Tumulus

I am hyperplastic, surrounded by tumuli. A drone moves in the valley below. Cysts smoulder with a wash of unidentified chemicals. What started as archaeology has rapidly descended into farce. Black hares mewl in the bushes. Bastards. Moon turns the lake to a silk hankie gathered at a point. Rivers crawl, the bastard interlopers.

Entropy begins soon after. Vortigern scouting the woods. Muffled covert projects. Rumours of dark armies disappearing into marshland, the mountain opening its unmapped flanks.

We are dressed for the occasion not the weather. A goat stands at the foot of the ridge. He has not climbed this far to be disappointed. Great spot for a pirate radio station, we both think. It’s uncanny, the hill. Burnt on one side, rising from the valley floor like a tumour, a bastard stump. The moon watches, though I doubt it is a moon at all.

The drone is growing now. My heart, ballistic. Grappling up the ramparts, I saw my own reflection in the forming night-frost. Deep inside, it’s red and sweating like a brain. I lump you in as well.

Pissing in the dark. Bastard hares tracking snouts in the undergrowth. Reinforced windows smash. Shop fronts collapse under the weight of it.

Always keep hydrated. Always feel and breathe. The hares cavort, the moles and creeping things. Land is a profligate anus. We are breathing ourselves back in. Droplets coalesce on a pair of nylon lungs tethered to the hill. Vortigern breaching from the north-east. Vortigern breaking, molting needles, praising the moon. Unmanned drones probe the basin for signs of life. Keep breathing, the tumour will depart, the tumulus, the sudden, sodden tumult of this plot. And then the hill erupts in wet, glorious morning.