A little sandwich perhaps?
Bread out of the bin.
Soft thick slices,
Put it back.
Open the fridge.
Butter out,
Bacon out, grill on,
Lettuce out,
Tomato.
Tomato.
Tomato?
No tomato.
Grill off.
Lettuce in, butter in; bacon in.
Shut the fridge.
Keys. Coat.
Open the door.
Damn its raining.
Close the door.

The grey air was flooded.
The gutters ran free in the streets.
The drains were quiet,
under the rivers which had drowned them.
Gus turned his collar up in the privacy of the rain.
He leant at an angle and hurried.
He wiped his brow.
Were his shoes letting in?
Where was he going anyway?
Wherever you might live there are always the common approaches, the few streets which you must take to and from them wherever you might be going. That much was simple.
Where was he going after that?
The covered market. It would be worth seeing the river in this lash.
A car poured past him pushing a bow wave.
It threw spray at him.
Gus cursed at it, invisible in the falling water.
He had been going to cross the road but had stopped to avoid being run down. The frothing torrent in the gutter embraced his feet. His shoes resisted for a moment and then melted into the cold welcome of the street.
Gus whipped his feet up out of the stream and for one unbelievable second he stood a few inches above the flood.
Then his feet swooped from under him.
But he did not fall.
His face swung low to the river,
Drops flying in his astonished face.
Then he floated swiftly along above the wash like a well struck air hockey puck.
After half a very worrying second Gus began perceptibly sinking towards the ground until he was safely deposited in the wet.
Gus pinched himself and hurried from the scene.

The river foamed triumphantly along all the streets that Gus walked until they both came to the floating market bridge. Then they went their separate ways. The river following gravity and Gus his palate.
Solid whitewater rushed beneath the ramparted bridge but the rain had diminished to a slow drip.
There are few things as comforting and humanising as covered markets. People selling luxuries as if they were life’s essentials
 and people selling life’s essentials as if they were luxuries.
Gus passed his eye over the ranks of piled grapefruit and designer handbags. Somewhere here was the tomato, or two small tomatoes, of his dreams.
Children pushed past him to hang over the parapet and yell at the foaming, moving wavebacks just beyond the reach of their outstretched, possessive fingers.
An oily voice cut unmixed through the sodden atmosphere.
“Lovely fruit and veg.
Soft and Ripe.
Get your hands on it before it goes off.”
The voice came to Gus from a shady customer masquerading as a trader.
He caught Gus’ eye.
“Can I interest you in anything you see, Sir?”
Gus perused his produce.
His tomatoes were a little large, they looked juicy.
Following Gus’ gaze
 the salesman pulled out a sharp little knife.
He grabbed a tomato and neatly sliced off a sliver of flesh. “Taste it,
Taste.
Taste.”
He ushered the morsel into Gus’ open mouth.
It was good,
Sweet.
Gus bought two and was a little overcharged.
As he waited for his change the rain became heavier, accompanied by the sound of drums. He looked to the cliffs that rose on the other side of the white brown water.
On the slopes people were dancing and flying brightly coloured kites in the chaos of the soaking wind. Taut, wet drumskins were being beaten.
A blue Chinese dragon was swaying between the hairpins of the path like a drunk shuttle, its wet frills snapping like gunshots in the choppy air.
Gus was similarly wet and could not get more so, he was drawn to the people and the nonsense. He crossed the bridge and stalked up the steep paths to the first little graveyard with an empty bench. He swept the thin puddle from the plastic coated wood and sat down to spectate. The tomatoes hung from his hand in their transparent bag,
Forgotten.
Red and Yellow flags chased each other crazily above the waddling blue dragon.
As Gus watched a group of other watchers gathered around him.
An American tourist in the crowd reached out and inexplicably crushed the tomatoes in their bag.
Gus only just noticed out of the corner of his eye and was so amazed that he was speechless for a second.
He stood up.
“What do you think you are doing?”
The tourist turned.
“Sorry man. I was only being funny.”
“I don’t think it was very funny.”
“No man, it wasn’t. It was stupid.”
Gus now did not have enough change to get more of the nice tomatoes.
He felt very light on his feet.
“You cannot so casually commit vandalism and get away with it. Apologise.”
Gus felt righteous, he felt like he towered over this man. He felt that if he took both feet off the ground it would confirm his rightness and help the American understand his wrongness.
“I’m really sorry, man. I wasn’t thinking. It was dumb, sorry.”
Gus took both feet off the ground.
“Whoa, man. Whoa! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
He floated upwards for a heartbeat and then swept sideways over the heads of the small crowd and turned head over heels, slowly in the splashing rain.
“Sorry man, sorry. Don’t magic me man!”
The drums swelled and Gus touched down on his toes.

The first thing he saw beyond the congratulating crowd was the polis, far off but looking in his direction. He couldn’t go straight home now.
So he climbed the hill, taking his time as the polis took theirs. They drew away before him and followed up after him. They kept pace as he topped the rise and entered the sheltered city.
The occasional gravestones became throngs,
filling the flagged spaces between the stone walls. Stained glass and thick circular windows let a little light into the closes. The floor still ran with water though the weeping sky could not be seen.
In the claustrophobic spaces the tailing polis were obvious. Other pedestrians looked curiously at Gus and gave him space on the pavement. The tunnels spat him out into the huge, smell-less space of the cathedral. The sloped and pitted floor led uphill, under ancient arches and between solemn statues as is the rule with such places.
Gus crossed the floor and in the looming gloom the polis made their move.
They formed a ring and closed on Gus.
From the crowd stepped a performer
returning from the rain parade.
She fell into step beside him and the polis drew back.
He let her guide him by unspoken commands and they moved towards a wall of the enormous cavern.
She stood suddenly still with her back to the quarried blocks and gestured towards her skirt.
Gus looked blankly at her.
She smiled and pulled up the thick ruffles of her skirts.
She smiled more widely and pointed between her legs.
Preferring petticoats to the polis Gus knelt down and crawled between her legs.
Hidden behind the curtain of her dress was a square stone tunnel with a light at the other end.
Gus crawled in
 and her thick skirts fell like night behind him.

He struggled forward through the rock for thirty feet into sudden sunshine and light precipitation. Below was a drop of one hundred and twenty feet.
Gus felt an urge to levitate down to safety.
If he had been standing he would have taken both feet off the ground but in the cramped tunnel he couldn’t work out how to start.
He cast around for inspiration.
Beside the tunnel was a simple ladder, each rung hammered into the sheer face, leading up, up, up to the summit of the castle crag.
One thousand two hundred feet of vertical rock.
Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting.
Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting.
Hard breathing, sweat lost in the rain.
Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting.
Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting.
What a ludicrous thing to be doing.
The thin rain fell persistently, streaming through Gus’ hair and into his eyes.
Gus too was persistent, he got into a rhythm , pulling himself up by tiny increments.
The rain fell faster the higher he climbed.
Just when he began to feel unsafe Gus came upon a café with a thin promenade balcony, coffee, salty ham rolls with thick glaze and tiny plastic containers of expensive orange juice. Also a 1930’s hat shop.
Deploring the rain Gus bought a blue/grey fedora, towelled his hair in the changing room, paid with a card and drank a glass of coke, no ice, inside the tiny steamwindowed café.
With his load of water, sugar and caffeine Gus rattled up the last four hundred rungs like a monkey.

On top of the cliff small castellations shielded Gus from the wind. For the length of a warming rollup the clouds parted and the rain stopped.
Gus surveyed the tumbled sandstone of the city,
shining and quietly liquid in the full moonlight.
He steamed lightly in the heat of his exertions. Tendrils of steam and smoke mixed peacefully in the lee of the battlements.
With the first spits of the returning rain Gus roused himself from contemplation and groaned his way along the early morning skyline. King Kong surmounting the city.
The wind ran rings around him like an annoying red biplane. Then it got round behind him and pushed him across the crag. The illuminated greenhouse that was the roof of the train station ended Gus’ gusty perambulation.
He could not go back, the polis would have an eye on his bolthole. He must… disappear.
Begging favours from gods he didn’t believe in Gus edged out across the slanted glass floor, slick with raindrops and of unknown strength.
The treacherous floor spanned a terrifying drop, all too visible through the bubbled glass. Heart more or less in mouth Gus skittered across the fragile surface like a water boatman trying to will surface tension into existence for the brief moment that it is needed. Every one of the station’s eight wedding cake layers was dizzyingly visible to the worlds most recent human fly. The upper levels of the station rose towards him as he inched closer to the cliff edge, where the trains shot off into the darkness like a theme park log ride.
Barely believing his plan Gus crawled onwards.
The wind urged him on, now held him back,
now urged him on again.
Hidden above an eighth floor platform Gus listened to the staff prepare the train for Glasgow.
When the sounds of riveting and loading had stopped they put the train’s banks of lights on.
The doors opened to passengers and in the covering glare and bustle Gus leapt like Batman and landed in a crouch on top of the sleek white carriages.
Tension built inside him.
Were the polis on to him?
Would the train ride kill him?
Did his new levitation power mean that he had snapped?
Was he really just sleeping in?
What was he meant to do today?
Find a tomato, of course,
of course.
There was no time for satisfactory answers because the train was off.
Gus lashed his arms to the train with cords of white knuckle and hung on.
Ten feet beyond the end of the platform the track plunged half the distance Gus had just climbed,
the train and Gus followed it.
They all plummeted faster than the rain.
The drops flying up into his face harder than they usually fell. Energies poured through his body,
potential becoming actual,
acceleration fighting inertia,
g-force fighting gravity. Gus
screamed,
open mouthed,
there was no noise,
except the wind.
The sun was in the sky flooding the already wet city.
The slick surfaces gave back the orange nuclear glow.

From on top of the train Gus’ tear-bleared eyes saw the city that the planners never meant you to see. The backs of buildings, walls of metal fence, spaces of wasteground, temporary industrial landscapes moping in the pissing wet. He saw the unbeautiful carparks behind unbeautiful offices. He saw department store depositories and domiciliary equipment yards. The commuters on the train stared blindly through their spotted spattered windows but gus was out in it, all of it achingly clear. He saw gravel piles so clearly that he could have counted them from memory if he had a lifetime to waste. The wind and the leaves were vital to him; the short tunnels horrifying; the earth and the sky and the speed, exhilarating.
His nails broke on the inadequate handholds provided on top of the lighttrain.
He could not prevent a slow backwards slide along the train. This was not wise.
This was not getting him home, safe,
with a tomato or two.
Would this wild ride end in disaster?
Could he safely dismount?

He felt within himself for the levitational trigger,
probed his inner sensations for a clue that would lift him off the speeding train and set him gently on the ground.
A sudden hard gust of wind threw him up in the air, finally breaking his grip and almost his fingers. Gus’ senses packed his mind with data on the rushing metal surface of the train. His imagination filled with possibilities.
Landing back on the monster was not an option.
So Gus pulled upwards with all his fear strengthened spirit an twirled away into the air
 like a sycamore seed.

Gus span and span out of all control.

Normal spacetime had spat him out into an eternity
Of rushing fluids and soaking colours.
Gus saw the dancing blue dragon.
His extremities,
Head,
Fingers,
Toes,
filled with blood and tingled
as if strong electromagnets pulled at them.
His hat was lost.
His wide eyes searched for a surface,
any surface.

His body spun with his mind.
Isn’t that the wrong way round?
Drops of rain filled his open mouth.

A hard green wall of wet grass hit him in the back,
he tumbled headlong across it,
down it,
as it changed from green wall slowly into shocking stone and gritty sand.
Gus lay, breathing heavily, on his bruised back, looking at the sky; visible only through the canopy of trees which hid him from the rain.
He was roused by a vague far off rumbling sound,
like a generator.
He sat up and listened.
Then he stiffly stood.
He had fallen beside a dark canal, hemmed in on both banks by small neat paths and inhospitable looking steeply graded inclines clad in thick and spiky undergrowth. He set off along the path, glad that he had not fallen right into the water.
The generator noise seemed to be from an approaching aeroplane. It got louder and closer and more metallic and crunchy. The sound crinkled the air, constantly touching everything in the narrow manmade valley.
As he strolled back towards the city the noise became louder and louder yet. The air shook. Only a massive aeroplane could make such a din. Flying slowly and very low.
And were those muffled booms deep behind the noise?
Gus could only think of bombers.
Gus stared at the tiny morsel of sky,
searching for a sign.
What could be happening?
Had war broken out?
With the current state of misinformation it surely couldn’t be the least likely thing. War was a human norm, that it had not touched Gus before was chance and nothing more, his grandparents had known war and they were not so different he and they. But the pounding bass predator still approached and Gus still had no idea what it was.
Then an awful thing happened.
The noise got closer still and it became clear that ‘whatever it was’ was on his side of the canal.
And ‘whatever it was’ was travelling overgound, not in the sky.
The earth beneath his feet carried this terrible information up his entire body to his ravenous mind.
Gus glued his eyes to the tree line above him,
waiting for the steel bulk of tanks to appear and descend upon him.
But the threatening noise broke up into stealthy sections which never appeared but filled the shuffling undergrowth with possible killers. Killers that might personally decide his fate as easily as impersonal war machines could unthinkingly crush him. They were unknowably numerous and totally camouflaged.
The only evidence their massive numbers released was a terrifying sound. The tramp of boot, snick of gun, thud of shell, growl of motor; the softer sound of official letters bearing the worst of news.
Gus trotted on, feeling far from home.
Home?
What had happened to the city while he had been gone?
What would a really big earthquake do to Edinburgh?
He hurried.
The sound faded into the past.

The green walls of the canal fell and human habitations tentatively appeared as the city grew closer. Reassuring old concrete and grassy sheds. Bikes in various states of roadworthiness. Side roads full of puddles. Dripping trees trying to hit Gus in the coupon.
He quickly skirted a pebble dashed barnacle and approached a brown and yellow building, like a school hut.
In the vestibule Gus exclaimed aloud to himself as he found a two pound coin. The lucky find made everything else much simpler.
Inside the school hut was a pub, and a pint, and a final rest from the rain before the dash home.
Back out in the sunshine he sauntered down a firm mud road. Long grass and brambles merged into allotments and the flowery gardens of twee bungalows. There was only one hill before home.
A final rise of posh gardens.
He had to plan the route, over the small fences, around the easily damaged foliage plants.
He felt like a well intentioned burglar. Then
 for a moment
climbing a curve topped stone wall
he felt like a schoolboy.
Then he chided himself gently. Damn childhood,
he was getting wet and looking foolish right now.
As if to reward him, on the other side of the wall he spied a greenhouse. He humped along a few feet, laid his body down flat along the wall, reached out, through the window of the greenhouse, to grasp his hand around a perfect tomato.
He took it,
clambered the rest of the wall,
overtopped a garage
and dropped into a quiet street not far from his own.

Back inside.
Door shut to the never ending rain.
Keys on the table.
Hang up coat, mind the tomato.
Tomato in hand, grill on.
Open the fridge.
Lettuce out (old joke)
Bacon out and under.
Butter out, slices still on breadboard.
Slice tomato: perfect;
Tear lettuce.
Get towel for hair.
Salt and pepper to taste.

 

 

 

Relax, its over.