The Guards

Out where the lonely highways turn into winding dirt tracks stand the guards.

Maybe God put them there to stop bleeding at the seams of reality. But we don't know.

Maybe they're just a legend, a whispered rumour in the casbah, a drunken secret shared among brothers of the grape.

Maybe just a mad glimpse in the shadows; something to shudder a lonely traveller; a voice in the fog to a pilgrim making progress.

The guards creak, but they are fast, and they are merciless. They have metal in them. Steel; but not stainless.

Stainful steel.

Maybe. Maybe they run on electricity. No manufacturer's initials appear on their outer casing.

The guards just are, and they inhabit fracture lines and awkwardness.

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