Slugs Page 20

  George always hated coming to London. He’d lived in the country all his life and the hustle and bustle of the city unsettled him. Everybody was always in such a bloody hurry and George liked to take things easy. However, at sixty-two he was as sprightly as a teenager and ran his little farm in Merton only with the help of his two sons. It was a small piece of land but it yielded a good crop of vegetables and George had found a regular buyer for his produce. He watched now as the man picked quickly but expertly through the crates laid out before him, occasionally taking out one of the lettuces and tossing it onto a nearby pile of rotting vegetables. He went along all the crates with similar expertise, muttering to himself as he did.

  ‘Good crop again,’ said George.

  ‘Yeah, only a few bad ones,’ said the buyer, picking up another lettuce. He ran an expert eye over it, noticing something inside the inner leaves. He threw it onto the pile with the other rejects.

  After about fifteen minutes he finished. The deal was concluded and George climbed thankfully back into his lorry. He waved a hurried farewell to his buyer, who was already having the crates removed, and then set off to battle his way through the traffic on his way home to Merton.

  He couldn’t wait to be out of the bloody city.

  The pile of discarded vegetables grew higher as the day progressed, until it seemed to tower as tall as a man. Under the heat of the sun the green stuff began to wilt and smell, but no one paid it any attention. People came and went and the noise grew louder, with stall-holders shouting out their prices, bickering with their neighbours. It was a normal day really.

  No one paid the slightest attention to the lettuce which lay near the bottom of the pile, one of George’s crop, rejected because of the strange cylindrical objects in its inner leaves. The transparent mucoid tubes with the black centres.

  Who cared about a few slugs’ eggs anyway?

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  Read other books by Shaun Hutson

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  Lucy’s Child

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  Coming in 2017, Shaun’s brand new horror novel - Chase