Written today and first posted here

The municipal wasteground was, in better times, earmarked as land for development.  Housing was probably the likeliest money-spinner but that was before money itself spun out of control.

Then populations moved from town to town in search of work, often only to be lost in the gaps between – so houses were no longer required. This made some sense, I suppose, if one surveyed a place like this wasteground with rutted puddles and the derelict beginnings of construction: an area to 'read' as one would scry the dead leaves left in drained unwholesomeness - overlaying the older skid-marked stains around the inside of a chipped china teacup.

Any such 'reading' told of a future before which the real past somehow never passed.

The wasteground's map of memories never stayed still, not because of seasonal entropy or the weathering of age – but a ghost, when unwatched, would switch puddles with other puddles or dismantle and re-erect things elsewhere that were otherwise permanently rooted to the spot  ... during the seeping gloom of seeming endless winters.

A very wet ghost indeed.

I stumbled one day upon this pre-described wasteground when lackadaisically exploring what I quaintly called the future-that-never-came. Time without antecedence.  

I was a writer, the only discipline left for the likes of someone who merely owned a fountain pen and a piece of blank paper that I had kept blank during the better times ready for use in the bad times.  You see, I had fixed my home's roof when the sun still shone, but what a waste all that turned out to be when even homes themselves became homeless.  But with ownership of one piece of blank paper, at least I always had the potential to describe the indescribable.  But once described, all hope would be lost.  So I shall keep it blank till the last minute.

Even so, the drops I drip upon the paper will blot the words making them subject only to guessing-at when you eventually come to transcribe them in the future.

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Late Arrival (1): http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=14967

A Very Wet Ghost (1): http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=136537694&blogID=456290204&Mytoken=62AD2207-4434-483E-B57EE2529ACC81D8101830700

Late Arrival (3): http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=147731320&blogID=456516451&Mytoken=332C157F-49C9-4044-89596C4B84322B1C173756322

Late Arrival (2) - A Very Wet Ghost (2): http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=145421249&blogID=456357014&Mytoken=DB487886-C403-4C01-93E5EF2BD48AB8F9124446134