it was arson , i'd bet my hat on it ! @ lemon
𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝖾𝗅𝗌 𝗈𝖿 𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍𝗂𝖼𝖾 𝖺𝗋𝖾, 𝗂𝗇 𝗆𝖺𝗇𝗒 𝗐𝖺𝗒𝗌, 𝗅𝗂𝗄𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝖾𝗅 𝗈𝖿 𝖺 𝗆𝗈𝗇𝗈𝖼𝗒𝖼𝗅𝖾: incrediblydifficult to balance and usually handled by a single clown with no purposeother than entertaining a crowd looking for something to do with their Sunday Morning. Also generally favourable toward tips. As a child I had never been curious to ride a monocycle, and quickly found out I couldn’t trust any clown that was jolly. I soon came to feel the same way about those in charge steeringthe wheels of justice –as I have witnessed too much suffering and injustice to believe they are ever steering in the right direction.This investigation, I also believed, was being wrongly steered in the direction of ‘Accident’.
Though I was posing as a journalist, my Organization had trained us all to see the traces of arson from the very smoke in the distance. The smoke had always meant run, you only had to figure out if it should be towards and away from it. This had been a towards, and I’d had been very discouraged to find everyone running away. Closing a case that had only started opening up to me, telling me things in the items left behind and the charred shapes in the curtains.Resigned to steering against the Official Wheels, I’d started photographing the scene under the not so false pretence of writing about it when a young woman walked up to me, and said the only sensible thing I’d heard all afternoon: ‘It was arson, I’d bet my hat on it!’.
Relieved by her very existence, I looked at her the way two mice look at each other the second the cat walks out the door. The cat being the police.
“ I’d join your wager, but magenta doesn’t suit me. ” A beat. “ And I’d be betting against myself. ”
@pphryne
