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サマリー
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あらすじ・解説
Lockdown may be over, but our store of lockdown tales is not. Music: Creepy — Bensound.com. Here are some Totally Made Up Tales brought to you by the magic of the internet. Try placing your hands on my thighs and then rub. Language makes it easy to understand other people and animals. Friends don’t listen to moaning. Friends tell each other to shut up. One day, Maisie got out of bed, stretched, and thought, I wonder what I should do today. She arched her back and flicked her tail and stretched her claws. Perhaps she would go and chase birds. That will be a wonderful thing to pass the time, particularly if she could catch that fat blue tit that had been taunting her for days. She jumped up onto the window sill and out, climbing up onto the roof. From her high up vantage point, she looked over the gardens of the neighbourhood that she regarded quite rightly as her own. There, three gardens down, sat a bird. Perched on an old fashioned flat surfaced bird table covered in bacon rinds, pecking away at them with an arrogant swagger in its manner. Maisie extended her claws and licked them carefully, making sure that they were sharp and ready for action. Stealthily putting one paw in front of the other, she crept across the tiles of the roof, with the smoothness of a monorail. First, from her own house to the next door. And then the one beyond that, and finally to the one in whose garden the bird perched. She crouched low against the roof tiles, peering intently down at the bird, still unaware of her presence. And then, letting out a yodelling screech, she leapt for the bird table. Midway through her jump, the bird, alerted by her yodel, turned, looked at her, and took flight. Maisie landed on the bird table, which wobbled precariously. As it wobbled slightly, it fell onto its side and an ungainly heap of cat, bacon rind, and table were left on the lawn. From inside the house, Maisie heard the owner yelling. He was fumbling for the key for the back door and looked like the sort of angry red-faced man that might teach geography. Maisie took off like a shot. And crouched in the branches of a nearby tree where she wouldn't be able to be reached, she licked the bacon fat off her paws and was surprisingly pleased by the taste. Perhaps, she thought, I should hunt bacon next. The end. Timothy sat down on a rock, at the side of the road. He was weary, having walked from the village all the way out to where he was now. The flat, marshy fields of the fens stretched out in a featureless expanse, as far as the horizon in all directions. He was beginning to worry that the pub that he was heading for, maybe didn't actually exist. It had sounded so attractive when his Airbnb host had recommended it to him as a pleasant Sunday afternoon outing. But now, the wind whistling between the rocks and the heather, he was having second thoughts. As he sat on his stone, a cold feeling started to creep from the rocks into his bones. He thought he should get moving again, but somehow couldn't quite pick up the energy to stand up. It seemed that he was getting heavier by the moment, and that his thoughts were slowing. His heart rate seemed to be slowing too. His pulse, almost impossible to discern. Eventually the sculpture park in Lowestoft became Britain's top tourist attraction for 2020. Walking home one afternoon, Melissa stopped by a bank by the side of the road to pick some wild flowers. They were a wonderful selection of colours, bright yellow, dark purple, and pale cornflower blue. She wrapped them carefully in a scarf that she had with her, and took them home and arranged them in a vase. The smell of the flowers filled her living room. It was rich and intoxicating, with that edge of the night that comes from wild flowers. Even by the time she was getting ready to go to bed, she could still feel permeated through the house, the magic and feeling of dusk. As she slept, the land of dreams washed itself over the horizon of her consciousness. She saw herself dancing, dancing through fields of flowers, dancing with flowers, just dancing throughout the night. When she woke in the morning, it was not in the comfortable and familiar bed that she had gone to sleep in. Although the bed was still there, now it was twined with flowers. Every surface covered with creepers, with blooms, and even the very sheets had turned to patterned flowers. She lay in a bed entirely of flowers. As summer turned to autumn, the bloom of the flowers faded and the leaves of the creepers crinkled and shrivelled and prepared for the winter ahead. Now the house felt more cold than it had ever done. And she started to resist going to bed, staying up later and later, the bed feeling cold and unwelcoming when she slipped into it, finally. At last, on a chill October night, the first frost of the year came and carried her away. When they found her body cold, dark, and alone, creepers were still entwined with her limbs and a small wreath of still...