Fairground Attraction

Husband and wife duellists whetting their custom weapons. As usual neither has any Seconds, no one to rein them in and make them see sense. No feud-fatigued child savant to bang their infantile heads together. Ding ding, seconds out, round on one another. Roll up, roll up.

His tongue rolls the acidic spitball around the crevices and cavities of his mouth. Shaping and casting the verbal stilettos. Honing the precise dimensions of the intended words. Filing and grinding against his teeth. Ready to launch and thrust. The palate sheath withdraws, the acuity primed to cut

To the quick, yet not to the core. As in any quarrel, the aim is to wound but not fell. To pin down without impaling. To notch the unimpeachable point of an argument, not to clinch a lifetime of detestation. Delicate balance and distribution of point and edge. He fixes on aiming for that ridiculous kiss curl that mocks him from between her eyes. If he could snag that particular quintain, she would perforce have to tug her forelock and concede. Of course there is so much petrochemical gunk lining her head already, a single loose spark emitted from his cold metal barb...

And she too is firing up her arsenal. Liquid accelerant lapping around her quivering mouth, working up the necessary flammability. To go incendiary on his hind quarters. Arse! This was going to be a big time blow up. Lardy! Quarter neither asked for nor given. And so it begins. Cocktease!/ Cockfeather!

He lashes her to the revolving wheel in his mind's eye. Echoes of historical Inquisitions. When stilled, it facilitates his aim, training his trajectory along sharp lines for honed blades. But when that gash of a mouth of hers has built up sufficient steam, spinning wildly so she becomes nothing but a blur, a whirl of perpetual motion, he is charged with a far more hazardous plunge. She becomes a girandole of complete unreason. Snuffing out all further susceptibility. The pommels of his verbal daggers flapping with cartoon reverberations, having missed their mark. Dabbing uselessly in the air, like the snapped limb of an animal

She has her fire started now. Eternal conflagrations billow from the everlasting brimstone of her forge. Freshly quarried by her blistering tongue, seeking to spit-roast him for quarry. Her fierce heat singes his eyebrows. He hefts another knife to slice through the air at her heart. Cockroach!/ Coward! / Vermin! / Dung beetle!

His salivary salvo is unleashed. Whore! Meets hers head on. Limp dick! His words condense in her heat, vaporised with a tutting hiss of steam. His cutting edge tempered. Temper, temper, you're showing your hand. You got nothing Mr Limp wrist. That quenches him. Brittle now. Well you'd know, you wrote the book on temperamental. With the emphasis on the 'mental'. Temper, a double-edged word. Fit for an outburst, an unhinging of passion such as this. But also a mollifying, a soothing. A middle way.

Blunted, forced back by the heat, he must acknowledge the middle way to be her way for today. From knife thrower to sword-swallower. Forcing him to eat his own words. Falling on his own sword. Maybe not, a final parry possible; Make-up sex? he tentatively proffers.

She glares him down in flames.

Passion's big top blown for another evening.




This story appears in my first Amazon Kindle collection

Click on this for a troubling video of a knife throwing mother...