Between stars and children

The vicar

Stepping into the vicars study felt like teetering into the brink of a fire, it was almost as if a snake of fire kept between his shoulder blades, blazing and burning across the mangled skin. An otherwise uncompromising atmosphere with little light and little space to move let alone think. The space available was taken by stacks of old newspapers and broken chairs, chairs stacked with torn seats, the fabric of floral and velvet frayed in long gauges, abandoned in their ugliness. Hound found a daunting image of knives and blades rubbing against skin, comatose hands clutching jaws, crushing bone, he saw himself. From the corner of his eye a dusking burst of light spun dropping from the back of a large red armchair, a lit candle had rolled to the floor, illuminating the various scratches on the wooden floor like a Catherine wheel against the night sky. The vicar had moved with nerve to extinguish the birthed flames with a heavy blanket, his face now twisted with his protruding teeth eased Hound, but the floor once ignored now became an object of interest. what was seen as mistaken scratches from runaway shoes, now under closer inspection ignited into long, deep, digging scratches that lead under a looming wardrobe.

"blasted thing fire? don't you agree Mr. Hound?" Hound was too busy following the train tracks of nail indentations to hear the flustered Vicar "oh I assure you I have no time to sit in all of these chairs my boy, my only purpose is to mend them, call them a...hobby if you will."

"chair mending?"

"you see I believe chairs hold a certain magic to them" the vicar moved to clear a stack of papers from a wooden rocking chair in the corner as in invite for Hound to sit, Hound, still in judging silence, stood with squinted eyes evaluating the elaborate man in front of him. "it don't bite boy" a gruff un expected voice emerged from the sallow face prompting Hound to sit.

The chair still held at the shoulders by the vicar ceased to move, but was rather to small for Hound who had always been too tall even in his youth, his elbows jutted out of the arm rests and his knees folded like an exotic insect. The vicar found this highly amusing and had crouched to become head to head with Hound, bringing his wet lips to Hounds ear he let out a mocking hum.

"when it's been a long day and the sun is saying farewell and the moon is putting on its dancing shoes, the only thing us animals can think of is rest, we've excelled at it actually. We must be the only creatures able to sit and do nothing in more than five ways and the chair you see symbolises that. it's our halfway between existence and dreaming, we sit with the promise of sleep, but linger in consciousness-out of choice."

the rocking chair violently dropped, the vicar had left Hounds ear to move towards his desk, his grasp keeping the chair had vanished ,leaving Hound shook by the sudden rhythm. He felt suspended, like a fly in a spiders web, moving with little hope of leaving. The vicar had perched his elbows onto the edge of his desk, interlocking his fingers to hold to his lips, his eyes still grinding into Hound.

"strange isn't it, the way we crave death, but continue to live despite our desires-"

Hound had shifted his view to the paper lain limp at the foot of the vicars desk, it had fallen from the surface, landing face up in a screwn mess to Margaret's face. He had realised then she had not been smiling, she had only been stretching her mouth so the flash bulb could see her teeth. There was no happiness there.

"where were you on January the tenth vicar?"

Hound had ceased the movement of the chair to stare distinctly into the vicars eyes. the vicar however had shifted his foot beneath the desk out of thought, his eyes had turned stoic, like marble, before lifting their polite facade.

"well on January the ninth I had held a sermon so I was highly fatigued and rested throughout the next day to prepare for Sunday." Hound stared impatiently "I was here all along you may ask Persephone if you must, I'm sure that is your desire"