Excerpt: A Note About Graves

The corners of her mouth sank, showing the age lines on her cheeks. “Right, right. I’ll have meself not a soul to chatter to. We only get regulars these days, and they’re all goat-lovers, if ye get me lip.” She took the drink herself, slamming down the shot-glass. Her right shoulder went up in a twitch and there was a bang when her knee hit the bar. She let out a small cry but quickly composed herself. “Gots yerself a name?”

“Sherwood.”

“Sherwood,” the name rolled off the tip of her tongue; she tasted it. “Sherwood. Where’s that name from then?” She was now cleaning the bar with a dirty rag, briefly looking up to the distant sound of horses against soft rock which disappeared in a bare moment. My ears perked to a different sound, that of an orgasm that came from the occupied rooms upstairs. The woman treated it as commonplace. I grimaced.

“Penal colonies,” I said.

She laughed, dropping the rag. “One of those, eh? Same. Me grandfather, that is. You too? Grandfather?”

“It’s been that long?”