Atmospheric Consequences

Doors slam. A hornet enters through the window, adding its thrum to the distant snore of her neighbour’s mower. She slithers from between sheets, and secretes herself through a doorway as the insect rockets towards her.

Dusk. Plants are beginning to droop after a spell of heat. Girls chatting beneath a large curly willow, water the garden. A revving sound, building to a roar, draws their gaze up towards a dark cloud expanding into the air from twisted branches. The oldest girl orders the youngest to run and they race to escape the swarm, screaming to their mother in the kitchen.

Silent and still on the floor of her studio, she guesses you must have died from lack of oxygen. Balancing your tiny body in the palm of her hand, she studies your truculent appearance, seeing that you are about four centimetres long. Not yet drained of colour, your perfectly formed body sparks an impulse to draw. Charcoal meeting thick white paper, her hand moves around the page as you appear, erupting into a 4’x5’ space. You grow magnificent and she feels small.

A shadow moves past her ear, arcing and weaving through organic material and papier-mâché sculptures, hovering long enough to be seen clearly, then disappearing over a ledge. She knows with her body, for a moment, that the dead are no more absent than the living.

Mandy Rogers

Mandy Rogers is a student on the Creative Non Fiction MA at UEA, exploring a relationship between the written and the visual.