The coin fell in slow motion through grief stricken air, landing on the dusty floor. A plume of particles arose around it, a mushroom cloud of dead skin and fireplace ash. The top of the imprinted metal surface was level with the loose grey layer and already covered with some of the dust it displaced.
Footprints of clean wood lay on the otherwise dusty floor, doubtless a track made by wet boots. Mac crouched to observe. The dust layer was too thick for a week or two, the family hadn't been moving around this house for quite some months.
Dusty bottles lined the shelves of the derelict shop, their brilliant greens and blues lost below the grey-white layer. The dust was so thick that it built a layer over them that was more like fur, or else fragments of the old cobwebs that hung from the rafters above.
Every movement in the abandoned house sent a vortex of dust into the previously stagnant air. With the rotting door now wide open, the dusty particles reflected the sun-rays taking on the appearance of glitter, or perhaps pixie dust, rather than a dull grey sheen over the flag-stones.
Aunt Maud ran her fat finger along the mantle piece, judgement announced on her tight features before she'd even looked. She knew the result. This was a mere formality to assert her superiority before the belittling began in earnest. She raised the digit for Rose to see, dust clinging to it in fat wads. "Dusty!" she crowed, as if it were a shocking surprise. But that was as far as her acting ability went, the rest was all natural pitt-bull and saliva.
Dusty boards, dusty walls, dusty drapes and windows - in the summer baked town there was no escape from the powdered mud that settled on everything. Nothing that should have been white was, clean laundry came in dirty form the clothes line. It swirled in the dry air and made its way into everyone's lungs; not a person in town didn't have a dry cough come mid-August or eyes that weeped a red crust each morning.
The dust lay thickly like winters first snow, but instead of being a spirit-raising brilliant white, it was a depressing dirty grey. To think that it was ninety percent dead skin cells was just revolting. As the children ran in and out the gusts of wind blew it into the air in great swirls and the light from the window illuminated the particles in their grisly dance.
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