Dust from dust

Piers is at war with entropy. Rust offends him as does mould on an orange or the grey dust that betrays the passage of entropy's rough tongue on every surface. These things haunt him: pot-holes in roads; data crashes; gravel driveways; lost memories; ancient history.

Others have tried to defeat entropy through vigilance. At the first touch of entropy's rough tongue these people run riot with cleaning goods, repairs and reinforcements. Perhaps it seems that entropy is rebuked for a time, but it always creeps back. No merely human sentry can watch forever.

Piers has a different tactic. He has set a booby trap. So that entropy will suspect nothing, the bait is not anything perfect and uncorrupted - it's not a challenge. It's an old station clock on whose face entropy has written with mouldy water and bleaching sun. It is also marked by entropy's rough tongue. Piers hopes entropy liked the taste of it, and will return, some night, to take another careful lick...

At that point the kilogram of amateur alchemical mayhem that Piers made with meticulous direction-following from a recipe he found on the internet will intercede and hopefully, entropy will be blown to bits.

Piers lies awake at night in the next room, listening for entropy's light tread and the gentle rasp of entropy's rough tongue.

And just in case, he also has a knife under his pillow.