Troy Scheherazade

A few boxes of raisins; bastard needs his ears lowered. Covered in pocket lint, sticks to the roof of my gob. Cat strangler, seen him wring a few feline necks, pushes ‘em over the cornice and into the river. Tails white with plaster. Sells them to the Asians, make a wonton or soft roll with the not so bad parts. The sun bled yellow egg yolk. His father told him that if he sat under the biggest tree in the forest an apple would sooner or later fall on his head. ‘That’s how we know we’re down here and not up there’ said his father pointing a resin brown finger at the sky. ‘there’s only the apple and the serpent’ said his mother scolding his father, ‘now get in the house!’ He lined up the toffee and raisins on the floor next to his bed. He counted until he couldn’t stand counting any more. Five pieces of toffee and 27 raisins, each in its own tiny box. Taking into account the plumpness of the raisins he figured he could eat one raisin and one piece of toffee a day, the entire cache lasting 27½ days, longer if he broke the toffee into smaller pieces. The writing on the side of the box said, The Tuxtla Bros. Raisin Co., Chiapas Gutierrez, Mexico. 'The finest plumpest raisins grown and sundried with lots of nice plump sunshine'. Each tiny cardboard box carried within it a handful of plump sundried raisins, some so plump they looked more like plums than raisins.

He wrecked havoc wherever he went, smashing and wielding the cudgel his grandfather made him from a sledge of grainy oak. He and Troy Scheherazade, an uncomely boy with jug-handle ears and an ungainly smile, vandalized and laid waste to anyone who got in their way, using their cudgel sticks as batterers and swords.