Marie was walking gaily along the pavement, listening to the warbling in the trees, and the occasional car passing in the distance. She felt the lack of presence of the sky that day, as the faint yellow haze subtley sprayed across the floor of the sea of light blue. The clear sky was beautifully plain, but what really affected the girl was the purity of the air; only a day after the thunderstorm meant that everything smelled as fresh as a cascading waterfall. It was such a contrast to the day before the storm, as the weight pressed down on Marie's shoulders; the filling station with air conditioning giving the only respite to her smothered body and lungs. She told herself that there are not very many days like the one she was experiencing, so she made sure she was going to enjoy it. So she started skipping along the path humming melodies, and enjoying the freedom from the clouds. She hopped over to a patch of bluebells, and inhaled the sweet fragrance. She absokutely adored the smell of flowers. She delicately snapped the stem of one of the bluebells, and slid the gorgeous flower inside her hair clasp, and picked a small bunch for her friend. Ross was Marie's friend. But she thought that he was so very cute, she wanted to kiss and cuddle him forever. But she did not dare even give any signs away to him before, as her fear of rejection was pretty intense. As she turned round the corner to the park, she saw Ross sitting on the bench, looking at his watch. Marie was early herself, so she guessed he must have just arrived a moment before. He looked up and saw her, smiled, and got up to hug her. In their embrace, Marie was nearly overwhelmed by how gorgeous he smelled. He must have used some strawberry scented shower gel, Marie thought, and to her satisfaction. She timidly gave him the bunch of bluebells, trying not to let her senses take control of her. But his smile was unbearable, and she could not help but blush slightly and drop her head a wee bit. Ross brought them a picnic, and his tartan rug took the whole of his rucksack, so he carried their lunch in a carrier bag. They settled down on a nice spot, and Ross told his friend of his bus journey there. There was an adorabe little girl on the bus sitting opposite to him. She wore a little puppy fat, but that just made her frown ever cuter to him. She clutched her Bagpuss throuhout the journey, and got off at the stop before him. Marie knew that this girl was half Ross' age, and she would find this girl just as cute as he did, but she was nearly sick with envy. She wanted desperately to be the one he thought was cute. Her masterplan to let things happen naturally was scrunched up; she was going to have to something that very day. She sighed to herself and lay down, and gazed into the sky. Silence passed between them, but she didn't find this an awkward silence. She was actually quite content in lying there with him, with the adrenaline undermining her jealousy, and racing through her as she was ready to penetrate the threshold between being friends and kissing him. Ross did not like the silence though. He thought that something was wrong, but he didn't know what. So he stood up, and asked her friend if she wanted to take a walk to the pond. He gave Marie her hand to help her up, but he did not have as much strength as he wanted to; Marie managed to fins her feet, but it wasn't without knocking over her friend's rucksack... the bag fell on its side, and Marie could only try to battle against her body's reluctance to breathe, as one of the side pockets was open. She could see her masterplan growing obselete, and then her backup plan be torn to shreds, as her world crashed before her, and saw a couple of packets of cigarettes slide out of the bag... _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+