Katrina Bruna

I've just been called out onto the roof where four of my housemates, half-finished cigarettes between their fingertips, are standing in a semicircle around an object I can't quite see.

What the hell is what?

I say, slightly irritated at the sudden urgency.

That, one of them says, pointing down at the object.

All my annoyance is suddenly gone, and I feel like bursting into laughter.

What they're looking at with so much confusion is a jar of pickles.

Not just any jar of pickles, a jar of Eastern European pickles.

Its owner, our Romanian housemate who occupies the rooftop room, is away.

The jar has sat out there on the roof, exposed to the elements, for as long as the guy has lived here.

The sun's just setting now, a ray of golden light shining right through the jar, which somehow makes it look all the more horrifying.

By now the vinegar water is so murky that you can't clearly make out the contents.

There are a few cucumbers, a shade of dark green that's verging on brown, several cherry tomatoes, bits of herb, and torn up leaves I can't quite identify.

With the best will in the world, it doesn't look like something you would want to eat.

I tilt my head and walk around it.

Why'd you bring it out of the corner?

We wanted to see what it was.

Don't just go disturbing it like that for no good reason, I say.

Disturbing it?

What, it's alive or something?

Of course it is, I say deadpan.