Smoking in the Fringes of the Strange

I always go out for a cigarette at one am, moon, cloud, frost, snow or the clinging humidity of warmer months that means I can never sleep. But whatever the weather I always prefer to be outside.

For my home lies on the fringes of the strange.

The strange is defined by a complex mathematical function that makes no sense in our world. Things can flit across the fringe in both directions unimpeded, but take on a radically different form when they do so, a spinor function that resolves all life into true pure forms rather than crude three dimensional representations.

This is not as glorious as you would think.

It just reveals the endless baseness of humanity. I will be there smoking a Camel Light, and I see at the end of the driveway an attractive woman in Victorian dress carrying a parasol – I know, a parasol at night. She asks for a cigarette, and as I say yes, she crosses the border of the strange, and becomes a spitting monster in Paul's Boutique, who demands “a fag” and threatens to have me beaten to death by her steroid abusing boyfriend as soon as get gets out of nick. She is multidemnsional and so has tattooes both on her skin and off it.

A passing couple of deities, Mars and Aphrodite, began to kiss backlit by the moon. And then they crossed the fringe and became a low grade couple fucking in my bushes amongst discarded fag packets, their poison filled condom joining stacks of others, tampons hanging off the elderberry bushes dislodged by their sweaty intercourse. They see me standing there and yell threats even as the male's hips began to spasm into climax, skin the colour of a corpse.

Foxes cross the garden, dying immediately at the fangs of a hound the moment they cross the fringe. Badgers shot to pieces by the government. The stars turned to greasy fast food wrapping the moment their ancient light crosses the threshold.

And yet I'm always drawn to watch it, a student of sluttishness, observer of decay, I remember it all as I stand there with a cigarette and a drink, garnished by the endless drizzle.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 13/09/13