Morning had come in hard and fast. Blink sleep was the best way to describe it. Tired eyes closed, hours passed, tired eyes opened, nothing had changed.
He had not slept so well.
Davis was choking down porridge. It was far too hot and far too sweet. Goldilocks would not approve.
He was in his dressing gown and slippers. Dishevelled and disappointed.
The pockets of his satin garment pulled the fine threads lower than expected. He was showing skin. Gammon-like. A pig in a blanket. Efforts to breathe-in could not contain his paunch. The pebbles clunked together as he walked across his living room to take stock. To see what was what. To catch a glimpse of the trees, of behind enemy lines.
Across the way, just over the invisible marker that says ‘this is mine, that is yours’, Rogers was troubled. The air hung with trepidation. He knew something was wrong, he just could not figure out exactly what. Something was well... it just felt off.
Barefoot and bare-chested, Rogers peered at the four buckets by the conservatory window. He winced...his WHOLE house was a conservatory. What had he been thinking? The bag of pebbles he had acquired in the dead of night now lay open beside the Bluetooth speakers that he did not know how to use.
Rogers had slung a few rocks across the garden, as the owls and the ferrets went about their nocturnal habits. Trying them out for size. Getting a feel for them. How far and how fast.
He had been surprised at how free he had felt with the a few stones in his hand. He could see how this could have been fun at a public stoning and had imagined the crowd jabbering and shouting and baying for blood. He would have given them some and more.
He felt his pulse quicken.
Davis had caught sight of his one time Squash partner as he had carried out the evening pilgrimage: turning off all the stylish lamps in the house. The moonlight had framed his practising perfectly. Davis had seen Rogers shaping to throw something. Miming the action at first. As if skimming a flat one across an invisible lake.
Skip, skip, skip, smash.
A heat rose from Davis’s toes to his lobes. And he shook gently with incandescent yet impotent rage.
The toaster popped. And, like a starter’s gun, that heralded the hail of fire and brimstone.
Although with less fire and more stones.
Something was about to give.
