Morpethroad

This week’s words: Grope Hazel Skull Mutual Luminary (A celestial body, as the sun or moon. A person who has attained eminence in his or her field or is an inspiration to others.) Leopard Potency Tatterdemalion (A person in tattered clothing; a shabby person.) Sidle (to move sideways or obliquely.) Prism Apothegm (a short, pithy, instructive saying; a terse remark or aphorism.) Drape

They say leopards don’t change their spots and Mary Louise was one who stuck firmly to the adage that if it ain’t broke why fix it. She was a master of the apothegm her language sprinkled with them and she was never averse in using them when the need arose.

We were both village tatterdemalions living as we did among the refuse of society. Mary Louise or M’s as we called her was not a good person to hang around. I tried to avoid her much as possible but its hard when your sleep was broken with the realisation that her hand was down your pants as she groped around inside for the rapidly disappearing.

I’d wake up and look into her hazel eyes, which looked a whole lot darker at night. She suddenly freeze and the tale of seeing a rat go up the leg of my trousers would be told and that she was saving me by removing it before it did too much damage. I’d then mention to her that my testicles were not something I wanted removed and she’d apologise and withdraw her hand.

M’s hand down my pants and her holding me by what determined my manhood never did much to liven up my potency levels. She was to put it mildly an ugly woman with a toothless grin and a pock marked skull, which in the moonlight did little to endear her to you.

But no matter the circumstances hail rain or shine if you weren’t keeping an eye out she would sidle up beside you and before you knew it she’d have draped her arm around you would have begun suggesting her plan for you both for the coming evening. Most times her conversation centred on her desire to build some sort of prism in which the two of us could sleep. Though it wasn’t sleep that she was thinking about. It was always something about increasing one’s potency but it made little sense to me.

To say we developed a mutual dislike and distrust is to put it mildly. M’s was the sort of woman you walked across a field of broken glass bare footed in order to avoid.

Her sole claim to fame was her insistence that once she was a luminary in the field of mathematics. Geometry was her field hence her interest in prisms though in a real sense I think she spent more time in prison than in a prism. She told us stories of her years at the University, of the research into geometric shapes, of the papers she allegedly wrote and of the honours she won.

She’d have you in every time before you realised she had the grope out again and you’d be fighting her off her advances twisting your body into their own geometric shapes to avoid her hands of steel.

Usually that resulted in a blow or two on your skull as she’d claim to be brushing something away but I always asked her how many things seem to be always going for my testicles when she was around.

Then she’d utter another of her apothegms like ‘better be safe than sorry’ or if she was feeling particularly frisky ‘never enough’ she utter eyeing off my nether regions.

As I said leopards never change their spots and M’s was one of those.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/wordle-77-september-7-2015/