The Space Marine’s gaze is straightforward, straight-ahead and resolute. There’s not an inch of his body that lacks determination, not a quavering muscle on a limb. The eyes are flat, and stay flat as a frame edges into view, a black frame surrounding a black pupil twice the width of the Marine’s head, a giant white-flecked brush reaching for the Marine...
From the next room comes a tremulous wail, “I hate old women!” Kieron applies the white highlight to the model’s head, and straightens up as Dan walks in the room, clutching what looks like a mung bean in his hand. “I was just stood in the queue at the butchers, eyeing the breaded crumbed dehydrated-rehydrated ham, when the old ‘dear’ in front of me, orders something called a Bath Chap. I ask what it is, and she assures me it’s very nice with salad, dear. After that pitch from someone who lived through rationing, from someone with less teeth than Kojak’s comb, I bought it.”
‘Is that what the smell is’ asks Ron, a finely picked nostril falling back under the twin offensives of varnish and stench.
‘That? No, that’s the Stinking Bishop, some Nazi cheese that wants to be an acid, that some malicious friend told me was nice. You’d think I’d learn from the name’s tis not meant to be eaten. The, Bath Chap’s the pile of mouldering flesh in the kitchen bin, what I dug this tooth out of.’ Holds up said canine with disgusted look. “Guess I should listen when people say we don’t waste anything round here.” Flicks tooth into bin.
“Cuh,” says Ron, and his beplasticked eye follows the tooth’s arc as it sinks towards the bin, and thinks about how that’d look really cool in his latest diorama…