the smelly hillock, 2010

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S: Life was different back then; shiny, bright, colourful, superior and succulent. I was a system being, on display for all. But all that has changed now.

M: How did I get here? I only half remember, the memory is gone as if whatever happened never happened. Why did we end up devoid of innards and entombed in this godforsaken place? Beyond mind, spent and of no more use?

E: I just can’t stand the stench of decomposing and rotting food round me any more. Rodents and insects, crawling all over as if I were… invisible. Their stench hits the back of my throat and nostrils, it makes me retch. Leachate seeps out of everything - nothing could be worse. It’s too damn damp; damp dark and damp smelly.

L: What about the constant rubbing up against hard stuff, soft stuff, wet stuff? Cramped in a space where things are compacted, all sides touching and being touched with more on my tip-top is unbearable. Then they add to it daily; my luxury is torn, crumpled and inside out.

L: Wouldn’t you love to be back on the shelf; tantalizing, slightly out of reach and glimmering under dazzling lights?

Y: Just don’t think or feel that’s my trick.

H: I have this strange sense that I am still here; present despite not being seen.

I: But, don’t you like the fact that you are not alone anymore? Our friends have joined us and we are reunited here in the upside-down under-world?

L: They look worn and faded too, but I will endure and outlast some of them by hundreds of years in my new sub-terra residence.

L: One of the newbies told me that sheep graze above us, that flies swarm and that the air stinks.

O: Apparently lots of strips and layers have been ploughed into, but there is nothing left to see down here, just smell.

C: This place is not what it seems, it is a stinky, smelly hillock and I hate it. Juices ooze, insects lay eggs and gases whistle through tubes, otherwise this whole place would blow – pow, and I wish it would.

K: Listen? Can you hear the buzzards screeching overhead?

Published by Ponsonby Press, 2010.