Neville the Less

by Robert Nicholls

  * * *

  On Rahimi Island, Mohammed and Parisa – Riff and Raff – had jogged twice past the pond on which the Ragged Major Pastor Immigration Mann floated in their little boat, gathering in the last white duck.

  “Leave it!” Riff had demanded, but, “No no!” the helpful man had smiled with eerie calm, as though gunfire and explosions and ear piercing amplified sounds were the stuff of his every day. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Neither Riff nor Raff had the focus to deal with his peculiar insistence. Hard enough to deal with the welter of sensory confusion coming from beyond the Folly; or the fact that their daughter had defied them again and gone wandering in the darkened yards; or the facts that other children believed she, unbelievably, had a gun and that a gun had indeed been fired somewhere nearby.

  When the loudspeaker was suddenly cut, they couldn’t help but pause and look above the Folly’s blank facade, wondering at each new development in their

  mad neighbour’s mania. And then the Duke’s lights went out and Riff took his wife’s arm and pulled her toward the banana palm border. The Duke’s game, whatever it was, could wait. For now, for them, Afsoon was all. She must be safe. Please God, she must be safe.

  Then, echoing wildly amongst the buildings, the shotgun blast.