A bit of fantasy dreamed up by a recent innocent, browsing trip to a new shopping mall in Edinburgh, taking a breather from the world famous arts and comedy festival
*
The odours permeating my extremely sensitive nose were ranging from exotic to milk sweet. The colours were darkest black to not quite, by now, crisp white and housed in delicate silks, lacy frippery, highly patterned miniature cottons and cute polyester slivers. There were also musky, shitty, sweaty stinks, but easily avoided, as all were bundled in large, grey and grubby once white cottons.
I tended to rest in one of the oval, roomy coves which never fully flattened like the scented ones mentioned above, as they were reinforced with wiring going round the rims. On one or two of these, there were pretty bows where the two adjoining coves, sometimes with designed lacy edges in contrasting striking colours came together.
Huge woollens, plaids, fleeces, Lycra, Lycra mixed with polyester, polyester, nylons -- the mix was as diverse as the sizes and shapes and I guessed I was in a household of four, one being male. It was always dark in there and a lot of garments were tightly bundled, folded and crumpled, meaning it took me an age to filter through all the contents and re-live happy memories.
That place was a clue to where next I'd be heading.
Not so happy were the times I fucked up and got to some large cottons. I was rolled, smashed, crushed and fondled, the latter by outside unknown torturers. The stench was ripe, the light dim and I was constantly being clashed from side to side by an enormous sack holding two bulky beings, They were soft, lightly haired and occasionally joined by an imposter whose onion shaped end leaked and left a festering yellow mark until I was released. One horrific experience, thankfully not happening every time, was when I was thrust up by a pointed outsider into a foul dank horribly smelling cave and luckily escaped being smeared with some brown slime. But -- I had no choice,
Fluttering between two fixed and one mobile dark domains apart from the bruising fast spinning barrel of fun where I suffered with them all together, I was never sure who I would be accompanying when out in the brighter varied landscapes, but I knew which two I favoured and certainly not that one I had the cave episode with.