In this way days, weeks or even a occasional month could pass without a beating at 473 New Garden Terrace in Endland (sic) and just the sight of a dwindling yellow apple to keep a child awake or on its toes.

*

Days of tension, brite nites of dreams.

Kelly’s father had a stone mason come round their flat and carve in the words UTOPIA on the doorstep but she dint think he meant it literally – just as an indication of what he and his family were striving for and regardless what filth the other scum on the estate decided to chase after .

Only when the last bite of his apple was done would Kelly’s father strike – instantly scalding that child unlucky enough to have ‘finished the fruit’ (as he termed it) and sending it down to FAST FOOD to get another one (an apple) before administering actual bodily punishment of a grievous/hideous kind.

*

That there were possible abuses to this system is so fucking obvious as it is also inevitable that in any society the weak will sink and the strong will rise and that there will emerge a type or class what manipulate the apparatus of justice and the law and ‘prosper in every event’ ©.

Kelly, for her part, was one of the sinkers and in fact, to extend out our metaphor, she was just that kind of weight some persons might use to put inside a sports bag of unfortunate other animals and cause them all to drown.

*

Kelly lacked guile. She did not limit her misbehaviour to the time when an apple was fresh and therefore unlikely to be ‘finished’ but rather sinned willy nilly and thus very often ‘finished the fruit’.

Kelly was dumb. When sent to purchase another apple from FAST FOOD she did not look round for a bloody great big one (like what her brothers did) but bought some cheap and poxy thing that her dad could finish off easy in less than 5 bites.

Kelly got some poisons. She put them in her fathers apple and killed him, really slowly, really painful, really bad.

*

Revenged in this way Kelly left home and moved to Corsica. She got off with a bloke, the son of a foreign dictator (or so he said) whose father had been shot and hanged at a roundabout. Kelly wanted to know everything abt this new man – all abt his country, all abt his language, all abt his dreams, and all abt his father – was he hanged to death in the street and then shot repeatedly for target practice or was he shot in private and then just hanged up at the roundabout to be put on display?