The Snuff Mill

I was slumped on a deckchair idly flicking through The Daily Grind when a picture caught my eye in its barbed malice. An Iraqi casualty.

If I had to describe it, I wouldn't. If I were spread across a wheel and laboriously taken apart strip by strip with hot calipers, I wouldn't attempt to explain even that the boy's skin looked cold and pure as marble. Or that his smile/grimace was etched like a military boot in wet concrete. Or that his body was contorted like a buffeted TV aerial; angry semaphore.

I wouldn't mention in passing that he so strongly resembled my long-absent brother, I became convinced I used to have one. Or that the brother I didn't have was actually the boy next door and if we had been brothers, then my fantasy life would have been rampantly incestuous.

You can be too candid. It will go with me to his grave.