The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

Bertha looked up. The building in front of her was the shape of a baguette standing on its end and the colour of mushroom soup. She walked towards the imposing front door and raised her ham-coloured hand to knock on the frosted (translucent, not frosted like a cake is frosted) glass. It made a noise like dropping a can of baked beans on a tiled floor.
‘Hello?’ she said. The building was as silent as refrigerated milk. She waited for a few seconds, then a few more, until she had been waiting for roughly the amount of time it takes to toast a muffin. There was no reply, much in the same way there is no reply if you phone a takeaway restaurant on a night when they’re not open. She tutted under her breath, making the same noise as a bubble popping on the surface of a thick tomato and basil sauce which has been brought to the boil.

She watched as Alfonzo’s hands snaked up the bearded interloper’s back, caressing her like a seahorse caresses his young after carrying them for their two-to-four-week gestation period, because it’s male seahorses that get pregnant, not female ones.