THE CENTRE

Someone should cut this grass, Rob thought, trudging over the wasteland. He didn't know who the ‘someone’ should be, because he had no idea who owned the sea of long grass he had to cross every morning on his way home from work. He felt the grass was growing taller by the minute, and it pulled at his feet every time he tried to walk faster. The grass was like everything else in his life, pulling him down. He shook his head. I'm pathetic, he thought. He shrugged. Or maybe, I'm just tired.

The route home from the supermarket was the same as it always was. A big grey sky hung silently above him. The grass at his feet thinned out, after another twenty minutes of trudging through it; and then he began to walk over the huge concrete floors of long-demolished factories. It felt harder but comforting under his trainers, after the energy sucking grass. Occasionally, he heard a car in the distance, but no traffic bothered the abandoned industrial estate. He walked over a long series of old factory floors, each one the size of a football pitch. Further into the estate, he walked by the few empty factories still standing. Windowless. Roofless. In some of the ruins, ragged green leaves were creeping out of window-shaped spaces. It