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