A Stroll - Pall Mall

A snapshot of the Bendigo that exists in my head.

The body flops onto the road and rolls like a rag doll to the gutter. The minivan that dropped it there has slammed its door and trundled away as only minivans can.

Some louts crowd out of McCafe - boguns with their frappacinos - muttering, nonplussed about being kicked out of the playground; one of them declares her ability to "murder a burrito". They step over the corpse and slouch across the road in search of Mexican fare.

 

It's 2am, Wednesday, and Pall Mall is predictably crowded. I look down the street toward the park and see a bloom of red among fluffly clouds of blue-white hair - the local senior knitting societies are lobbing flares across the road at each other again.  Opening the sewing store 24hrs was a bad move from the start - you can't get the dears off the street anymore, though if they closed their doors all hell would break loose. I pass the ringleader as she is handed the burning flare, and I can smell the haze of sherry that engulfs her posse.

'Your mother's great-aunt was illegitimate!' she screams, and the flare arcs back over the road. The ringleader - eighty, at least - jumps on her pimped-out shopmaster; over the roar of its lawnmower engine I can hear the crackly wireless strapped to the back as it warbles into life - "We-ell me-et agai-n..." - bloody hell, it's Vera Lynn. I grit my teeth and try to make better time to the corner.

 

There's another red glow past the fountain, hanging over Rosalind Park - flames, burning with a tinge of green. They've caught another of the metal folk and are trying to smelt it at the stake. It was werewolves, last week.

 

Reviews

[OnEternity]

Was the dead body metaphorical or real? If it was real, that reminds me of China in the 70's with the babies in the garbages and on the streets, abandoned.(Still occurs today but the press doesnt cover it)

Do you intend to make the story any longer. Sounded alot like a poem. I liked it though.

[soul music]

i like this very muchly! However me being biased, i would love a 24 hr sewing store! imagine the possibilities *maniac cackle*~ what i could craft with these two hands!
it strange how we all perceive our town isn't it? It is something that fascinates me how people percieve the same thing so differently. My first thought when i read the part about the body falling on the road was that this represented a burger. As in, your proximity to Mcdonalds and how a burger is essentially the body of a cow... but i might be reading something thats not there...

anyway, i love this piece, and especially as a personal reflection of YOUR feelings about Bendigo, however i would have put in an ode to the shining beacon that is the book store!
again, great work on this one!

[Stonewall]

I cackled my way all through this. The Vera Lynn part was sensational. Good old Vera. Nice work, what was the inspiration?

[dermal_plating]

Very funny, now you just need to keep going.