Short Story: A Field Guide to Ugly Places
This story was chosen as a notable story of 2005 by Story South Magazine.
Jamie Barton's life is in ruin. He is unemployed and his wife has just left him after fifteen years. In despair, he returns to the abandoned industrial estate where he used to work. There he meets a strange woman who will turn his life around.
Extract
It was just light enough for Jamie to see where he was putting his feet. Within a couple of paces, he realized the ground was coated in moths, hundreds upon thousands upon millions of them, settled over every brick, every girder, ever stained patch of asphalt. They spun up where he stepped, before his feet could crush them, like snowflakes falling upwards.
The ground beneath his feet felt odd. He crouched. The ground was dusty and dry. He reached down and ran a finger over it, then lifted it to his lips. His tongue flicked over his finger. Dirt. And something else. Something sweet, like flowers. Pollen?
He stared at his finger. For a moment, it seemed like something alien. Then he shook his head, and moved on.
He reached the culvert and sat himself on the barrel. A halo of moths rose around him, then settled again further away. The barrel, too, was covered in the layer of dirt and pollen. Jamie took a deep breath. For the first time that he could recall, the air in this place wasn't stagnant and laced with degraded oil. It was almost intoxicating.
- From A Field Guide to Ugly Places. Read the story free online in Strange Horizons.
Free Online
Read A Field Guide to Ugly Places free online in Strange Horizons.
Publication Details
First published in Strange Horizons, 6 June 2005.
Credits
The story illustration is by Liz Clarke.