attached to design

He felt a unique euphoria as he upended the basket and impregnated the slush in the cement mixer with the recently withered crop. He watched the mixer interweave the crumbs and plant-flecks among the pink and pale green streaks until they were a uniform dusting of dark dots, a reverse sparkling. If the ingredients were uncovered, there would be protest. Like the time he had exhibited the love scene from the bronze age, but probably worse.

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supplied domesticity

After several punctures he confessed to falsifying the fight with his brother-in-law. Where was the brother-in-law now? He wouldn’t say. He was given over to the wife’s family for further treatment. They had free rein. The rest of the populace made preparations in case the brother-in-law resurfaced.

fruition

He told her, “You are like a taste that wants to be sweet, but is lacking something essential. You are bitter and unusable, like the sugar of an unripe fruit, the taste of which sends a tart cringing stab through the shoulders, jaw and the back of the neck.”

She was stunned. She turned and walked slowly away. The heat of his remarks was burning something away inside her.

bent fin

The trawling expedition was being financed by a monthly publication. When they couldn’t complete it they had to seek more funding. “We need a second hook on the net,” was what the publisher said. Everybody else thought the metaphor was stupid, but nobody wanted to tell him. They also thought his idea to bring in sponsorship from a maker of percussion instruments was crazy, but he swung the deal.

napping promise

The interchangings that he had utilized had elapsed in sick, exposed rumblings. The payments in multiple units could not hide the cheapness, in fact they demonstrated it. He claimed that with the correct spectroscopy methods hidden qualities would be revealed, but no one was willing to further fund him.

smooth strangle emission

When the lights in the ward were turned off, the boils and cankers sparkled. She had found it both frightening and exciting at first, but now she was desensitized. She waved the fan over her uncle, blowing the glowing mites away from her, fanning them like sparks from a beach bonfire. She turned the fan around to tuck in a loose hair. The hair on the fan was streaked gray, though she suspected if it grew back on her uncle it would be all snow white.

traveller’s checks

“Your girl,” he told them, “has perpetrated deficiencies. She has mangled the percentages in the air-condition detection. We have found a deficit in the accounts not reconcilable with the documents we can locate.”

“You can’t prove any of that.”

“But we can suspect her of some of it. And once suspicion for anything is established, here among us, that’s enough to paint her for everything.”

“We won’t let you touch her. We won’t even let you see her.”

“We are all alone out here. You’ll find that difficult.”

you can’t not manage what you measure

The surveillance turned little by little into farming. Each new monitoring, each new observation was a step toward cultivation. Soon enough the information was ignored except in so far as it affected or predicted physical production.

dragoman

Gavin decided to continue the flogging. In a way the victim argued him into it. That, or the interpreter was a sick bastard. He seemed very devout, though, and Gavin had never known him to be anything but conscientious. Was it possible there was some hidden history between the two? Was the victim being sarcastic or ironic in some way that wasn’t coming through in the translation. He stopped for the day and went back to his cabin, where he tried to think of a line of questioning that would answer these new puzzles. He decided on way to test the translator was to question the victim about something both he and Gavin knew about, but the translator didn’t.

unyoked

We watched the aircraft towing us be shot down. The detach mechanism must have been broken when the cockpit was hit. We were about to detach on our end, which would make it difficult to find another tow, but then we watched one of her crew climb down her back and detach us manually.