Sunday, February the 5th, 2006

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K Is for Kleptomania

Look, stranger, at this : episode eleven of the thrilling serial story The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet

Morose and insignificant, dyspeptic and cruel, Blodgett was also a kleptomaniac. He would have stolen his own head, given the opportunity. Oh, the things the man brought back from his robberies! Pins, litmus paper, zinc, gorse, pie-crusts… not even Euwige knew where Blodgett stashed everything, or how he disposed of it all.

Euwige was relentless. She listened out for Blodgett, concealed behind parapets, shrubberies, false ceilings. She pried and spied without success. Then she questioned him directly. She tied him to a chair and shone a Toc H lamp into his eyes, puffing the smoke from her cheroot into his face. He coughed, but was otherwise uncommunicative. Later she tried wheedling and deedling, but that didn't work either. Blodgett remained wholly and uncannily silent.

And still he accumulated tuning forks, dishcloths, cortisone and ironmongery, tin baths, cupcake mixture, the heads of oxen, and whisks, and still these things vanished, somehow, as if they had never existed in the first place. Like Trellis.