Daisy recieves a visitor

Daisy shuffled out onto the doorstep, and pushed her fat ginger cat into the garden with a ragged slipper.  The cat looked at her with disdain, then stalked off into the dark, deliberately stopping to lift his leg on the neat flowerbed borders of the lawn before he completely disappeared.  She sighed and tipped her head to one side to light up.  The lighter flickered and the cigarette became a glowing red point in the dark.  She leaned against the door frame as she exhaled; watching the shapes form as they drifted out into the dark.  The smoke slowly resolved itself into the shape of a ship.  It jerked in different directions, as if in bad weather.  Little men swarmed over it, like ants.  Daisy blew smoke towards it, as if it were not anything she didn’t already know.

The ship disintegrated.  Daisy took a practiced drag and blew out carelessly.  The smoke curled into an old freight train, heading through the mountains.  Daisy’s eyes narrowed.  She straightened up a little.  The smoke coiled shape of a line of cars, stretching endlessly across an empty plain.

She exhaled again.  “War.”     

The smoke then became a quick succession of images, one after the other.  A girl, a building, stockpiled guns, a map…
         
“I see. When?”

Here, the smoke hung briefly in the air.  It then became a smart car, heading down a familiar road.  Daisy sighed and put out the cigarette on the wall.  She pulled her dressing gown around her and waited in the dark. After about half an hour, there was a crunch of gravel as a car pulled into the drive at the front of the bungalow.  Daisy stood still as she heard the car door shut, and lock, and gravelly footsteps made their way up to her front door.  A horrible doorbell version of ‘islands in the stream’ rang out.  She went inside took off the dressing gown and kicked off the slippers.  Underneath she was fully dressed, in a gaudy silver and black spangly ensemble.  She stopped to scrunch her hair and add some horrible pink lipstick in the hall mirror.  She started at herself for a second,  looking like an ageing country singer, before she waved a hand impatiently and the image changed to show a rather tall dark boy, on a doorstep, looking irritable.  She breathed in sharply.  He was wearing an expensive suit, and he was wearing it well.  This, Daisy knew, was a family trait.  She stumbled to the door and pressed her head against the wood briefly and tried to slow her breathing before she pulled herself together, and opened it.