Penny on the track
Ruby boarded the Dart at Bray train station and sat facing the front, choosing beautiful coastal views over sights of suburbia. She settled quietly, slipped a stockinged foot from her shoe and rested it on the seat opposite, then removed her book from a battered shoulder-bag. She dived into its imaginary world as the carriage doors chimed loudly to signal their closure, and braced herself against the silent electronic backward lurch as the train began its journey.
Several passengers embarked to join Ruby in her lonesome carriage at the next station, but she was too engrossed in her novel to notice. The train heaved and threatened to topple her bag… she saved it and in doing so lost her place in her book, causing her to sigh and roll her eyes. She then noticed the girl.
A black haired doppelgänger sat on the opposite side of the carriage, with her hair tied up in the same fashion as Ruby’s own. She wore a blue tee shirt that matched the colour of Ruby’s jumper almost exactly. They both wore blue jeans and navy tennis shoes, their shabby bags nearly identical. The girl was reading a book intently, holding it in front of her face so that Ruby could read its title. She gasped when she saw that she was reading exactly the same book. She gaped in disbelief.
The stranger felt her ears burn, and looked up. She frowned to find Ruby staring straight at her and let her book slowly fall to her lap. Ruby smiled, held up her own copy, and fingered her jumper. The girl peered at Ruby’s book and raised her eyebrows suddenly, seemingly confused.
“Hi!” Ruby said above the hum of the clockwork clack of the train wheels; “Good book, isn’t it?”
“Umm… yeah, I’ve read it a few times now, it’s one of my favourites.”
Ruby sat in silence for a while and considered the situation, then got up to sit opposite the stranger.
“Hey, I don’t want to sound odd or anything but don’t you think this is weird? I just… I believe that some coincidences are there for a reason. Like”… Ruby blushed as she listened to her own voice – “like one of us has a message for the other or something. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, but, I don’t know what to say… that message could be anything, we could be here for hours trying to figure out what it is. Uh, my name’s Robyn though, does that help?” Robyn scrunched her nose in an awkward admittance of the setting.
“Ruby.” they exchanged smiles and both glanced out the window in embarrassment. Ruby considered giving up and returning to her seat… they were approaching Killiney Dart station, the part with the best view of the entire Dalkey to Bray coastline and she hated to miss it, but she stayed put, not wanting to appear rude.
The acceleration pulled the girls towards the rear of the carriage as the train lurched from the station, momentum building, the ocean coming into view. A sudden gunshot crack interrupted their thoughts and the seats underneath them jimmied slightly… the girls exchanged curious glances in the seconds before chaos ensued.
The carriage swayed slightly as another loud snap could be heard, and juddered violently as though it had driven over a giant pothole. A second later a more violent judder rocked the carriage and another shortly after that. The train began to shake uncontrollably, then buckled and tipped on its side as its wheels left the track and forced the girls into temporary suspension. Robyn shrieked and grabbed the nearest support bar, Ruby slammed into Robyn’s midriff and grabbed her waist as the train’s carriage blundered back into an upright position. They slammed against the glass and tucked their feet behind the hand-rail for extra support as the carriage lurched awkwardly screaming its metallic protest, the atmosphere lit with incandescent sparks. The girls watched in horror as the first carriage containing the driver and several souls left the cliff and plummeted towards the sea, screaming voices all around them drained Ruby’s face as she began to pray. Violent jerking as the second carriage tipped towards the the bottom of the cliff made metal howl under the strain of the carriages behind it. Two left. The third could not be seen from the vantage point of the girls, but the reactional movements told them it had probably followed suit over the edge of the precipice. Ruby closed her eyes.
The screeching at this point was deafening, passenger’s voices melted into the scream of tearing metal and bending steel… shattered glass flew in every direction and a final loud bang spun their carriage sideways against the inner wall by the railings as the carriages detatched from one another. The carriage slowed to a deathly silence. Ruby opened her eyes to find that the side of the train she had originally been sitting on was completely destroyed… everyone on that side had perished instantly, horror lay to their left as a small gathering of disjointed bodies could be seen towards the carriage front through the thick black smoke and random carriage debris.
The girls escaped cautiously and stumbled away from the wreckage in silence, both understanding now what the coincidence meant with vivid clarity. The girls separated, lost in the crowds of spectators, never to meet again.
Hours later Ruby sat unscathed on her mother’s couch under a thick blanket and held on to her sweet tea for dear life as she watched the grim footage replay on the evening news, her eyes glued to the images. Her breath caught suddenly. Without removing her eyes from the screen she felt for the television’s remote control and re-wound the footage for a second look… she gaped in awe as she watched herself stumbling away from the wreckage… alone. She could have sworn… the teacup fell and splashed her goosepimpled legs as she lost consciousness.
White Sage
They say that what doesn’t kill you, will cure you. ‘They’ don’t know the full story, I don’t think they’re ready for it, but you are, I can smell it.
Settle yourself in a comfortable chair, gorge your belly with creamy milk and clean your ears with your favourite fore-paw (for this is how it should always be done) and when you’re ready, let me know.
Finished?
All right… where to begin?
I lived in a village once, a small village of small minds, where nothing was a secret. When cherry blossoms bloomed, the people decided when they fell. If a character was off kilter, the villagers took it upon themselves to rectify the imbalance, and that, my dear cat-lovers, is what happened here.
My girl Tess chose an awkward man. His skills where preening were concerned surpassed mine by far, his stories involved himself and his prowess and nothing else. Nothing, in fact, stood in the way of his happiness. He would bore Tess to tears of how fantastic his rock-climbing skills had become, about how wonderful his car was, but she would stroke my head and stifle yawns in the ginger fluff behind my ears and make me warm and shivery… this was the only boon to his boring company, this moist breath as she whispered her frustrations into my collar. “This guy needs to keep walking until he hears a splash, then he should just keep going…” was her most common complaint. I heard it many times, and could hear it many more. My Tess is a funny girl, far more deserving of better company, if you ask me.
He took her to a carnival one day, not having been there myself (for such crowds are not for a demure feline and anyway I had much more important things to do that evening), I could only imagine her frustrations at his constant proof of epic masculinity and accurate aiming skills, but there was a bright side, my friends. She appeared home late that night with a multitude of cuddly toys for me to sleep on, and a single candle. This candle was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, I cannot describe its attraction.
Tess unwrapped the plasticky nonsense from this entity that very same night and held it to her nose, breathed deep. An orgasmic pause developed in her demeanour as she breathed it in… she held it to my nose (being a considerate pet owner) and I recognised the smell instantly. White Sage. Not your average stink for a candle, I must say. It smelled as though something amazing was about to happen, it was an awareness smell… we felt alive.
When she sparked the wick with her zippo lighter it burst into fiery madness, potassium sparked with the flame as though a tiny voice was trying to convey its tiny message across… it mystified us, we stared at its purpled spitting wax for hours and cuddled and snuggled until she snuffed it out and it was time to sleep.
-o0o-
A lonely man sat alone, his bitterness consumed him, an outcast from a place that once had loved him but that had grown up, grown away from his natural ways. It was hard to get used to being a freak, a weirdo, once capable of wonderful healing methods, now deemed an abomination. He looked down upon the village and the carnival at its heart, and he wondered. He hated.
-o0o-
A phone call. Tess reacted in such a way as I knew it was this awful boyfriend of hers, but I knew it was important. He arrived on the doorstep a while later. Pale as my water bowl, his speech garbled, he clutched his head and spoke of exploding brains. No sooner had he reached the kitchen, the vomit began to erupt in violent convulsions… his head bowed over the sink at the end of a long trail of slippery vulgarity… I watched with awe. Tess appealed to him to see a doctor, but his masculinity prevailed and they argued, all the while he clutched his head like a madman.
“If not a doctor,” said she, “why not the mystic in the hills? His methods have healed plenty of tough cases in the past, sure wasn’t there that woman with the stick lodged in her…”
“That guy’s a curse!” he interrupted, “why the hell would you send me up there? Give me a break, my father’s done his best to alienate the guy and have him hanged and now here’s you sending me to his doorstep??? I have better things to be doing, I’ve the competition tomorrow, the leading guy is toast, he won’t stand up to my awesome abilities now that I’ve practised the…”
He warbled off on a monologue, his foot twitched the entire time, though he was too caught up in his own awesomeness to notice.
-o0o-
Meanwhile the man in the hill saw with a clearer vision than he had done in weeks… finally the blurred lines of his spell book stood still. He knew his curse had taken hold, somewhere, somehow.
We burned the candle again that night, its size diminished, the wax flowed away in silky puddles, the gilt edging morphed into mercurial puddles on her night stand and we purred. The next day, the seizures began. He was in the midst of the competition and it happened, the convulsions racked through his body and time stood still, his chances ruined.
He hit her that night in frustration and I watched. I watched and I could do nothing, but I licked her wounds as we burned the candle after his stormy exit and she told me about escape, about how she would end this, if not by chance, then by empowerment. I listened to her emphatic words and curled against her soft warm belly as the smell of white sage filled the room.
-o0o-
The old man’s headaches had subsided by now, his memory returned, his nausea disappeared. The brain tumour borne of bitter suffering was growing smaller, with every inch of the candle he had placed it in. His plan took place, his skills returned once more and he was ready.
Like a moth to a flame, I and Tess wandered to this man one day, up through the thickets, past the stone gates, into the wilderness. We disappeared.
I watch now as she learns his craft, I grow younger every day, I hear her incantations and I feel it’s right. I care not of her man and I suspect, my dear readers, that she doesn’t either.
We make more candles, destined for those with closed minds and sick souls, we strive to heal them, to clean the bitterness and save their loved ones from the destruction they cause.
If we cannot cure them, we will kill them, for that is the way. The only way. The next time you should meet such a sorry soul, send them to our house at the top of the village, we will ask no price of you, only that you accept that Darwin was not the only man with a plan.
Not just an Irish Liquor
I vaguely remember ‘Carolan’ music when learning to play the violin all those years ago, but apart from that I drew a blank when it was suggested to me over the phone.
Wedding music. The thought freaked me out, man. Just think… all those specialist musicians out there waiting to screw you as soon as you mention the ‘W’ word, just because they’re handy with a few strings and a plec. Everyone I researched cost at least nine hundred quid. For an hour!!! We’re in the wrong job lads! But; happily, a friend piped up one day and suggested I ask her second-cousin’s brother in-law’s nephew who happens to play in Dan’s bar in Greystones of a Tuesday night. Apparently those fellas can do amazing things with Mandolins and flutes that would blow the acoustics right out of a church, so myself and TAT went to have a gander last night.
What an atmosphere! Dan’s is a tiny pub that looks like it’s the household pet belonging to The Beachhouse bar/restaurant next-door. It’s like as though somebody left it there by mistake, or maybe its neighbour partook in a course of steroids…Dan’s bar is a strange but beautiful place.
The group of lads consisted of two guitarists, a tin whistler, a mandolin player, a box-squeezer, and a very timid bodhrán player. That was before the Uileann pipe player happened by, bringing a Venezuelan chap with a Suzuki guitar (a cuatro?) and a very beautiful singing wife who stopped time with her songs about the moon. A chap wandered in towards the end, ordered a pint, and drank it while singing all fifty-nine verses of a pretty comedic Irish song, then buggered off again. The Accidental Terrorist and I were quare’n entertained, and discussed becoming part of the furniture there at some point in the future.
They played a few Carolan tunes for us to give us a taster for Churchy things to come, that might have sounded something like this:
Apparently Turlough O’Carolan was a blind itinerant Irish harper who lived from 1670-1738 and got an enormous thumbs-up from Mr. Vivaldi himself for his music composition. He wasn’t rated much as a musician by his peers, rather for his poetry. For example, he fell off the wagon once, and penned the following poem;
He’s a fool who give over the liquor,
It softens the skinflint at once,
It urges the slow coach on quicker,
Gives spirit and brains to the dunce.
The man who is dumb as a rule
Discovers a great deal to say,
While he who is bashful since Yule
Will talk in an amorous way.
It’s drink that uplifts the poltroon
To give battle in France and in Spain,
Now here is an end of my turn-
And fill me that bumper again!
Problem sorted! Thank God for Irish Trad, and for the fact that I don’t have to pay through the nose to see some young wan’s Aria on my wedding day. Now, to find a babysitter…
Three a.m., St. Michael's Ward
I remember the Juggernaut. I remember the blinding lights and the windscreen and the rain droplets that suddenly morphed into a million tiny pieces of glass… and the fire. I remember the furious heat most of all. Burning hair. My poor car! I wonder what it looks like now.
I don’t remember how I became so lucid! There was nothing in between, no tunnels or white lights and definitely no Grandmother welcoming me into her open arms as I expected. Those people must be starved of answers for that is not what death is like. Unless… am I dead? Maybe I’m not. I feel a sudden want to be a wet dog at the beach, to send a flurry of shakes throughout my body and furiously flick away whatever is causing this fuzzy strangeness but I can’t, and instead it clogs my mind so that I can’t think straight.
Slap slap slap… my bare feet on linoleum… I’m walking through a corridor that smells of uric acid and tumble-dried cotton, a corridor that could use an open window to breeze away the heavy stuffy fug that amplifies the muffled sounds of swishing ventilators. It’s oppressive. The fact that I can feel that is good, right? I’m so confused. A nurse passes me and shivers. She won’t look at me and I don’t want to talk to her, she has work to do and I seem to have no urgent agenda right now, anyway. A buzzing exit sign that I have no interest in whatsoever passes me by.
A baby screams.
“200. CLEAR!”
Where is that child? It’s urgent cries tear through me. It makes me flinch and I yearn to pick it up and have it feel the warmth of my neck, I need to stop it from herniating itself, such violent cries should not be left untended… what the hell is wrong with that infant? I pass doorways, dark rooms that seem like capsules of immune silence. Sleeping souls oblivious to the suffering outside their rooms snore gently and beep contentedly. The screaming gets louder as I find the room I’m searching for.
“300. CLEAR!”
It’s empty. I can’t believe this room is empty save for this poor child. His blanket has tied itself in knots around his kicking ankles, his pillow sodden, its whiteness paling so bleakly against the furious redness of the small child’s cheeks. As I reach toward him, I feel the change. I feel the needle entering my arm and it’s so wonderfully exhilarating. Beautiful and uncontrollable ecstasy rules my functions and I collapse into a nearby chair and my stomach distends but I care not a jot for the unborn child. I feel like I’m dying all over again, but this is a living death, a torture of unheardof proportions.
“500. CLEAR!”
A jolt of clarity awakens me and I sit up, the child is still there in front of me and still crying and I am infuriated with my lack of willpower to stay with it and so I stand with sudden urgency. I reach out and touch the child whose skin is burning and itching from a rash of foreign cause and I feel its deep loneliness and needing. I know now that there’s no mommy, that mommy has gone away, mommy was never there in the first place. The baby’s need is so urgent that I can feel it too, tears trickle down my cheeks as I grab the child with sudden urgency and squeeze it tight to my breast. It’s ok now. Every little thing’s gonna be alright. Shush now. Shushhh.
“700. CLEAR!”
I feel the end. My feet no longer touch the linoleum beneath as my weight shifts and a great racking breath leaves my soul, I’m plunged into newness and I care no longer for my car.
“Let it go… she’s gone. Time of death, three fourteen a.m.”
The baby’s cries stop in a sudden vaccuum of inevitability and a peace falls upon its tortured soul, the heroin addiction no longer there. It relaxes its clenched wrists and notices the lights above the door to its room and it gurgles with pleasure. The baby sleeps, and wakes to a whole new dawn.
(Image from Glasseyalley.com – best Photo Blog, Irish Blog Awards ’09)
Every little helps
The fluorescent light pinged and flickered in the supermarket canteen. I sat alone, away from the gaggle of women on the other side of the room, and sipped slowly from a can of coke. Each woman was adorned with Argos bling, each finger weighed down with gold, each sovereign ring betraying the true worth of its powdered owner. The women dunked their biscuits and cackled in high spirits, each trying to out-shout the other in false worship.
“Ahh Martina I still can’t believe you got the promotion, that’s feckin’ ace, that is.” I sat silent, fuming with jealousy. That job was mine.
“Well sure, what can I say?” Martina winked at her clucking admirers; “I showed him my skills and he liked what he saw!”
“Wha? In the floor-management sort of way?”
“Nah…” Martina didn’t bother to lower her voice… “Behind the store-shed sort of way!!!” The girls exploded in filthy laughter and began to out-compliment each other on the accolade of being such a filthy bitch. I stood up and left, but nobody noticed.
A heavy fug of bitterness surrounded me as I resumed the boring task of filling the store freezers with new bags of oven-chips. I poured my frustration into the job and hated every second of it, fingers freezing, lost in the banality of it all. The cheesy supermarket music was becoming the soundtrack to my life, the smell of sour milk and moldy disinfectant my own personal scent. My concentration broke suddenly as the Manager walked by, his hand connecting with my ass in a crude slap as he passed without a hint of apology. I stood bolt upright. Dots began to swim in my vision.
“Mr. Sullivan, if I might have a word?” Halted in his tracks, he turned.
“Now?” He inserted the tip of his biro into the inner cavity of his left ear and scratched. Absently he then withdrew the biro and wafted it before his nose before depositing the gunge on the tip of his tongue. I shuddered.
“Yes, now.”
He led me to his office and shut the door behind us, then sat at his desk, leaned back and formed a leer. He asked me what he could ‘do me for’… my eyebrow flickered at the criminally overused line.
“I’m pretty dismayed at having been passed over for that promotion to be honest, I just want to hear the reasoning behind it for myself.” I spotted a gold T-bar chain on the floor at my feet, a sad pool of gold, someone’s worthless trophy, a flaccid show of wasted wealth. I leaned down to scratch my ankle.
“Well, I can only say that Martina not only talked the talk, but she walked the walk. Do you know how to walk the walk? There’s still time to show me what you can do, you know.” the manager winked and scratched his balls from within his pockets. “I’ll even let you leave those rubber gloves on!” he giggled at his own hilarity but didn’t stop to wonder at the reasoning behind the gloves for a second.
“I sure do… Sir.” I stood up slowly, smiled, and approached the man who was too busy watching my breasts to notice the fact that I was wrapping my hands around each end of the lost gold chain. He gasped when it was too late.
Thirty minutes later found me approaching the main door of the supermarket, my handbag stuffed with the contents of the manager’s safe deposit box. I passed Martina’s checkout on the way and noted her panicky distraction while the queue slowly grew.
“Where’s me feckin’ chain?!” she rooted beneath the counter and cursed her own carelessness.
“Gold T-bar?” I asked.
“Yeah!!!”
“That’s strange… Mr. Sullivan just tried to give me a gold T-bar chain in his office to seal the deal.”
“What deal?!”
“I talked the talk I suppose” I winked at her. “Don’t worry, I changed my mind… you can keep the job.”
“That feckin’ ba…. I’M GONNA KILL ‘IM!!” Martina stormed away and I left the building forever while heads turned to listen to Martina’s threats and expletives, and knew that nobody would be searching the store-room freezers for oven-chips any time soon. Just as well… those crispy golden coated chicken balls aren’t quite ready to be found just yet.
A Blogmas Carol
…At least I’m not one of them.
I don’t know her name, the lady that created me, but a part of her is still caught up in my stitching, like a fingerprint, and I liked her a lot. She bought my bare bones in a woollen mill in Wicklow and brought me home to an old house devoid of heat and life, but when she stepped through the front door she instantly warmed it with her comforting humming… when she sat down with me, I kept her fingers toasty while she stitched me slowly together. We kept each other warm for many weeks until the day my button eyes were fixed to my bear-shaped head and I was finally complete. From a forgotten ball of brown wool in a bargain bin, to a teddy-bear with plush stuffing and a bright blue bow tie. My smile is wonky like that of my creator, and I have paws made of black embroidery thread. I noticed straight away that my thumb is coming loose, a detail too fine for bi-focals to catch, I think it shall be my quirk.
It’s dark now.
It has been for several days. She plopped a wet kiss on my nose and wished me Godspeed before pulling the golden bow taut around my crinkly wrapping, and now here I lie, quiet.
I heard voices multiply this morning. Different cadences crossed the threshold and I felt the magical suspense as my hour of glory approached. Smells of cookery and candle-wax wafted through my festive coverings and the clear bell chiming of wine glasses being toasted muffled in my cloth stuffed ears.
“Is it time yet? Can we open them?” a small voice wheedled. I hear a subtle grunt of approval and my heart soared. I’m about to be unwrapped, about to meet my new owner, the person my creator cared so much about.
Gravity shifts suddenly as I’m picked up and squeezed. I growl a pleased sounding teddy-bear growl which only I can hear. Daylight.
I see a room lit with flashing lights which hits strands of tinsel and explodes brightly against the walls and the floors and in the eyes of the child that holds me.
“Awww, I have a brown teddy already!” the child’s shoulders slump for a second until he realises there are more gifts to unwrap. He lets me fall. I tumble into the pile of discarded wrapping paper below, and come to rest gazing into the eyes of the old lady who made me, I watch as she folds her arthritic hands in her lap and I want to be with her again. She looks sad.
“Simon! Don’t be so rude!” the mother chastises the child, but does it on a full stomach which weighs her conviction down. The child ignores her. I sit where I am for hours, until nightfall.
I’m scooped up and darkness falls again as I land in a moist place that smells like tea-bags and poultry bones. They can’t see me! They don’t know I’m here. I am carried away… I hear a door slam, and I’m cold.
I’m a forgotten bear. I try to get used to this fact as I sit for a long time in the dustbin outside the front door to the apartment – my black button eyes begin to accumulate frost and people march by, desperate to return to warmth.
Rummaging sounds.
Dirty hands. A boy in a filthy tweed cap fishes me out and peels greasy tin-foil pieces from my fibres. I am placed in a satchel, patted with fingerless mittens, and carried away.
Arms. I am held in two small arms, warm and cosy, periodically extended to be admired by the little sister of my rescuer, as the pair sit beneath an A.T.M. on Christmas Day with their paper cup. I am loved, I feel the love for the best brother in the world from the happiest girl in the universe. I’m a happy teddy-bear.
The little girl sings carols as she sits on her plastic bags and cuddles me. I watch as passers-by throw coins into her cup and I sing along with my teddy bear growl that only I can hear.
Gaze
I see you. I know your deepest secrets, every mole on your body. I watch you while you sleep, but you don’t know it.
That’s not to say you don’t know I’m here… don’t get me wrong; don’t think I don’t feel your love for me, your admiration, your appreciation. Sometimes you sit for an age, just staring at me as though you were in my world, contemplating the solutions to your everyday irks in my presence, extending a solitary finger every now and then to ascertain that I’m not really there. I feel that touch and I feel blessed, but you don’t know it. I’m there.
I live. You might think that I’m alive in a different sense (I know you’ve contemplated it), but that doesn’t mean I don’t live. I live doomed to forever enjoy my favourite past-time while you exist so freely, troubled by the things that aren’t your idea of an hour well spent. I do so wish you could live like me for a day, just as much as I wish the reverse. If we could trade places, I would show you the true meaning of life… the fact that no matter what you do or say, no matter what erronious impulse you act upon and regret thinking it a lifelong mistake, you always come back. You come back to me with the regularity of my own apperance, and nothing changes. None of it matters in the end.
I am the one in the picture… the picture in your room that inspires you and earths you in a moment of need.
I know you well. If you are lucky, some day you’ll end up like me… the person in the picture with the steadfast face, forever gazing longingly, belying the truth. Maybe one day children will dash madly around the room you inhabit, shouting ‘Make it stop watching me!’ and they’ll be looking at you, trying desperately to avert your gaze… a gaze that you so preciously coveted in your mortal life. A gaze is a wonderful thing, be sure when all’s said and done that your gaze remains true, a source of inspiration for those that follow, because that is all we have left.
The Blogosfear – Part V
Part I/Part II/Part III/Part IV/Part V/Part VI/Part VII/Part VIII
The family’s plans for Halloween were somewhat spurious this year. Given the option of a night in my mother-in-law’s or a weekend at my cousin’s house in Mullingar, I chose option C; (I had to fake a rather good breakdown for this option to be plausible) a weekend away on my own. Not being entirely flushed with cash, I did an inter-net search using the words ‘Guesthouse, cheap, remote, Ireland’. The search engine asked me if I was feeling lucky, and it just so happened that I was…
I browsed the comments, of which there were only two.
The first said: ‘My sister had to be booked into the clinic after she stayed here’, the second: ‘This house tested the limits of my humanity! To be avoided.’ Sheer curiosity made me book a room right there and then.
3:00 am
The baby in my arms is screaming fitfully, its jaws look dis-jointed, much like those of a snake as it attempts to swallow something five times its size. Its hands… no, its claws grab at my hair and pull it out in fistfuls, but all I can do is cuddle it in the hope it could be pacified. Its eyes bulge, grow larger and larger… they turn into balloons filled with a noxious fluid which sloshes around inside, threatening to drown me when the child’s eyeballs inevitably pop. The eyeballs don’t pop… the image dissappears as I wake, sweating. Shouting.
“Please don’t!!! He didn’t mean it, please don’t do it!!!”
It’s all gone away and I am extrmely grateful.
My stomach curdles in remembrance of the nightmare, it’ll take a while for those images to abate. I look around, lost for a second until I remember where I am. A strange smell wafts that wasn’t there when I had fallen asleep, and a peculiar scraping noise can be heard from above. I slide out of bed and look up, searching for form in the dusky light. Holes. There are holes peppered into the ceiling plaster. Ugh. I put my tracksuit on and distinctly hear a disappointed groan.
That can’t be good.
A baby screams. My blood curdles and suddenly changes direction rending my extremities cold and the hairs on my body prickly like a million thorns… the memory of my nightmare returns and threatens to stupefy me. If intuition came in neon lights, mine would be putting a serious energy scourge on this godforsaken grid in this moment, for it is screaming to me that madness is standing right behind my bedroom door. The benign piece of wood seems to throb as I stare at it and against all my wishes, the doorknob begins to turn.
“Hey!” My voice squeaks in a panicked cadence that isn’t my own. “How about an old-fashioned knock first?!”
The door swings slowly open and light oozes into my room like a puddle of radioactive waste. A woman stands on the threshold holding a bundle. Her hair is long and straw-like and her eyes… her eyes are bearing right into my core, into my past. I can tell she knows my worst fears immediately. I freeze as she holds the bundle towards me. This is too surreal for me.
“The baby hassssssssh to go. We don’ wannishh. You wannisssh? Can’ take’n no more!!” her accent is masked by her stumbling speech pattern.
I pull my adrenaline together into a virtual wrecking ball and slam my body against the back of the door in an effort to close it. Fuck the baby. Its cries are all wrong, just like in the dream… I don’t care if I hurt it. My shoulder crashes against the outer edge of the door, but it goes nowhere. A dart of pain storms through my shoulder and neck and I fall back towards the bed, now in full view of the occupants of the doorway. I screw my eyes shut in horror and tell myself it isn’t real. Even foulness has its limits in everyday society.
The blond lady with the crazy eyes is not alone – she drops the bundle she has been carrying to reveal that it had been a decoy. The moth-eaten material falls pathetically around the heels of the man who stands beside her… a man whose features are wrong, all wrong, in the manner of a person who is borne from genes too closely linked. His stumpy fingers hold a rope, and attached to the other end is a rotting mass of child. The suggestion of bone beneath the mess is indescribable, the smell unbelievable. The baby. Oh, this is too evil. Too wrong. I beg with my sanity to stay with me.
Through the darkness of my eyelids I sense movement and realise that blackness is an even worse enemy than the truth, so my eyes snap open to welcome the horror. The baby is being held at arm’s length, as though it was being offered to me.
“She seen it now, that be th’end of tha’ gird’le!!” His nostrils flare as he laughs with mania, a flash of silver crosses his palm as the door is all too suddenly slammed shut, defying the laws of physics.
Darkness, but not silence.
Hissing.
Snakes? A jar of insects? What the hell is the noise? The answer reaches me before I have a chance to search for a light switch.
I gag. The air is suddenly scarce and filled with a billion microscopic razor blades. When it fills my lungs I retch as I feel it try to turn me inside-out. My eyes burn, fluid streams not from my tear ducts, but from my eyes themselves, like they are melting and are trickling down my cheeks in scalding rivers of putrid pus. My nose is occluded by two red-hot pokers and is frantically trying to extinguish the heat itself with a torrent of mucus… it oozes into my mouth and onto the carpet as I bend forward and gag helplessly. Even my ears are suffering from an unruly hell. What the hell is this stuff? This clogging, fogging gas that makes me want to shove my head down the unsavoury toilet and flush?
Death perhaps seems a welcome escape, but not before I notice the old cracked window frame through the noxious fug. I drag my body to an almost upright position, and sneeze the poison out violently. Liquid gushes from my head as though I am a possessed hobo and I frantically wipe and claw at my face to clear my view.
I hurl myself at the window and cherish the sweet sound of shattering glass and cool clean Irish air as I plunge to my death.
Or not.
I land on the porch roof and roll… THUD… onto the leafy ground below. The last of the poisoned CS gas leaves my lungs with the blow and I gasp. Oxygen floods my brain, enough to fuel the last remnants of adrenaline I have left and I run.
See Kate run. Run Kate run.
I am almost at the gaping maw of the front gate when I hear it… the all-too realistic human plea.
A gnarly tale
The cloaked figures huddled together in a solemn circle and murmured in unison. Their tears fell slowly for the loss of the last great sorcerer as they watched his body being immersed slowly in the soil he had battled for and won, many times over. He was their last great leader and without him they were lost, without his power they were unsure of their strength as an army from this point forth… they mourned not only for their legendary friend and comrade, but for their future.
A tree was planted on the sorceror’s grave… a Hawthorn seedling which grew steadily and slowly for the next 3,000 years, untouched by human hand, despite the many battles that raged on that field over time. It stood strong and wise, the blood of the magician flowed through its roots, and it learned many things.
-o0o-
Crispin (Tayto) Doyle sat dangling his steel-toed work boots from the uppermost height of the scaffolding he’d just erected, and gazed at the muddy chaos below. The road was taking an eternity to build thanks to the Godawful weather, progress was painful and cold. His mobile phone rang, startling him into an almost death-inducing jump. He slid backwards into a more secure seating position and reached for the phone, hoping it was Claire. He could do with the warmth of her voice about now.
“Yeah, Tayto… work away on your lunch there… a bit early, yeah, but we’ve hit a serious batch of bedrock here, we’re on to the base about upgrading the digger but it’ll probably take a while.”
“Sound, man… I’m starved, give us a shout when ye’re ready to go!” Tayto flipped the phone shut and shimmied down the scaffolding with the ease of a baby monkey. He scanned the area for some shelter and spotted the tree. The mud squelched underfoot and mirrored his enthusiasm for his job – if only a way out was an option, but it wasn’t. Times were hard, jobs were scarce.
Claire had packed his lunch that day… bless her, he’d have preferred vinegary chips and a batter-burger, but his wholegrain rasher and mayo sandwich did the job nicely. He sat and ruminated afterwards, working the seeds out of his teeth with a piece of loose bark from the tree. The wood tasted surprisingly fresh and warm, as though he were chewing on a piece of tasty ham crackling, and he felt a peculiar warmth spread through him, like the early morning rays of sunshine on a prisoner’s face. He felt strange. Empowered, but strange.
Awake.
He knew he hadn’t slept, but his mind kicked awake with a fitful jolt – his eyes took in an array of peculiar information and he could see the wind. He could track the flow of the breeze and learned its purpose instantly, understood its pattern and yearned to follow it to see where it went… he immersed himself in the new understanding and felt himself pushing against the airflow not with arms, but with wings. Startled, he watched as he flew further and further away from the pile of clothes and the opened lunchbox below. He had a new shape, but he understood and was not afraid.
Tayto alighted on the uppermost branch beside a ladybird and winked a greeting with his new beady blackbird eye. The ladybird nodded, and spoke in a voice unheard of by man. He warned Tayto, pleaded with this link to mankind, and pointed with urgency with a tiny quivering feeler – to the bulldozer below.
Such perfect timing! Was it Tayto’s purpose in life to protect this tree, right here in this instant? He didn’t know, but knew to act fast. His wings flapped furiously, faster and faster until they became a low-droning buzz. The world slowed to a snail’s pace to his waspish awareness as he darted towards Neelo, the bulldozer’s driver. He had to stop him, and could think of no other way. Once he was inside, he could sting the man, then change into something bigger again, something more persistent.
Neelo spotted the wasp instantly as it flew towards the cabin’s open window. He blew a puff of smoke from his John Player Special into the wasp’s path to stun it momentarily, and reached for his can of deodorant. The vapourised molecules hit Tayto before he knew what was happening and he fell, curled in agony onto the cabin floor of the bulldozer. He gasped his last breath and died.
Neelo plodded on, the bulldozer made contact with the bark of the tree near the root and he changed gear. With a gnarly groan, the bulldozer lifted the tree away from its bed, inducing a flurry of leaves and pollen, killing the tree instantly and cursing the road that was to lie there soon afterward. As Neelo pushed forwards, the tree collapsed with a gushing sigh and with what sounded like a chorus of keening souls. Neelo arched his neck and peered out the window to make sure he wasn’t hearing things, just as a gush of leaves blew into his face. He inhaled and gasped instantly, choking the fragments out of his windpipe.
Awake.
Neelo snarled as he jumped from the cockpit and barked viciously as he ran towards the foreman… he savoured the sweet taste of blood as he sank his wolfish teeth into the commander’s calf.
He never liked that prick.
In her shadow
I remember when she was born, my Emily. We were close at first, she and I would spend hours talking and trying to make sense of the world, sometimes long into the night. When we were finished I would lie beside her and keep her warm and safe in the knowledge that she was loved unconditionally.
As she grew and other worldly interests held her attention, we spoke less and less… she slowly forgot about me which is the natural order I suppose. Nevertheless I stayed with her. I walked with her through dark evenings on her way home from school and held her hand. When she wrestled with the enormous volume of schoolwork that had been laid before her, I didn’t interfere, instead I quietly placed helpful material in her path to aid her inspiration, but she never thanked me for it.
I remember well the early days of her marriage… a misplaced match by all accounts but I said nothing, for it’s better that she learns from her mistakes. I watched her anguish as she slowly realised her husband was not the man she first thought he was and I remember the worst night of all… the drunken tornado of abuse she suffered, left crumpled on the bedroom floor like discarded underwear, with violet bruises erupting on her beautiful complexion. She lay on the floor with vomit dripping from her hair and fresh blood seeping from her recently inhabited womb and I said nothing, for all I could do was sit beside her and hold her tightly, trying to help her feel that it wasn’t a way out she was now looking for now, but a way back in. I couldn’t hide the pills from her that night, all I could do was grasp her hands and lend her my strength – I poured wordless encouragement into her heart until the morning came and kept her alive – kept myself alive. I think she remembered us that night as we used to be… forgotten childhood friends… though I can’t be sure.
How she grieved for her lost child! It was a source of infinite comfort for me, ample thanks for the love I’d given her in the past and I told her so, even though she couldn’t hear me. I explained to her in her dreams one night, I explained that the child was an error, that it could not have been born, for its soul belonged to me. I explained that one day, when she departed, I would be born to a different mother and it would then be Emily’s turn to nurture my mortal soul. This is how things work with Guardian Angels, this is how it has always worked.
I stay in her shadow now… I push the forceful words out of her mouth when she needs strength, I close her eyes to the things she should not see and I turn her in the direction of the things she should. I think she knows I’m here – she feels the warmth of my support and berates herself for entertaining the notion that I exist but she still knows deep down.
Just like you know deep down. On those nights when the silence seems oppressive and you feel despair clawing at the edge of your mind, know you’re not alone. Right now you’re being loved by somebody you’ve forgotten all about but it’s okay, this is how it’s meant to be. Stay very very silent and you’ll feel it, listen closely and you’ll hear it – the love of your minder, your connected soul. There’s no such thing as an imaginary friend. We’re very, very real.
