12/24/2024

“Don’t worry, I’m a natural-born trapper. I can follow the prey anywhere!”

The woman, dressed in shades of gray and ebony that made her indistinguishable from the alleys and lanes of the less-travelled parts of Glasgow, jumped slightly, the better to cuff her companion’s ear.

“We had ’em coming out of that wine cellar! Are we home enjoying dinner?” The tilt of her head produced a curious reversal, surely it is in human relationships that trompe l’oeil found their natural environment.

“No! We are not!”

For his part, the slightest of shrugs prevented any serious injury, which was never a concern of his for any of the countless years the pair had been together.

The urban canyons and abandoned wine cellars had provided sustenance for the two since…well, since either of them could remember. Somehow, the night was betraying the two as their prey continued to remain ahead of their patient stalking. This unexplored country for the pair who, as subjects of whispered tales of fearful parents to innocent children were simply the Crone and the Stone. Cautionary bedtime stories to keep them out of harm’s way

As they crossed the small wooden bridge, the forest around them blazed in artificial light. LED suns tethered to trees, the better to kill fairy tale monsters

The man, larger than he wanted to be, looked down; the woman, smaller than she felt with him, looked up with no regret,

“We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou’d the gowans fine.”

*****

04/12/2024

“We’re too early!”

The woman shuddered impatiently, eyes scanning the empty train car, the platform and station and, finally, the man looming over her. Looking down on his companion, he exhibited the restrained power of a mountain snow-mass teetering on the edge of Spring.

“Find us an alley nearby, preferably with a streetlight you can put out with a stone!”

The stolid intensity of the man’s face softened at the hint of a compliment, lumbered off the platform. A half a block to Anchor Ln and, after a glissando of falling glass, awaited his companion in the dark alleyway.

Together in the shadows, the Crone leaned against the man; a drier and, arguably, more protective a wall to have at her back.

“Remember, back when you’d bring me a Saturday Evening Post from the canastair sgudal down at the train station and we’d leaf through it waiting for closing time to push the unfortunates to the sidewalks where they’d totter homewards like a desert cart with one bad wheel?” The old, grey woman retreated into her mind, leaving her tattered body to sway in the artificial breeze of cars racing past their hiding place, driven by the 21st century imperative of faster, faster…

The pair who, subjects of whispered tales of fearful parents to innocent children, were referred to simply as the Crone and the Stone waited for the crowds to be pushed towards the empty train car by the social peristalsis of last call on a Glasgow Saturday night.

*****

06/15/2024

“You know, I been thinkin…”

The man paused, the conversational backleading found in couples of only the longest tenures; bent-knee of one leg an additional support to the woman slightly behind him.

“Now, what have I always said…” the woman, an age and adversity-drawn caricature of Nature’s male-female size discrepancy, drew a breath that seemed to cling to her body like passengers on a slowly sinking ship.

“Only one of us can be the brains and the other…”  her words trailed as she leaned towards the man. The absence of the expected sharp retort sparked a sad alarm in her companion’s eyes.

“Let’s sit here a minute, I’m tired,” the easy lies couples exchange, like monetary instruments or favored talismans, have never been immune to the wear-and-tear of time.

Crouching, his right knee an inverted ‘V’,  the man did his best to position his trailing leg at a right angle, perpendicular to the other, creating, at least to a child’s eye, every bit a throne of ivied-timbers; the woman leaned back, her eyes trapped by the incline below the two fleeing anachronisms.

“Has it occurred to you that walking up stairs is god reminding us of the difference between man and angels? That, should we only recover the part we left behind in the Garden, hills and steep staircases would be celebrations of our wings and not a curse of our aging bodies.”

The man paused, a patient waiting. Time now a comforting breeze, no longer an endless headwind.

*****

08/03/2024

“The Fifth.”

“What?”

His hand making the demitasse look like a tiddlywink on a manhole cover, the man aimed his face at the building across from the café; his companion, a woman of indeterminant age, stared at him from the shade of her hooded sweatshirt, an inadvertent impersonation of a 19th century optical illusion.

Pointing at the wrinkled parchment in the center of the table without taking his eyes off the tall structure, his eyes flickered in the semaphore of self-doubt. An affectionate, aged-worn contralto whispered a thought, ‘You are my enforcer, I am your soul’.

“The arrangement of openings on the building that we’re going to burglarize, it’s the famous dah-dah-dah…duh.!”

The small woman raised her eyebrows, her sigh barely distorting the silk-screened ‘I ♥ Glasgow!’ bas-relief’d across the front of her hunched form.

“Lia Fàil! You really need to see someone about that.”

“About what?”

“Your grip on reality, thats what.”

“You were there at the premiere. Vienna you said, the hunting will be good in Vienna, you said, let’s leave Glasgow to cool off, you said! I remember it like it was…”

“216 years ago?”

A chuckle barely escaped as she continued, “Pay attention to the floor plans. This is our chance to steal something that doesn’t kick and scream. I know a fence who will be happy to pay for the jewelry we’ll find at the top of that…”

“Four story …motif?”

Her laughter echoed dream-sowed affection flourishing in their youth, “Git on wid ye!”