Leaning into the gas ring

he lights a cigarette and begins to list the illnesses that have struck people down in the area. Cancer. Coronary. Liver and kidney failure. And he says, “they’re just the killers. Migraine. Anxiety. Impotence. Thrombosis. The high rates of carcinogenic illness in the area are being looked into. It all relates.”

One by one, down to the watering hole for fellowship and favour, to find souls willing to flatter fictions – of which, there were plenty of both these days – we are drawn. We frame the table.

“They were testing secret things, probably nuclear. Now, decades later, everyone’s sick.”

Makes sense.