The crows come behind the west wind that sweeps in gray and chill an hour after the sun goes down. Black clouds of them, hundreds, silhouetted against the crepuscule. Rising out of the rookery behind the mall on the other side of the river and rustling low on their way north, toward empty Parliament.

On the Corner John’s Gollum has disappeared. Last seen climbing over Barhaven’s back fence around midnight last Thursday in pursuit of a lost garbage can lid, which it had been using as a Frisbee. Spinning it through the air at night, trying to dislodge sleeping raccoons from the trees maybe. Nobody’s saying anything, but it was the prime suspect in the disappearance of Barbie’s cat a couple of weeks back and nobody would be sorry to see the last of it.

Dear Leader has dismissed this pesky parliament; perogied it away with a wave of hand, gone in a puff of greasy smoke, leaving the spiky cathedral of our little democracy echoing empty and dark through these winter evenings. The whiff of bacon hanging on the chill air in the empty corridors the only reminder that it ever was. Holed up two blocks west in his well-fortified HQ the loyal leader of the opposition has taken to scrawling his edicts in Russian on the back of peeled-off beer bottle labels and throwing them out into the street between the iron bars that cover his window. His inner circle are to wear suits with matching ties. MPs shouldn’t talk about weed anymore. The crows are to be fed cranberries to maintain their loyalty.