The Butter Mouse struck again last night.
I hate to use the nickname, but with every new source repeating the moniker no other words are suitable. Plus my own personal distaste is not relevant considering what has happened.
The police found a processed sheet of metal on top of a solar panel. This time they had crushed another diesel model, and boiled down the remains. Apparently the residents had to set up emergency lighting, and water the dying plants by hand. The crime scene was on a hi-rise on the other side of the city, so no visual reference for us this time. But some grainy amateur photos were a few clicks away online.
Images of sagging and blackened foliage and a melted corpse was not what upset me the most. This honour lay with the words printed onto the perfect silver square.
'I can only show you the compassion of fingers trapped in a closing door.'
That metal was designed to withstand gunfire and missiles. How much effort must a human need to engrain an irrelevant sentence? Put those words into metal you have already melted down and waited to cool? No-one checks the solar panels at night of course, but why take the risk for the sake of a weird message? Beyond unnerving.
Mum reckons the culprit is ex-army. She explained that most recruits had to liquidate machines towards the end of the war, so smelting is a skill that is available and well-known. She does not expand, and from her frown I can tell she is not happy with my scrolling the forums and news site for crime scene photos. Decide not to challenge her lack of compassion tonight.
Even with the sun in bed the weather is shorts and t-shirt level. I hang my legs out of the window. The flowers are blooming scarlet on the building opposite, and many of the cars that fly past have orange gourds hanging from the window for the downtown pumpkin festival. Classic, and idyllic. I will miss this next year. But that moltan slab is like a bucket of bones in my mind.
End up delving further into my video edit this evening. A good distraction, and there can be no doubt. Some of the clips are synching up.
Will ask Deni what she thinks of the links between them when we next meet up. Plus must check on them after today. Starting to get serious.
Clip: Not much more information, but this video makes me calm. Is this an art project? A simulation?