Gaea's Womb

Božena heaved the bucket over the cattle-gate, the shamble leg man watching on in horror. ‘that’s no way to treat victuals’ said the shamble leg man, ‘if I had the mind to I’d give him a piece of it’. Hooking the stubble on his throat with his fingernail, a teacher’s chalk-line scoring his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, he walked in the opposite direction, his thoughts on lemony scented soap and saddle leather. Written in yellow chalk above the transom of the Bagenalstown Chemist’s was ‘Chapter XX: Wherein An Account Is Given Of The Wedding Of Cerberus The Rich, Together With The Incident Of Basilar The Poor’ and below that 'Argus and Panopte play ring-around-the-rosy with Chimaera and Cyclopes, the Ash Tree Nymphs tugging at their cocks. Echidna and Hecatoncheires peek their tiny misshapen heads out of Gaea's womb, Aegaeon, Cottus, and Gyges singing tra la la la la to Stheno, Euryale and Medusa, Typhoeus begetting Bellerophon begetting Chrysaor, then as quick as they were begotten forgotten and cast into the dark ominous shadows of the Queretaro de Arteaga Quertaro where they live out the respite of their gods fearsome lives'. Addled and confused the shamble leg man shook his head and continued down the sideways, the sun at his back. To himself he thought ‘why do I have such strange troubling thoughts… to my knowledge I have never pinched a cabbage or told an honest lie… so why am I plagued with such peculiar thoughts?’