Sex, death and a snake in the grass: 19 linked short stories, fiction for the Internet. Read in narrative sequence using the left-hand menu or follow characters through the in-page links
4
Mark sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee and the Sunday papers spread out in front of him. Alice was at the oven, cooking bacon and sausages. Mark was absorbed in an environmental article about the untreated overspill from a sewage plant discharging onto a beach in Northern Ireland. Things had now come to a head, with giant tomato plants growing on the sands.
'Listen to this, Alice,' Mark said, reading out the article. 'It really makes you think, doesn't it, how we're no different to animals.'
'What do you mean?'
Then Mark told her about how some plants use animal digestion and excretion for seed dispersal and germination. And how tomato seeds pass through the human stomach and into sewage systems.
'Anyway,' he added, 'I'll make some toast. What do you want to have with the bacon?'
Alice had already taken two tins, one of plum tomatoes and the other of beans, out of the cupboard and now she stood there with one in each hand. She looked at Mark doubtfully, and then put one of them back on the shelf.
'I think beans,' she said. 'Don't you?' 