scarlet across albino fur. Unique things, murdered by the shit-eating grin of an idiot. Carcasses to be stuffed, sold, turned into product. I feel anxious. I think on the Hunt Saboteurs I have met, the benefit shows I attend, the rusty foxes that rifle through the grounds of my local church barking, making their demonic lovemaking sounds. The white foxes, murdered in the Garden of England, are once more forgotten and slip from the headlines. I however, make notes on this man, find his address, print out his photograph. People are easy to trace these days. Approximately a year later, the white fox is seen again. I mumble and murmur as to what it means, marvel that they exist, feel uncomfortable, ashamed to admit that I distrust the albino. I have no one to talk to about these things. I try, but do not know what to say, am met with laughter. Feel part of what I was slip away, the knowledge that I am becoming something else. Something curdled, sour, more at home with foxes and the green than with language and my fellows. Stories drift in via the Twitter
accounts I follow, the messageboards on cryptozoology and folklore. Alleged sightings of the black fox, long believed to be a bad omen, a sign of ill-luck. The white and the black, the ghostly and the dead. The sightings are so sporadic as to be mythic. When the creatures are seen, they turn up dead soon after. Anyone privileged with seeing them will be met with calamity and personal misfortune. The latest witness is featured in the pages of The Daily Mail, alongside photographs of the ash-black canid by a busy roadside. Later, its dead carcass, murdered by the motorcar. The Mail spreads the sighting of the animal, spreading ill-luck to its readers. I obsessively watch the blurry videos on YouTube, stare at the photographs of the dead black fox on the website of national newspapers. Perhaps the curse will pass to me even through this digital refraction. I laugh about this as I tell of my exploits to bored friends in local pubs. Secretly, I hope for the calamity, an end to the stifling boredom, the crippling anxiety, the bad omens Inkspill Magazine | Issue 8 | 41