Ultramarine

By Daniel Gooding

I don’t know who coined the phrase ‘turning the air blue,’ but they were certainly onto something. Not just any blue either, but a deep vibrant colour like twilight on some vital distant planet.

I’m sure there’s a name for it, but no one believed me when I told them. I just remember the sergeant standing there below the on-ramp, blasphemies coursing out of him like a broken air duct, “Fuck you smiling about, peckerwood?”

After a while I’d stop hearing him. It was like watching some thwarted octopod far beyond the sea, spraying his virulent ink into an unseeing sky…