The hawk nosed general in the grey suit sniffed out his enemies, labrador like, nose to the noise, chest beating, bleating, blaring in the thunderous applause, that made his ego bloom amongst the corpses of the shrunken heads and hands reaching out for bread, in the shut down quarter of the empire where the eagles flew in/ out dropping mustard, caught between a deadly sandwich of closed escape routes.
"Burn them all" he said, and turning to his sidekick, he smiled a thin smile, devoid of the god he worshiped in the minarets on the mosques that stabbed the blue sky with their sharp bulbous needles of attention.
At twelve the muezzin called the faithful to prayer and moaned for mercy on the unbelievers.The call echoed and reverberated down the streets. The mustard closed the eyes of the city where the gas cannisters jangled on thin nerves and let the people sleep forever.
The grey suit, now eau de cologne scented handker- chief hawk nose sniffed wiped his forehead and walked spritely to his armoured vehicle, to call his wife and enquire if the kids were enjoying their summer swim.
"Yes, darling!" she tingled with excitement. "How's that part of the city where these rats live?" "Good love! Just need to smoke 'em out some more! By tonight I'll be home for dinner. Bye for now!"
The line went dead with twenty others, fried in the concrete pan of a bunk buster bomb dropped from a drone with butterfly wings and a sharp upside down minaret nozzle of spray now stabbing the earth. Earth to sky, sky to earth?
The barbed wired brains circled the city. Children soon crunched cockroaches, mice and rats and grass salads, autumn leaves on wild spinach thousands died eating succulent poisonous roots.
Even the carrion claws refused to descend into the darkness of carcasses that lay down in the streets to pray forever.
The water turned green with envy as lichen, clogged with blood and ***** and bones rotting under bridges, ****** up the blue river and sent the beavers into burrows of omerta The world watched and waited.
?
Around the dinner table the grey suited general tucked his napkin under his red,wellfed face and smiled at his lovely wife in a designer outfit. " Pass me the mustard please, darling!"