David Blake turned into an umbrella. His parents were disappointed, but not surprised. For months now, he had been changing – limbs lengthening, voice deepening, and skin covered in a slick of grease which seemed to bubble up from the surface. The umbrella seemed like a logical climax to that unsettling precursor.
The umbrella was many things that David was not; neat, quiet, and useful. It sat politely at the dinner table. It didn’t rant about the climate emergency. It didn’t scream that Conservatives were killers and it hated, hated, hated them.
The Blakes continued as usual, dropping David off at school, and collecting him at four from the same kerb. The other parents looked on with pity. They were skeptical. “He’s not an umbrella’, they said. “He’s run away. The umbrella’s what he left behind.” But David’s parents knew the truth.
He was an umbrella now, and it was something of an improvement.
No comments:
Post a Comment