The Fur Collar

1

All evening I could smell the fur collar of her new coat, like a happy memory or a promise, the coat she had bought that morning at the fleamarket. Who had been its mistress before? Who had been owned by its perfume, its cut?
Later she removed her opal ring and handed it to me. “Look closely, you can see seven colours.” I turned it in the light- a tiny constellation flared- but all I could see were blue and white.

2

Cramped in her cage, the anguished mink paces to and fro, to and fro, and bites, bites her own flesh, just to feel something, to know she is still alive, and in her mind she is swimming in cool waters, sanctified.
Soon someone will come to gas her or poison her or break her neck.
Caged foxes attack one other, tearing at each other’s flesh in cannibal frenzies. Presently a man comes, humming a song, to electrocute them in the anus.
A struggling raccoon gnaws screaming at his leg, desperate to free himself from the trap. Then he looks up: a bullet in the head and the hunter’s boot stomps on his skull.

3

All evening I could smell the fur collar of her new coat, like a happy memory or a promise.
She had palped the fabric with her witch’s fingers, probed its warmth and depth for meaning, till she trusted it, needed its comfort, its grace. A bargain.
Her smile spiralled like a Methodist hymn into the devirginated heavens.