I hope the weather has cooled down a bit for Canada Day then! And I hope it's a good day this year -- the recent stories about the church and the indigenous children would not seem to make for a very positive Canada Day to be honest. Oh, and good luck with what sounds like is going to be a rush on Friday.....
Counting It's a construction site. Half-finished brick walls are dotted here and there across it, in no order that I can make out, and in the middle there is a much larger concrete pillar that's going to be the centre of a high-rise building of some kind. There are large white numbers painted on it, starting at 0 and going up in increments of 1. I think it indicates where the floors of the building will be -- looks like there's going to a mezzanine floor above the ground-floor atrium.
I pick my way through. It rained last night and there are puddles everywhere where there isn't just mud. My shoes were leather once and are now... well, let's call them shoes as that stops arguments. They still slide around and my legs are aching after just five minutes of trying to keep my balance. I think for a moment that I don't know how the construction workers do it, but then I remember that they were steel-toecapped boots and probably just stomp through confident in their footing on this treacherous surface. Like goats or something. I saw a goat once, in Calabria, just before it got hit by a bus full of tourists and young children.
The sky overhead is cloudy and grey and promises more rain to come, but there are slashes of blue here and there as though the sun is showing that it's making an effort too. I ignore it mostly; into every life a little rain must fall, and for some of us enough rain falls that we're hanging on to the life-preservers already and hoping that the flood recedes soon. I finally reach the shelter, if you can call it that, of the central column and discover that there is actually shelter here: there are a couple of small rooms with roofs already. They're cold and dark and will probably house the lift machinery, but it's still a solid floor under foot.
And a corpse of course. Count Abellio, as he styled himself, and the man I'm here to meet and listen to. He claims he has information -- had information I suppose -- and Miss Sapphire wanted me to find out what it was. She had leaned in closely to me, her alcohol-infused breath reminding me of an elderly aunt's picnic trifle -- if I said she went heavy on the sherry that would understate how many empty sherry bottles were put out for glass collection -- and whispered that I was the only person she could trust not to kill the Count if his information turned out to be valuable. I shrugged; people die around me, but I don't kill them. And it looks like they've started dying around me in a larger radius than I knew about.
"One," I muttered. I've started counting the corpses that collect when I start a case. The last count reached sixty-nine, a number to make kids giggle and the downtown morgue open the overflow morgue's doors. Our city is the only one with an overflow morgue, and I'm wondering how much I have to do with that. Blue lights flickered in the distance and I figured that whoever had killed the Count had also called the police: nice of them. I rifled through the Count's pockets not expecting much, and was slightly surprised to find a left-luggage key. Well, it could have been missed, or it could be a trap. But I took it anyway, and set off across the other side of the construction site.
Greg - yeah, I don't think too many people were really in a mood to celebrate our history this year. Obviously a few people will take any excuse to party, but it was a different sort of holiday this go around. And rightfully so.
This is an interesting scene which has captured my curiosity and left me eager to see more. But for now... I should probably get some sleep. More comment catching up tomorrow!
2 comments:
I hope the weather has cooled down a bit for Canada Day then! And I hope it's a good day this year -- the recent stories about the church and the indigenous children would not seem to make for a very positive Canada Day to be honest.
Oh, and good luck with what sounds like is going to be a rush on Friday.....
Counting
It's a construction site. Half-finished brick walls are dotted here and there across it, in no order that I can make out, and in the middle there is a much larger concrete pillar that's going to be the centre of a high-rise building of some kind. There are large white numbers painted on it, starting at 0 and going up in increments of 1. I think it indicates where the floors of the building will be -- looks like there's going to a mezzanine floor above the ground-floor atrium.
I pick my way through. It rained last night and there are puddles everywhere where there isn't just mud. My shoes were leather once and are now... well, let's call them shoes as that stops arguments. They still slide around and my legs are aching after just five minutes of trying to keep my balance. I think for a moment that I don't know how the construction workers do it, but then I remember that they were steel-toecapped boots and probably just stomp through confident in their footing on this treacherous surface. Like goats or something. I saw a goat once, in Calabria, just before it got hit by a bus full of tourists and young children.
The sky overhead is cloudy and grey and promises more rain to come, but there are slashes of blue here and there as though the sun is showing that it's making an effort too. I ignore it mostly; into every life a little rain must fall, and for some of us enough rain falls that we're hanging on to the life-preservers already and hoping that the flood recedes soon. I finally reach the shelter, if you can call it that, of the central column and discover that there is actually shelter here: there are a couple of small rooms with roofs already. They're cold and dark and will probably house the lift machinery, but it's still a solid floor under foot.
And a corpse of course. Count Abellio, as he styled himself, and the man I'm here to meet and listen to. He claims he has information -- had information I suppose -- and Miss Sapphire wanted me to find out what it was. She had leaned in closely to me, her alcohol-infused breath reminding me of an elderly aunt's picnic trifle -- if I said she went heavy on the sherry that would understate how many empty sherry bottles were put out for glass collection -- and whispered that I was the only person she could trust not to kill the Count if his information turned out to be valuable. I shrugged; people die around me, but I don't kill them. And it looks like they've started dying around me in a larger radius than I knew about.
"One," I muttered. I've started counting the corpses that collect when I start a case. The last count reached sixty-nine, a number to make kids giggle and the downtown morgue open the overflow morgue's doors. Our city is the only one with an overflow morgue, and I'm wondering how much I have to do with that. Blue lights flickered in the distance and I figured that whoever had killed the Count had also called the police: nice of them. I rifled through the Count's pockets not expecting much, and was slightly surprised to find a left-luggage key. Well, it could have been missed, or it could be a trap. But I took it anyway, and set off across the other side of the construction site.
Greg - yeah, I don't think too many people were really in a mood to celebrate our history this year. Obviously a few people will take any excuse to party, but it was a different sort of holiday this go around. And rightfully so.
This is an interesting scene which has captured my curiosity and left me eager to see more. But for now... I should probably get some sleep. More comment catching up tomorrow!
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