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WARNING: For those of a squeamish disposition look away now. The following post contains scenes of a graphic nature.
I am staring down the garden from the eerie that is my office on the first floor watching three bow shouldered gentlemen in black as they bob to each other in a little huddle. At first I don’t realise what they are doing and it takes a while for my mind to rattle through the permutations.
Razor sharp daggers are plunged into the ground or at least I think that is what they are doing but it is hard to distinguish through the rain. I see a bright white tuft flash and it dawns on me that my husband has been up to his little tricks again.
The gentlemen in black are merely cleaning up.
In my mind’s eye I swoop in on the little party at the bottom of the lawn and it seems as if I am watching from above. I am hovering over the gruesome sight. A dismembered body being torn apart, as gobbets of flesh are fought over, limbs flaccid and at odd angles. The soft belly spewing forth a pile of slick pink and purple tubes, and other scrofulous goo. The head has no eyes now; the teeth look barred in some sudden grimace of pain captured in the moment of death.
There is an intensity about the work the black gentlemen are doing, a rhythm in their movements, a strange kind of dance. The frenzy that was there moments ago has gone. This is a serious job which requires a dedicated concentration if it is to be done properly with no wastage.
I know that when I get down to the corpse later today all I will see is a head attached to four limbs by skin picked clean. I shall scoop it up and put it on the compost heap where in a few months all vestiges of its presence will vanish.
Cleaned away.
Neat and tidy.
The way nature intended. For back to the earth we all return eventually.
PS. For those concerned about bodies at the bottom of my garden it was that of a rabbit which my husband had shot from his bedroom window and failed to tell me about. He is beginning to do this with alarming regularity as he gets his eye in. We have a lot of rabbits and we also have a vegetable plot. I am afraid much as I appreciate the stories of peter Rabbit and the Flopsy Bunnies I am now as a veg plot owner firmly on the side of Mr McGregor. The black bow shouldered gentlemen are my beloved Rooks.
