The carrot rots: one hour healthy orange, the next livid white, then a rapid state of putrefaction, the ends distinctly black and flimsy like a trunk consumed by fungal growth and battalions of termites, the black film advancing like the burning edge of an abandoned draft of a chronicle of an invading tribe of faceless Northern barbarians. The peel strips off like a moist, dirty rag laying vagrant atop the deli countertop, the stench of potatoes and dried fish, and then the meowing, the incessant meowing, the neglect, the deviousness, the vengefulness. It watches, the maniacal cat of scornful cat eyes under the backdrop of crimson draperies, the sinister figure wrapped in a tunic, the small velvet pillow under the shining crystal ball ready to crack at the slightest pulse just as the vial under the armpit of a cat figure in a poncho and sombrero, a red neck tie, a lengthy clip belt wrapped several times around the torso, the rifle dextral, the saber sinistral, the blood tarnished from a shell wound, the rosy, dewy, sunset sky fitting for the rotting occasion. Like the gaucho or the vizier, neither the bearded pirate with a claw, a skull pendant and the two conjoined melon slices for a hat, nor the heavily ornamented Napoleonic officer, nor the Spanish revolutionary, nor the Harem concubine, all cats, all cat-eyed: none impact the rotting progression, one, two, three and já foi; not Edith Piaf, nor Betty Smith, nor the abandoned chess board, nor the woodcut of a lavishly painted contrabass.
Questions, comments? Connect.