Not Yet Titled

I claim it is part of everything to be its own whole. The person implied by ‘me’ is more universal than anything you can put between definition-buffers. Johnno looked up at the chimney and sighed deeply, and wondered if his brushes would reach up that far, as the flue looked as if it might be the longest flue in the world. Once inside, joint by joint he inserted each metal rod into the next one up, feeding upward the whole thing half by half by half into the narrow conduit that seemed clogged with fresh soot despite there having been no fire lit at its bottom hearth for at least a hundred years. No wonder the owner Mrs Kenn had called in Sweep Johnno, with her having recently heard boyish screams up the chimney during the night. Or girlish screams? — Johnno wondered, because ghosts had their own free choice of pronouns these days, whatever the timbre in their vocal cords. To be a ghost, happily it just needed to call itself a ghost. Johnno approved of today’s freedoms, but did Mrs Kenn? Which brings it all back to me and the pantry shelf on which I sat each Sunday, just begging someone to take me to the local church service so that I could climb the church’s towering spire from inside. I was no showman who climbed such daredevil buildings outside simply for brazen bravado. These words themselves are similarly more inner than outer, more unread than read. The old tasks were the best tasks, in days when nobody asked awkward questions. Johnno and Mrs Kenn and the soot were just invented to lend veracity to my story, the choice of names as an unlikely dual idiosyncracy. They never existed — in the same way as God never existed, in truth. ‘Soothsaying’ is this story’s title in hindsight. Please insert it above at the top