Morpheus Tales #18 Supplement

www.morpheustales.com perhaps not as old as she dresses. She wears the uniform of a coffin dodger; a woollen coat as murky as a drizzly autumn wood, knee length stockings, and she clutches her handbag like a kiddie fiddling priest with his rosary.

You observe the scene next door by pressing your eye to a vial of liquid as murky as conjunctiva juices. Around you the womb of intricate workings turns, the coils of muscle-like length, the belts that stretch like tendons, and the bony levers, how they are like a giant body, the corporeal extension of some divine controller.

“Two fresh chicken livers, please,” says Daisy.

Gloom doesn’t answer immediately. He is setting his clock. He eases the minute hand forward with a podgy index finger and stops it at quarter past. His slow and deliberate movements have an animal grace that quite fits his ovine physiognomy. His long and sheep-like face reminds you of a bust carved in wax that droops a little more each day as the sun settles briefly upon it as it traverses the firmament and passes his shop window. His jowls and the bags under his eyes surrender a little more to gravity each day. His hair, worn like a helmet of wire wool, has an animal texture too and his sheep teeth, flat and yellowy pebbles of random shape, suggest many an hour of peacefully chewing the cud.

“Coming right up, Daisy my dear,” says Gloom.

You hear their voices through one of many leathery ear-type shapes that project periodically from the wall.

“Actually,” says Daisy. “Let’s make it three.”

How curious, you think to yourself, noticing the variation in their interaction. Like a pastoral stroller contemplating the last leaf to fall from an autumn tree, you are suddenly entranced.

Gloom pauses, unsure that he has heard correctly. He too has detected a change in their routine, a shifting in the dismal spheres they inhabit.

“Three?” he asks.

“Three,” says Daisy.

Gloom puts his plastic glove back on to his hand and selects another liver from the tray under the counter. He holds it up and with Daisy’s nod of approval he drops it into a small white bag with the others and seals it with a strip of red tape. Outside the sky clears and the sun streams hazily through the shop window and the scene is momentarily captured in illumination for you like a still life from the oeuvre of an artist, who although skilled, persists in depicting the mundane.

“Is it the cat’s birthday?” says Gloom, knowing his suggestion to be most unlikely as many a year had passed with him serving her livers and never before had Daisy treated her pet to an extra portion.

“No, it isn’t,” she replied. “I just thought I’d buy three today.”

Like Gloom, you can’t help but forge a spontaneous frown. Minor discrepancies in routine can lead to disaster; everyone in Leddenton knows this, not least of all you, but experience has taught you that the necessary ingredient for successful indolence is unfounded optimism, and with this in mind your attention turns for a moment from Gloom The Butchers.

Through a different murky vial you can see Daisy’s home where her cat usually waits for the key to turn in the front door before it stretches, yawns, and rises from the divan. Daisy’s cat surely sensed that today was no ordinary day, for you watch her rise from her snug patch of quilt early and go to the window to watch the day unfold.

Daisy drops the livers into her tartan shopping bag and turns to leave. Gormo takes his cleaver from the chopping board and waves goodbye with it, as he always does. However, out of sorts somewhat from the odd break in routine, he has forgotten to remove his hygiene glove and the cleaver slips from his hand and spins through the air like a circus performer’s knife. You watch its graceful journey in slow motion, as if absently observing a dragonfly hovering between lilies before deciding where to settle. Gormo finds time to will his cleaver a landing place in the wooden frame of the shop entrance, and to debate the considerable advantages, were the cleaver to strike Daisy in the head, for it to do so with the handle rather than the blade.

Both hopes culminate in disappointment, a spray of blood, and finally Daisy collapsing to the floor like a marionette with severed strings. A room already dense with the aroma of death achieves greater aromatic depth.

All of this abruptly disturbs you with a sense of utter horror and dismay, for this sort of thing does not happen in Leddenton where every day is the same. Somewhere air wheezes from a stuttering piston and 63