Chapter Three (Part One)

If Jen was the kind of person to talk about voting against the current local council for their poor litter collection; then Ethan was the kind to pick it up. Plus he liked to walk, and it wasn’t exactly taxing to do both. He had often considered how different he and his sister were, doing what we all do and seeing right through our similarities.

He was up early for work again. He could walk to work; it was the best time to walk, the best time of all the day, when the air was crisp and the park quiet. His customary, sfumato smile played across his lips. He stopped and looked at his watch, it was nearing six and the air was cool, so as to feel like mist.

He felt sure that she thought the same way as he; that they were different, but he also felt sure that she felt it in a more pejorative sense than he, in the way that people with lower self-confidence often do. She had a degree. Did that make her high minded? It certainly didn’t seem to be making her money, or even happy. She was trained to be an academic, but she had no love for academia. It was such a terrible pity to see her waving her conditioning around as if it was more than training.

He deliberately left the path near the entrance to the park and sauntered across the grass towards the stream, the cool dew colouring his trainers. He then turned onto the path which cut across and crept up the hill towards the church and town.

It was as he turned to his left he saw another supermarket trolley stuffed, half upturned into a bush.

A feeling of kinship had developed. In many ways the life of the trolley was not too dissimilar to his. At times it could seem mundane and repetitive, but it was always faced with impervious sprite, good nature and a slight wobbly mischief; and sometimes they had a moment of exhilaration to savour.

It wasn’t the first one he had seen. Actually he saw one every now and again, either lying buckled beyond use at the bottom of the high street, refusing to slow them until the huge flint gate had intervened, lying around in the park after a Friday night or bathing in the stream.

He walked on and it was only as he turned his head back to look up the hill to the spire of the church that he caught the glimpse of something, right at the very edge of his vision. Next to the trolley cage and beneath the shadow of the bush, ghostly against the dark earth lay a slender white foot.

“Shi…t,” the word whistled out spontaneously as he was caught there motionless, struck still by the macabre sight.