The Shifting Price of Prey

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The garden fairy was as desiccated as a dead frog squashed by a passing car and left to dry in the summer sun. Its claw-tipped appendages, stringy arms and legs, big bulbous eyes and wide slash of a mouth made it look even more amphibian-like. With its large gossamer wings folded down its back, it wasn’t much bigger than a frog either, so there was plenty of room in the plastic sandwich box that served as its makeshift coffin.

Though, as I adjusted the angle of the lamp and bent over the marble-topped desk to peer closer, I noted, of course, that ‘it’ wasn’t correct. Judging by the lack of neck-frill, and the corkscrew-shaped penis pointing down past the fairy’s knees— ‘it’ was a ‘he’.

And ‘he’ was a perfect example of why September – mating season for garden fairies – is called the screaming month.

Except this was the middle of June.

Hatching time, not mating time.

The fairy’s death was a freak of nature— if I was to believe my ‘client’, Mr Lampy.

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