An evening of pitch and weeding. They asked me to find the fish, but the drilling on the left side of my brain hadn’t gone away.

Working class women love karaoke. Sat on the floor with a puzzle book playing spot-the-difference and squirting cream into my mouth. Mother said we’d all get pregnant without globes made of glass and spare train parts. I’d always build globes from muffins. Accounted for the broken heart, at least.

Working class women love karaoke. On the way home I tore ribbons of skin from my feet and laughed to myself about the black hole sat on my shoulder. It stole my thoughts and left me in the room with Harry Pollitt. He had never quite appreciated the terror.

Woke up with a stranger’s hand down my trousers and a bar of soap in my pocket. Went back to sleep.

It was a beautiful evening as he turned left to speed down the hill. The tall Victorian houses sped like motion pictures as he passed them, and the road grew steeper. Ahead of him he could see the sky; such a perfect blue, with wisps of clouds growing from the corners of the pink horizon. He breathed a sigh of relief; his last breath, he fancied. He was going to lose his home and his wife; he was going to lose his job, he had been diagnosed with depression. A kind of ‘What’s the Point?’ sentiment had took over him recently. But all that kept him alive was this beautiful scene that he saw everyday. The houses and the skies, as though the colours had been made just for him, and just for him alone. He was coming to the end of the street. He held his breath. One turn and it would be all over: a car would run him over and he would die in the most perfect place of all. He could hardly wait. Sam turned the corner and… carried on riding. There had been no car today.

Perhaps tomorrow.

…

The next day was more beautiful than the last. The sky was orange as Sam sped down the hill. Out of the corner of his eye he could almost see the ghosts of the residents past in the old Victorian houses. Their grand statures, made of brick and fantasy, cheered him on as he gathered speed towards the end of the road. Today would be the day. The most beautiful day of all. He opened his eyes as wide as he could as he prepared to take his last breath and turned the corner… but there was no car today either.

Perhaps tomorrow.

…

For weeks Sam turned the corner, wishing to die. To leave the world surrounded by the most cosy beauty that he had ever known. He wished for death each day and would ride his green bike with earnest past the derelict houses. They had known loss, just as he had done. His desire to die was so deep, for there was nothing left to do but to die when faced with such unfathomable beauty. It wasn’t so much their faces that he adored, but what they had lived. He could hardly explain it. They were not corporate. They were not clinical. They were open and warm and loving. They knew the value of life and family, they had been loved and now lay derelict. They personified Sam’s own heart. He saw them everyday and knew them, just as they knew him. He took his last breath and turned the corner… but there was no car today either.

Perhaps tomorrow.

…

Then one day Sam received a call from his boss. His job was going to be safe. After weeks of uncertainty, his position would be secured. This now also meant that his home was safe, that he could live there until the end of his days. This was such wonderful news, but Sam still knew in his heart that he wanted to die: perfection would not be overshadowed by living. But then Sam also received a call from his wife; she wasn’t going to leave him after all. She’d made a terrible mistake. Sam was so happy, but still he wanted to die. It was his destiny, he thought.

And so he once more turned down the street. But as he moved quickly past all of the old houses, their loving understanding reaching into his very soul and he realised that were he to die, he would never be able to see this place ever again. No longer would he see the sky contrasting against the buildings stretching in every direction. There would be no more beauty. And at once he took his first breath; the first breath in a long time that he was certain of. Today he wanted to be alive. Today he had his home, his wife, his job, and his way home forever. He wanted to live, he was certain of it now. He  was careful as he turned the corner, but then… CRASH! There was a car today.

And there would be no tomorrow.

The aisles of the supermarket are silent. Canned music plays over the speakers. A cold night pumped full of artificial air. Nothing to do. Nothing to do but to wait to go home, or to die. Whichever would come sooner.

The time is still 20:58 and I am sat on the floor, working packets. I push them to the floor just to pick them up again. I do this several times over. It is still 20:58.

There is a child screaming in my ear. It is wearing a pink coat with orange shoes. A terrible combination. Someone should just kick it. I wish someone would kick it. Why won’t somebody kick it? It screams in my face and the parents move to the next aisle. It is still 20:58 and the child is still screaming.

Outside the cool night air embraces those who are living. I am sat on the floor surrounded by packets of underwear. I knock some more on the floor. I will work until I die. This task will accompany me to the end of my life. Hundreds of packets of underwear everyday for eighty years. A worthwhile existence. It is still 20:58.

My shift would end later and I would go home, eat a chicken cob, and go to bed. Then I would wake up and come to work and sit on the floor and tidy packets.

My buttocks had become numb. So had my brain.

I looked at the clock. The time was 20:57.

And so with tomorrow my hair was fixed and I became sassy and tremendous once more. But there remained a single fragment of red: a red spot upon my hand where the gloves had split. No amount of soap and water would rid it. Nor toothpaste. Nor battery acid. I couldn’t stand the silent ridicule from my work colleagues and friends; non-existent, but potent. A secret ginger. Caught red-handed. I could stand it no longer.

I took a glass bowl from the kitchen and emptied the contents of a bleach bottle into it. And then another. And then another. Then I plunged my hand into the bowl and waited.

For hours I sat, growing dizzy from the bleach. It smelled chemical and carbolic. There was also the faint scent of biscuits from my liquefying flesh. My hand burned without respite. My skin crawled all over my body, pulling up from my arm, trying to sever itself from the dangerous mixture at the end of my hand. I drifted in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I was walking into the warmth of a swimming pool; other times I was in a bakery devouring donuts and being sick on the Christmas cakes; but most of the time I was sat in a bathroom, dissolving my hand in a glass bowl filled with bleach.

Eventually the pain stopped, but the smell was overpowering. The nerves in my hand had dissolved, but my nose was still greeted by the remnants of my flesh, soaked in a cocktail of Toilet Duck and Lemon Scented Household Bleach. Disturbing and delicious. I pulled my hand from the bowl with great difficulty and lay on the floor for a few hours more, the bleach running from my hand gently dripping onto the bathroom floor tiles, making them fizz and hiss.

Finally I opened my eyes and looked at my hand. It was no longer recognisable: it had become a sludgy mess of red liquid and exposed bone, partially dissolved and utterly destroyed. I pulled myself to my feet and looked in the mirror. I was horribly disfigured… but at least I wasn’t ginger.

The woman at the desk wore a yellow shirt and a happy smile, contrasting dangerously against the glum blue hue of the walls. I’d have torn out her throat, but blood doesn’t soak well into the leaves of potted plastic plants. Instead I took my seat and waited to be called.

The woman who collected me smelled strongly of cheap perfume, and her multi-coloured vest top lay over her crinkled skin and harmonised very closely with the yellow of her teeth. She led me through the dreary corridors, past rooms filled with silence and the told words of the agonised and afraid. Our room had no windows. The woman’s blue eyeshadow told of a dinner lady, having taken a wrong turn and having been adorned with the bright coloured clothes of the psychiatric ward of the hospital. She smiled at me and held her pen between her old, frail fingers. Today she would be serving patronisation.

Some days were worse than others. Today I was careless and fuelled with thoughts of disarray. I had been here before, a thousand times perhaps, in different rooms and with different nurses, all with a cheery smile and a chest without a heart. I was interesting if I was bleeding. Today I was only mordant.

She asked me if I had any obsessive thoughts recently. I told her that I had. She asked me if I had tried to harm myself recently. I told her that I had. She asked me if I had planned to kill myself again. I told her that I had a bag of various pills that I had collected over the years, just incase. She told me that it was dangerous to have these pills because I lived in the same house as a 12 year old. I told her that being 12 doesn’t necessarily make you an idiot, nor a master locksmith. Nor a zookeeper for that matter.

She told me that pills were dangerous. I told her that oxygen was dangerous, if you had too much of it. And water. And love. And chicken. She asked me if the television ever spoke to me, and I told her that of course it did; how else would I know what stuff to buy? She asked me if I was full of doubt, and I told her that I was mostly made up of water.

She wrote something down on her clip board and told me that she would be in touch, and to have a good day. On the way out I noticed a single real plant, with luscious green leaves in a ceramic pot. The next time I would be bringing my knife.

An old woman walked into the aisle and started pondering about the dressing gowns. A portly Asian woman wearing a Christmas hat rolled in from the other end and stood, panting, next to the pyjama bottoms. They were pink and fluffy: like giant marshmallows gone horribly wrong. I was trapped for the time being and so turned my attention to the pants that someone had taken the time to dump behind my nicely sized pyjama sets. I would have grumbled, but was so numb from the never-ending boredom that sticking an electric whisk in my own eye would have been a preferable distraction. I was glad to have something to do. I turned to put the pants on my rail.

Suddenly the old woman appeared at my elbow, ‘Do you see her?!’

‘See who?’

‘The woman!’ She quickly peeked over my shoulder, ‘That woman over there!’

‘I, uh…’

‘I’ve seen her somewhere before… in the paper! She was in the paper! She’s been stealing pregnancy tests from the chemists and selling ‘em off down Donnington Market! There was a “Have You Seen This Woman?” thing in the paper!’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really! I swear it’s her! She’s the same build… she’s even wearing the same hat. The same hat! What are you waiting for? Go and get a Telegraph, girl, quick!’

I flung the pants on my rail and ran to the kiosk at the front of the store, as though this was something important enough to be running for. Screw it… I’ve got fuck all else to do! I started running faster. I quickly grabbed a paper with a ‘I have no time to explain’ kind of glance to everyone that was watching (no-one), and ran back to the old woman.

The Asian woman had gone, but the old lady had set up office on the floor. She had turned her basket upside down to make a little table, and the glasses on her face were a keen indicator that she meant business. Oh-ho, did she mean business.

‘I tried to look through it but I was running, and I…’

‘Give it here, dearie, let’s take a look at it!’

She took the paper from me and leafed through it like a professional. This was probably how she spent most of her days: sat on the floor in a supermarket, looking through the papers for criminals. I sat down with her.

‘This is actually the most interesting thing that’s happened to me all day’

‘She was wearing the same hat!’

‘Yeah, what a bitch like! Have you found it?’

She reached the end of the paper and shook her head. ‘It’s in here somewhere… I’ll go through it again!’

Ten minutes we sat together on the floor, like retired superheroes. She, retired I fancied from a broken hip and myself, retired from the realisation that I would never be as good as the paper-wielding old woman using a basket as desk. We would wear pyjamas as capes when the time came for us to once again go kick some ass.

‘I don’t think it’s in here! Maybe it was last night’s edition? Oh dearie, I am so sorry. It’s the old Alzheimer’s you see’. I became lost in my thoughts. She seemed to deflated: the fat hatted woman was probably long gone by now. It was over. We had lost. We had been left to gather dust in the crevices of the supermarket.

I heard a small cough.

‘I’m 83 dear, you’re going to have to help me up’

‘Oh right, yeah!’ I helped her up, ‘I’m sorry we didn’t find the article… at least it was a bit of fun’

‘If only there was some way to see it’

‘Wait… there is! Most of the articles in the paper get put up online as well. What if I was to have a look online, and then just let you know when you’re next in?’

‘That’s a wonderful idea!’ she exclaimed, and peered at my nametag, ‘The next time I am in, I shall have to look you up!’

And with that she was gone… lost in a swirl of ladies lingerie and assorted slippers. I beamed from the encounter: finally a customer who didn’t want to gut me because we’d ran out of socks! I wandered back over to my rail, but it had been cleared. One of the seasonal colleagues had likely done it. The day had suddenly become agreeable. I wouldn’t be needing the electric whisk in my eye socket after all.

When I got home, I kept my promise to the old lady. I searched online for the article and then finally found it: ‘Picture clue to shoplifter who targeted chemists three times’. And there, set neatly amongst the text, and magnificently printed in colour was the picture… of my old lady. With a Christmas hat. And several pregnancy tests in her bag.

My mouth gawped open slightly as I backed away from the computer, before suddenly realising… my pants! The old woman had nicked them off the rail and shoved them in her bag! She’d stolen my pants and my precious time. My buttocks had become dusty because of her. What a devious old bag. And then I started clapping… 83 years old and she spends her time stealing pregnancy tests and underwear whilst fucking over the young and unsuspecting. This woman was basically the woman I wanted to be when I was a pensioner.

I couldn’t bring myself to call the police. She’d stolen my heart when she stole my pants.

Bravo, old lady, bravo.