some cheese. Her friends Marcella and Sarah had brought them over from her, freshly grown in their garden, in exchange for helping them catalogue Marcella’ s uncle’ s books after his death in the summer. Not for the first time, Sylvia found herself wishing that she had a garden or an allotment. Not that it was possible in the city to grow enough produce to support oneself, but a steady supply of vegetables would definitely decrease her anxieties about food, as the city’ s supplies grew more and more erratic. For the time being, food from the countryside was still being brought in on horse carts once or twice a week, but from what Sylvia had heard, conditions out there were tough this winter, and the roads were deteriorating.
Sylvia ate her meal on the sofa, joined by the cats once they had finished eating theirs. Sylvia retrieved her copy of Shelley’ s poems from her bag. Twiggy lay on her lap and purred, and she idly stroked the cat whilst reading in the dim candle light. She drifted off to sleep and dreamt of Panthea, heavily pregnant with Prometheus’ s child. Panthea could hardly move, the baby kicking and roiling visibly in her abdomen. Her waters broke, except instead of amniotic fluid, voxsola fungus trailed down her legs and into a gloopy puddle on the floor. The baby had the face of Demogorgon, before it exploded into a mass of writhing white tentacles and viscous fluid. Sylvia awoke with a start, startling the cats.
*
It was August when Sylvia found the body of the homeless man. There had been curfew in effect for some months now. Sylvia’ s job at the museum wasn’ t considered essential, but somebody had to look after the beetle samples, and her employers were happy for her to come in during the night when the rest of the labs were empty. Seeing
71