Staying in the womb…

The school was always making noises. We boys, being the ones that we were, merely added to the general volume. Most days would see us tempering our explosions, sometimes not. We were like juvenile pressure points that had very little control over themselves. The temperature, the pressure per square inch, was often pre-set before the day began and what happened after that had been determined in those things that neuros called dreams. Like the neuros, we dreamt but we did not realise what dreams were.

Since the first of the outbreaks we were aware that things had changed. The first few weeks had brought about stillness and something that was close to rebirth. There were more animals in evidence in the countryside, more deer, more foxes and more ‘unseen’ birds of prey. “Unseen’ means not seeing them until it was too late. I remember seeing a goshawk tearing a woodpigeon…