Why can't I open my Advent calendar in the correct order?

Sometimes, life is like that tin of crayons on the teachers desk. There are so many colours, so many shades, and some are sparkly or striped or two colours at once and some are everything at the same time so your brain hurts just looking at them, and they're all crammed inside a small container, rubbing against each other and losing bits and changing shape, becoming smaller and taller and faded and warped, until they disappear.
Briony thought she understood life.
"I match my socks up every night before bed," she told Cara as they sat on the comfortable wooden bench and ate their sandwiches. "And I make sure to eat five fruit and three vegetables a day-"
"It's the other way round," Cara interrupted in a nonchalant way.
"What is?" Briony asked sharply, lowering her sandwich.
Cara swallowed and took a minute studying the contents between her bread. "What you said," she replied finally, "It's five vegetables a day not fruit, and three fruit instead of vegetables."
"No it isn't. And I made mum buy me one of those electric toothbrushes, because they're better, obviously, for cleaning your teeth, and I always watch the five-thirty news. Always. Every single night."
"Sliced chicken and mustard," Cara said, gazing at her sandwich with unfocused eyes, as if she was under a spell. "Why does she think I like that?"
Cara. Briony chewed her egg, mayo and lettuce sandwich slowly, watching Cara with a slight wrinkle of her nose. What good is Cara? What does she know about food? Her mum can't even make her a good lunch!
"So, anyway, I followed that girl home the other day," she said and waited.
Cara took another bite of her sandwich absentmindedly, chewed and then turned to Briony, "Huh?"
"Yep-"
"Wait, followed her home?"
Briony grinned, almost throwing out her chest in pride, "I did."
Cara's eyes grew wide as she stared at Briony, biting into her sandwich and seeming to forget that she didn't like it.
"And she invited me inside."
"Why?"
"I told her I had to pee."
"Oh. Did you?"
"No."
Cara chewed some more. Briony felt as if she were losing her captivated audience. She said: "Her house smells like powdered soup in every room and all her carpet is that white fluffy kind that always looks clean and she had this massive- what's so funny?"
"You said 'powdered soup'," Cara said, grinning.
Briony let out air from her nose like an angry tortoise, "Soup? I meant soap. Anyway, and th-"
"Oh, soap."
"And there was a painting of a cat in a top hat, a real top hat, that was just hanging like twice the size of me in the hallway, I mean, how did they get it in?"
Cara said: "I bet they had to widen their front door," and wiped her fingers on the white and blue school skirt.
Briony snorted like a tortoise with a cold and said: "I bet they did."
Cara snorted too, but didn't sound like a sick tortoise because she had a dainty nose, and crossed her legs the other way. She only snorted when Briony did to see if she would notice and stop doing it. She never did. "What happened after the toilet?"
"Who?" Briony said loudly.
"Did you say goodbye?"
"To the girl? Of course! I used her toilet Cara!"
"What sort of toilet rolls did she have?"
"Dolphin patterned," Briony reported with an air of importance. She was sure moving her head in an arrogant manner, Cara observed.
"Well."
"I know."
"Hey, lunch muffins, what's crackin?"
Briony looked up to see Jarrad grinning down at them.
"I had a muffin once," Cara clarified, "and it was more like a deformed cupcake, really, so you can stop calling us that."
"It didn't have frosting so it's a muffin," Jarrad kicked up his skateboard with ease and grabbed the end, "Whatcha talking about?"
"Actu-" Cara started, looking a little disgruntled.
"That new girl's house," Briony cut over Clara excitedly, eager to share her daring news. "It was marvelously dangerous of me."
Jarrad raised his eyebrows, "What was dangerous?"
"She went inside."
Briony nodded enthusiastically.
"You broke in?" Jarrad asked in disbelief, "That's wac-"
"No," she rolled her eyes, "I used the toilet."
Clara said knowingly: "Dolphin toilet paper," and Jarrad's disbelief turned into admiration.
"Wack!" he said.
Briony smiled. "Blue dolphin toilet paper."
"Yeah?" said Jarrad, looking rapt.
"Wow!" breathed Cara.
"Isn't it?" said Briony, and they all lapsed into a sort of stunned silence, smiling vaguely and staring off at nothing.
"Say," Jarrad said after a while, glancing at Briony, "You wouldn't wanna come down to the servo with me," he hesitated and then added, "With me?" as if he had a memory problem.
Briony tried to look gracious and uninterested. "Oh, yeah ok, why not?" But her heart was thumping wildly. Jarrad! Asking her to the servo! She stood up carefully and waved goodbye to Clara much like the Queen waves to the public.
Cara watched them go; Jarrad tall with dark hair and Briony short with fair hair. She didn't understand life. She didn't watch the news or eat five vegetables and when she wasn't in school she wore odd socks, mainly because she couldn't be bothered doing the washing. But at that moment she thought she understood about boys and what it took to get their attention.
Patterned toilet paper.
~

How did I wind up here?

MY EYEBROWS ARE GOING ON AN ADVENTURE

Moreover, my strawberry plant is sort of dying and this saddens me because I'm only up to chapter three on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and I'd really like Sierra to know the ending of one of the greatest books in print. Sierra is my strawberry plant, because I have thing with alliteration. Or do I? Certainly not in my everyday speech as that would be alarming and annoying and bothersome- not to mention time-consuming and a little bit wet- but maybe in the back of my mind there's this quiet voice prodding me, whispering: 'use the words, work the magic that is poetry and spelling and aligning words into sentences with structural purpose and sounds of soothing bliss.We won't judge.'

And I must say, I really feel that they will judge. I have this feeling, deep down in the pit of all things, a feeling of mild persecution. A perpetual uncomfortable intrusion.

GET OUT OF MY HEAD

^_^v

~

THINGS I HAVE DONE:

! Learnt how to tie a tie.

! Had a car accident because I was ferrying strawberry pie around the streets.

! Read three chapters of Harry Potter to my strawberry plant.

! Coincidentally, all the strawberries in this tale are from different sources, JUST IN CASE ANYONE WAS WONDERING ABOUT THEIR WHEREABOUTS, WHICH I'M SURE EVERYONE IS.

! Bought a zombie Christmas t-shirt and an Adventure Time advent calendar.

! Considered being hardcore as fuck and opening my calendar backwards, but my OCD won't let me.

! Broke two gnomes.

! Glued two gnomes together.

(These could be related)

! Went to the circus.

! Rode on a camel and realized that I much preferred the Ferris Wheel and I HATE the Ferris Wheel.

! Burnt my tongue twice.

! Stepped on a pin.

! Accepted the fact that no matter what I do, my computer screen will always change from blue, to yellow, to red, to normal, whenever it damn well pleases.

! Spent six hours and forty-nine minutes trying to pry off a device attached to Jill's chest in Resident Evil 5.

! Ate seven hundred thousand little marshmallows covered in chocolate and was transported to heaven for that time.


Yes, it has been a blast.

Also, if I happened to be stuck in some isolated place for a long period of time with nothing but another human being and a dog, which out of the two would I eat?

Also, a train.

But earnestly, in all the earnest that I can muster up at such a late hour...


HERE ARE MY TEN REASONS FOR EATING THE DOG. Amem.

1. In my professional opinion that has nothing to do with actual experience, I reckon the dog would taste better.

2. The dog may have more meat to offer, depending on the build of the two, thus would last longer.

3. I can have conversations with the human while we eat the dog, and I cannot have conversations with the dog while we eat the human unless we both know sign language, and even then, I'm not sure if the dog's paws would be up for the challenge of making all the signs, resulting in miscommunication and possibly a fight.

4. The lovely fur of the dog will keep me and my companion warm on those long cold nights.

5. I've heard rumours that eating another human being can make you sick.

6. I can also have conversations with the human about how to get out of our current isolating situation.

7. It would feel wrong to kill another human being, unless they were someone like Hitler.

8. I'm 85.2 per cent certain that I would be unable to actually eat a human. (I left room because the zombie apocalypse is coming and you just never know).

9. I really feel like Garlic Prawns.

10. Number 9 is legit because it's a well known scientifically proven fact that prawns and garlic together with yummy fluffy rice and the creamy goodness of sauce stimulate specific cells in the body that activate brain neurons therefore enabling certain human/dog debate information to be processed at a faster rate, and this is how lists of genius are born.



For Real.

Where do all the ghosts dwell?

So Merceline had hobbled around the house like a wounded soldier, even though her legs and feet were perfectly fine. "Yes, I was almost killed by my cat. Yes, I will have him put down. Yes, I do need help putting on my undergarments," she told her friends on the phone, her neighbors on both sides, the local butcher and little elderly ladies at various bus shelters. Pity was expected.
Merceline reveled in the shocked expressions of strangers. She sat at bus stop number six, wearing bright red sunglasses and her sturdy green hat, staring straight ahead at the playground and entertained the thought that she may be a thrill seeker.
I've never jumped out of an airplane before, she thought with a kind of grim determination, and I suppose now I must, for this is what thrill seekers do.
She would never admit it, but imagining herself jump out of a plane made her terribly frightened.
Renton had survived his slip in the hallway with only a burn on his big toe from the telephone cord. He surprised everybody when he mentioned it, and he wore thongs on purpose, even on rainy days, just to have something interesting to say.
"Well! To be frank- ("Oh, that's your name is it?" he said to one stranger when the man he was telling suddenly beamed and exclaimed excitedly: "What a coincidence! Were your parents staying at the Marmone Hotel that year, as well? 1952?" Renton told him his name was not Frank, in a sour tone as he didn't appreciate being interrupted, and explained impatiently that his parents had never been to Hotel Marmone as they were not fans of Frank Sinatra and he, himself, had only heard one song) it's not just medical implications here, is it? It's the fact that Merceline doesn't know the sex of our cat, isn't it?"
People nodded, looking awkward.
Yes, thought Renton as he sipped a carton of iced chocolate, it is rather shameful not to notice whether your pet should be wearing a blue knitted vest or a collar with a dangling heart shaped pendant. He made a mental note to check out this situation.
Merceline was hanging her hat up on the heavy wooden coat-rack when Renton walked in the front door. She watched him bite into a thick-crusted meat pie. She pondered: would there be glass in that pie? If he was daring and thrilling?
Out loud she said: "Where have all the books gone? The ones in the upstairs room?"
Has she been scrolling through ebay looking for bowls with skulls printed on them and dark coloured blankets displaying girls in bikinis? Renton wondered while searching for hidden custard in his teeth with his tongue. He replied: "What, the room with all the wigs?"
Merceline tried to look down her nose at him in some form of disgust, but he was taller than her so she spent a bit of time tilting her head backwards and forwards without realizing what she was doing.
"Merceline, love," he said tenderly, looking at this thin, bright, rather odd lady before him, "let's have a picnic out in the park by that old house."
Merceline peered at him, much like a stern old lady would. "All we have is ham," she said, displeased, "and maybe some dried apricots."
"Well then," he smiled, "let's have a ham picnic out near that old house by the park."
She suddenly smiled and it lit up her entire face. "Let me get some glass."

Can there be more than two?

There seemed to be a hailstorm starting outside just as Merceline situated her lime green hat in the correct position upon her head.

"Here," Renton's arm appeared under her nose. He held out an umbrella and Merceline gave an unappreciative sniff.

"Well it's no good going out now! I'll get knocked unconscious by a falling hailstone!" She turned and walked into the living room, where a fire was roaring and a sleepy-looking cat lay curled up on a fat and fluffy rug.

Renton thought it was very unlikely that Merceline would get hit by the hailstorm on the account of her wearing such a sturdy hat. Merceline sat herself on one of the plump armchairs and called out: "Do we have any of that old brandy left? Renton? The brandy!" all at once without waiting for his answer.

Renton detached himself from the umbrella (brown with a splatter of artistically drawn water splashes making it look permanently wet) and went upstairs to run a bath. What bliss a bath could be. What heaven! Renton, on the odd occasion he took one, would fall into a sort of rigid trance and would lie for such a long time underneath all the bubbles and rubber sailboats, existing in peace, until he would suddenly remember something important he should be doing and leap out of the cool, grimy water looking like a bleached prune. 

"I said Renton!" came a shout from down below. 

Merceline stared about the room as if she'd suddenly appeared and hadn't the foggiest idea how she got there. She looked at the portrait hanging above the fireplace. She didn't know who the figure was, and she didn't care, but she liked it. Yes, she thought approvingly, I like that painting. She turned her gaze to the small square table with a set of sparkling crystal glasses that sat near the window. There were small squat round glasses and tall elegant wine glasses, skinny glasses that could hold a single flower and tiny shot glasses with a bubble pattern all the way around, all arranged neatly on a silver tray. Well, yes, I believe I like those, too, she thought, although this thought made her tired.

She then looked at the cat. No, she thought sharply as she watched it sleep, I don't believe in the slightest that I like that.

Renton came wandering in at this point. He was wearing a maroon bathrobe.

"We have to get rid of that cat," said Merceline. She pointed a long finger at the fluffy orange ball and sent it a look of pure disgust. "That cat has to go."

"What? Get rid of Terpentin?" Renton asked incredulously, "but love, we've had her almost four years."

"Now! It's attitudes like that..." she started, but stopped when Terpentin suddenly stretched, opened her eyes, climbed gracefully to her feet and walked off in the direction of her food bowl.

"No," said Merceline,"I don't like it."

Renton said, "I made sausages earlier on."

Merceline declared she was a vegetarian and Renton frowned, trying to work out exactly when she had claimed this.

"Yesterday before last," she offered unhelpfully, "just as I witnessed the horrible massacre of all those poor horses."

"That was Wild Stride, the cartoon. And anyway, there's no meat in the sausages because I had them made especially." He didn't cross his fingers behind his back when he said this and he felt odd. He had a feeling of rebelliousness. Why, maybe he should open his bathrobe and walk around, just for the fun of it. His trembling hands had just touched the fuzzy bathrobe cord when Merceline said: "Sausage-less sausages?" and they jumped back to his sides like guilty school children.

"Oh dang it all!" he grumbled. He undid the cord in one swift motion and said loudly, "I'm putting them on! They like to cook for seven minutes only." 

Merceline stood up. "Good lord, Renton, your bathrobe is open."

"Enjoy the show, lassie!" and he turned around just as Merceline reached out to close his robe. Her hands grasped air, she stepped awkwardly, stumbled over Terpentin, who meowed softly, and fell onto her left arm. 

There was a crunching sound.

Renton would have looked over to check if she was alright, but he had turned down the hall at high speed in his haste to aid his rumbling, naked stomach and skidded on a puddle. He slid a few feet before crashing into the phone table.

"Renton!" called Merceline, "I think-"

Oh, dang it, Renton thought as he stared at the growing stain on the ceiling, left the bath running again.

What is that weird smell?

"Look at that," said Jeremiah, "Just, fucking look at that."
Sierra swung around a streetlight pole and replied in a faraway voice while looking up at the stars, "If I were to join the circu-"
Jeremiah kissed her then and she didn't finish.
"Okay then," he said, staring down the street, "Let's go this way."
"I think I left my phone in the kitchen."
Jeremiah glanced at her hands. "Oh, well, Frances has it by now. What do you think about the harbour?"
Sierra bowed her head as she walked and wondered: what did she think about when she heard the word 'harbour'?
"Boats," she answered firmly, "and chips. Seagulls. Little pebbles."
"Nah that's the beach," Jeremiah dismissed her words easily, and Sierra said: "You're right," in her faraway voice that he knew too well.
"I'm wrong, actually, but thanks for giving it to me."
Jeremiah spent most mornings gazing into his pale reflection while combing his brown hair, and then he would throw the comb into his little rubbish bin, eat a bowl of nutrigrain, swap the lamp and ornament clock around in the living room before slipping seventy cents into his jacket pocket and leaving through the bathroom window.
This was his routine most mornings.
Sierra hummed songs that she heard on the tv the night previous while washing up the dishes, making sure to scrub the suds out of the sink and that all the knives, forks and spoons were facing the same way in the stand-up drainer. She then chose shoes without laces, opened the curtains at every second window, drank a can of blueberry mix breakfast drink standing next to the fridge then counted to twenty-four and six seconds before leaving the house.
They met up outside Marmy's Apple and Bookshop; Jeremiah tried not to mention anything about fire and Sierra avoided bringing up dogs, telephone boxes and baking soda.
"I think I'd like the circus," Sierra said, picking up her own thread of conversation, "and I think I'd like it because I like bright colours."
Jeremiah nodded.
"I also like candy."
"I'd like flying and doing those trapeze acts."
"Yes," Sierra said pleasantly, "flying is one of those magical moments in life where everything is better all at once."
"Like a breath of fresh air," agreed Jeremiah.
"Like leaping into heaven."
"Flying into heaven."
"Oh, quite right."
But, this morning, Sierra hadn't cleaned any dishes, hadn't opened the curtains or checked the cutlery. She had skipped the blueberry drink and counted to forty-four and three seconds before reluctantly reaching out to grab the door handle.
Jeremiah had glanced knowingly up and down the street while leaning against the bookshop window. He had a funny feeling in his stomach.
Sierra had come walking up with a hot-dog. She said, "The sauce is too rich but I enjoy the way it melts into the bread."
Jeremiah gave a tense smile, as if his cheeks hurt.
"Let's go to the skate park," Sierra suggested after swallowing, and they went.
In the hours that followed, Jeremiah had watched Sierra, not closely because that would encourage questions. He glanced at her from time to time, wondering what was different. Was it the way she concentrated on things, really looked at objects, as if it was the last time she would see them? Was it her bouncy blonde ponytail, or the red ribbon around her wrist?
He glanced, he wondered, but he didn't dare ask.
Then the sun went down and she had started talking about the circus.
"I know what you're doing," he said complacently, "You're planning on running away."
"Hmm," Sierra clutched her bag strap a little tighter and said, "where would I go?"
"The circus."
She laughed. Jeremiah clenched his jaw. He glanced at her and noticed her eyes, her carefully brushed hair, the red lines on her white skin, and he softened.
"You don't have to drink that blueberry crap every morning."
"What," Sierra started, in a rather icy tone for such a conversation, "would you know about blueberries?"
He shrugged, "They're expensive all year round."
"They're n-"
"Just tell me what's going on!" he yelled suddenly. He stopped walking and so did she. Sierra blinked at him, waiting. He thought she was probably biding time to think of a lie and this made hole in his chest grow bigger. "Sierra, I'm warning you-"
"Are you?" she said, feeling sort of detached from whatever moment they were having. She turned to walk but he grabbed her bag strap.
"Hey!"
"Don't walk away-"
"Fuck you!"
Jeremiah was stronger than her, and the bag shot out of her grip as he tugged her backwards, spilling the contents all over the dirty sidewalk. Gum wrappers, pens, hair clips and headphones, a notebook and a packet of tablets rolled around their feet.
Sierra bent down as if someone had fired a gunshot behind her, madly grabbing the items while Jeremiah stared at the orange and white tablet box. A pack of twenty-four. The kind she could never use because of one ingredient.
"It's for someone!" she said hurriedly as he swiped it up and stepped backwards, unable to take his eyes off the packet. "Wait! No!"
"So you weren't going to join the circus," he said quietly.
"Jere-" she stopped, not wanting to go on. She was suddenly so tired, so afraid, she felt like a shell. The real Sierra, the girl with substance and positive solutions to all problems, had drifted away without her realizing and left her with a body she had to somehow operate as normal.
Jeremiah turned around and walked to the railing. She stood frozen, watching. He threw the packet over as hard as he could, turned back and took her hand.
"Come on," he said.
They walked on; Jeremiah staring ahead at nothing much but with a grip so strong it was almost painful, Sierra focusing on the concrete slabs that made up the path while tears ran silently down her cheeks as she tried to make out odd bits of graffiti, her bag and all the contents splayed out behind them, forgotten.

How do I prepare for a metaphorical storm?

.Wet Leaf.

"Well! What extraordinary circumstances are these!' yelled Petra as she climbed rather ungracefully out of a lavender bush.

"Very! Indeed!" cried Alfred, who just happened to be the perfect height (although for what purpose, no one really knew) and wearing an acorn on top of his head. 

"Alfred! do come and let me examine you, at close range."

Alfred was afraid of trees, and as they hadn't planned to meet specifically in a forest, they were, actually, in the middle of a forest, surrounded by trees and flowers and other positively frightening foliage, it was certainly understandable that he felt a little on edge.

"Oh! Not still peering into every bark curl and chrysanthemum bush, are you?" Petra remarked in disdain as she brushed the front of her petticoat. 

"No! Certainly not!" but he stared around and gave a nervous twitch when a bird descended violently upon a nearby branch.

Petra sighed loudly. Alfred trembled. Petra looked over at the bird, coughed, then marched up to Alfred and smiled. "My, how tall you are now."

Alfred nodded, "Yes, well, height. Who can say how tall I am?"

"You're tall!" Petra commanded unnecessarily, for he was not. "And how very wet everything is." She looked around at the leaves and twigs, flower petals and fading crisp packets, all glistening in the weak sunshine as if covered by little diamonds. 

"The rain..." Alfred started to say in a very unenthusiastic voice, and then stopped because Petra wasn't listening. She was bending over a fat log and muttering a string of 'yes's' and 'I see's' and 'most interesting if I were the interested sort, which I'm not's'.

"Appealing, as it were, to have a dandy chat out here but I must take leave-"

"Alfie! Love, come here."

Petra also wore a hat. Her hat was purple and tall, with a wrap-around black ribbon and looked like it could withstand an armed attack. Alfred sighed and trudged over, watching as she bent with surprising flexibility. 

"Are you into Yoga?" Alfred enquired without care to her answer. He felt his legs start to tremble and wondered if he had chosen appropriate socks that morning to allow for leg-trembling. Ever so discretely, he pulled up his left trouser and glanced down. Orange.

"What are you doing?"

Alfred jumped. "Doing?"

"Stop playing with your pants and look at this," Petra held up a gigantic red leaf, about the size of her face, and twirled it around in her fingers. "What do you suppose this is?"

Alfred grimaced. If there was anything he hated more than trees, it was trick questions. Or questions that seemed like trick questions but turned out to be simple ones, leaving him with a red face that clashed terribly with his orange beard. "Uh, it's- it's a leaf?"

Petra rolled her eyes, "Of course it is! Does it not look like a leaf? Is it not red with soft edges and a thin stem that breaks when you twirl it too fast?" 

"Perhaps."

Alfred stared at a pink chip packet lying near Petra's heeled shoe and thought of his home. He lived in a large wooden house two streets out from the city. He had small apricot trees planted in pots and various-sized birdhouses hanging around the veranda. It was all very calm and serene, unlike his current predicament where the two trees nearest him were having a rude, whispered conversation with loud sniggering and overly passionate branch-pointing. 

"I protest!" Petra exclaimed suddenly. 

"Protest!" Alfred screamed, jolting out of his pleasant yet unsettling yen experience. "What ever about?"

"This!" she waved her hands around at the general area. "I would prefer tea, wouldn't you? We have so much to catch up on, what with having eight years between now and our last visit." She looked him up and down fondly. He felt like a piece of rare candy on display. Cinnamon, he thought with affection, I would like to be something involving cinnamon, and not butterscotch in the slightest.

"Do you do cinnamon, at all?" he asked and flinched as a branch came swooping dangerously close to his head in the breeze. "Oh! It's just all horrible!"

Petra's gaze hardened and she seemed to gather herself up, "You do bring out their violent urges, don't you?"

"I what?" 

"The trees. They seem to have unresolved anger issues whenever you're around. But, forget that!" she gathered up her skirts as if preparing to march onto a battleground, "Shall we have butterscotch fingers and reminisce?"

"Oh," Alfred drooped, as if she had sucked out all his air, and said: "Certainly. What happened to that leaf?" in an interested but obviously fake tone of voice. 

"Leaves, really! How on earth do you plan on achieving anything on a daily basis if you keep stopping to smell the roses?"

Alfred frowned at nothing in particular because he had started walking. 

"I daresay, Alfie, you have so much to learn on how to get on. I fear we shall need more time."

Her tone was absolute. They would, indeed, be spending enormous amounts of time on trifle matters, probably while eating an array of butterscotch-flavoured food around demanding, enraged foliage. 

~

Where do thoughts go?

The mouse and the model are laughing at us,

We'll risk it, we're desperate, for someone to trust.

~

'It most certainly is!'

And it was.

Of course, just because it was, didn't necessarily mean it was is.

I put the pen down, rub my head and turn to the boy next to me. "Does that make sense?"

He looks over at the paper. "Not in the slightest."

"Oh-"
"But! Actually, you've got is and was next to each other."

I frown. "Is that wrong?"

Before I can stop him, the boy with straight, straw-coloured hair has snatched up the sheet of paper and scrunched it into a  ball. "Haven't you ever noticed how much better you feel after chucking out the stuff that weighs you down?" he leans back on the chair legs, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

I honestly cannot say that I have ever felt that way Or that I have ever chucked anything out. "Hang on-"

"And!" he lets his chair fall forwards, "that sometimes, it's not what is getting you down, it's the other way round. It's what you're getting down about. See?"

His brown eyes sparkle as he smiles.

I ponder this. Can it be true? Maybe we have a choice?

"The opposite of 'you're' is not 'is'," I reply because the prospect of choice is too much at the moment. My head throbs harder at the endlessness created from such mass variety, and the continuous effort required to keep it up.

"Ha! What would you know?' he exclaims in a gleeful gesture of friendship, "You've got ink all over your fingers and no paper."

"You took  my paper!"

He leans closer, suddenly- so suddenly that he topples slightly but seems not to notice- with a cheeky grin, "Heard about Mara?"

I glance over at the new girl. Every day this week she had come with a red headband, a different pattern each day but always red. It went beautifully with her shiny brown hair.

"Yeah?" I said, eager to hear some headband-colour-type scandal, maybe involving a boy or a stint in prison.

"Yeah," he said, leaning closer, "she ate those mushrooms out in the garden, those red ones?"

I turn, sagging slightly like a deflated balloon at the mundane direction this conversation had taken, "oh..."

"Yeah? So when she ate them, you know when that was?"

"Yesterday?"

"Last year. And she was a thirty year old man called Gurtred."

Did you think this plan would work?

Meet me in the shadows...

Won't you come out
We could paint the town red
Kill a little time
You can sleep when you're dead

It isn't over yet...
      (Remember what I said)

Won't you come out
I've been waiting for you
Holding my breath
Til my body turned blue

       You've got everything to lose

How many nights do you stare at the moon?

.Eight Light-bulbs.

He sat in his rickety two-story house and he was happy. Planks of wood were nailed over the windows; the chimney bricks fell every few days, either through the roof or down into a pile near the front door, and everything smelled of age. The house was very old but he was very young.

I’m not that young, he scowls over my shoulder, and I tell him to quieten because this is my story.

So he was young. He sat in a room upstairs that was absolutely empty apart from eight light-bulbs attached to string and tied to the ceiling.

He was young, alone, sitting in an empty room and he was squinting. He’s the forgetful type (you are); he’d rather play with paper dolls than turn up at an eye appointment.

But he was not alone. No, someone found his weary house that smelled old and decided to let herself in. She was brave, or foolish. Sometimes bravery can seem like foolishness until victory, but whether she was brave and foolish or one or the other is beside the point. She opened that squeaky door and walked through the narrow, dark, eerie hallway, and she was quite ignorant of the faceless portraits hanging on the walls and the broken lamps scattered about.

She was brave but she was also impatient.

She was not impatient, he scowls again. I remind him what I once said about scowling and I tell him that he is quite right, of course. One cannot assume impatience isn’t fear. And fear can make you fast.

I watch as he reads and assesses, and then I ask him if I can continue. He nods noncommittally.

So she was fearfully impatient, glancing around and not seeing, wondering who could live in a place that echoes loudly and sighs despondently. She took the stairs quietly and crept past locked doors until she came to the room with the light. The room she had seen from outside in the darkness. She had counted the windows and now she was here, she was standing at the closed door but was not ready to open it.

He didn’t see the way her hands shook or hear her breath hitch in her throat. He was too busy sitting in his empty room staring at the light in his hands.

Light is power, he says from behind me. I smile because I know he wants my opinion so he can argue his point, and I continue.

So. She stood in the faded hallway with peeling flowered wallpaper and she took a deep breath to calm herself. Then she opened the door.

He turned around slowly, surprised at the spontaneous intrusion and stared at the girl who had just walked into the room with eight light bulbs.

“Oh,” she said when her eyes fell upon the lights hanging from the ceiling.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She looked down at him, crunched up on the floor in summer clothes while the snow fell outside. “You’re the boy with too many light bulbs.”

He watched her as she stood silent and still. He liked her sandals but couldn’t imagine her wearing anything else. “You’re the girl who lost her way.”

I could, he says, I imagined her wearing those lace-up shoes with flowers on the toes.

“You’ve got so many,” she remarked. Now that she had entered the room and found the light, she wasn’t afraid. She walked over to the nearest one and reached up, as high as she could, and because the ceiling was low she was able to touch it with her fingertips.

It went out.

“Oh!” she cried and jerked her hand away.

He leapt up, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to touch things that aren’t yours?!”

“I’m sorry!”

He stared at the dark globe and the shadows it cast and he felt something go out inside himself. He felt empty and he had never felt empty before.

“Get out! Go on! Who told you to come in anyway?”

She looked down at the worn floorboards and said, “It’s cold out there.”

“Yeah? Well you’re not welcome in here!”

She felt a sudden rise of anger at this stranger for telling her where could find welcome. Certainly, if the boy didn’t want her company then the walls and doorknobs would?

“Why shouldn’t I be allowed in here?” she retorted angrily and waved her hands about.

I found her hand gestures tiresome, he says and I tell him that the small, irksome habits of others are the things we miss the most.

Her hand grazed another light-bulb, as she had moved a few paces while talking, and it, too, went out.

“Stop!” he called, his eyes wide and frantic. “Don’t move!”

She stopped moving and caught sight of his left hand clutching something so hard that his knuckles were turning white. “You have a light yourself. Why are you so worried about these ones?”

He glared at the clumsy, impulsive girl who took up too much space. “There’s no room for you in here. Go!”

She laughed at his words, a giddy feeling bubbling up inside her as if she were a can of freshly opened soda, and she said, “There’s nothing but room in here.”

“It’s full!” he yelled. The emptiness he had felt before seemed to double as another set of shadows settled into the room. “Go away!”

“Stop telling me what to do! Didn’t your mother ever teach you to share?”

And this foolishly brave girl reached up to the third light, she pushed up on her toes as far as she could and stretched her arm as high as it would go, and she snatched it free from the string.

“STOP IT!”

Nearly half of the room was now bathed in blankets of black and he felt as though he had suddenly started falling.

I thought I would never breathe again, he says quietly. I tell him I remember and continue.

She looked down at her own dark light bulb, shook it carefully at first, glancing up at his as she did so, and when that didn’t bring it to life she brandished it so hard he thought it would break.

“Why did mine go out when yours is still alight?” she demanded.

He took a deep, trembling breath and said, “Leave n-” but he didn’t finish.

She had reached up once more while he had been steading his nerves and thinking up reasonable requests. This impatient yet courageous girl had reached up, as high as she could just like the last time, and yanked down the fourth light.

“NO!”

He lunged at her as the fourth bulb went out in her hands.

“Why does it keep doing that?!” she cried in frustration, oblivious, yet again, to her surroundings.

It is hard to see in a room that is only half lit up and even harder for someone who spends all of his time never seeing anything for how it really is. But fear made him strong.

She looked up to see his furious, blurry figure and she, too, felt fear. Fear pushed all the sensible thoughts out of her head like a dripping tap until the only thing that made sense for her to do was the one thing she shouldn’t.

She threw the two broken light-bulbs up into the air.

I pause and wait for him to comment. Surely there is something important to add at this crucial part of the story?

There is nothing, he says. I recognise the undertone in his voice and continue without a word.

So she had flung the two bulbs away in regrettable haste and they had sailed up into the light. He crashed into her as the two dark bulbs hit two light bulbs and there was a monstrous smashing noise that had never been heard before in such a dispirited and sensitive house.

They fell and glass rained down around them like the falling snow.

“WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING EVERYTHING!?” he shouted.

“Get off!” she screamed.

His free hand grabbed at her cardigan in rage and she, in turn, tried desperately to push him off with both of hers. Anger, like fear, enhances strength and he was overflowing. His lonely, sad, bright world had been safe without rash irresponsibility, her rash irresponsibility.

“WHY?!” he yelled with so much force that his throat ached, “WHY?!”

He glared, wide-eyed, down at her scrunched-up face streaming with tears, and he quite forgot himself. She stared transfixed up at all his fury and she watched as his left hand suddenly moved. His arm rose up, seemingly without instruction, while his right clenched and clawed, and the brightest light she had ever seen flew out of his grasp.

Shadows descended around them. She felt his other hand join its brother around her neck but she was waiting. Her eyes followed the glowing trail as it flew up to meet the others.

I would have killed her, he tells me.

And so he would have, had the last two light-bulbs not shattered upon impact and plunged them into darkness. 

Where will I stand tomorrow?

"Gnome! What on earth are you doing?"
The Height of Trolls- or the One Troll from the Seventh Troll League- paused whilst fiddling with his jacket button and looked at the scene before him in puzzlement.
"It's nothing! Not a thing !" cried the Gnome as he flurried about the dozen or so thick stumps in the forest clearing. He appeared to have fashioned one of the smaller stumps into a hat.
"Are you wearing a stump hat?" asked the Height of Trolls, forgetting his buttons altogether so his jacket flapped open in the breeze, displaying numerous unsightly stomach hairs. This was not a pleasant vision.
"Of course not!" the Gnome stopped at the largest stump in the clearing and took a few deep breaths.
"You know," said the Height of Trolls, "You shouldn't be worrying about these mere tree spirits when th-"
"Tree spirits!" spluttered the Gnome. His reddish-orange hair stuck out at weird angles and even though his eyes looked extremely bloodshot, his insulted glare was sturdy and almost painful to witness. The Height of Trolls certainly turned his privates discreetly out of view.
"These are homes! Sacred sites and memories! These are lives."
The Height of Trolls nodded, growing weary of such a topic, "Of course, of course, it's quite alright. Now, do tell me how you made that hat."
"Hat?" the Gnome shook himself, "This isn't a hat-"
"Beg your pardon, do," the Height of Trolls inclined his head a little, "I can s-"
"I've forgotten your name," interrupted the Gnome tersely. "What is it?"
The Height of Trolls blinked, "Barry."
"Oh I see."
And there was a long pause, probably to ponder about such a name for the highest of Trolls in the Seventh Troll League and consider alternatives, such as Club or Stonehenge or even Herds the Horrible. Barry flexed his thick, hairy, greenish arms and the Gnome stared at the ground frowning.
"Barry the Height of Trolls..." the Gnome said vaguely, glancing up only to catch sight of the chest hairs blowing in the breeze. He turned hastily and hit a stump.
"And why is it 'height of trolls'?" he exclaimed, rubbing his knee, "Just answer me that!"
"Dear Gnome, brash and fearless Gnome, am I not the tallest troll in the land?"
The Gnome let out a grumble, "How would I know?"
Barry stopped expanding his chest and the dazzling grin fell from his face. "How would you know?"  he repeated, almost in a rasping, horrified tone, rather like one would use on finding out their Beef and Kidney pie had only cooked around the edges leaving the middle frozen and gloopy.
"Yes, exactly!" the Gnome started limping to the stump at the very back, "How would I ever know? You are the only Troll I ever see, and good riddance for that!"
"How would you know?" Barry stared unseeing into the forest. He felt something fall out of place. He wondered how he had suddenly become unsure of how brilliant he was and why his height had become a question.
"Yes! Am I to repeat myself until morning light?" the Gnome turned to retort with passion but found Barry the Height of Trolls frozen to the spot, one arm in mid-flex and a droopy smile akin to how most of the forest flowers looked these days. The Gnome yanked up his boxers in a huff. "Come on then!"
Barry glanced at the Gnome with wide, yellow eyes. "To where?"
The Gnome grunted again and picked up his finest walking stick, which was alarmingly leafy and much too tall for walking long distances, "To measure!"
Barry's arm fell. "Grand!"
"Mmm."
And the pair set off on their adventure to lands unknown. Barry looked down at the Gnome stumping along beside him, "Tell me, rather, what is your name?"
The Gnome cleared his throat in an offhand gesture. "Barry."
.:+:.

Who would you invite to a magical tea party?

"Look at you," said the fairy in a gushing and admiring tone, "All grown up."
"I am," the girl said confidently.
"Oh, dear," the fairy smiled sadly, and the girl felt as if she were being mocked somehow, but it didn't fit in with the situation. "You're not grown up at all."
"But you just sai-"
The fairy gestured in fake surprise, "Yes, and look at how easily you believed what someone else had to say. You're tripping over yourself every day."
The girl put her hands on her hips and pouted, "I am not."
"Ah," there was that mocking tone again. "Just like a child."
She shook herself out of the pose quickly, took a step forward and said, "Who are you to be telling me what I am? I can be anything I choose, anything at all!"
The fairy watched the girl for a moment as she floated serenely above, like a Guardian Angel or a women who had been taken over by a condescending spirit.
"I believed what you told me, not because I thought I was wrong, but because I knew you were right!"
Again, the fairy smiled sadly, "Life is like a rubber band, little child, always stretching and shrinking and slowly wearing away..."
But the the girl stopped listening and glared around for something sharp to knock this bitch out. She found only bits of twig and drooping flowers. "Does no one paint the flowers anymore?" she asked incredulously.
"... and if you stop paying attention it will snap."
The girl looked up and saw the fairy fading. "Hey!" She yelled, "Where are you going?!"
And just like a happy memory, the fairy disappeared into the wind and left the girl clenching her hands in frustration with something rather like emptiness in her heart.


There's a blue light in his eyes, so that tonight I might see.

Are we waiting for this hurricane?

In Life:

ART

MOVIE

That is all.


#I found a silver coin, and made my bed,
believed in all the signs.
There's nothing here that wasn't there,
I've never looked it in the eye.

Is this a One Way street?

Dinner had started four hours ago and they were still waiting for soup.
Brenda was peering at her purple nail polish, Roger had just started humming Amazing Grace, Christian was trying hard not to look like he was planning an escape out of the laundry window and Trevor was typing madly on an over-sized calculator.
"I saw Molly in my Choir class the other day," Roger said in a bored tone, and Trevor replied, "Really? Did she have that rotating angel clock with her?" without taking his eyes away from the numeric screen.
Brenda looked up,"What?"
Christian sighed, "At it again Brends?"
"You don't mean...?" Roger frowned at Christian, and Christian made a face as the smoke alarm went off.
"Fuck me!" shouted Brenda.
They all turned and stared at the kitchen where a large mass of grey smoke was billowing out of the oven.
"Oh, grand," said Christian and Trevor at the same time.
Roger half-rose off his pillow, but seemed to have second thoughts and sat down again."Should we do something?"
"Go into that mess?" Brenda asked with a nose-wrinkle, "After having done my hair?"
Trevor looked up at this point and said: "It does look lovely," in an admiration, then went back to calculating.
"Oh my god! Oh my god!"
Everyone at the low Japanese-style table watched as Tammy came running into the kitchen with an armful of eggplants. She dropped them all and launched herself at the oven, flinging open the door and disappearing as the gloomy, foggy smoke engulfed her tiny frame.
"I didn't want food anyway," Brenda remarked as she pulled a pair of large steel scissors out from under her cushion and started chopping away at her hair.
"Guys? Guys!" Tammy called from inside the smoke.
"Rewind back to the clock," Roger commanded Christian and Trevor shouted, "It just can't be!"
"Everything is burned!" Tammy called with a despairing sob.
Christian focused his eye on Brenda's hairdressing skills, ignoring Roger and all his questions, and said in a fake admiring voice, "What talent you have there."
Brenda smiled, "I rather have talent, have I not?"
Tammy emerged from the clouds of blackened chicken looking as though she had just spent time inside a boiling kettle. Steam seemed to be rising from her clothes and hair as tears rolled down her red cheeks.
"You look like a demon," Roger stated truthfully.
Tammy's lip trembled.
"Oh do man up!" Christian rose to his feet dramatically, and a bit awkwardly considering he'd been sitting on the floor for the past two hours and had a bad hip.
"Yeah," Brenda said to nothing in particular, so everyone in the room stopped and turned their attention on him, "I took it and gave it to-"
"I've done it!" the front door burst open and Amara strode in with a smirk.
"... not even sparkly..." continued Brenda, unaware.
Tammy brightened at Amara's intrusion, "You've stolen all of Stewie's strawberries!"
"What?" Amara frowned and paused mid-stride, "No. I've just finished the time-machine."
"What a magical occurrence!" Christian declared, "I can finally meet Aristotle."
"Although..." Amara tilted her head, lost in a sudden faraway thought, "...having that many strawberries in one place is preposterous..."
"Hold up!" Brenda slammed his scissors on the table, "You've made a time machine?"
"Of course he has!" Roger snapped, "Do you not pay attention when we talk through the toilet door?"
"Oh, are you talking to me when you do that?" Brenda asked, surprised and alarmed in equal measure, and Roger replied, "Well, who else would I be talking to?"
"There's that fern in the corner," Brenda looked around at everyone. "Is there not a fern in the corner called Marcluume?"
There was a moment of silence, in which Tammy wiped her eyes and Trevor muttered something about having too many sixes on the screen. Brenda said: "A time machine?"
Roger replied: "I actually spent a whole paycheck on that clock, and one of the angels has an arm missing," and Christian pulled out an armful of assorted hats, like those assorted licorice packs that no one eats, from under the table.
"I can make soup, you know," Tammy said quietly.
"Soup gives me the twitches," Brenda bowed his head apologetically.
"What?" Amara and Tammy said in unison.
Trevor put his calculator down and everyone gasped, except Amara who had never met Trevor until that very day so didn't understand the significance of such an act. "I'll have Pea and Ham, thanks."
Tammy looked at Roger, and they both looked at Brenda, who said with a shrug, "It's something in the U."
"He talks to plants," Roger said to Tammy with a knowing look in his eye. Tammy nodded and took a step towards the exit.
Amara sighed loudly and obnoxiously, "Have I not just announced that I have made something no one else has ever dared to make?"
"Look at all these eggplants!" Trevor gestured at the little round vegetables splayed across the floor, as if he had just discovered mountains of gold. "You could surely make soup with eggplant."
"Does anyone know if Aristotle had strong opinions for a particular colour?" Christian asked seriously and with a hint of desperation.
Amara regarded Trevor with interest. "You like eggplants?"
"My battery died and Tammy used the last pair for her hair-curling wand." Trevor pushed his thick black glasses up his nose as Tammy said: "curling wand?", and Roger interrupted abruptly: "Yes! Tammy's fondness for hair-curling! Now, where's this machine?"
Amara grinned and bounced on her feet, "Let's go!"
"Hey!" Brenda called as Amara disappeared out the front door, "We're not going to that bloody pond again are we?!"

Can I play your games without you?

Tarry had never been bitten before. She supposed, as she ran desperately through the dark streets dotted with orange orbs of lamplight, that very few people had.
Her neck hurt and her legs ached, but she pressed on. She could feel the blood trickling down her collarbone like a broken tap, and she had visions of teeth-reshaping parlors hidden behind leafy trees, and long-fingered hands practiced in the art of pretending, and she was so wrapped up with thoughts about minty perfume and silk jackets that she didn't notice where she was running. Her foot slipped on a red apple and she fell spectacularly into a little alley.
"I'm sorry. I was playing with that."
Tarry groaned and opened her eyes.
There seemed to be someone sitting next to a large dumpster. "Oh!" She scrambled up, wincing as the searing pain in her head and the throbbing in her foot made her slump against the wall.
"You could play too if you like."
"What?" she panted, "Who are you?"
The person didn't answer so she said, "I've just been bitten," and she squinted harder, intent on working out who she had just revealed this atrocity to.
"How awful. Want some?"
"Can you not come into the lamplight?" Tarry grumbled. She wanted to know if she really did desire whatever was being offered, especially if it was a purple cushion or a beaded emerald bracelet.
"Sorry!" she exclaimed when the mysterious person limped into view. It was the most horrendous sight she had ever laid eyes on and she half-wished she had had stayed in the cemetery.
The person appeared to be male, with no hair anywhere whatsoever (although she really couldn't tell if he was bald all over as he wore pants and she didn't have the strength at the moment to wrestle them off) and he had red and black sores covering his exposed skin that looked like he had been repeatedly stabbed with a pen. Blood smeared his mouth, arms and hands, dark circles framed his eyes and his skin seemed to be a faint green colour.
Tarry felt her heart sink. He had obviously been exposed to some radioactive disease that was highly toxic and contagious, and here she was, breathing in all his poisonous fumes. Then her eyes fell on the item in his hand.
"What is that?"
It looked like a chunk of flesh.
"This?" the hideous male asked with an air of surprise.
Tarry nodded, too faint to speak. She noticed he was missing half of his fingers and that the blood smears on his arms were actually wounds. Great, big, gaping wounds.
The monstrous male smiled, "We could share."
Tarry whispered, "No," and closed her eyes in mortification. She said quietly, "You're Joseph. Mr Borkgam's son."
She waited, hoping to ignite some recognition into the situation and avoid becoming his next meal.
"No," said the mutant boy, "I'm a zombie."

Have you cleaned your bones recently?

It was only five thirty in the afternoon and the world had already descended into darkness. Tarry's part of the world, anyway.
"I told you, at least a thousand times, there's nothing wrong with those pants," Hanan growled, sort of like a hungry bear.
Tarry hiccoughed. She pinched the tight denim fabric of her jeans and wondered how on earth she had squeezed herself into them. "I know," she replied sulkily, "But they're in fashion and Sherridan said they were half price-"
"But they weren't," Hanan supplied this information for no reason.
"No, no they weren't," Tarry said quickly, picking up her pace to match him, "but they were sitting on the table out the front, and the ones next to them had oranges as the pattern-"
"For sure and certain," Hanan said, like he always did when he couldn't care less about whatever was being discussed, and he stopped walking so Tarry had to stop as well. "Listen, it's not far, ok?"
Tarry nodded.
"So let's keep on at it, alright? No more talking about oranges or tight jeans."
Tarry watched her breath rise into the cold air and she focused on Hanans heart-shaped face. He was always so pale and thin, like the ghost of a skeleton, and she rather liked the way his caramel-coloured curls flopped around his forehead and his bright, golden eyes gleamed amongst the dim streetlights. He looked as though he should be standing on the sidewalk selling play-chalk and wooden shoes.
She straightened her posture, "Ok."
When they started walking again, Tarry asked in a deathly quiet whisper: "Where are we going again?"
"Bourghan's," Hanan said loudly.
"I didn't think mummy liked Bourghan's," she said, pinching at her jeans again.
Hanan sighed, "Your mother doesn't like Mr Borkgam," and Tarry said: "Oh, that's right."
Then the tone of Hanan's voice changed and he said softly, "It's your birthday in four days."
A bird hooted. Tarry glanced to her left and stopped abruptly, "Is this the Bourghan's?"
Hanan said, "Yes," and stopped as well.
It was a cemetery, named after William Bourghan, who had tripped over the pavement while playing hopscotch, hit his head on a wooden bench and died at the age of seventy-two.
"There's an old rumour that went around about Will Bourghan," Hanan told her as they stood and stared at the rows and rows of headstones through the impressive iron gates, "They say that he tripped on a Tropical Palm, you know, those little gum lollies that take forever to lose their flavour?"
"Oh! I love those," Tarry exclaimed. She wished she could take off her shoe right that minute and discover a Tropical Palm rattling inside, waiting to be devoured.
"He tripped on it," Hanan repeated, "and that was the end."
"If only he'd just bent over, picked it up, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth," Tarry stated wistfully, "He would never have had to stop playing."
"You always have to stop playing," Hanan corrected her, and he took her hand, quite forcefully Tarry thought, and pulled her into the cemetery.
"It's your birthday in four days," Hanan said again and Tarry clenched her jaw tersely.
"I know," she said, "I know and it's just-"
"You'll be twenty-two."
She was aware of his hand still clutching hers and she tried to gently tug it free. Hanan's grip was either absurdly strong or he was planning a dark affair, and Tarry felt something extremely close to fear rise up in her stomach.
"So, I think- I think it's imaginable..." the toe of her shoes hit little grass mounds as she tripped along behind him and she stumbled while Hanan marched purposefully ahead. She continued bravely: "...and that, being imaginable, that we could- could t-take a break."
They suddenly stopped. Tarry walked into his arm.
"Oh! S-"
"Tarry," Hanan breathed in a tone of desire one would expect to hear from a lover. He was gazing at a large, square headstone with the name Ezli J. Whelnhemsky engraved at the top. "His name was Ezlian Johan, but no one called him that."
"Oh..."
"It was only a brief thing," he muttered, as though he were justifying something.
Tarry tried once again to pull her hand out of the vice clamp that was Hanan's, and failed. She shivered. "Hanan? How long are we going to stay here?"
Hanan smiled at the headstone, "That's right. Twenty-two." He suddenly dragged her around and pushed her against the rough stone front.
"Hanan!" Tarry felt a sharp pain spread across her shoulder-blades and an ache in her left ankle, "Hanan..."
He looked mad.
His curls sprang out from his head and his wide eyes danced as they focused on her face, like a puppet without a master, like a deranged clown holding a knife instead of smiley-faced balloons, and when Tarry tried to move she realised he had both hands at her shoulders.
"What are you doing?!"
Hanan ignored her feeble attempts at scratching and kicking. He seemed possessed.
Tarry whimpered as he suddenly moved closer.
"Be sure to keep still."
She stared in horror at the blank expression on his face.
"Please..."
But he didn't seem to hear. She squeezed her eyes shut and started counting as he leaned in and sank his teeth into her throat.

In this land, are we the heroes?

Well! Christian was appalled.
"I must say," he said in his broad English accent, "I do not care for this at all."
"Oh, don't you?" Roger asked as he put a candy-cane to his lips and pretended to take a puff.
"Fuck, no cigs?"
Christian turned and saw Brenda striding into the living room.
"Brenda!" said Roger, "You're hair is rather blue."
Brenda nodded, her short electric-blue hair swinging in her face, "I'm afraid it is," and she said this so solemnly that Christian had to ask, "Whatever is making you so down?"
There was a crunching sound as Roger gave up and took a bite of his cigarette.
"I was at the store, you know, to buy the things we agreed on."
All three heads bobbed up and down in a creepily-performed nod, and Christian remembered the discussion they had around fluffy slippers and 'Blood Orange' tea that didn't taste like blood or oranges at all, but rather some hybrid cross of cough syrup and roast pumpkin.
"And I was in the hair isle- that hair isle devoted entirely to hair?- but my glasses were on and I couldn't see, and some child dropped jello on my shoe."
All three of them looked down in sync once again, as if they were puppets on string, and stared at the light green stain spread over Brenda's white high-tops.
"It's a catastrophe!" Roger declared around another candy-cane.
"It's rotten!" Christian agreed, aghast.
"So you see," Brenda went on in a weary way, with slumped shoulders and her mouth turned down at the corners, "I couldn't buy red."
"You couldn't buy red," Roger remarked with a note of confusion in his voice, "because some child dropped jello on your shoe?"
"The point is," Christian started as he walked past Brenda and opened the top kitchen drawer, "Is that bloody Molly."
"Oh! Don't start me!" Roger rolled his eyes.
Brenda sat herself down on the little round shag-rug and Christian said, "She couldn't buy red because of her glasses! I'm right? I'm right." Then he took out a little purple notebook and pen and wrote down Brenda's name, the date and what item she had missed in his small, jerky handwriting. He had to write this on the seventeenth line because there was a whole host of items Brenda mistakenly purchased all due to her enormously red-rimmed glasses.
"The pineapples do nothing for your scope of vision."
Brenda shouted: "They're decoration and they're delicious!" and Roger snapped a photo of her on his phone.
Roger asked, "Have you ever scratched yourself in the eye?"
Brenda sniffed. "Do you spell cranberry with two Ys?" and she stood up in a huff and stalked off in the direction of the bathroom.
"I bet she showers with a towel on," Roger said, looking rather amused and Christian had just finished dotting every I with a love-heart, so he joined in with the amusement too, opened the fridge and announced they would be having fried legumes and string cheese for dinner.
"What? What's this?" Roger asked, repulsed, and he slid gracefully out of the armchair to investigate.
"Oh have some faith in loud announcements, will you?"
"What volume was that in?"
Christian paused at the stove, confusion etched onto his forehead in the form of a wrinkled brow. "Which one?"
"The first one, the announcement."
"Eh?"
"Under ten or over one hundred?"
There was a moment of silence as they both suddenly stopped conversing to listen to Brenda sing gaily as she scrubbed herself.
"I don't think this is the time," said Roger and swiftly turned.
Christian waved an arm, "I concur," and he was pretty sure Roger would have said, "Hear ye, hear ye!" while shaking a bell if he had not just walked off outside to smoke a chocolate wafer stick in the shape of a cigarette.

>Where your wild things are

"Wait, what?"

Today, a smiling stranger helped me find a car park. It was all narrow alleys and bright trees. I ate long noodles and watched the sun, reminisced about people who hung out of windows muttering to themselves, watched sportsmen declare love for orange peanuts and wished I had hair long enough to swing from.
~What colour eyes are the most hypnotic?
Apart from crazy eyeballs and the odd burst of Disney song that gets stuck in my head, I have a habit of stepping on pink starfish sponges and falling into cake.
"Cake? Really?" they all say, rather surprised.
"Of course," I reply, in a grand gesture of reassurance, "What else is there?"
They all nod, of course, for it makes perfect sense.
"She really is onto something," one would say to the other, "Is cake not the softest?"
"Totally right, she is," the other would say to one, "if it's not the softest, I shall eat my right boot!"
"Not your left?" one would enquire, intrigued and slightly suspicious.
The other would laugh, "Oh, no, you see! I was wrong once before!"
And sure enough, they'll all look down and see first-hand just how hazardous a wrong proclamation can be.


~for the first time in forever...

Would you brush your teeth with bubblegum?

"THERE'S NOTHING HERE!" she shouted. Then she plonked herself down ungracefully on the wooden floor, amongst stacks of books and odd trinkets, and she stared blandly at the circular walls.
"Yes there is," she heard a voice say quietly behind her.
"You're wrong. You will always be wrong, forever, because you are wrong."
She heard him move about but didn't look, not even when he came right up close and sat beside her.
"I cannot be wrong if I am right," he said, and she almost believed him.
"Did you know there used to be a stool in here? And a really big bowl that I had to eat out of, and a really big oversized spoon. I didn't know spoons could be that big. Did you know that about spoons?"
"Cerri-" he began, but she interrupted him.
"Did you know about spoon sizes when you were my age?" she turned to him and waited. His dark hair fell around his eyes as he stared at the floor, and for one quick second she imagined dropping handfuls of that hair into the really big bowl and eating it. Then she shook her head.
"You're not that old," he replied.
Cerri was, indeed, that old. She was almost nineteen, which was old, far too old for her to be thinking about spoons and stools.
"Jasper," she whispered, "can you tell me the time? Tell me it's twelve o'clock."
She knew that he was looking at her. "It's twelve o'clock," he said softly because he knew.
Wishing that she was clever and sane, Cerri leaned over and kissed him slowly on the mouth.
+
If time went sideways, Cerri imagined she would be ok. But time went forwards, always in a straight line and always on time. Never a second out of place.
When Jasper came back the next day, she gave him the book with a picture of a red horse on the cover and he smiled.
"I don't think I've ever received such a wonderful present."
Cerri tried to hide her pride, "One day you can ride on a red horse."
"They don't exist, Cerri."
"Yes," she nodded forcefully, so forcefully that her light brown hair fell in her face and made him laugh, "they do. There's a picture on the book."
Jasper looked down at the horse and said, "Not all books are real."
"Yes, they are."
She felt heat in her hands and she knew there was a reason for this. The warm tingly sensation running along her fingers wasn't supposed to be there and she knew there was a procedure that she was supposed to follow, but she couldn't remember what she had to do.
"Some are," said Jasper, "But horses like these are found only in fantasies."
Cerri didn't see him looking at the book wistfully. She felt her chest tighten and her brain buzz, as if a thousand little bees were swarming around her brain. "THEY'RE REAL!" She yelled.
Jasper looked up, "Cerr-"
"THEY'RE REAL! ALL OF THEM ARE!"
"I'm s-"
"LISTEN!" she threw a book at him. He ducked. She threw another, and another, until her arm ached and Jasper was crouched on the ground with his arms over his head and the book with the red horse still in his hand.
Then Cerri stopped and she couldn't understand why. She saw Jasper on the ground and the books lying haphazardly around him, their pages squashed and ripped. She felt her heartbeat slow, her brain quieten and her fingers cool.
"Jasper," she said through a sob, trying hard to calm the panic rising up in her stomach, "is it twelve o'clock yet?"
+
It wasn't always twelve o'clock, but Cerri waited for those hours. She liked that they came around twice every day.
The next time Jasper visited he bought a woollen hat. It was yellow and knitted crookedly, as if the maker had bad hands, but he still thought it looked wonderful.
"I don't want it," said Cerri.
"I bought it from the market place," Jasper said brightly as he held it out, "I thought of you when I saw it."
Cerri snatched the hat and strode over to the window that had bars on the outside.
"Wh-"
"I don't want it," and she slid open the small, square window pane and stuffed the hat through the rusting bars. She watched it fall out of sight. Then she turned to Jasper and pointed back out of the window to a bush of purple flowers, "I want one of them."
Jasper said, "Ok," in a tired voice, "I'll get one for you."
But Cerri said, "I want to go out and pick one myself," and she knew he wouldn't know what to say. She waited. He walked right up to her and she watched him warily, gasping when he put his arms around her and said quietly into her neck, "You can't go out."
She stared at the big iron locks on the door. Something felt wrong. "It's not time," she whispered, and the panic feeling was spreading again like a bad rumour. "Jasper," she said a bit louder and heard a sob.
+
Cerri sat on her pile of murder-mystery books.
"Have you ever seen a family of ducks wearing top hats?" she asked Jasper when he came in and closed the door behind him.
"Yes I have."
Cerri raised an eyebrow, "You haven't."
"I saw them yesterday," Jasper said with a smirk, "at the pond." He sat next to her on a pile of old romance novels and held out a flower. It was big and leafy and purple.
Cerri gazed at it. She had a funny feeling, as if she was supposed to remember something but she couldn't.
"It's pretty," she said in a distracted way and turned, almost automatically, to look at the window.
Jasper tucked it behind her ear, and even though he was quick and careful, she caught a glimpse of two long red cuts running down his hand before he tucked it up into his jumper sleeve.
"Jasper," she said, "is it twelve o'clock yet?"
+


I may or may not have watched Tangled yesterday.. ^_^

Where do you want to go?

If 'blegh' had a colour it would be red with a little golden wand and maybe a crown made out of paper- you know, those flimsy orange or yellow ones that always rip or fall off into your food.
Yes, that is what would be happening.
I am now obsessed with this TV show called Helix for some unknown reason. It's dark, serious, full of zombies and lab work based around the T-virus. It's delicious. I've been patiently waiting for more blood and gory scenes filled with people eating other people, but then I remind myself that this is a TV show, Cerri, a TV show, not a movie, and I must say, good zombie movies are hard to find.
So The Walking Dead sort of took a side trip to Albania while I latched onto this one.
;_; ~I will continue watching it. I will. (Said this girl who did everything else ever to avoid watching it, even taking up parasailing and candle-making , and died without knowing what the hell everyone was so crazy about).
I vote for words with N.
My guitars shout at me whenever I try to play them. I find this abusive yet sensible as I can't play very well but really believe they should tune themselves. Sometimes, really believing just doesn't work.
In the midst of 'nuclear families' and mountains of different-shaped bags and swearing guitars and food that shouldn't be coconut flavoured and bursting light-bulbs and teapots with one eye and heels that change how your toes look, life happened.




>_<

Is that the time?

THINGS I WILL DO THIS YEAR:


+ Ace my Uni course ^_^.


+ Make one piece of jewellery a week.


+ Make one monster a month (because last year's goal was absurdity of the Cerri kind)


+ Watch all of Walking Dead.


+ Watch all of Once Upon a Time.


+ Learn to play a tune on the guitar (just a tune!)


+ Start cooking healthy, veggie-loaded meals.


+ Watch all Disney movies again, also including Brave, Tangled and Frozen.


+ Grow a small veggie plant like tomatoes, cucumbers, or even parsley.


+ Attempt at writing a fanfic! >_<.




I feel that I will be too busy watching things to have a life, so I should probably go out right this minute and purchase an array of snack food, multiple pillows offering supreme neck and back support, a hat with ears and a house-friendly robot who I will call Claptrap and who will fetch me anything and everything I ever need or want because he will be the most loyal yet bizarre robot in all existence.
This is what dreams are made of.
On a completely related topic, I've never appreciated just how hungry zombies are. They seem to have insatiable appetites and will eat and eat and eat until they die, and I wonder if there is a way we can use this.
>On board to beat this syndrome but will gladly surrender for the right price.


My day in songs:


~Still Alive - Lisa Miskovsky


~The Birthday Massacre - Lover's End


~The Birthday Massacre - Happy Birthday


~Everclear - Santa Monica


~Delerium - Silence


welcome to my only world... it is full of space junk...

When will I get my superpower?

I thought to myself: 'It seems like I spent the entire day inside a bubble, and even though I drove around and made myself food and held conversations like a normal human being, I still had the feeling that I was a blurry version of this girl called Cerri'.
"Sorry," I said, as I bumped into an elderly man sitting on the bus. "It's this bubble."
He looked at the transparent but slightly shiny orb encasing my body and replied with some concern: "Clearly," and he eased himself up out of the isle seat and limped over to the window seat.
I felt horrible, of course, for forcing this man to sit by the window, but not as much as one would expect because this bubble dulls my emotional response factor.
"Is it painful?" the man enquired while I tried to squeeze myself in between the seat and drivers wall.
"Not really. But sometimes my elbows bang into the sides." I managed to stick myself in place quite nicely and turned my attention to the elderly man, who was wearing a grey suit and two dark green ties.
The man saw me looking and pulled a grumbly face, "You can ask me about them," he muttered, "and I would only tell you that my wife didn't agree with me on the colour."
I nodded to show appreciation of this rare fact, "What colour did you want?"
He glared up at me, but not in a mean, threatening way; in a way that only grumpy elderly men can, and he said, "Lime green!" very loudly.
I blinked. "That's a perfectly reasonable colour for a tie."
"It is, see? It is. But not for that old bat. Sleeps in a cave half her time, living on soaked beans and soap operas!"
Sensing that this could turn ugly, or alarmingly boring, I quickly made some soothing noises and changed the topic to sports. "I hear the Tennis is quite a game this year."
The man focused his softening eyes on me, "Men wearing those shorts that ride into their crotch, eh? Not on my watch."
"Mmm," I agreed, although who could deny a fine man in tight attire? "I've oft-"
"How do you get anything done, in that bubble of yours?" The elderly man interrupted without a hint of apology. He studied the shiny outer layer, his face lit up with curiosity and his fingers drumming his knee as if he wanted to touch it.
I smiled at him, "I'll let you touch it if you tell my why you're wearing two ties at once."
"Girly, I believe we have a deal," and he stuck his hand out for a moment, forgetting that I couldn't possibly shake it.
"Ok," I said, and I moved my shoulders a little so I could look this delightful man in the eye. He tilted his chin upwards and waited. "I roll."
"Eh?" the  man scrunched his face up, and I couldn't blame him for his reaction to such a disappointing answer.
"Yes," I replied kindly, "It is a debacle-"
"But you can't do everything by just rolling!" the man exclaimed and then belched.
I turned away at this preposterous accusation and tried to find an interesting sign to read. Unfortunately public transport is limited, so I was staring at a poster exclaiming that a red fingernail will help drivers focus when the elderly man said: "Can you?!" in a rather harsh tone, as if I'd just declared that I would be transporting him to Mars.
"Hmm?"
"Go on then," he leaned closer to me, "Tell me."
"I'm sorry, that is the only way I do anything."
The elderly man glared at me, in the mean way this time, and I wondered how the truth could invite such enmity so I said: "Now onwards with your answer," and I smiled with all my teeth, which probably wasn't the best idea considering how white and blinding they are.
"Not a chance!" the elderly man all but shouted.
"Oh," I said, "I thought we had a deal."
"Oh we had a deal, alright," and I noticed he was moving about.
I turned to watch out the front of the bus, knocking my elbows but ignoring this. Someone pressed the button and when the sound faded away I realised the elderly man was muttering under his breath.
I considered elderly men and deals. I thought about honour and ties. I questioned whether lime green really was an appropriate colour for a tie.
Then I felt something bump into me.
"Are-" I turned and caught sight of the elderly man kicking at my bubble.
"Do pardon your intrusion!" I cried.
The elderly man kicked my bubble again and sent me rolling awkwardly out into the isle as the bus began slowing. "The intrusion's all mine, lassie!" he called out. I almost certainly heard a cackle as he did this.
"I demand you stop at once!" I exclaimed, "This bubble is expensive!"
The bus stopped and the elderly man lashed out again with frightening strength. I stumbled and tripped as my bubble rolled past the driver and to the top of the bus steps. I could see the trees blowing in the wind, and I must say, I was momentarily anxious at the thought of being pushed out into the gale and rolling forever. Rolling really isn't my thing.
"A tip to ya, lying lassie: a cold wind is always much stronger than the warm!"
And then, with one final lifting of his skinny leg, and as I tried in vain to count all the little hairs that sat upon it, the elderly man kicked me down the four little steps and out into the street.


...just one more cup of coffee before I go

What shoes do stars wear?

Well, this is new.
And it was.
I had just returned from my exhilarating walk in the cool, brisk winds to find my living room covered in red fabric cut-outs.
"What are they of?" I gestured my hand at the two mice sitting on the sofa. One had a pair of scissors suspended in mid air, as if it was about to cut. The other was holding a tiny black bottle.
"NO YOU CAN'T," said the mouse holding scissors, and I thought: I bloody well can, but I wasn't sure what we were talking about so I said, "I've just run thirty miles."
"Well on with it then," squeaked the second mouse quite pompously.
"You know-" I began, but the mouse with scissors turned to its companion and said, "Snails don't eat mushrooms. Have you ever seen a snail eating a mushroom?"
"I most certainly have!" said the second mouse, and it waved the bottle through the air.
I stuck out my foot, hoping to appear cool and into it: "There's-"
"You have NOT! When have you seen a snail eating a mushroom?"
The first mouse seemed very put-out and the second mouse seemed not to notice as it pulled the bottle in close to its face and took a big whiff.
"Are you sniffing?" I asked, shocked, "Sniffing glue?"
The first mouse turned to me, "What's it to ya?"
A mouse saying 'ya'? This had to be stopped. "I will not have mice sniffing glue in my house!" I exclaimed loudly.
"It's not glue," said the second mouse with its eyes half closed, "It's cocoa."
I raised an eyebrow, "Chocolate?"
The first mouse looked down sadly, and even the scissors seemed to droop in dismay while I pondered how to name these lost, wayward creatures.
"Ahhh, gets the old heart pumping," said Morsel, swinging its legs in a satisfied contentment.
"No, that's your Heart Pumper," said Twinge, and I said, "Sorry, heart pumper?"
Twinge eyed me up suspiciously, "Haven't you got one?"
"I'm done," I said extravagantly.
"Oi," one of them called as I walked away (I couldn't be sure which one because they both sounded the same: high-pitched and annoying), "Tell us when our sister is returning from her balloon adventure!"
I ignored this ridiculous request.
"I'd rather like to ride in an air balloon," I heard the other mouse declare dreamily.
"Let's."
And as I made my way into the kitchen to prepare my double-strength Cinnamon and Cherry tea, I had an uneasy feeling that things were about to go down.
~In a furry kind of way.

What time is it in Mordor?

Things I did last year:




+ Ace my Hospitality course (which basically means don't drop out) :D Yeah!

+ Take up martial arts -Went to a few local ones and wasn't too impressed. Will keep trying.

+ Make 50 monsters

+ Save up to pay for either Pathology course or EN course at TAFE next year

+ Climb onto the roof of a bus shelter and blow bubbles Attempted, but I'm acrobatically challenged.

+ Draw one faery every month  Will post the rest soon C=

+ Learn how to paint faeries My elf painting is almost finished (almost meaning never...)

+ Join a gym (unless doing martial arts) Yep! >_< I'm that weird girl who looks like a demented chicken trying to casually do bench presses.

+ Buy and wear fairy wings at random (and try not to fly away)  ^_^ I flew.


+ Substitute coffee for Green Tea  No. Just No    This never happened.

+ Start selling jewellery  + Make more jewellery  + Organise portfolio

+ Laugh more I laugh all the time anyway but I'm putting it down as a win coz I'm cool like that.

+ Watch all episodes of Game of Thrones




Things I will do in Life

+ Go to Glastonbury for the Faery Ball

+ Have seven kids and a million pets

+ Own a business

+ Drink coffee in the rain  + Dance in the rain ^_^

+ Acquire a farm with lots of goats, sheep, cows and chickens

+ Publish something

+ Have a Wiccan wedding, but not get married

+ Lose one of my slippers like Cinderella and have some random person find it (maybe stick my contact details inside the sole? THESE SHOES ARE EXPENSIVE AND LOVELY AND THE WHOLE POINT TO LOSING A SHOE LIKE CINDERELLA IS THAT SOMEONE RETURNS IT) >_< It was midnight. I was suave.

+ Have a food fight with cake

+ Find out what really is at the end of the rainbow, and if there's leprechaun gold, find a leprechaun and make a deal

+ Give blood -Not sure if I can do this as I was banned for about six years because I fainted FIVE YEARS AGO and the system is filled with people who care more about one girl losing conscious for two minutes than terminally ill people who depend on regular blood donations. I tried three times and I'm still furious.

+ Make a fort and have sex in it

Have I made my own umbrella or am I slipping in the puddles?

"I wanted three lumps..." I said, mildly agitated but not enough to sound convincing.
"I'm appropriately apologetic," he said, and scooped in four teaspoons of sugar before I realised what was happening.
"Hey!" I looked down into my cup, "I said three."
"Terribly aggrieved," he turned, put down the sugar bowl and adjusted his bright blue turban. Then walked off.
"THOSE GENIE PANTS ARE FOR GIRLS!" I yelled. When I got no response, I shouted: "AND THEY MAKE YOUR BUM LOOK BIG!" then I looked back at my coffee, which had now accumulated six sugars and a smug expression.
I contemplated drinking it. But then again, I contemplate a lot of things when I'm staring into mugs of hot liquid.
"Excuse me; is this the take-off terminal?"
I started, because hearing voices in one's own head is never a good sign, and my eyes fell on the mug sitting innocently upon the table, apparently ready to have a chat. Well, I felt honoured.
"Have you always sounded like a Rhinoceros with two teeth missing?" I asked, basking in my honour. I might have been smirking a little, narrowing my eyes and moving my head in that 'oh, you know how it is' gesture, and perhaps even rehearsing what I would say when complimented on my years of hard effort.
"Appalling English, if I do say so."
My smirk faded and I gave the mug a look of frost and daggers, "I wish you wouldn't. I have delicate ears. See these ear-cosies? They're not just for decoration."
"They make you look like you're growing ferns out of your head!"
"I made them myself!"
The mug laughed shrilly, "Do make me some! I'll show all my friends and we'll have a grand giggle!"
I resolved on that very spot, sitting on my old three-legged stool, that I would never buy another mug again. But I wanted mugs. I wanted ten, or twenty; I wanted rows and rows, shelves and cupboards filled with different colours, sizes and horrendous patterns.
This was absolution.
"I must go shopping," I said abruptly (and very superfluously) and stood up, knocking my stool backwards without a care in the world. The time for stools was over.
"Aiighhhhh!"
I looked down to see a little mouse wearing a waistcoat and black high-tops sprawled out on the ground as if it had just attempted to bowl with an oversized ball.
"Do pardon my excessive energy," I said primly, "I have just been insulted by my coffee with too many sugars."
The mouse grunted and scrambled to a stand.
"It has six," I said to make my angst more understandable.
"Do sweet things often insult you?"
I took some time to think about this. "I think on occasion, but I'd have to go back inside a time-machine to make sure, and my beloved one doesn't have the ability to assemble machines that can travel, or even heat up spaghetti, so I'm afraid my answer is quite a lie."
The mouse wrinkled its little nose and said: "Do you know where I can find the nearest take-off terminal?"
"This isn't an airport," I said with an air of exasperation. Was this mouse one of the blind ones that lost its tail in a tragic knifing escapade?
"I'm taking my mouse friend hot-air-ballooning," and he proceeded to whip out two pairs of goggles and a handful of what looked like tiny water balloons from his back pockets. "Filled with jelly," he said as if this was entirely normal mouse behaviour.
"Um..." I was unsure how to continue.
The mouse checked his watch so I said, "I will swap you a jelly balloon for a mug of conversational coffee that compliments you every time you take a sip," and I crossed my fingers behind my back.
"Coffee and compliments?" The mouse enquired.
"Rather a thing now," I replied nonchalantly.
"Well," he checked his watch again, making me realise that the only reason I had taken him to be a male was because he had on a waistcoat, and then I wondered why I didn't associate waistcoats with females.
"I think I'll buy a red one," I said out loud and the mouse looked up and declared: "I will definitely."
"Right on."
I took hold of my aggressive mug and watched the mouse search in his handful of balloons, and I went through all my fond memories of our time together. What a time.
He held up a green one, "It's got a little knot, just here, that I find offensive."
"More offensive than an insolent mug?"
"Possibly."
So it was settled. We switched items and called it a day. I thanked him for my breakfast. He wondered if hot-air-balloons ran on good time. I told him about the time I developed a blister on my foot and had to hop on one leg all the way up to the service station to buy a carton of strawberry milk that I found out I was allergic to.
He nodded- probably because his head wasn't screwed on properly- and I felt unable to offer assistance as I had no idea how to screw a mouse head on properly.
"If you're going to throw jelly bombs while flying, please try and hit the guy walking around with a blue turban. He causes me physical angst." And he did because my stomach had just started to rumble.
The mouse stared at me in a serious manner: "It will be my absolute honour."
I gave a low nod, turned and took a bite of my breakfasty bomb goodness.
~Some days, things just work out.
^_6