After the fire

I say character actor Gary Cole told me to do it, but the cops refuse to accept it. He's a leading man, they say, he just happens to have range. One has a DVD of American Gothic in their bottom drawer. The hems of my trousers still smell of gasoline.

Graphic Depictions of Insurance

A map appears on the study floor. He wants to use 'archipelago' but it shifts. Pangea on biscuit carpet, water searching for a single point of relief. The whole ground floor floods, or anyway dampens, enough to  set at his hollow temples an algal bloom of mistaken forms, case numbers, photos and many many days. He never wanted to pay an insurance premium until kingdom come, but now that it has - upon our very heads, Helen! - he's rather pleased. Proud to be not so green as cabbage-looking, he knew it was a scam as old as tides; turning now across the parquet floor, aghast at such easy discolouration, he discovers policy documents more logo than help. Absently fingering the slime at his temples, he has a vision of what this march of destruction portends for his generation: admin and endless phone calls to a man named Kieran at Aviva plc. Helen, he says, as she furiously bails water out the window, we simply must do something about climate change!