GRASS

The lawn was a smooth emerald carpet - as consistent as the finest bowling green. So perfect, one could not even imagine that it sported individual blades of grass within its weave. Arthur had been invited for the weekend as a child for a childless couple - a man and his wife who owned the smooth lawn as part of their front garden. Part-time fosterers. Giving city kids a taste of the good life in the countryside - even if it were for such a short while. Even if the lawn were not in itself typical of the rough edges that countrysides usually boasted. Even inner city parks.

Mr and Mrs Griffin looked at Arthur askance - amazed by his untidy demeanour. Even his face was untidy. One ear bigger than the other. They decided to smooth him up with a quick bath and a change of clothes. Of course, they could do nothing about his ears - or character. They frowned, whilst maintaining their smiles.

After such rectification, they said he was allowed to get a breath of fresh air in the garden, while the lunch - of lamb chops, new potatoes, asparagus and gravy - was being prepared from fresh farm produce.

"Be careful not to get dirty, Arthur," Mr Griffin said with another smile. Mrs Griffin looked at Mr Griffin but permitted no expression to pass between them. Mr Griffin reflected this in his own way, while Arthur escaped into the neat garden - straight on to the lawn where he practised a couple of cartwheels. Then proceeded to dig a hole in the middle with the stiffened fingers of each hand - seeking treasure. There was never treasure in the city streets even if one could penetrate their hard crusts, but a rich soft place like this one must have treasure buried in even the unlikeliest places, he thought. To the feel of his delving finger-ends the grass was more like moss than blades. It did not separate out like genuine plant-life but stuck together between his skin like webs of elastic mould. The gritty dirt created new moons of black at the top of the fingernails - as he delved even deeper below the billiard-table of turf.

Arthur was bitterly disappointed to find nothing that could pass as treasure. But there was something he could not explain. Indeed something he could not describe. He looked up at the kitchen window where he saw the faces of Mr and Mrs Griffin. They did not look angry. They did not in fact look anything. He had done nothing wrong, surely. Ground was his to make into moats - honest dirt to fashion into adventure lands. He dreamed without feeling.

But then he looked down at his hands. Not smooth skin over knuckles. Not cylinders of unbroken flesh within rind over fingerbone. The pinkness of the 'gloves' that had been his hands' outermost layer of self was separated out into shredded strands: a rosy bouquet of blades. He could hear the loud laughter of Mr and Mrs Griffin, but only loud enough for his largest ear.