Avery glided softly through the mist, sighing every now and then and focusing on nothing in particular. Her departure had caused her mild grief. Now she had sand in her shoes and a fluttering heart, constant concern for the only men in her life that she had left still with shock and surprised like the coloured portraits hanging around them, and she wondered if she had been a little wild.
Could her exit be considered wild? Certainly, she had been thinking about it for some time. When she served out that over-sized plate of grapes, for instance. And, similarly, when Second had dropped his soggy handkerchief in her entrance leaving a wet patch that he slid in, just a little but enough to smear, causing Watt to step in it also, all while he infuriatingly waved away her concerns about his overall, obviously ailing, health.
This memory made her quiver with slivers of contempt. The problem with Avery was her inability to work up an appropriate level of anger so people would take her seriously. She simply did not have the energy.
She realised this as her foot hit something hard yielding and she cried out, looking down to see a figure hunched up on the sand.
"Oh!" the figure exclaimed and leapt up.
"Goodness!" Avery stepped back instinctively, "You were very far down."
"Yes, I was," Quintus agreed, rubbing his bottom and squinting at her.
"Could you see far?" she asked, wanting to get the scope of his vision.
"I could not," he answered honestly. "The fog is too thick."
"Oh, of course," her mind wandered once again as her disinterest took over.
They both stood and stared at the fog, avoiding each other, and then Quintus said in a rush: "Sorry, is that- is that why you kicked me? Because of the fog density?"
Avery swayed gently to a silent tune. She said: "I walked out on all the people I love" in a whispery voice.
Quintus leaned in closer so the whispers would swim into his ears. "I did, too."
Avery nodded. "My husband, Brunei, works down at the gates. His work keeps him long hours and his friends visit often. His two friends... they love him."
Quintus watched strands of her hair fly in her face and marveled at her lack of concern. He wondered if she was one of those people who were carved out of stone, set, and then animated using goat fur, honey and candle wax. "What gates were these, do tell?" he asked instead, because this town had taught him caution in conversation and seven different ways to weave a basket.
"The Peyying Gates," she recited proudly, a faint smile lighting up her dull eyes.
Quintus thought about all the gates he knew and realised that they were all made out of wood and housed animals. He felt on edge.
"Oh, Peyying," he remarked as casually as he could. "Are they south of the farm?"
"They say he does not work hard enough," Avery said loudly and Quintus jumped. "They say, the workers at the gates are not- your hat looks very peculiar," she interrupted herself. She was peering at him in that intrusive way people do when they're trying not to insult someone about a malfunction of their appearance.
"It's hand-made!" said Quintus defensively. "Made entirely by hand!"
"By your hand..." Avery whispered, neither impressed nor ready to give a compliment, and Quintus felt the fondness he had developed for this vague woman disappear almost completely. She said: "It looks like a baby bottom" and turned to the sea in an effective conversation-ending gesture.
"This hat has silk!" he declared.
"It also has bells," she replied dismissively. "Loud, cantankerous, soul-ripping, soul-crippling, soul-squenching bells..."
"'Soul-squenching'?" Quintus echoed, uncertain.
Avery nodded at the sea.
"Soriary was wrapped up tight in a ball of self-destruction and there was no way to pierce the outer layer," Quintus said. "I could not. I was a coward! I made myself flee as if I, myself, had witnessed the brutalities of war..." his voice caught in his throat and he looked away, afraid he would choke or sob or vomit.
Avery swayed, seemingly lost in thought.
"There was nothing you could do," she said after a while, in a soft yet practical motherly way, and a weight Quintus did not know he was carrying instantly fell from his hunched up shoulders. She said: "Some people are a war themselves and they must learn to wield their own sword, or fall heavily upon it."
"Yes!" Quintus heaved, even though he didn't believe that her analogy applied to the beautifully worn flower that was Soriary. He did his best to blink back tears. He wiped his nose on his tunic sleeve. He smiled gingerly at the ocean but the ocean did not smile back. Probably because there was too much fog in the way. Or probably not.
"My departure was very sudden. It caused a slight disturbance, but I have not been back to see," Avery closed her eyes.
"It might be for the best," Quintus said without consideration, as he did have a lot of practice at departing and none in tact.
"Would you think so?"
"I fear-"
"Yes," Avery cut in, "Your fear. It is rather unbecoming."
Quintus frowned. "What is?"
"All this fear..." and her voice was lost and so far away that Quintus leaned in further, a tad annoyed now that she couldn't keep proper volume.
"I believe fea-" he started but Avery interrupted again with a soft sigh: "Of course you would. But look at that," she pointed ahead to where there seemed to be mountain tips growing out of the thick, fluffy fog.
"The confusing peaks." Avery breathed, almost in hushed awe.
"Yes..." said Quintus, dragging his uncertainty back to the front-line of his current emotional state, trampling over confusion and exhaustion and the need to urinate.
"They think he works up there. They do not listen, therefore misunderstand almost everything Brunei says." Avery blinked her sad eyes and Quintus felt something sharpen in his chest. "But fear..." she went on, "...fear can take us places. There are great places and I think..." she stepped forward.
Quintus jolted, "Are- are you-?"
"... I think we should walk right up to fear." Avery took another step and Quintus felt such a sudden rush of loneliness that he lunged forwards as well.
"Yes..." Avery whispered, staring out at the rising peaks with an expression of something like excitement mixed with horror that surrounded a hint of a smile.
"...let us see where fear will take us."
Sunday 27 December 2015
Saturday 21 November 2015
When will it be that time again?
"Fudge it!" Quintus ran down the street, his powdered-blue cap tingling with the sound of bells that were attached to it and his caramel-coloured bloomers rubbing against each other. "They're going to start a fire!"
Quintus was no stranger to running. He ran almost everyday because the other boys chased him and threw chalk. They called him names, like 'Forenry!' and 'Heshem!', which were insults in his town. They stole his fried potatoes that he packed for lunch, or they stole his money. They left twigs in his desk, let his pig free in the fields, and lounged around in his art space, messing up his paintings and whittling down his favourite pencils.
"I simply cannot stand it any longer!" he had cried, last Tuesday, holding his dripping wet boots that were filled with eucalyptus oil and fighting back tears.
So he had ran.
"Quintus!" his mother had called from their front porch as she watched him sprint off at a slight angle through the gate and along the road (he had never been the straightest sprinter, or the fastest, or the most elegant). "Where will you go? You don't know anyone! And you're lousy at making conversation!"
"You don't need conversation to do laundry and pick peaches!" he had shouted back.
His mother had shaken her head as she wiped her dough-covered hands on a tea-towel, thinking, actually, you do.
For four days, on and off, Quintus had ran, walked, skipped, sat, slept, and limped into and out of various towns. He had eaten bread, stolen apples, washed his bloomers in the stream and put them straight back on, due to the public nature of his washing, and he had cried while sitting in the wet patch. He had been laughed at while he sang, danced, recited poetry, and told stories of shoes that talked. He had been given coins out of pity and then had them taken out of greed.
Finally, after many long conversation-less days and nights, Quintus found himself outside a run down building that had blue shutters in front of all the windows, and yellow and orange potted flowers hanging from the separate balconies. Quintus thought, this looks like where magic happens.
And he walked inside.
He sat down against the corridor wall, which was white and peeling, and stared ahead at the row of little wooden post-boxes all with little keyholes. There were thirty-nine rooms in this building. That meant thirty-nine keys. What a lot of little objects there were!
"Fucking useless!"
Quintus jumped at the voice as the building door opened and a girl came struggling in. She looked like she was heaving in a gigantic sack full of heavy body parts. Quitus jumped up.
"Hello!" he cried, filled with unease but out of sincere habit.
The girl looked up. Cans spilled about the place as she paused and glanced up and down at Quintus with her bright green eyes, as if he was being scanned for a price.
"Hi there," she said, turning her attention to the cans rolling around. "Fuck it!"
"Do you need help?" Quintus asked.
"Of course I do!" the girl grunted. "My bags have split wide open, and then some."
Quintus helped the girl carry all her cans up the stairs and into her apartment. Turns out she lived in apartment twenty, where a mattress lay in one corner, a row of potted plants lined up along the opposite wall, and there was a large nude portrait of a shapely woman blocking the bathroom door.
"Don't worry about that," said the girl, waving her hand. "I'm only holding it for a friend until she gives me the green. You smoke?"
Quintus blinked. "Smoke?"
The girl assessed him once again, this time with her head tilted to the side. "Why does your hat have bells on?"
"It's hand-made!" Quintus said loudly in a defensive stance, and the girl said, "Alright! Don't worry, I like it. It looks like a baby's bottom."
"A baby's-?"
"Do you drink?" the girl asked, turning away with disinterest. Then turned back and said, "Oh sorry, I'm Soriary. But everyone calls me Soria."
"I'm Quintus," Quintus said.
Soria smiled without the light touching her eyes, so Quintus thought she didn't look acquainted or charmed at all.
He watched as she poured some kind of honey liquid into a glass and drank it quickly. She poured another and raised her eyebrowse at him. "Do you want some?"
Quintus frowned, suddenly unsure why he was still there. He said, "No thank you. My heart, it burns, you see, when I drink coloured liquid so I try my best to stay away."
"Suit yourself," she drank that quickly, too, and then sat on the floor. Quintus decided to sit also, and told her the stories about shoes that spoke, but she didn't laugh or mock and she said he was welcome to sleep if he had nowhere else to go, before vanishing into the bathroom for a long time.
She came out when Quintus had settled himself on the floor and stumbled into the mattress.
In the morning she threw up, said, 'here's something interesting you can incorporate into your stories', and Quintus had decided to stay.
He stayed for two days and in those two days they ate only flaky noodles that tasted like rubber with parsley on top.
"I HAVE PARSLEY!" Soria had screamed, banging her fist on the table and throwing out her other hand at the line of plants. "SO WHY NOT FUCKING EAT IT!" and Quintus had felt his chest tighten with fear.
They sat on the floor while Soria played quiet opera music. Quintus listened hard, straining his ears and leaning in closer so he could understand the messages and the melodies, but he didn't. Soria disappeared into the bathroom randomly throughout the day and would emerge looking vague or relieved or ashamed. Quintus noticed cuts and bruises and vomit stains, but never said anything just in case.
He watched Soria drink the honey liquid and sat next to her at the window where they looked out at the night sky.
"The stars, Quintus, are you looking?" Soria asked on the second night while they stared up at the darkness sparkling down at them like little winks of reassurance.
"I do see them," he replied.
"There are always shooting stars. What I mean is, there are always stars that fall. All over. Like signs."
"But there are so many still in the sky," Quintus said softly, afraid and alert but squinting around it.
"Yes, there are, I can see that! But look at the ones falling. Look at the ones falling! Ok? Is that so fucking hard!?" She waved her arms when she yelled.
Quintus said, "No. Yes. I can see them."
Soria stood up roughly and stalked into the bathroom. Quintus thought about leaving. He still had so far to run. His journey had not even began yet and here he was, holed up with a girl who spoke plainly of ending hers as if it was just another activity to fit into the day, without realising that every time she looked into the night sky she was desperately searching for hope.
"There is nothing here but patches of good and patches of bad spread out over the entirety of existence, Quintus," she had told him that night, "and you have no fucking idea how tiring it is to be stuck in the patch of bad."
He did know.
Soria came floating out of the bathroom and Quintus stood up, the bells on his hat tinkling in a cheery, courageous way that strengthened his resolve.
He said, "I fear it is time for me to leave."
Soria whipped around, her eyes ablaze and her skin weeping. She waved her arms, "Leaving! Ha! God, the problem with YOU, Quintus, is that you never see, you never know what it all means," and she grabbed the bottle.
Quintus watched her pour with a shaking hand and felt the emptiness that he had been trying so hard to escape grow inside his chest, seep through his arms and legs, down into his toes. Whenever he had experienced this before, he had run. Just before it touched his head, right when it had seized his throat in a deathly tight grasp, making him hoarse and numb and terribly afraid of breaking, he would jump up and flee.
But this time he couldn't, not without trying. Because this time he was watching someone else fight it.
"I am afraid," he said.
Soria laughed once between gulps.
"I am afraid," Quintus said again and stepped closer. "So very afraid of never seeing you smile like you do. It is your smile that lights up my world. In the truest way." He frowned at her as she stood with the drink raised in one hand, frozen and staring, as if dead already. "I have travelled very hungry, and wet, and I have been cast down upon! My world has not been kind to me. I was ridiculed and hated, I have known fear. I have walked with my eyes down and too afraid to walk with noise! How to silence shoes such as these, other than to tell tales?"
Soria stared at him. He stared back. Then he said, "To be true, the blackest of days take our hearts and squeeze, and we look for stars to take it away. But, if you do not buy some fruit and paint, an easel and some birds, a wind chime, some books, a couch, a hot chicken... just what is life if it is not about sitting with wet underpants while eating a hot chicken?!"
And he gathered himself up, gave her a tinkling nod and half a curtsy due to the stiffness of his bloomers, opened her door, and slammed it shut behind him.
*
Quintus was no stranger to running. He ran almost everyday because the other boys chased him and threw chalk. They called him names, like 'Forenry!' and 'Heshem!', which were insults in his town. They stole his fried potatoes that he packed for lunch, or they stole his money. They left twigs in his desk, let his pig free in the fields, and lounged around in his art space, messing up his paintings and whittling down his favourite pencils.
"I simply cannot stand it any longer!" he had cried, last Tuesday, holding his dripping wet boots that were filled with eucalyptus oil and fighting back tears.
So he had ran.
"Quintus!" his mother had called from their front porch as she watched him sprint off at a slight angle through the gate and along the road (he had never been the straightest sprinter, or the fastest, or the most elegant). "Where will you go? You don't know anyone! And you're lousy at making conversation!"
"You don't need conversation to do laundry and pick peaches!" he had shouted back.
His mother had shaken her head as she wiped her dough-covered hands on a tea-towel, thinking, actually, you do.
For four days, on and off, Quintus had ran, walked, skipped, sat, slept, and limped into and out of various towns. He had eaten bread, stolen apples, washed his bloomers in the stream and put them straight back on, due to the public nature of his washing, and he had cried while sitting in the wet patch. He had been laughed at while he sang, danced, recited poetry, and told stories of shoes that talked. He had been given coins out of pity and then had them taken out of greed.
Finally, after many long conversation-less days and nights, Quintus found himself outside a run down building that had blue shutters in front of all the windows, and yellow and orange potted flowers hanging from the separate balconies. Quintus thought, this looks like where magic happens.
And he walked inside.
He sat down against the corridor wall, which was white and peeling, and stared ahead at the row of little wooden post-boxes all with little keyholes. There were thirty-nine rooms in this building. That meant thirty-nine keys. What a lot of little objects there were!
"Fucking useless!"
Quintus jumped at the voice as the building door opened and a girl came struggling in. She looked like she was heaving in a gigantic sack full of heavy body parts. Quitus jumped up.
"Hello!" he cried, filled with unease but out of sincere habit.
The girl looked up. Cans spilled about the place as she paused and glanced up and down at Quintus with her bright green eyes, as if he was being scanned for a price.
"Hi there," she said, turning her attention to the cans rolling around. "Fuck it!"
"Do you need help?" Quintus asked.
"Of course I do!" the girl grunted. "My bags have split wide open, and then some."
Quintus helped the girl carry all her cans up the stairs and into her apartment. Turns out she lived in apartment twenty, where a mattress lay in one corner, a row of potted plants lined up along the opposite wall, and there was a large nude portrait of a shapely woman blocking the bathroom door.
"Don't worry about that," said the girl, waving her hand. "I'm only holding it for a friend until she gives me the green. You smoke?"
Quintus blinked. "Smoke?"
The girl assessed him once again, this time with her head tilted to the side. "Why does your hat have bells on?"
"It's hand-made!" Quintus said loudly in a defensive stance, and the girl said, "Alright! Don't worry, I like it. It looks like a baby's bottom."
"A baby's-?"
"Do you drink?" the girl asked, turning away with disinterest. Then turned back and said, "Oh sorry, I'm Soriary. But everyone calls me Soria."
"I'm Quintus," Quintus said.
Soria smiled without the light touching her eyes, so Quintus thought she didn't look acquainted or charmed at all.
He watched as she poured some kind of honey liquid into a glass and drank it quickly. She poured another and raised her eyebrowse at him. "Do you want some?"
Quintus frowned, suddenly unsure why he was still there. He said, "No thank you. My heart, it burns, you see, when I drink coloured liquid so I try my best to stay away."
"Suit yourself," she drank that quickly, too, and then sat on the floor. Quintus decided to sit also, and told her the stories about shoes that spoke, but she didn't laugh or mock and she said he was welcome to sleep if he had nowhere else to go, before vanishing into the bathroom for a long time.
She came out when Quintus had settled himself on the floor and stumbled into the mattress.
In the morning she threw up, said, 'here's something interesting you can incorporate into your stories', and Quintus had decided to stay.
He stayed for two days and in those two days they ate only flaky noodles that tasted like rubber with parsley on top.
"I HAVE PARSLEY!" Soria had screamed, banging her fist on the table and throwing out her other hand at the line of plants. "SO WHY NOT FUCKING EAT IT!" and Quintus had felt his chest tighten with fear.
They sat on the floor while Soria played quiet opera music. Quintus listened hard, straining his ears and leaning in closer so he could understand the messages and the melodies, but he didn't. Soria disappeared into the bathroom randomly throughout the day and would emerge looking vague or relieved or ashamed. Quintus noticed cuts and bruises and vomit stains, but never said anything just in case.
He watched Soria drink the honey liquid and sat next to her at the window where they looked out at the night sky.
"The stars, Quintus, are you looking?" Soria asked on the second night while they stared up at the darkness sparkling down at them like little winks of reassurance.
"I do see them," he replied.
"There are always shooting stars. What I mean is, there are always stars that fall. All over. Like signs."
"But there are so many still in the sky," Quintus said softly, afraid and alert but squinting around it.
"Yes, there are, I can see that! But look at the ones falling. Look at the ones falling! Ok? Is that so fucking hard!?" She waved her arms when she yelled.
Quintus said, "No. Yes. I can see them."
Soria stood up roughly and stalked into the bathroom. Quintus thought about leaving. He still had so far to run. His journey had not even began yet and here he was, holed up with a girl who spoke plainly of ending hers as if it was just another activity to fit into the day, without realising that every time she looked into the night sky she was desperately searching for hope.
"There is nothing here but patches of good and patches of bad spread out over the entirety of existence, Quintus," she had told him that night, "and you have no fucking idea how tiring it is to be stuck in the patch of bad."
He did know.
Soria came floating out of the bathroom and Quintus stood up, the bells on his hat tinkling in a cheery, courageous way that strengthened his resolve.
He said, "I fear it is time for me to leave."
Soria whipped around, her eyes ablaze and her skin weeping. She waved her arms, "Leaving! Ha! God, the problem with YOU, Quintus, is that you never see, you never know what it all means," and she grabbed the bottle.
Quintus watched her pour with a shaking hand and felt the emptiness that he had been trying so hard to escape grow inside his chest, seep through his arms and legs, down into his toes. Whenever he had experienced this before, he had run. Just before it touched his head, right when it had seized his throat in a deathly tight grasp, making him hoarse and numb and terribly afraid of breaking, he would jump up and flee.
But this time he couldn't, not without trying. Because this time he was watching someone else fight it.
"I am afraid," he said.
Soria laughed once between gulps.
"I am afraid," Quintus said again and stepped closer. "So very afraid of never seeing you smile like you do. It is your smile that lights up my world. In the truest way." He frowned at her as she stood with the drink raised in one hand, frozen and staring, as if dead already. "I have travelled very hungry, and wet, and I have been cast down upon! My world has not been kind to me. I was ridiculed and hated, I have known fear. I have walked with my eyes down and too afraid to walk with noise! How to silence shoes such as these, other than to tell tales?"
Soria stared at him. He stared back. Then he said, "To be true, the blackest of days take our hearts and squeeze, and we look for stars to take it away. But, if you do not buy some fruit and paint, an easel and some birds, a wind chime, some books, a couch, a hot chicken... just what is life if it is not about sitting with wet underpants while eating a hot chicken?!"
And he gathered himself up, gave her a tinkling nod and half a curtsy due to the stiffness of his bloomers, opened her door, and slammed it shut behind him.
*
Wednesday 18 November 2015
Can I go back to when I believed in everything and knew nothing at all?
Secil yanked open the door with a mixture of frustration at the time-consuming activity that was answering doors, admiration at the gentle way this stranger handled their doorbell, and wondering if this was the same place the door had been in yesterday.
"Yes?" she said forcefully.
The man coughed and Secil stared.
"Hello," he said, smiling mildly. She took in his fluffy black hair and bright green eyes and slammed the door shut in his face.
Then promptly opened it.
"Sorry!" she exclaimed, "It must be the potion, I mean, pois- the drink- I had a drink earlier- tea! yes...tea, I had tea, lousy... lousy tea..." Secil smiled and tried to twinkle and sparkle and glow up at him in a friendly and less-intimidating manner.
The man said kindly, "Ghastly, this tea business." But Secil wasn't listening.
"Yes, that's right, over there," she said suddenly, sliding her gaze from the scratches on the wooden door over to the left window, as if she'd just been hit with a memory orb. "The door was over by tha-"
"Oh, you have roaming doors, too?"
Secil jerked back to the stranger and narrowed her eyes. "Only on Thursdays and every other Monday at four, nine and twelve, twice around the clock."
"Clocks!" the man exclaimed, looking appropriately enthusiastic.
"The very same," Secil agreed, although she didn't know what she was actually agreeing too. Was he happy at the relevant-ness of time? Or did he feel overwhelmed at all the hand variations and clock sizes? She asked, "Does your mother know you're out this late?" in a condescending way.
"I'm nearing thirty," he replied apologetically, with a wave of his hand as if to indicate how useless it all was.
"Oh, yes, of course..." Secil nodded with full understanding, "...the clocks. Do come in then."
"Thank-"
"No wait! You have to say your name first!"
"Ah." the man smiled again, in a knowing and approving way. "It's Alfred."
Secil and Mercery had built a whole room (with magic of course. They both refused, rightly so, to do anything manually exerting while in possession of wands) devoted entirely to store captured names, and which sometimes became an area for Mercery to practice the art of Loom. Secil would barge in with a jar containing a name that she had worked very hard to steal, sometimes wasting hours of her life with searching, and complimenting, and bargaining, and learning how to play the flute and make wooden clogs, to find Mercery taking up all her shelf space.
"I NEED TO LOOM!" Mercery would yell.
"YOU NEED TO MAKE A RUG WITHOUT YOUR FACE ON IT!" Secil would retort.
"I AM A WORK OF ART!" Mercery would scream in a fit of self-adoration, "I NEED TO BE PUT OUT IN THE WORLD. I NEED TO FLY, TO DREAM, TO BURST FORTH IN A FLURRY OF TALCUM POWDER AND ALLSPICE AND THOSE LITTLE DEFORMED PINE CONES."
"THAT'S THE WORST SOUNDING MIXTURE OF AMBITION I HAVE EVER HEARD OF," Secil would scream back.
"THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'VE NEVER DREAMT OF SEEING YOUR FACE AT THE ENTRANCE OF PARLIAMENT HOUSE."
"THAT'S BECAUSE I DON'T DREAM OF BEING A WELCOME MAT."
They would glare at each other. Then they would realise that they were both inconceivably right, and would hug, babbling their apologies, and Mercery would make Secil her own welcome mat that Secil would later burn in the pretense of cleansing her aura, and Secil would bake Mercery a love-cake that Mercery would insist they leave for a while so she could stare at its beauty and would later add to her potting mix and throw out in her veggie patch.
"Did you say Alfred?" Secil asked in a whisper as the man stepped through the doorway.
"I did."
"Oh..." she stared up at him, quite transfixed. He looked down at her, quite amused and a little self-conscious at the state of his shoes, which mattered now, what with her being so close to them.
"Sorry... I, uh, I normally get them cleaned-"
"But how long have you been called Alfred?" Secil demanded, the waves of lust spilling all around her in absolution.
"Ah, all my life..." he looked worriedly around the entrance, "You're not planning to take it, are you?"
"And no one's tried to steal it?!" Secil asked, swaying a little in the pale pink cloudy fog, breathing in a scent of preferred perfection, blinking against the magnification of colour.
"Are you alright?"
"Mercery..." Secil breathed.
"I'm terribly sorry, I only came about the letters. I think you summoned me?" Alfred took a step forwards, worry and fear sliding around his face, and Secil laughed out loud.
"The starfruit!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's an enhancer," Secil spun around clockwise waving her left arm and then anticlockwise waving her right arm. "I forgot. I get it mixed up with pineapple."
Alfred frowned, "They look nothing alike."
"Mmmm, I think one of my eyes may come from Jupiter." She shook her head and looked back up at him. There was nothing Secil disapproved of more than attraction, except maybe fatal attraction. She had books to write and movies to be a part of and spells to reconstruct- people today were so sloppy and traditional, always adding rose petals or saying some long incantation, it curled her silvery- white hair for days after reading them.
"Are you talking about the planet?" Alfred asked
"No, there's a place down the road called Jupiter's Duty. They sell eyes. But they don't do the insertion process, that's further down, past the post office- wait a minute..." Secil narrowed her eyes at this absurdly attractive excuse for a human. "You said roaming doors."
Alfred nodded. "Yes."
"And summoned. You said the word 'summoned'."
"I did."
Secil's heart started beating faster but this time she wasn't wrapped up like a lusty bean burrito, she was unravelling like a disorganised, sweltering mummy lost at the beach.
She said quietly, while thinking up numerous ways to incorporate the dry leaves around Alfred's feet in a curse, "That means you're a-"
"SECILIA!" Mercery shouted from down the hall.
Alfred jumped. Secilia shot out her wand arm with her wand in it and jabbed Alfred in the face.
"Oh! OW! Christ!"
"Oh no, sorry! It's reflex! I was a junior warrior ninja scout battle maiden as a child, and the training stuck!"
Bent over and groaning, Alfred gave a short laugh that sounded more in exasperation than overflowing with admiration and intimidation. "You can't be all those things at once."
"SELIA. I JUST GOT THE MAIL, FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE," Mercery yelled, sounding closer. "WHY FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE- FROM INSIDE THE KITCHEN NO LESS? WHY? WHY AM I HOLDING PINK ENVELOPES NEXT TO THE FRIDGE AT FIVE IN THE MORNI-"
"GO ON THEN," Secil shouted back, watching Alfred, torn between her desire to comfort and her impulse to verbally scorn.
Mercery suddenly strode into the entrance hall, scowling and red in the face, which did nothing for her complexion. "YOU DIDN'T TURN THE MAILMAN INTO A TOAD."
"Oh, didn't I?" Secil replied with casual elegance.
"SOME OTHER POOR HUMAN IS CROAKING OUT JAZZ MELODIES IN OUR GARDEN, MISSING THEIR FAMILY AND NINE-TO-FIVE, AND THE MAILMAN SUDDENLY IS UNABLE TO GET AT OUR FRONT DOOR."
"Shame..."
"That's me," Alfred straightened up, blinking. "I put a retreating marker on the door."
"OH," yelled Secil, beside herself and filled with defiance, defense, guilt and feelings of lust, "Charming OUR doors and stealing OUR letters, posing as a regular human to capture our hearts and souls and bewitch our minds with your enchanting smell and posh blue shirts-"
"'Regular human'?"
Mercery said, "Don't change the subject!"
Secil was quite blind with all her emotions and she may have also been suffering from caffeine withdrawals. She lunged forward, ready to push this impossibly good-looking thief out the door before hexing him into a snail with a crookedly dented shell, but she slipped on a mark on the floor, skidded sideways and crashed into the dresser.
"Good grief!" Alfred exclaimed. "Is your house nothing but full of traps?"
"Oh that's right..." mused Mercery, "I tried to clean the cauldron marks as your nightmares keep me awake all night, and I used polish instead of cleaning stuff, I mean, we really need to re-label our products. It said 'essen posoap lish' and I thought, 'lish, what a nice sounding fragrance'."
"It does sound nice," Secil agreed.
"It does."
"Like a spice," Alfred chimed in.
"Oriental."
"From somewhere far, like Atlana."
Alfred scoffed, "Atlanta doesn't exist."
"It does," Mercery shot back, "it's on a cloud."
"What cloud would hold an entire underwater city?"
"That's Atlantis. Honestly..."
"I say this calls for tea," Secil said firmly.
"Yes," Mercery nodded, "I'll get the Globe."
Alfred's eyes lit up. "You don't by chance have Minty Minting Flash?"
Secil scrunched up her face, "What's that?"
"It's like stepping into a cool-"
"We have tea with essence of toe," Mercery interrupted. "The toe, and that's it."
"Tea with toe," echoed Alfred, sounding ridiculous. Secil sighed. How could she ever be in sensuous longing with someone who said absurd things like that?
Mercery said, "The very same."
"But why not use the whole toe? Why only use essence?"
"Because," sighed Secil, waving at the pink lust waves once more and puzzled at why anyone would have to ask such a question, "Just imagine the taste of tea made entirely of toe!"
"Yes?" she said forcefully.
The man coughed and Secil stared.
"Hello," he said, smiling mildly. She took in his fluffy black hair and bright green eyes and slammed the door shut in his face.
Then promptly opened it.
"Sorry!" she exclaimed, "It must be the potion, I mean, pois- the drink- I had a drink earlier- tea! yes...tea, I had tea, lousy... lousy tea..." Secil smiled and tried to twinkle and sparkle and glow up at him in a friendly and less-intimidating manner.
The man said kindly, "Ghastly, this tea business." But Secil wasn't listening.
"Yes, that's right, over there," she said suddenly, sliding her gaze from the scratches on the wooden door over to the left window, as if she'd just been hit with a memory orb. "The door was over by tha-"
"Oh, you have roaming doors, too?"
Secil jerked back to the stranger and narrowed her eyes. "Only on Thursdays and every other Monday at four, nine and twelve, twice around the clock."
"Clocks!" the man exclaimed, looking appropriately enthusiastic.
"The very same," Secil agreed, although she didn't know what she was actually agreeing too. Was he happy at the relevant-ness of time? Or did he feel overwhelmed at all the hand variations and clock sizes? She asked, "Does your mother know you're out this late?" in a condescending way.
"I'm nearing thirty," he replied apologetically, with a wave of his hand as if to indicate how useless it all was.
"Oh, yes, of course..." Secil nodded with full understanding, "...the clocks. Do come in then."
"Thank-"
"No wait! You have to say your name first!"
"Ah." the man smiled again, in a knowing and approving way. "It's Alfred."
Secil and Mercery had built a whole room (with magic of course. They both refused, rightly so, to do anything manually exerting while in possession of wands) devoted entirely to store captured names, and which sometimes became an area for Mercery to practice the art of Loom. Secil would barge in with a jar containing a name that she had worked very hard to steal, sometimes wasting hours of her life with searching, and complimenting, and bargaining, and learning how to play the flute and make wooden clogs, to find Mercery taking up all her shelf space.
"I NEED TO LOOM!" Mercery would yell.
"YOU NEED TO MAKE A RUG WITHOUT YOUR FACE ON IT!" Secil would retort.
"I AM A WORK OF ART!" Mercery would scream in a fit of self-adoration, "I NEED TO BE PUT OUT IN THE WORLD. I NEED TO FLY, TO DREAM, TO BURST FORTH IN A FLURRY OF TALCUM POWDER AND ALLSPICE AND THOSE LITTLE DEFORMED PINE CONES."
"THAT'S THE WORST SOUNDING MIXTURE OF AMBITION I HAVE EVER HEARD OF," Secil would scream back.
"THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'VE NEVER DREAMT OF SEEING YOUR FACE AT THE ENTRANCE OF PARLIAMENT HOUSE."
"THAT'S BECAUSE I DON'T DREAM OF BEING A WELCOME MAT."
They would glare at each other. Then they would realise that they were both inconceivably right, and would hug, babbling their apologies, and Mercery would make Secil her own welcome mat that Secil would later burn in the pretense of cleansing her aura, and Secil would bake Mercery a love-cake that Mercery would insist they leave for a while so she could stare at its beauty and would later add to her potting mix and throw out in her veggie patch.
"Did you say Alfred?" Secil asked in a whisper as the man stepped through the doorway.
"I did."
"Oh..." she stared up at him, quite transfixed. He looked down at her, quite amused and a little self-conscious at the state of his shoes, which mattered now, what with her being so close to them.
"Sorry... I, uh, I normally get them cleaned-"
"But how long have you been called Alfred?" Secil demanded, the waves of lust spilling all around her in absolution.
"Ah, all my life..." he looked worriedly around the entrance, "You're not planning to take it, are you?"
"And no one's tried to steal it?!" Secil asked, swaying a little in the pale pink cloudy fog, breathing in a scent of preferred perfection, blinking against the magnification of colour.
"Are you alright?"
"Mercery..." Secil breathed.
"I'm terribly sorry, I only came about the letters. I think you summoned me?" Alfred took a step forwards, worry and fear sliding around his face, and Secil laughed out loud.
"The starfruit!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's an enhancer," Secil spun around clockwise waving her left arm and then anticlockwise waving her right arm. "I forgot. I get it mixed up with pineapple."
Alfred frowned, "They look nothing alike."
"Mmmm, I think one of my eyes may come from Jupiter." She shook her head and looked back up at him. There was nothing Secil disapproved of more than attraction, except maybe fatal attraction. She had books to write and movies to be a part of and spells to reconstruct- people today were so sloppy and traditional, always adding rose petals or saying some long incantation, it curled her silvery- white hair for days after reading them.
"Are you talking about the planet?" Alfred asked
"No, there's a place down the road called Jupiter's Duty. They sell eyes. But they don't do the insertion process, that's further down, past the post office- wait a minute..." Secil narrowed her eyes at this absurdly attractive excuse for a human. "You said roaming doors."
Alfred nodded. "Yes."
"And summoned. You said the word 'summoned'."
"I did."
Secil's heart started beating faster but this time she wasn't wrapped up like a lusty bean burrito, she was unravelling like a disorganised, sweltering mummy lost at the beach.
She said quietly, while thinking up numerous ways to incorporate the dry leaves around Alfred's feet in a curse, "That means you're a-"
"SECILIA!" Mercery shouted from down the hall.
Alfred jumped. Secilia shot out her wand arm with her wand in it and jabbed Alfred in the face.
"Oh! OW! Christ!"
"Oh no, sorry! It's reflex! I was a junior warrior ninja scout battle maiden as a child, and the training stuck!"
Bent over and groaning, Alfred gave a short laugh that sounded more in exasperation than overflowing with admiration and intimidation. "You can't be all those things at once."
"SELIA. I JUST GOT THE MAIL, FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE," Mercery yelled, sounding closer. "WHY FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE- FROM INSIDE THE KITCHEN NO LESS? WHY? WHY AM I HOLDING PINK ENVELOPES NEXT TO THE FRIDGE AT FIVE IN THE MORNI-"
"GO ON THEN," Secil shouted back, watching Alfred, torn between her desire to comfort and her impulse to verbally scorn.
Mercery suddenly strode into the entrance hall, scowling and red in the face, which did nothing for her complexion. "YOU DIDN'T TURN THE MAILMAN INTO A TOAD."
"Oh, didn't I?" Secil replied with casual elegance.
"SOME OTHER POOR HUMAN IS CROAKING OUT JAZZ MELODIES IN OUR GARDEN, MISSING THEIR FAMILY AND NINE-TO-FIVE, AND THE MAILMAN SUDDENLY IS UNABLE TO GET AT OUR FRONT DOOR."
"Shame..."
"That's me," Alfred straightened up, blinking. "I put a retreating marker on the door."
"OH," yelled Secil, beside herself and filled with defiance, defense, guilt and feelings of lust, "Charming OUR doors and stealing OUR letters, posing as a regular human to capture our hearts and souls and bewitch our minds with your enchanting smell and posh blue shirts-"
"'Regular human'?"
Mercery said, "Don't change the subject!"
Secil was quite blind with all her emotions and she may have also been suffering from caffeine withdrawals. She lunged forward, ready to push this impossibly good-looking thief out the door before hexing him into a snail with a crookedly dented shell, but she slipped on a mark on the floor, skidded sideways and crashed into the dresser.
"Good grief!" Alfred exclaimed. "Is your house nothing but full of traps?"
"Oh that's right..." mused Mercery, "I tried to clean the cauldron marks as your nightmares keep me awake all night, and I used polish instead of cleaning stuff, I mean, we really need to re-label our products. It said 'essen posoap lish' and I thought, 'lish, what a nice sounding fragrance'."
"It does sound nice," Secil agreed.
"It does."
"Like a spice," Alfred chimed in.
"Oriental."
"From somewhere far, like Atlana."
Alfred scoffed, "Atlanta doesn't exist."
"It does," Mercery shot back, "it's on a cloud."
"What cloud would hold an entire underwater city?"
"That's Atlantis. Honestly..."
"I say this calls for tea," Secil said firmly.
"Yes," Mercery nodded, "I'll get the Globe."
Alfred's eyes lit up. "You don't by chance have Minty Minting Flash?"
Secil scrunched up her face, "What's that?"
"It's like stepping into a cool-"
"We have tea with essence of toe," Mercery interrupted. "The toe, and that's it."
"Tea with toe," echoed Alfred, sounding ridiculous. Secil sighed. How could she ever be in sensuous longing with someone who said absurd things like that?
Mercery said, "The very same."
"But why not use the whole toe? Why only use essence?"
"Because," sighed Secil, waving at the pink lust waves once more and puzzled at why anyone would have to ask such a question, "Just imagine the taste of tea made entirely of toe!"
Friday 23 October 2015
Can we make it bigger?
I feel as though I have been running. My feet ache and my lungs burn. I feel old and worn, lost in the process of decaying day by day. My outer shell has cracked and split apart, there are bits falling constantly, fading, temporary: skin, blood, memories, equations, plans, words, whispers, ambitions. Laughter.
The things that define us slowly change with time until we become someone new and when we see our reflections, our hearts weep for the way we were.
"Yes, yes, this is fascinating, but please pass the sugar will you?"
Secil scowled. "This is an autobiography, Mercery, it has to contain fact and musings."
"You can't muse without coffee-"
"Actually, I'm on a cleanse."
"A cleanse?" Mercery gasped in horror.
Secil smiled inwardly. Outwardly, she said, "Rightly so. I'm on green tea and soda water."
"No tonic?" Mercery whispered.
"None at all."
"No gin!"
"Not even."
Mercery gasped again, louder and with wider eyes, and clasped a hand to her chest. "Secil! The madness!"
"It is," Secil agreed wholeheartedly, because it was. She hadn't planned to go on a cleanse, as it were. She'd been down at the post office paying a bill, with intentions to visit the herbal shop next door for supplies - what with Beatrice on holiday and Beatrice's husband decaying six-feet under ground, slowing down progress - when the man behind the counter had pointed out her dismal appearance.
"He was rather rude," supplied Secil, "telling me I had circles under my eyes-"
"You do," Mercery interrupted grimly.
"- and going on about bronze door knockers and the time his niece broke into the neighbour's house for a lawn gnome-"
"Huh?"
"- honestly," Secil waved her wand through the air dramatically, "it's a wonder I didn't turn him into a toad weeks ago!"
"You did what!?"
"Hmm?" Secil had glanced down at her ingredients list and noticed a spelling error.
"SECIL!"
"How do you spell mushroom?"
"DID YOU TURN THE MAILMAN INTO A TOAD?"
"Keep your wig on!" Secil crossed out 'munchroom' and wrote 'muchroome', stared at it and sighed, crossing that out, too.
"SECILIA!"
"Yes! I turned him into a toad. And I took him home, and he's in the garden, playing, and feeding, and singing to his people. Now, tell me how to spell mushroom. It's not with two e's, is it?"
Mercery said, "Oh, alright then. If he's singing..."
Secil tapped the paper with her wand. (It wasn't really a wand; it was a longish, semi-straight stick that had a thin branch growing from one side, which she had tripped over while running away from a bad date one night. Secil refused to buy a proper wand. She had performed a complicated, slightly illegal enchantment on her stick, and after seeing how well it worked out, Mercery had done away with her own wand and copied her.)
The letters rearranged themselves, appearing and disappearing, until the correct spelling of mushroom shimmered up at her.
"Hey, those aren't my o's!"
Mercery clicked her tongue, stood up and stretched. Secil's laziness always made her extremely tired. "That's what you get for enchanting."
"I turned the milkman into a toad, too," she said casually.
"WHAT!?" Mercery dropped the kettle. It bounced extremely hard on the wooden floor and shot out the kitchen window. "FOR FUCK'S SAKE! THAT FUCKING ANTI-SHATTER CHARM IS JUST NOT WORTH IT!"
Secil sighed again, this time in calm contentment. Mercery's aggression at her own spell inventions always gave her a sudden tranquil feeling, much like stepping under a cleansing waterfall after drinking three pots of green tea at once. (She was a recovering coffee addict and the herbal stuff just did not fly). She wondered about detection work. She wondered how to trace handwriting. Was it done?
"You can't just turn people into frogs, Secil, it's not proper!" Mercery turned away from looking out the window. She tugged on her black and silver-star wellingtons, yanking them on so hard in her anger that her toes pushed out the end, and she cursed the stupidity and apathy of whoever made them.
"It's boring being a regular human," Secil complained. "Look at all these spelling errors, look at the multiplication sums on the fridge, look at the shopping carts in Beddells! They're so slow and the people scan my items with glazed eyes, as if they've never heard of-"
"You've never heard of!" Mercery interrupted forcefully, sounding like she didn't know what Secil was talking about (which she didn't). "And now I have to trudge out in the ponds so I can make tea!"
Secil watched Mercery stride out the back door, her long black hair breezing out behind her and long skirts swishing around her legs in determination. When she was gone, Secil jumped up and rummaged around in the kitchen for flour, starfruit, bread crust, ginger, and three sour lollies.
"Spell for tracing..." she murmured, flicking through her little notebook. Secil also refused to perform spells from books. She kept her own notebook with her own inventions, working tirelessly through her mundane existence, switching between writing her soon-to-be famous autobiography (that would go on to become a film starring majorly important actors, and probably even a television series) and creating her own brand of enchantments that she called Severely Secil. Her autobiography was entirely fictional because her own existence was as dull as a wilting cucumber.
"Nothing! Why is there nothing! Why have I not thought of this before?" she groaned in frustration, paused in thought for a millisecond, before snatching up the ingredients and putting pinches, halves, teaspoons and entire packets, haphazardly into the fat, alarmingly green cauldron that sat next to the fireplace. She stirred with the end of a mop, thinking about how expensive cauldrons were these days. This one had been bought from a second-hand store and heaved into the house with the help of three strangers.
"A wedding present!" Mercery had said with false brightness.
"My wedding," Secil had lied in clarification.
"We like to make soup," Mercery offered for no reason, so Secil had countered with, "For the homeless, down on Main."
"So many homeless," Mercery continued.
"Inventive instruments," Secil complimented pleasantly, thinking of the men and women she'd seen shaking their cans with coins in, as if playing a tune.
The cauldron-dragging had resulted in four lined marks all the way from the front door to the fireplace, and none of Secil's spells had worked so far in cleaning it up. It was dismal. Secil still had nightmares about these marks.
The cloudy grey mixture in the cauldron emitted a puff of glittery smoke, which Secil took as an indication that the potion was ready. She scooped half a ladle into a mug, drank it quickly and burped. It tasted like eggplant and brilliance. Yes, she thought smugly, how brilliant she was.
She waited, standing next to the cauldron, holding the mug, and watching the mixture slowly turn a pale violet colour. Bubbles formed in clusters on the surface. Another glittering puff rose up and dissipated.
Secil turned to her right and threw up. She crossed out 'sour lollies', sure that they were reacting with the other ingredients, and wrote 'bottom half of a gingerbread man' instead.
"SECIL!" came a shout and Mercery burst through the back door, puffing, just as the font doorbell rang.
"I think it needs an incantation," frowned Secil.
"Oh my god, Secil..."
"Yes... I know."
"No! You don't! Secil, Beatrice buried her husband in our yard!"
The doorbell rang again and Secil wondered who on earth was calling round at four in the morning. She looked up suddenly, registering. "Buried?"
"YES! SHE BURIED HER HUSBAND IN OUR YARD AND THEN WENT OFF TO CELEBRATE, PROBABLY EATING OCTOPUS AND GETTING A TAN!" Mercery stopped. "What are you doing?"
Secil stared unseeing at Mercery, thinking about starfruit and bubbles and alkalizing and the soothing, restoring properties of dead human toes.
She smiled. "Lead the way."
+
The things that define us slowly change with time until we become someone new and when we see our reflections, our hearts weep for the way we were.
"Yes, yes, this is fascinating, but please pass the sugar will you?"
Secil scowled. "This is an autobiography, Mercery, it has to contain fact and musings."
"You can't muse without coffee-"
"Actually, I'm on a cleanse."
"A cleanse?" Mercery gasped in horror.
Secil smiled inwardly. Outwardly, she said, "Rightly so. I'm on green tea and soda water."
"No tonic?" Mercery whispered.
"None at all."
"No gin!"
"Not even."
Mercery gasped again, louder and with wider eyes, and clasped a hand to her chest. "Secil! The madness!"
"It is," Secil agreed wholeheartedly, because it was. She hadn't planned to go on a cleanse, as it were. She'd been down at the post office paying a bill, with intentions to visit the herbal shop next door for supplies - what with Beatrice on holiday and Beatrice's husband decaying six-feet under ground, slowing down progress - when the man behind the counter had pointed out her dismal appearance.
"He was rather rude," supplied Secil, "telling me I had circles under my eyes-"
"You do," Mercery interrupted grimly.
"- and going on about bronze door knockers and the time his niece broke into the neighbour's house for a lawn gnome-"
"Huh?"
"- honestly," Secil waved her wand through the air dramatically, "it's a wonder I didn't turn him into a toad weeks ago!"
"You did what!?"
"Hmm?" Secil had glanced down at her ingredients list and noticed a spelling error.
"SECIL!"
"How do you spell mushroom?"
"DID YOU TURN THE MAILMAN INTO A TOAD?"
"Keep your wig on!" Secil crossed out 'munchroom' and wrote 'muchroome', stared at it and sighed, crossing that out, too.
"SECILIA!"
"Yes! I turned him into a toad. And I took him home, and he's in the garden, playing, and feeding, and singing to his people. Now, tell me how to spell mushroom. It's not with two e's, is it?"
Mercery said, "Oh, alright then. If he's singing..."
Secil tapped the paper with her wand. (It wasn't really a wand; it was a longish, semi-straight stick that had a thin branch growing from one side, which she had tripped over while running away from a bad date one night. Secil refused to buy a proper wand. She had performed a complicated, slightly illegal enchantment on her stick, and after seeing how well it worked out, Mercery had done away with her own wand and copied her.)
The letters rearranged themselves, appearing and disappearing, until the correct spelling of mushroom shimmered up at her.
"Hey, those aren't my o's!"
Mercery clicked her tongue, stood up and stretched. Secil's laziness always made her extremely tired. "That's what you get for enchanting."
"I turned the milkman into a toad, too," she said casually.
"WHAT!?" Mercery dropped the kettle. It bounced extremely hard on the wooden floor and shot out the kitchen window. "FOR FUCK'S SAKE! THAT FUCKING ANTI-SHATTER CHARM IS JUST NOT WORTH IT!"
Secil sighed again, this time in calm contentment. Mercery's aggression at her own spell inventions always gave her a sudden tranquil feeling, much like stepping under a cleansing waterfall after drinking three pots of green tea at once. (She was a recovering coffee addict and the herbal stuff just did not fly). She wondered about detection work. She wondered how to trace handwriting. Was it done?
"You can't just turn people into frogs, Secil, it's not proper!" Mercery turned away from looking out the window. She tugged on her black and silver-star wellingtons, yanking them on so hard in her anger that her toes pushed out the end, and she cursed the stupidity and apathy of whoever made them.
"It's boring being a regular human," Secil complained. "Look at all these spelling errors, look at the multiplication sums on the fridge, look at the shopping carts in Beddells! They're so slow and the people scan my items with glazed eyes, as if they've never heard of-"
"You've never heard of!" Mercery interrupted forcefully, sounding like she didn't know what Secil was talking about (which she didn't). "And now I have to trudge out in the ponds so I can make tea!"
Secil watched Mercery stride out the back door, her long black hair breezing out behind her and long skirts swishing around her legs in determination. When she was gone, Secil jumped up and rummaged around in the kitchen for flour, starfruit, bread crust, ginger, and three sour lollies.
"Spell for tracing..." she murmured, flicking through her little notebook. Secil also refused to perform spells from books. She kept her own notebook with her own inventions, working tirelessly through her mundane existence, switching between writing her soon-to-be famous autobiography (that would go on to become a film starring majorly important actors, and probably even a television series) and creating her own brand of enchantments that she called Severely Secil. Her autobiography was entirely fictional because her own existence was as dull as a wilting cucumber.
"Nothing! Why is there nothing! Why have I not thought of this before?" she groaned in frustration, paused in thought for a millisecond, before snatching up the ingredients and putting pinches, halves, teaspoons and entire packets, haphazardly into the fat, alarmingly green cauldron that sat next to the fireplace. She stirred with the end of a mop, thinking about how expensive cauldrons were these days. This one had been bought from a second-hand store and heaved into the house with the help of three strangers.
"A wedding present!" Mercery had said with false brightness.
"My wedding," Secil had lied in clarification.
"We like to make soup," Mercery offered for no reason, so Secil had countered with, "For the homeless, down on Main."
"So many homeless," Mercery continued.
"Inventive instruments," Secil complimented pleasantly, thinking of the men and women she'd seen shaking their cans with coins in, as if playing a tune.
The cauldron-dragging had resulted in four lined marks all the way from the front door to the fireplace, and none of Secil's spells had worked so far in cleaning it up. It was dismal. Secil still had nightmares about these marks.
The cloudy grey mixture in the cauldron emitted a puff of glittery smoke, which Secil took as an indication that the potion was ready. She scooped half a ladle into a mug, drank it quickly and burped. It tasted like eggplant and brilliance. Yes, she thought smugly, how brilliant she was.
She waited, standing next to the cauldron, holding the mug, and watching the mixture slowly turn a pale violet colour. Bubbles formed in clusters on the surface. Another glittering puff rose up and dissipated.
Secil turned to her right and threw up. She crossed out 'sour lollies', sure that they were reacting with the other ingredients, and wrote 'bottom half of a gingerbread man' instead.
"SECIL!" came a shout and Mercery burst through the back door, puffing, just as the font doorbell rang.
"I think it needs an incantation," frowned Secil.
"Oh my god, Secil..."
"Yes... I know."
"No! You don't! Secil, Beatrice buried her husband in our yard!"
The doorbell rang again and Secil wondered who on earth was calling round at four in the morning. She looked up suddenly, registering. "Buried?"
"YES! SHE BURIED HER HUSBAND IN OUR YARD AND THEN WENT OFF TO CELEBRATE, PROBABLY EATING OCTOPUS AND GETTING A TAN!" Mercery stopped. "What are you doing?"
Secil stared unseeing at Mercery, thinking about starfruit and bubbles and alkalizing and the soothing, restoring properties of dead human toes.
She smiled. "Lead the way."
+
Thursday 24 September 2015
How does it feel to pretend?
"It couldn't possibly get any colder," Second was saying jovially, leaning back in his wooden chair. It was one of those hard-backed chairs that made him sit upright and proud.
"There is proper moisture in the air to suggest possible rain," Watt countered with a little scowl on his face. His dark eyebrows moved up and down as he ran his light blue eyes critically over each of the framed paintings hanging on the wall. His chair did not have a hard back. His chair had a green velvet seat and arched, curly feet.
"Are you the weather man?" Second asked with a jeer.
"I have always been told that I have a face for television."
"Ha!"
Avery coughed and both boys turned to her. She was knitting something long and twisted, and rather blue, and she hummed very quietly to herself while she did this. Her light tangerine-coloured hair fell about her cheekbones and her long eyelashes kissed each other every once and a while.
"Back me up!" cried Second.
"About what?" asked Avery.
"Do your butlers not bring herbal anymore?" complained Watt.
"They bring whatever they like," replied Avery, not looking up. "This time I believe it to be Earl Grey."
"Earl Grey is not herbal, Aves. It appears I cannot even have pleasure within my closest companion circle."
"It comes in a bag," Second said, with a hand motion not unlike that of scooping, which confused Watt.
"Are you trying to move something?" he asked with brows furrowed.
"Am I?"
"Something out of thin air?"
Second sighed and leaned back again, tired. (His hand gestures had always bewildered his mate, if truth be told. It was like baking a cake with instructions written in a foreign language. Like elvish, Second thought, it is exactly like deciphering Elvish while trying to create a decadent masterpiece for an ethereal wedding).
"Brunei," Avery said suddenly, jerking Second out of his strawberry-swirl fantasy. "You're home."
The two boys watched as Avery carefully put her knitting on the table and rose silently and elegantly. Second narrowed his eyes, picturing her in Elvish dress.
Watt said, "Hello Brune. How goes the weather up at the peak?"
Brunei looked dishevelled and slightly slumped forward, as if he had carried a heavy load for long hours without breaks or mugs of hot chocolate. The snow sprinkled in his dark hair made him look like a coconut cupcake.
"'Up at the peak'," Second mimicked, looking like a spoilt Prince. "You don't make any sense, Wattary!"
Brunei said, "Hello chums," fairly cheerfully for someone who was missing most of his tapered hat. He put his arms around Avery, she murmured something at his ear that made him bend further, and Watt turned to Second and muttered, "All these pictures, you see them all? Why are they all blue?"
Second didn't have time to be concerned about the blue of pictures. The choice of hanging house decoration didn't interest him in the slightest! He leaned back- because his chair was at the end of the table and he couldn't see the pair- and called out to Brunei, "Mate, did they find the silver?"
"Oh, they have silver now?" Avery inquired, surprised and grim, and in need of a good polish. Her clothes and skin and hair all appeared a bit dull. She could have made a superb bell, Watt thought admiringly, his eyes slipping back to scrutinize the pictures in secret every now and then, if she had not been born a person.
Brunei smiled and it lit up his face. Second frowned. Watt pulled his eyeballs back to the activity and frowned as well.
"They found a tidgy tippit o-"
"Tidbit," cut in Avery as she moved to the kitchen. She walked with an air of someone who wasn't paying any attention to her surroundings but she also carried herself lightly, like someone who thought they would fly away at any moment, and who was, possibly, ready for it.
"-of copper! Nothing else worth mentioning though."
"That's a shame," Second said, his heart pounding in an escalated way. He drummed his fingers on the table to hide the sound.
Watt was fearful that the volume of his own increased heart rate would be discovered, only he was not so adept at covering it up. He leapt up at high speed, overturning the milk jug and plate of almond biscuits, announcing in a hurried voice, "I have to meet with the toilet, at once! Or else my bladder will fail and I will spill all over the furniture! Not that this chair is the most comfortable or the most lean- yes, I have seen lean chairs, I have seen gleaming and quivering chairs that couldn't possibly hold the buttocks of man and woman even though that is their life aim! I am sure, in the fullest, that they are sombre and in the practise of attending museums for the post-modern art, I am sure they critique! But, as I say!-" before sprinting from the room.
Second hid his teasing grin by pressing his lips together in a thin line. Brunei said, "Righto," in a noncommittal way and plopped himself into a chair. Second drummed louder.
Brunei called over the drumming: "HOW WAS AVERY TODAY?"
Second averted his gaze to the blue pictures. "WELL," he responded. How blue they were! He'd spent a lot of his time in a hazy belief that Watt made up half of his daily observations. But now, having seen the evidence with his own two eyes, he called out (careful to keep his eyes on the wall): "WHY SO MANY BLUE ONES?"
"BLUE ONES?" Brunei asked, sounding puzzled for sure.
"THE PICTURES HERE ARE ALL A MIGHTY BLUE AND I CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY THEY NEED TO BE SO. IS IT A TRICK? ARE THEY ALL ACTUALLY DIFFERENT COLOURS BUT YOU'VE MANAGED TO PUT SOMETHING IN THE LIGHTING?"
"AHH, NO, THEY ARE ALL BLUE."
"IS IT MY EYES? YOU'VE ADDED A MAGICAL INGREDIENT TO THE FOOD SERVED, SPECIALLY, LIKE A LIQUID POISON OR RESTORATIVE?"
Avery appeared at that moment carrying a large silver tray piled with grapes. Second stilled his fingers.
"Avery, thank god," Brunei said in a voice overflowing with gratitude, and Second had to wonder if he'd matched it entirely to the plate of grapes, and how he found the time. Was there nothing Brunei couldn't do?
"I thought you might be hungry after a long day at work," she placed the tray on top of the scattered cookies.
Isn't it bad enough that he's so damn good-looking? Second thought, still staring blindly at Brunei. He's like an irresistible bowl of melon. Exactly. Second felt his heart start up again, but he was too far gone. Like dipping a coffee spoon into the ravishing, impossibly cold, crisp yet moist, flesh of green wonderment...
Was he drooling?
"Your hand-towels are twelve thread-count!" Watt came in like a verbal ambush. "Twelve! That is almost one thousand less than I expected of you, of both of you!"
"What needs to be counted twelve times?" Avery asked in a voice like a gush of rushing air.
"No, no, butternut, it's to be counted by a thousand, twelve times, and then taken from a thousand by twelves..." Brunei looked up at Watt's face of injustice. "Isn't it?"
Second laughed. "Better with a twist of lemon!"
Watt closed his eyes and put a finger in between them, on his nose ridge. "I cannot express-"
"Then don't!" called out Second. He stood up, swiping a handful of grapes and thrusting them at Watt in a form of alliance and gallantry.
"Oh," Avery turned, admitting the cloud of boredom to descend once again. "They were talking about our towels, Brunei. We have substandard quality and it terrifies them."
Brunei popped a grape into his mouth and chortled around it. "They have the same fear down at the gates. They worry over underwear stretch and belt shine and how to correctly add cinnamon to pancakes."
Avery laughed. She touched his shoulder. Watt and Second stared. The bunch of grapes lay forgotten by their shoes.
That touch is not sacred! Second thought, aghast. How small her hands are to be able to apply the right amout of pressure, the pressure only a man can make!
How cold the tents must be down at the gates, thought Watt, in a practical and highly motivational take on elemental temperature. There must be all sorts of ways to keep warm. He praised himself for thinking like a weather reporter in this time of stress.
"Why not try the hands of man?!" Second called out desperately at the same time that Watt declared, "Men give off TWICE the amount of body heat compared to a recent study conducted in Poland and revised in America, once over, just try it!"
Brunei asked politely, but with concern and mild apathy just to keep things interesting, "Have you both caught a chill?"
Avery said in a wispy, whispery voice: "It just won't do."
She placed her small hand on the door knob and pulled it open, letting the wind rush in, dash around the room and jostle the pictures on the wall, rattle cups on their saucers and overturn the biscuits so their almonds showed.
Brunei rose slowly. "Avery!" he called.
"Avery!" Second and Watt shouted together.
They stood very still and watched her step gently out into the night.
~
avery
I think of you only,
avery,
won't you come home.
Saturday 5 September 2015
"...A scone with your tea?"
"GOD DAMMIT, CLARENCE! WHY DO YOU INSIST ON NAMING ALL OUR CHILDREN WITH J? That woman and her five children, the absolute DEATH of me..."
"All 'J', hah! You'd know them all by now if you put things back where they belong-"
"Eh?-"
"The SPOONS, Harold, the SPOONS?"
"Spoon? Good-"
"Look at that over there! Just look at this mess. Soup spoons in mixed with the dessert spoons, how I ever manage to find the right one I'll never know..."
"Who's worried about the dishes? This is all to do with your bleeding singing in the shower-"
"Oh! MY singing-"
"That's right-"
"And I suppose you think you're some Saint. Saint Harold, from the church of 'Sorry Your Worship, These Sock Are From Last Friday'-"
"Saturday church service is allowing day old socks!"
"Not Tuesdays."
"THEY'RE ALL DOING IT!"
"AND WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT IT? Since when is Church time your regular? You never."
"I always!"
"The only time I ever saw you in a church was at our wedding, and even then! You were out of there faster than- is that my pie you're eating just now?"
"This? This is-"
"Harold..."
"Hold off, you angry bat, this is from Macy-"
"Next door's Macy?"
"Macy from that house with the green fence-"
"FROM NEXT DOOR! Give me-"
"Quit chasing me!"
"You think my singing is bad, just wait until I add a little SOMETHING into your next meatloaf. Now give it!"
"Poison!"
"GIVE IT!"
"OW, that was my knee you ung-"
"Ow!"
"God send you to hell-"
"Give. me. the.-"
"If I can't eat rhubarb pie in my own KITCHEN, CLARENCE, MY OWN KITCHEN! Where does that leave our marriage?"
"You think I'm going to let you eat HER baked goods?!"
"Better than that hideous dress you made me wear two weeks ago-"
"That was SILK!"
"IT WAS HIDEOUS AND MADE MY THIGHS STICK TOGETHER!"
"Oh, go iron your hair, you little sissy."
"Make me! Oh, forgot, ma'am, I'm eating next door's pie..."
"ARGHHHHHHH!"
"GOOD GOD-"
"OW!"
"PUDDINGTON!"
"MY PIE!"
"...well, technically.., it's Macy-"
"YOU LOUSY MONGREL!"
"Clarence!... Stop!... Can't breathe!... Please, I love you.... I've... always loved you. They meant nothing, all that.... Water. All water under the bridge, eh?..."
"Harold..."
"Yes. Yes... I'm here. Just loosen... the grip..."
"Oh... Oh, Harold. It's... It's just... it's the mats!"
"..."
"So wet, all the time!"
"...Eh?"
"I come out from the shower and there they are, sitting neatly- because I fold them straight away out of the dryer, you know. They don't come with those lines already in- all arranged in a row, and then I STAND ON THEM, with my WET FEET! And they get WET!"
"Clarence, love. Come here."
"Oh Harold!"
"Have you always worn this scented powder?"
"Today's my first try. I only put it on my neck because it says on the packaging it could upset the thinner skinned areas."
"It's a lovely rose scent."
"Isn't it?"
"Mmm."
"Harold? Are you working out again?"
"Quite. I do get a few bench presses in after work most afternoons."
"You can surely tell."
"Can you?"
"Oh, yes, very muscly and strong."
"Good."
"Harold, dear? Will you help me clean up after I blow my nose?"
"Of course, love. Here, I'll set this chair right and you can sit down a while."
"Oh, my knight in shining armour!"
"Well... I can carry ten cans of paint at a time..."
"So strong and handsome! It's a marvel every day!"
"Marvel at yourself, Clarence. The wonder of beauty and elegance that shines upon you is everlasting..."
"Oh! God! Take me here, in the kitchen!"
"Yes! let's..."
"We can have another..."
"Another?"
"Another baby, Harold, oh, thin-"
"Now hold on a minute!"
~
"All 'J', hah! You'd know them all by now if you put things back where they belong-"
"Eh?-"
"The SPOONS, Harold, the SPOONS?"
"Spoon? Good-"
"Look at that over there! Just look at this mess. Soup spoons in mixed with the dessert spoons, how I ever manage to find the right one I'll never know..."
"Who's worried about the dishes? This is all to do with your bleeding singing in the shower-"
"Oh! MY singing-"
"That's right-"
"And I suppose you think you're some Saint. Saint Harold, from the church of 'Sorry Your Worship, These Sock Are From Last Friday'-"
"Saturday church service is allowing day old socks!"
"Not Tuesdays."
"THEY'RE ALL DOING IT!"
"AND WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT IT? Since when is Church time your regular? You never."
"I always!"
"The only time I ever saw you in a church was at our wedding, and even then! You were out of there faster than- is that my pie you're eating just now?"
"This? This is-"
"Harold..."
"Hold off, you angry bat, this is from Macy-"
"Next door's Macy?"
"Macy from that house with the green fence-"
"FROM NEXT DOOR! Give me-"
"Quit chasing me!"
"You think my singing is bad, just wait until I add a little SOMETHING into your next meatloaf. Now give it!"
"Poison!"
"GIVE IT!"
"OW, that was my knee you ung-"
"Ow!"
"God send you to hell-"
"Give. me. the.-"
"If I can't eat rhubarb pie in my own KITCHEN, CLARENCE, MY OWN KITCHEN! Where does that leave our marriage?"
"You think I'm going to let you eat HER baked goods?!"
"Better than that hideous dress you made me wear two weeks ago-"
"That was SILK!"
"IT WAS HIDEOUS AND MADE MY THIGHS STICK TOGETHER!"
"Oh, go iron your hair, you little sissy."
"Make me! Oh, forgot, ma'am, I'm eating next door's pie..."
"ARGHHHHHHH!"
"GOOD GOD-"
"OW!"
"PUDDINGTON!"
"MY PIE!"
"...well, technically.., it's Macy-"
"YOU LOUSY MONGREL!"
"Clarence!... Stop!... Can't breathe!... Please, I love you.... I've... always loved you. They meant nothing, all that.... Water. All water under the bridge, eh?..."
"Harold..."
"Yes. Yes... I'm here. Just loosen... the grip..."
"Oh... Oh, Harold. It's... It's just... it's the mats!"
"..."
"So wet, all the time!"
"...Eh?"
"I come out from the shower and there they are, sitting neatly- because I fold them straight away out of the dryer, you know. They don't come with those lines already in- all arranged in a row, and then I STAND ON THEM, with my WET FEET! And they get WET!"
"Clarence, love. Come here."
"Oh Harold!"
"Have you always worn this scented powder?"
"Today's my first try. I only put it on my neck because it says on the packaging it could upset the thinner skinned areas."
"It's a lovely rose scent."
"Isn't it?"
"Mmm."
"Harold? Are you working out again?"
"Quite. I do get a few bench presses in after work most afternoons."
"You can surely tell."
"Can you?"
"Oh, yes, very muscly and strong."
"Good."
"Harold, dear? Will you help me clean up after I blow my nose?"
"Of course, love. Here, I'll set this chair right and you can sit down a while."
"Oh, my knight in shining armour!"
"Well... I can carry ten cans of paint at a time..."
"So strong and handsome! It's a marvel every day!"
"Marvel at yourself, Clarence. The wonder of beauty and elegance that shines upon you is everlasting..."
"Oh! God! Take me here, in the kitchen!"
"Yes! let's..."
"We can have another..."
"Another?"
"Another baby, Harold, oh, thin-"
"Now hold on a minute!"
~
Thursday 3 September 2015
Which song is on constant repeat?
Maurice sat in his sunny spot on the window sill, sneering. His first thought this morning had been about the peace and quiet he would experience once The Girl left for the day, but alas! She had not left! She had opened the curtains so the sunlight spilled away from his dry, cracked skin and into her room, warming up her dirty carpet and rouge-coloured clogs and pile of dusty papers that had been sitting on her bar-heater since the dawn of time, probably.
Psh!
Then she had bounced around with an ungodly amount of energy, using that white, vibrating square non-stop and dazzling with brightness and sparkles that- in his world- should mean she had some toxic illness preceding death, but here, in this upside down mad world, merely meant she was 'busy making plans for the day ahead'.
Well! Sorry if he didn't believe a word of that! Maurice scratched his eyebrow as he watched The Girl play around with another, larger, silver square. Her attention was admittedly absolute. He narrowed one eye (the eye that could see her), uncomfortable with the act of throwing niceties to undeserving people, even if This Girl would never hear his compliments. Look at her, he grumbled in is head. Look at the way she sits with her legs crossed. Are we in a type of prayer meeting? Does she know her blazer is on backwards?
He focused back on the lump of ceramic shit that commanded his attention most days.
Maurice is a gnome. He went to those YIG meetings and took the flyers in his thick, grasping hand, because he had wanted to know more and his hands always wanted to grasp. He liked to do things. He was industrious. Some days, when he wasn't staring at this monstrous ballsack, he liked to imagine he was really a dwarf who had been kidnapped and forcefully brainwashed into becoming compliant and perfectly-painted. He liked to believe there was an alliance forming, a rescue mission arising, perhaps somewhere in the East as that is where most good things rise.
"We can take the underground railroad! It should be round in twenty," came a voice and Maurice jerked his seeing eye to the activity.
Oh, The Boy is here. Maurice fumed quietly. Now they're going to start that jig again, as if I haven't seen enough bloody Kilts!
"The underground!" retorted The Girl in a dismal voice, "Yeah whatever. I thought they closed that ages ago."
"Closed?" asked The Boy as he wandered up and down the small amount of carpet place available. The Girl sure did know how to keep guests uncomfortable and pacing.
"Went down for repairs, you didn't know? They found a body, half an arm, and no teeth-"
"Wait, no teeth?"
"None."
"Hmm." The Boy stared at the piles of shoes and display-flamingos crammed around the bookcase, as if they would give him some inspiration. Maurice chuckled mildly. "What about ninth?"
The Girl shrugged, "Could do."
"Come on! We can take a gnome and blow it up!"
What now? Maurice blinked. He watched as The Girl looked over her scattered collection of gnomes. He squinted. She didn't look the least bit apprehensive! Hadn't She spent hours upon hours painstakingly painting each and every one of them, only to set them some place high where all they could do was stand and stare? Didn't she know how tiring that was?
"Come on..." wheedled The Boy. Look at Him, all wired up and restless. Maurice glared at His thin, shiny belt. He used to have one exactly the same!
"Yeah, alright," The Girl said, getting into the rhythm. "Let me make a few calls."
"Which one?"
What fucking traitors. Maurice tried to look for each gnome but couldn't due to his position, and he wondered for the thousandth time why She had placed him sideways on this ruddy windowsill, and he cursed Her stupidity, Her spontaneity, Her relaxed opinions and Her constant sleep-talk of magic hats and enchanted pumpkins. For god's sake, didn't She live in the real world at all!?
"Ummm..." The Girl glanced around pleasantly. The Boy glanced also, but in a shifty manner, and Maurice swore He shot a glance his way. "The fucking tards", Maurice muttered aggressively. Pick the pink one! The pink one! All he does is sit and smile and it's fucking LUDICROUS!
She did look up at the gnome with the pink jacket and glittered, yellow hat. Maurice tensed. His seeing eye started to water as he stared as hard and as furious as he could up at The Girl. His other eye gazed unseeing into a wall of red.
For the love of every unholy dick out in the world...
She stood up and Maurice almost yelped. "The monochrome gnome! Take that one."
You fucking cuntstop.
Maurice felt Her cool, thin fingers enclose his head as She picked him up lazily and without respect and handed him over to warmer, longer fingers that gripped his torso. Colours flew around him and he had to admit, he felt a little motion sick.
"The black one!" The Boy exclaimed without originality. "The best one!" claimed The Girl lamely.
They both deserved to rot in the furthest pit of hell, the darkest cave of Hades, the painfulest-
"So ten then?" said The Boy happily, suddenly flipping Maurice about, ignorant of his sensitive digestion issues and eczema patches on both legs.
The world whirled and bounced. His head swam. His mouth was unused to this movement and he, embarrassingly, started to drool but doubt The Boy noticed so he didn't worry. The Girl said something and The Boy stopped flipping long enough for Maurice to catch sight of his lumped-up window-sill companion. How happy and peaceful he looked. Maurice tried to focus between woozy blinks at this real garden gnome with whom he had never spoken to. All those sandwich lunches in the sun, all those bird-watching games seen with one eye, all those midnight conversations under the moon and fits of giggles while listening to The Girl rave on about a potted Geranium losing its spark or her 'Durnham' dying before she could finish reading it more crack stories of madness.
Durnham, thought Maurice as he lay rather comfortably, if a bit stiff, in The Boy's hand. Probably code for obscene sex. He should make an anonymous call and have Her locked up.
"Yeah, he's the worst one... ugh."
Blasphemey! Maurice perked up at the injustice of this conversation. She had painted him entirely black because She was bored of colour. She had the real problem here, not him. She was 'ugh', whatever that was. No doubt more code for how incompetent and utterly obscure She happened to be.
The Boy laughed at something unfunny and walked off. Maurice caught a last glimpse of the marvellous gnome he called lumpy, the gnome who had actual curves and shades, with real features, wrinkled hands, folded boot fabric and a belt with visually genuine buckle holes. The realest garden gnome who sat there smiling but never talked or ate or giggled because his realness didn't extend past his exterior.
Well! Maurice thought, as his world turned and turned so the real and unreal merged together like different flavours of melted ice cream in the same bowl, he may be the realest gnome around, but I am going on an adventure! I am going to see the underground and the body without teeth and the-
He stopped, horrified.
"Come on, then!" called The Boy from a dark area with fluffier carpet and immensely more paper piles than that air-headed female. "Get a move on!"
"Yeah yeah, keep your hair on!"
Maurice was distracted by a book titled: 'How tall is my grass? and Where to put my spare awning?... Household hints you never knew you needed!' and he thought, What the fuck is this shit?
The Girl appeared carrying a large backpack that was outrageously too big for her weak little arms, The Boy bounced on his feet in some form of excitement or mental retardation, and Maurice suddenly remembered Their earlier conversation.
Good lord. These lousy moronic fuckwits are going to blow me up!
[All language and representations are extremely fictional due to the 'voice of Maurice', who is a very angry, cynical gnome and uses verbal profanities as often as a coffee addict would drink finely brewed coffee (which is often, as I happen to be one).] (4__4)v
Psh!
Then she had bounced around with an ungodly amount of energy, using that white, vibrating square non-stop and dazzling with brightness and sparkles that- in his world- should mean she had some toxic illness preceding death, but here, in this upside down mad world, merely meant she was 'busy making plans for the day ahead'.
Well! Sorry if he didn't believe a word of that! Maurice scratched his eyebrow as he watched The Girl play around with another, larger, silver square. Her attention was admittedly absolute. He narrowed one eye (the eye that could see her), uncomfortable with the act of throwing niceties to undeserving people, even if This Girl would never hear his compliments. Look at her, he grumbled in is head. Look at the way she sits with her legs crossed. Are we in a type of prayer meeting? Does she know her blazer is on backwards?
He focused back on the lump of ceramic shit that commanded his attention most days.
Maurice is a gnome. He went to those YIG meetings and took the flyers in his thick, grasping hand, because he had wanted to know more and his hands always wanted to grasp. He liked to do things. He was industrious. Some days, when he wasn't staring at this monstrous ballsack, he liked to imagine he was really a dwarf who had been kidnapped and forcefully brainwashed into becoming compliant and perfectly-painted. He liked to believe there was an alliance forming, a rescue mission arising, perhaps somewhere in the East as that is where most good things rise.
"We can take the underground railroad! It should be round in twenty," came a voice and Maurice jerked his seeing eye to the activity.
Oh, The Boy is here. Maurice fumed quietly. Now they're going to start that jig again, as if I haven't seen enough bloody Kilts!
"The underground!" retorted The Girl in a dismal voice, "Yeah whatever. I thought they closed that ages ago."
"Closed?" asked The Boy as he wandered up and down the small amount of carpet place available. The Girl sure did know how to keep guests uncomfortable and pacing.
"Went down for repairs, you didn't know? They found a body, half an arm, and no teeth-"
"Wait, no teeth?"
"None."
"Hmm." The Boy stared at the piles of shoes and display-flamingos crammed around the bookcase, as if they would give him some inspiration. Maurice chuckled mildly. "What about ninth?"
The Girl shrugged, "Could do."
"Come on! We can take a gnome and blow it up!"
What now? Maurice blinked. He watched as The Girl looked over her scattered collection of gnomes. He squinted. She didn't look the least bit apprehensive! Hadn't She spent hours upon hours painstakingly painting each and every one of them, only to set them some place high where all they could do was stand and stare? Didn't she know how tiring that was?
"Come on..." wheedled The Boy. Look at Him, all wired up and restless. Maurice glared at His thin, shiny belt. He used to have one exactly the same!
"Yeah, alright," The Girl said, getting into the rhythm. "Let me make a few calls."
"Which one?"
What fucking traitors. Maurice tried to look for each gnome but couldn't due to his position, and he wondered for the thousandth time why She had placed him sideways on this ruddy windowsill, and he cursed Her stupidity, Her spontaneity, Her relaxed opinions and Her constant sleep-talk of magic hats and enchanted pumpkins. For god's sake, didn't She live in the real world at all!?
"Ummm..." The Girl glanced around pleasantly. The Boy glanced also, but in a shifty manner, and Maurice swore He shot a glance his way. "The fucking tards", Maurice muttered aggressively. Pick the pink one! The pink one! All he does is sit and smile and it's fucking LUDICROUS!
She did look up at the gnome with the pink jacket and glittered, yellow hat. Maurice tensed. His seeing eye started to water as he stared as hard and as furious as he could up at The Girl. His other eye gazed unseeing into a wall of red.
For the love of every unholy dick out in the world...
She stood up and Maurice almost yelped. "The monochrome gnome! Take that one."
You fucking cuntstop.
Maurice felt Her cool, thin fingers enclose his head as She picked him up lazily and without respect and handed him over to warmer, longer fingers that gripped his torso. Colours flew around him and he had to admit, he felt a little motion sick.
"The black one!" The Boy exclaimed without originality. "The best one!" claimed The Girl lamely.
They both deserved to rot in the furthest pit of hell, the darkest cave of Hades, the painfulest-
"So ten then?" said The Boy happily, suddenly flipping Maurice about, ignorant of his sensitive digestion issues and eczema patches on both legs.
The world whirled and bounced. His head swam. His mouth was unused to this movement and he, embarrassingly, started to drool but doubt The Boy noticed so he didn't worry. The Girl said something and The Boy stopped flipping long enough for Maurice to catch sight of his lumped-up window-sill companion. How happy and peaceful he looked. Maurice tried to focus between woozy blinks at this real garden gnome with whom he had never spoken to. All those sandwich lunches in the sun, all those bird-watching games seen with one eye, all those midnight conversations under the moon and fits of giggles while listening to The Girl rave on about a potted Geranium losing its spark or her 'Durnham' dying before she could finish reading it more crack stories of madness.
Durnham, thought Maurice as he lay rather comfortably, if a bit stiff, in The Boy's hand. Probably code for obscene sex. He should make an anonymous call and have Her locked up.
"Yeah, he's the worst one... ugh."
Blasphemey! Maurice perked up at the injustice of this conversation. She had painted him entirely black because She was bored of colour. She had the real problem here, not him. She was 'ugh', whatever that was. No doubt more code for how incompetent and utterly obscure She happened to be.
The Boy laughed at something unfunny and walked off. Maurice caught a last glimpse of the marvellous gnome he called lumpy, the gnome who had actual curves and shades, with real features, wrinkled hands, folded boot fabric and a belt with visually genuine buckle holes. The realest garden gnome who sat there smiling but never talked or ate or giggled because his realness didn't extend past his exterior.
Well! Maurice thought, as his world turned and turned so the real and unreal merged together like different flavours of melted ice cream in the same bowl, he may be the realest gnome around, but I am going on an adventure! I am going to see the underground and the body without teeth and the-
He stopped, horrified.
"Come on, then!" called The Boy from a dark area with fluffier carpet and immensely more paper piles than that air-headed female. "Get a move on!"
"Yeah yeah, keep your hair on!"
Maurice was distracted by a book titled: 'How tall is my grass? and Where to put my spare awning?... Household hints you never knew you needed!' and he thought, What the fuck is this shit?
The Girl appeared carrying a large backpack that was outrageously too big for her weak little arms, The Boy bounced on his feet in some form of excitement or mental retardation, and Maurice suddenly remembered Their earlier conversation.
Good lord. These lousy moronic fuckwits are going to blow me up!
[All language and representations are extremely fictional due to the 'voice of Maurice', who is a very angry, cynical gnome and uses verbal profanities as often as a coffee addict would drink finely brewed coffee (which is often, as I happen to be one).] (4__4)v
Tuesday 4 August 2015
Have we been eating these all night?
An evil glint sparkled in Topiary's eye as he watched Mazarin hold up a large piece of glass.
"You could sell that," he remarked casually, kicking a piece of yellow lego. It rolled over the carpet and under a thin-legged table made of splintering, soft wood.
"Maybe," Mazarin nodded. She held it up over her eye and peered at him. "Hello."
He said, "Will you keep it in the key drawer, then?"
Mazarin huffed in such extravagance that her arms swung down and Topiary leaned forwards, horrified with his arms outstretched, ready to leap if it should come to that, and she said in a ringing voice, "Not everything has to go into the key drawer, Topiary!"
"Where else would it go?!"
"Oh you're so mortified about every little thing!" her arms swung back and forth. The fingers of her right hand gripped the glass tightly so little patches of yellow formed on the tips. Topiary watched in alarm. "You're cutting off your circulation! Here-"
He lunged forwards.
"Hey! Fuck off!" Mazarin jumped back. His eyes were ginormous. Had they been that way this morning when she'd met him in the kitchen, half-dressed in a pair of tweed trousers and a daisy patterned dressing gown??
"You're going to sleep with it!" he yelled in frustration.
"Hah!" she flung her arms out in triumph. "Maybe I will!" And she jumped back again as he took a swipe.
"I'm over the line now buddy! Surrender and bow!"
Topiary looked down at the connection line that separated the thin, light blue living room carpet from the fluffy cream-coloured sitting room carpet. In all of Topiary's life he had never known why a house should have two rooms for the same purpose. One room to sit and read the paper by a light fire, maybe with a fan in case he grew too hot and a small bookshelf to set up his typewriter on, should be all anyone needed.
Although, now that Topiary thought about it, perhaps two rooms had merit. Why not write in one and read in the other? Keep the two activities entirely separate. All that confusion! So many muddling occurrences jumbling together that should be laid out neatly and smoothed over. How does one achieve anything with all that mess! No, here was an idea that could shake it all up, spill it all over and sort it all out. Separate rooms! Two different arm-chairs, two different types of lamp, two sets of wall painted in different shades of white (is there even such a thing? he thought, gasping). Two types of alcoholic beverage, two frog figurines with only one arm, maybe even two pairs of slippers! He'd match them to the carpet! Why, even two sets of his hair piece. He could change them every day and say goodbye to his current pastime of wringing out the sweat to pacify the itching!
"Mazarin..." he said slowly, as if mulling an idea over in his head or trying to remember something important.
"Surrender, buck face!"
She probably meant 'fuck face' but he couldn't be sure that two pairs of everything wouldn't flame his soul into further creative ambition. Were two rooms enough?
"Topiary, yoohoo! Let's get some pasta from Vincent."
"Mazarin!" he said suddenly, looking up with a stricken expression that usually precedes news of a terrifying nature.
Mazarin shouted something incoherent, lunging back awkwardly and, once again, flinging her arms out in surprise. The piece of glass sailed through the sitting room and smashed through the window as Topiary called out in horror: "I haven't got two hair pieces!"
~
god I'm gonna miss you when you... s m i l e
"You could sell that," he remarked casually, kicking a piece of yellow lego. It rolled over the carpet and under a thin-legged table made of splintering, soft wood.
"Maybe," Mazarin nodded. She held it up over her eye and peered at him. "Hello."
He said, "Will you keep it in the key drawer, then?"
Mazarin huffed in such extravagance that her arms swung down and Topiary leaned forwards, horrified with his arms outstretched, ready to leap if it should come to that, and she said in a ringing voice, "Not everything has to go into the key drawer, Topiary!"
"Where else would it go?!"
"Oh you're so mortified about every little thing!" her arms swung back and forth. The fingers of her right hand gripped the glass tightly so little patches of yellow formed on the tips. Topiary watched in alarm. "You're cutting off your circulation! Here-"
He lunged forwards.
"Hey! Fuck off!" Mazarin jumped back. His eyes were ginormous. Had they been that way this morning when she'd met him in the kitchen, half-dressed in a pair of tweed trousers and a daisy patterned dressing gown??
"You're going to sleep with it!" he yelled in frustration.
"Hah!" she flung her arms out in triumph. "Maybe I will!" And she jumped back again as he took a swipe.
"I'm over the line now buddy! Surrender and bow!"
Topiary looked down at the connection line that separated the thin, light blue living room carpet from the fluffy cream-coloured sitting room carpet. In all of Topiary's life he had never known why a house should have two rooms for the same purpose. One room to sit and read the paper by a light fire, maybe with a fan in case he grew too hot and a small bookshelf to set up his typewriter on, should be all anyone needed.
Although, now that Topiary thought about it, perhaps two rooms had merit. Why not write in one and read in the other? Keep the two activities entirely separate. All that confusion! So many muddling occurrences jumbling together that should be laid out neatly and smoothed over. How does one achieve anything with all that mess! No, here was an idea that could shake it all up, spill it all over and sort it all out. Separate rooms! Two different arm-chairs, two different types of lamp, two sets of wall painted in different shades of white (is there even such a thing? he thought, gasping). Two types of alcoholic beverage, two frog figurines with only one arm, maybe even two pairs of slippers! He'd match them to the carpet! Why, even two sets of his hair piece. He could change them every day and say goodbye to his current pastime of wringing out the sweat to pacify the itching!
"Mazarin..." he said slowly, as if mulling an idea over in his head or trying to remember something important.
"Surrender, buck face!"
She probably meant 'fuck face' but he couldn't be sure that two pairs of everything wouldn't flame his soul into further creative ambition. Were two rooms enough?
"Topiary, yoohoo! Let's get some pasta from Vincent."
"Mazarin!" he said suddenly, looking up with a stricken expression that usually precedes news of a terrifying nature.
Mazarin shouted something incoherent, lunging back awkwardly and, once again, flinging her arms out in surprise. The piece of glass sailed through the sitting room and smashed through the window as Topiary called out in horror: "I haven't got two hair pieces!"
~
god I'm gonna miss you when you... s m i l e
Tuesday 21 July 2015
Should you be looking that close?
I burst forth into speech much like a balloon bursts when popped. "You know what life does? You know what it is, with all it's rushing and sharp corners, and tight pants, I mean, come on! It's enough! We know you can buckle. And all the little odd bits that sit around the place without fitting into anything. Like, say you suddenly laugh while waiting in line at the shops. There's no reason to laugh, but you do, well where does that go? Where does that fit? That shot of giggles? That-"
"Oh yes, please do," he spits out with a severe frown that sits neatly inside a frame of dark, chalky brown hair combed back into a hard quiff. "Tell us all about life and the happenings."
"It's all in the bits. You don't need string! Throw it away!" I grab his tea cup and toss it over my shoulder.
"I- I- wh- I beg your pardon!"
"Yes," I ponder, looking at a brown smudge on the white tablecloth, "We have to stop attending tea parties."
"That was my favourite cup!" he bangs a fist on the table.
"That old raspberry pink thing? With the flowers?" I look up to find him glaring at me, positively burning his gaze into my head, as if he were trying to memorize every hair follicle on my head. I can feel myself blushing. "How very sweet of you, Gordoune, I mean, I cannot even say, but you'll be there for hours, hours-"
"You see here, young lady..."
I stare at him, obviously shocked at this unplanned outrage.
"I've had that teacup since I was ELEVEN!"
"Goosedrouse..." I say quietly, tilting my head at the other seats around the table, "...keep the tone mild, like a korma curry, yeah?"
He glares.
"The guests..."
"GENERATIONS have I had that cup! Haven't I? Since the Mildred's took over- no, it was the Perthreds... was it?"
"Certainly was," I agree. He stares off into the distance, still frowning, still sleek and short and somewhat pale. I pick up the teapot. It's not heavy like it should be so I put it back down.
"Ummm, Germinter, you didn't bring any tea biscuits with you? Did you? From the Foodit? The ones with the cream filling?" (I do like a center filled with cream).
There is a millisecond in which he stands as still as a statue, up on the chair- because of his height shortage- his hair and features frozen like an ice sculpture.
"Or chocolate?" I try desperately.
Then a light breeze drifts through our table of fun times and he sags as only a short, sleek, well-angered specimen can. "There is no sweet things now. The way of the world surely is a fierce maze of debacle, of calamity!"
I snort, "Debacle! Oh, Gingerferzen! You are one hilarious little person."
He turns to me and points a round finger, and I think: Me? He's pointing his little finger at me, for what? Organizing the flowers in spectacular bouquets of orange and lime? Then I think: Does he sand his fingers back each night, to keep them looking so short and stubby and perfectly round?
"YOU!" he hisses. I feel his spit and a slight curiosity to know where this is going. (I do love a good mystery solved).
"Yes," I reply pleasantly.
"You prance about here as if you know everything! Yo-"
"Ho now! I do not prance about-"
"You lift!" he continues, ignoring my plea for innocence. "You chartle and churtle and chuck things over your shoulder!"
"It's true," I acknowledge, "I do."
"Always your LEFT shoulder! As if that has some sort of meaning or power! Is it magical? Can you say without unleashing a hideous throng of infesting creatures?!"
"I feel kind of attacked."
"SO YOU SHOULD!" he quivers in his silky cream button up shirt and suspenders.
I put my hands behind my head and rock gently on my chair. So far this tale has been nothing but secrets and lies. Where is the scandalous revelations? "I think you are slowing down, old man."
"Cerri!"
Could you tell a scandal if one came upon you? Or would you simply fall into it, unaware, not wanting to see but unable to look away?
"Come on then, Glorpsle, tell us the juicy pickings!"
"Cerri!"
He's still again. Staring off behind me with glassy eyes and a shiny complexion. Is that a white spot on his cheek?
I feel unappreciated. He could at least give me praise where praise is due, preferably to recognise the sneaky theft tactic I learned, and used, so we could have cups and saucers!
"Well aren't you a boring old, lame, pompish old, nutjob gn-"
"Cerri!"
Someone bursts into my life from the left.
"There you are!"
I gaze over at the boy. He's panting a little, as if he's been running, and he's covered in dirt.
"Hello there, are you here to join my tea-party?" I spread my arms out wide to show him exactly what he could be missing out on.
"Cerri, good god. I've been looking everywhere," he takes a few short breaths and comes closer. As he walks into the light, I notice his sparkly dark eyes, only they're not sparkly at the moment and I wonder why I thought they were. Oh.
"Jasper!" I call, even though he's only a chair-length away. "What a surprise!"
"Yes, hi there." He pulls the chair closer to him and sits down, looking around at the single flowers sitting in fat glass jars on every chair and the garden gnome standing straight and proud in the middle of the table.
"Garbensnouff was just telling me about his family heritage," I nod wisely at him, "I think maybe something about his aunt Miffen stealing his grandfather's tiara, or something else worthy of being unjust."
Jasper sighs. I observe him again and straighten my posture because he looks tired and sad and a tad too tall for his jacket. "I'm sorry I didn't invite you. But I'm wearing my best dress because I thought you might show up anyway, and so that's the same as inviting you, so you should be grateful, and show that gratitude by handing out creamy biscuits," I cringe, eyeing the teapot. "And find some water. I didn't have a way into the kitchen."
"It looks great," he says. I smile. "But I think it's time to go. You kn-"
"No! Oh, let's stay a little while. We don't have to have tea, there's tap water over there, I mean, it's tap water, from a hose, but it won't kill you, although if you have your heart set o-"
"Ok!" Jasper raises his hands, and I feel a little unjust myself. People have killed each other to attend this party and he's sitting there acting like I'm reading him a lifespan blog of toenails.
"This is an exclusive party," I say harshly, turning away to grab a nearby teacup. "Only people of interest, worth, and the appropriate proportions are allowed to enter."
There's silence while I think up how I'm going to get out of pretending to pour tea, and then Jasper says with forced calm, "I'm sorry Cerri. I just didn't know where you were and I was worried."
"Pish!" I remark, waving to Goutstop, who is basking in the sun, probably hoping to tan over that hideous white patch on his cheek. "I've had company! The best! Now, pass me that teacup over there."
I throw it over my shoulder. He gives me another one and I throw that too. We throw the teacups behind us, like bad dreams, yelling and laughing and ignoring the scandalous cries of the guests and poor old Gwintsman-Gawd, and I think: These are the odd bits that life is made up of, and they fit right here.
"Oh yes, please do," he spits out with a severe frown that sits neatly inside a frame of dark, chalky brown hair combed back into a hard quiff. "Tell us all about life and the happenings."
"It's all in the bits. You don't need string! Throw it away!" I grab his tea cup and toss it over my shoulder.
"I- I- wh- I beg your pardon!"
"Yes," I ponder, looking at a brown smudge on the white tablecloth, "We have to stop attending tea parties."
"That was my favourite cup!" he bangs a fist on the table.
"That old raspberry pink thing? With the flowers?" I look up to find him glaring at me, positively burning his gaze into my head, as if he were trying to memorize every hair follicle on my head. I can feel myself blushing. "How very sweet of you, Gordoune, I mean, I cannot even say, but you'll be there for hours, hours-"
"You see here, young lady..."
I stare at him, obviously shocked at this unplanned outrage.
"I've had that teacup since I was ELEVEN!"
"Goosedrouse..." I say quietly, tilting my head at the other seats around the table, "...keep the tone mild, like a korma curry, yeah?"
He glares.
"The guests..."
"GENERATIONS have I had that cup! Haven't I? Since the Mildred's took over- no, it was the Perthreds... was it?"
"Certainly was," I agree. He stares off into the distance, still frowning, still sleek and short and somewhat pale. I pick up the teapot. It's not heavy like it should be so I put it back down.
"Ummm, Germinter, you didn't bring any tea biscuits with you? Did you? From the Foodit? The ones with the cream filling?" (I do like a center filled with cream).
There is a millisecond in which he stands as still as a statue, up on the chair- because of his height shortage- his hair and features frozen like an ice sculpture.
"Or chocolate?" I try desperately.
Then a light breeze drifts through our table of fun times and he sags as only a short, sleek, well-angered specimen can. "There is no sweet things now. The way of the world surely is a fierce maze of debacle, of calamity!"
I snort, "Debacle! Oh, Gingerferzen! You are one hilarious little person."
He turns to me and points a round finger, and I think: Me? He's pointing his little finger at me, for what? Organizing the flowers in spectacular bouquets of orange and lime? Then I think: Does he sand his fingers back each night, to keep them looking so short and stubby and perfectly round?
"YOU!" he hisses. I feel his spit and a slight curiosity to know where this is going. (I do love a good mystery solved).
"Yes," I reply pleasantly.
"You prance about here as if you know everything! Yo-"
"Ho now! I do not prance about-"
"You lift!" he continues, ignoring my plea for innocence. "You chartle and churtle and chuck things over your shoulder!"
"It's true," I acknowledge, "I do."
"Always your LEFT shoulder! As if that has some sort of meaning or power! Is it magical? Can you say without unleashing a hideous throng of infesting creatures?!"
"I feel kind of attacked."
"SO YOU SHOULD!" he quivers in his silky cream button up shirt and suspenders.
I put my hands behind my head and rock gently on my chair. So far this tale has been nothing but secrets and lies. Where is the scandalous revelations? "I think you are slowing down, old man."
"Cerri!"
Could you tell a scandal if one came upon you? Or would you simply fall into it, unaware, not wanting to see but unable to look away?
"Come on then, Glorpsle, tell us the juicy pickings!"
"Cerri!"
He's still again. Staring off behind me with glassy eyes and a shiny complexion. Is that a white spot on his cheek?
I feel unappreciated. He could at least give me praise where praise is due, preferably to recognise the sneaky theft tactic I learned, and used, so we could have cups and saucers!
"Well aren't you a boring old, lame, pompish old, nutjob gn-"
"Cerri!"
Someone bursts into my life from the left.
"There you are!"
I gaze over at the boy. He's panting a little, as if he's been running, and he's covered in dirt.
"Hello there, are you here to join my tea-party?" I spread my arms out wide to show him exactly what he could be missing out on.
"Cerri, good god. I've been looking everywhere," he takes a few short breaths and comes closer. As he walks into the light, I notice his sparkly dark eyes, only they're not sparkly at the moment and I wonder why I thought they were. Oh.
"Jasper!" I call, even though he's only a chair-length away. "What a surprise!"
"Yes, hi there." He pulls the chair closer to him and sits down, looking around at the single flowers sitting in fat glass jars on every chair and the garden gnome standing straight and proud in the middle of the table.
"Garbensnouff was just telling me about his family heritage," I nod wisely at him, "I think maybe something about his aunt Miffen stealing his grandfather's tiara, or something else worthy of being unjust."
Jasper sighs. I observe him again and straighten my posture because he looks tired and sad and a tad too tall for his jacket. "I'm sorry I didn't invite you. But I'm wearing my best dress because I thought you might show up anyway, and so that's the same as inviting you, so you should be grateful, and show that gratitude by handing out creamy biscuits," I cringe, eyeing the teapot. "And find some water. I didn't have a way into the kitchen."
"It looks great," he says. I smile. "But I think it's time to go. You kn-"
"No! Oh, let's stay a little while. We don't have to have tea, there's tap water over there, I mean, it's tap water, from a hose, but it won't kill you, although if you have your heart set o-"
"Ok!" Jasper raises his hands, and I feel a little unjust myself. People have killed each other to attend this party and he's sitting there acting like I'm reading him a lifespan blog of toenails.
"This is an exclusive party," I say harshly, turning away to grab a nearby teacup. "Only people of interest, worth, and the appropriate proportions are allowed to enter."
There's silence while I think up how I'm going to get out of pretending to pour tea, and then Jasper says with forced calm, "I'm sorry Cerri. I just didn't know where you were and I was worried."
"Pish!" I remark, waving to Goutstop, who is basking in the sun, probably hoping to tan over that hideous white patch on his cheek. "I've had company! The best! Now, pass me that teacup over there."
I throw it over my shoulder. He gives me another one and I throw that too. We throw the teacups behind us, like bad dreams, yelling and laughing and ignoring the scandalous cries of the guests and poor old Gwintsman-Gawd, and I think: These are the odd bits that life is made up of, and they fit right here.
Thursday 9 July 2015
Are you looking closely?
"Yes!" cried Emmerine, "It is confusing. But you will get there, Aradius, you will get there."
"Is that a mocking tone?" Aradius called out, huffing after her in a mild sweat.
"Well it isn't not a mocking tone, so who's to say?" Emmerine shrugged, facing forward, her long legs striding fast and elegant in the sand, and if Aradius hadn't been sweating out his toxins and heaving great mouthfuls of oxygen just to stay alive, he might have stopped to admire this walk.
He ignored her insulting comments and called out, "I agree with you!- oh, wait, oh please, Emmerine!" and he stopped suddenly, heaving like he had never heaved before.
Emmerine glanced over her shoulder (she was a head taller than him) and rolled her eyes.
"Oh, Aradius. You are so frail and wonton."
Aradius frowned, "Wonton? Are you admiring me?"
"It's a human word, yes?" Emmerine swayed her hips and her long silk skirt swayed with them.
"I am not frail just because I can't keep up with you!" he cried out in anguish and with hurt feelings and a sore head, as he was bald up top and not wearing a hat. The sun was extremely vivid today. "I am not frail at all, I am large and in charge!"
Emmerine smiled, "You are actually large. I have just realised."
Aradius was not large, nor was he 'in charge'. He was thin and small and his head had sported thick, shiny, floppy dark hair before this little trip. He eyed Emmerine's teal-coloured hair falling down her back to her hips, and felt a mad urge to run her down. It was probably all that swaying. (Perhaps it made him a tad sea-sick).
"Anyhow, Aradius, we must move. The sun is wilting my good vibes."
"Yes," Aradius nodded, hands on his knees. He took a few deep breaths, straightened up and started walking alongside Emmerine, sneaking a glance every now and then at her hair. Was that wilting, too? Could he possibly help it along on its wilting way?
"So, EmmieLine, I have a suggestion. A sort of fanciful fun-time activity we could take part in."
There was no pause or slow in Emmerine's stride as he talked. Aradius felt unheard and unappreciated. "I'm thinking, a sort of PARTY GAME!" He tried again.
"Why are you yelling?" Emmerine asked as they came to a wide stairway of stone steps set deep into the sandy bank. They started climbing up.
"Oh!" Aradius attempted to laugh in a carefree, accidental way. "Was I- OW!"
"Yes," Emmerine remarked grimly, "the contrast is not alluring to me at all. Neither is it pleasant. Let's hurry."
They were both halfway up the steps when Aradius screamed. Emmerine jerked to the side as if an invisible ghost had pushed past her.
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "What is it!"
"I do not know!" Aradius cried out in reply, hopping from foot to foot as he leaped up the steps.
Emmerine copied him. "It is painful! And it's getting worse!"
"IT IS!"
"Is this normal for humans?!"
"I CANNOT SAY!"
"HURRY!"
And together they hopped, pranced, and twirled up the scorching hot steps and raced straight onto a patch of grass that framed the road.
"Oh the grass is cool!" Aradius moaned. He closed his eyes.
"We're babies," Emmerine scowled at the yellow and purple flowers around them. "We are not one with the elements. Aradius, this has to change."
"Can it wait until my feet stop steaming?"
Emmerine said, "No," in a forceful way that was encouraged by her aggressive stomping on the grass. Aradius thought this trip was most uncomfortable and made up his mind, right here, with his feet cooling and his head burning, that he would never do this again.
"We must take up action against this attack!" Emmerine was saying, "What was that party game? Quick! We have to beat this!"
"Don't bother with that! It was a l-" but Emmerine took hold of Aradius's emerald vest and was shaking him with such extravagance that he thought the gold buttons would fly off.
"Hold up!" he yelled with a voice full of anxiety, "these buttons are capital elegance. They are ELEGANCE!"
"Tell me the fun-fi-"
"I ONLY HAVE FOUR LEFT!" Aradius pulled himself away, tripped on the rocks and steadied himself against a wooden railing, and he turned to glare at Emmerine. This outing had changed her. "It is not my doing if your hair is losing it's shade and your leg-scales are falling off!"
"You have a whole cupboard full of vests!"
Aradius blushed because it was true; he did have a substantial amount of vests, all in emerald green and purple and teal blue.
Emmerine waved her hand and seemed to compose herself. "Ok. Yes, my scales are leaving." She lifted up her skirt, stretched out one leg and they both looked. Translucent, silvery scales the size of a fingernail were scattered up and down her legs from her hips to her toes, like a full-length, ripped-up stocking.
"I'm sorry," said Aradius solemnly.
"Thank you."
They admired the sparklyness of the scales. Aradius tried to stick a fallen one back on using his spit and Emmerine shrieked about hygiene and the process of reattachment and the red patch coming up on his scalp. Then they stopped and stared about.
"Have you noticed any sound at all, Aradius?" Emmerine questioned, looking up and down the street.
"I haven't. Aren't the birds supposed to sing and the people supposed to shout at one another?"
Emmerine said, "Yes. The singing. But, more so, the cars are not moving and there are no people." They looked at the three cars standing still in the road. The doors had been left wide open, exposing towels and bags and baby capsules. All the houses and shops along the street, they observed, were also quiet, dark and seemed eerily empty, as if everyone had decided to get up and leave at the same time.
"Well, how boring is this!" Aradius exclaimed. "A trip to where the Air Dwellers roam, and they are not roaming, or dwelling, or running naked with ice cream!"
"It is frightful."
"It's disagreeable," Aradius corrected, eyeing the small, square toilet building to their left. Then he said, "EmmieLine, could we go somewhere without the sun? Just for a change, you know... heat and skin, heads without hair, such a bother..."
Emmerine turned to Aradius in excitement, unaware that a few scales detached themselves from her legs. "This is the adventure! We will find them!"
"Do you feel so?" asked Aradius as he inched closer to the toilet block.
"Don't you think we'd know if all the humans suddenly disappeared?"
"I probably feel that."
Emmerine nodded furiously and looked out at the ocean. "So we help," she murmured. Aradius thought she looked quite up-herself standing at the wooden railing, staring like a Sea King, muttering about saving the world and flipping her long, thick hair. Thank god she didn't have a trident, he thought to himself. She would have probably raised it in some gesture, and then a bolt of lighting would have no doubt come flashing down from some enchanted cloud to touch the trident tip and cause a scene. He pushed open the closest toilet door and positively slid down the wall in a slow form of gratitude.
"Oh this feels... I'm not sure... not sure if I ever have... but the feel..."
Emmerine appeared at the doorway clad in a shadow of determination. "This isn't time to feel! It's time to fight! First! We get an ice cream. That it where the fun-filled times are. Then!... Well...," she paused and looked down, so her shadowed head seemed to shrink and make Aradius squint, which hurt his eyes and forehead and peeling scalp. "...I hadn't got that far. Maybe we will watch a movie, as that is also where the times are at. But after! We will find the humans!"
Aradius said, "I hear butterscotch ice cream is a flavour to be had."
Emmerine said, "I think you are so wrong you may be going backwards," and two little silvery scales fell from her thigh, catching the sunlight and glittering in a determined sort of fashion as they drifted away.
"Is that a mocking tone?" Aradius called out, huffing after her in a mild sweat.
"Well it isn't not a mocking tone, so who's to say?" Emmerine shrugged, facing forward, her long legs striding fast and elegant in the sand, and if Aradius hadn't been sweating out his toxins and heaving great mouthfuls of oxygen just to stay alive, he might have stopped to admire this walk.
He ignored her insulting comments and called out, "I agree with you!- oh, wait, oh please, Emmerine!" and he stopped suddenly, heaving like he had never heaved before.
Emmerine glanced over her shoulder (she was a head taller than him) and rolled her eyes.
"Oh, Aradius. You are so frail and wonton."
Aradius frowned, "Wonton? Are you admiring me?"
"It's a human word, yes?" Emmerine swayed her hips and her long silk skirt swayed with them.
"I am not frail just because I can't keep up with you!" he cried out in anguish and with hurt feelings and a sore head, as he was bald up top and not wearing a hat. The sun was extremely vivid today. "I am not frail at all, I am large and in charge!"
Emmerine smiled, "You are actually large. I have just realised."
Aradius was not large, nor was he 'in charge'. He was thin and small and his head had sported thick, shiny, floppy dark hair before this little trip. He eyed Emmerine's teal-coloured hair falling down her back to her hips, and felt a mad urge to run her down. It was probably all that swaying. (Perhaps it made him a tad sea-sick).
"Anyhow, Aradius, we must move. The sun is wilting my good vibes."
"Yes," Aradius nodded, hands on his knees. He took a few deep breaths, straightened up and started walking alongside Emmerine, sneaking a glance every now and then at her hair. Was that wilting, too? Could he possibly help it along on its wilting way?
"So, EmmieLine, I have a suggestion. A sort of fanciful fun-time activity we could take part in."
There was no pause or slow in Emmerine's stride as he talked. Aradius felt unheard and unappreciated. "I'm thinking, a sort of PARTY GAME!" He tried again.
"Why are you yelling?" Emmerine asked as they came to a wide stairway of stone steps set deep into the sandy bank. They started climbing up.
"Oh!" Aradius attempted to laugh in a carefree, accidental way. "Was I- OW!"
"Yes," Emmerine remarked grimly, "the contrast is not alluring to me at all. Neither is it pleasant. Let's hurry."
They were both halfway up the steps when Aradius screamed. Emmerine jerked to the side as if an invisible ghost had pushed past her.
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "What is it!"
"I do not know!" Aradius cried out in reply, hopping from foot to foot as he leaped up the steps.
Emmerine copied him. "It is painful! And it's getting worse!"
"IT IS!"
"Is this normal for humans?!"
"I CANNOT SAY!"
"HURRY!"
And together they hopped, pranced, and twirled up the scorching hot steps and raced straight onto a patch of grass that framed the road.
"Oh the grass is cool!" Aradius moaned. He closed his eyes.
"We're babies," Emmerine scowled at the yellow and purple flowers around them. "We are not one with the elements. Aradius, this has to change."
"Can it wait until my feet stop steaming?"
Emmerine said, "No," in a forceful way that was encouraged by her aggressive stomping on the grass. Aradius thought this trip was most uncomfortable and made up his mind, right here, with his feet cooling and his head burning, that he would never do this again.
"We must take up action against this attack!" Emmerine was saying, "What was that party game? Quick! We have to beat this!"
"Don't bother with that! It was a l-" but Emmerine took hold of Aradius's emerald vest and was shaking him with such extravagance that he thought the gold buttons would fly off.
"Hold up!" he yelled with a voice full of anxiety, "these buttons are capital elegance. They are ELEGANCE!"
"Tell me the fun-fi-"
"I ONLY HAVE FOUR LEFT!" Aradius pulled himself away, tripped on the rocks and steadied himself against a wooden railing, and he turned to glare at Emmerine. This outing had changed her. "It is not my doing if your hair is losing it's shade and your leg-scales are falling off!"
"You have a whole cupboard full of vests!"
Aradius blushed because it was true; he did have a substantial amount of vests, all in emerald green and purple and teal blue.
Emmerine waved her hand and seemed to compose herself. "Ok. Yes, my scales are leaving." She lifted up her skirt, stretched out one leg and they both looked. Translucent, silvery scales the size of a fingernail were scattered up and down her legs from her hips to her toes, like a full-length, ripped-up stocking.
"I'm sorry," said Aradius solemnly.
"Thank you."
They admired the sparklyness of the scales. Aradius tried to stick a fallen one back on using his spit and Emmerine shrieked about hygiene and the process of reattachment and the red patch coming up on his scalp. Then they stopped and stared about.
"Have you noticed any sound at all, Aradius?" Emmerine questioned, looking up and down the street.
"I haven't. Aren't the birds supposed to sing and the people supposed to shout at one another?"
Emmerine said, "Yes. The singing. But, more so, the cars are not moving and there are no people." They looked at the three cars standing still in the road. The doors had been left wide open, exposing towels and bags and baby capsules. All the houses and shops along the street, they observed, were also quiet, dark and seemed eerily empty, as if everyone had decided to get up and leave at the same time.
"Well, how boring is this!" Aradius exclaimed. "A trip to where the Air Dwellers roam, and they are not roaming, or dwelling, or running naked with ice cream!"
"It is frightful."
"It's disagreeable," Aradius corrected, eyeing the small, square toilet building to their left. Then he said, "EmmieLine, could we go somewhere without the sun? Just for a change, you know... heat and skin, heads without hair, such a bother..."
Emmerine turned to Aradius in excitement, unaware that a few scales detached themselves from her legs. "This is the adventure! We will find them!"
"Do you feel so?" asked Aradius as he inched closer to the toilet block.
"Don't you think we'd know if all the humans suddenly disappeared?"
"I probably feel that."
Emmerine nodded furiously and looked out at the ocean. "So we help," she murmured. Aradius thought she looked quite up-herself standing at the wooden railing, staring like a Sea King, muttering about saving the world and flipping her long, thick hair. Thank god she didn't have a trident, he thought to himself. She would have probably raised it in some gesture, and then a bolt of lighting would have no doubt come flashing down from some enchanted cloud to touch the trident tip and cause a scene. He pushed open the closest toilet door and positively slid down the wall in a slow form of gratitude.
"Oh this feels... I'm not sure... not sure if I ever have... but the feel..."
Emmerine appeared at the doorway clad in a shadow of determination. "This isn't time to feel! It's time to fight! First! We get an ice cream. That it where the fun-filled times are. Then!... Well...," she paused and looked down, so her shadowed head seemed to shrink and make Aradius squint, which hurt his eyes and forehead and peeling scalp. "...I hadn't got that far. Maybe we will watch a movie, as that is also where the times are at. But after! We will find the humans!"
Aradius said, "I hear butterscotch ice cream is a flavour to be had."
Emmerine said, "I think you are so wrong you may be going backwards," and two little silvery scales fell from her thigh, catching the sunlight and glittering in a determined sort of fashion as they drifted away.
Sunday 5 July 2015
Can I show you something?
When the world went dark, I was sitting with my mother. The TV switched off, the lights flickered and died at the same time something crashed upstairs and there was a sound of cars squealing and smashing outside.
"Well," said my mother. She walked over to the window, pulled back the curtain and peered out. Her long red hair fell in front of her face. She looked luminescent in the moonlight, like an angel, or a really tall, human-shaped lamp wearing a dress.
I continued eating crunchy chocolate cereal even though I couldn't see my spoon. This was kind of hard, but the cereal was amazing so I pressed on.
"Everything's stopped," mother said.
"What do you mean 'everything'?"
"It's just..."
I watched as she tucked some hair behind her ear.
"It's all stopped," she continued, "all the cars and lights and that sign up on the Telstra building, the Ezeglow? That's stopped, too."
I chewed, thinking: what Ezeglow sign? "Oh."
Mother tilted her head a little as she murmured, "It's almost exactly like heartbreak."
The spoon hit my top lip as I said, "Heartbreak?"
"Yes," she breathed, the sureness in her voice mingling with wonder. "It is! Just, oh just like-"
"Mum, it's just a power failure."
"No Marhinad! It's heartbreak. The world is heartbroken, I'm sure." she turned then and gazed at me, not seeing, with tears shining in her eyes. "Mari..."
Jesus. I put the cereal bowl on the floor and went over to join her. Everything had stopped. Cars stood in the street either whole and alone or crumpled in pairs or groups. People were walking or running or huddled on the ground or talking into phones and gesturing wildly around them. The apartment building opposite us stood and stared blankly, all the windows black as if it had gone to sleep. Shops and street lights and traffic lights and road markers were all dark.
And there was the Ezeglow sign. I squinted a few blocks over at the gigantic, dark pink and probably overpriced letters sitting on top of Telstra. No one even knew what it meant.
"Huh," I said, a little impressed. "Why are the phones working when the cars have stopped?"
"Hmm?" Mother waved my words away, "It's the apocalypse Mari! Good god!"
She started moving wildly about the room, picking up papers, and throwing those papers away, and grabbing books only to set them down somewhere else, and moving cushions and taking down ornaments from the bookcase just to set them on the coffee table, all the while muttering a string of words in Polish.
"Mum!" I called, "I can't understand you, stop talking like that."
She ignored me.
I looked back out the window. It was all industrial and dirty. Why had I never realised how ugly this part of the city was? The silence made everything seem hard. Cold. Like after an argument when you've crossed your arms and shut down.
So maybe it was like heartbreak.
"Mum!" I said, "STOP TALKING IN POLISH!"
"Marhinad!" she said loudly from the kitchen, "Help me with this!"
She was pulling things out of the fridge and dumping them on the floor.
"Do you think they can read minds? They have technology for these events, they have microchips and cameras, oh god the mirror!" and she ran past me down the hall and into the bathroom, yelling, "GET THE WRENCH FROM THE CAR! IS IT A WRENCH? THAT THING WE USE WHEN THE DOOR WON'T OPEN?"
I stared at the soup cans rolling along the floor and sighed. "YES BUT IT'S NOT MEANT FOR OPENING DOORS."
"WHAT DOES THAT MATTER? JUST GET IT."
There was another crashing sound. I started picking up the cans. "MUM! FOR FUCKS SAKE, STOP WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING AND SIT DOWN."
Only my mother could make a simple power failure into some global crisis. There was a a thumping sound, some loud and angry Polish words again, and the slam of the back door. Oh great, I thought, stacking creamy pumpkin on top of garden vegetable, she's getting that stupid wrench.
I wondered if she was even strong enough to pry off the mirror or if she'd somehow bribe the man next door.
I started the redundant process of taking all the food from the fridge and arranging it neatly in plastic bags on the kitchen table, thinking about Lucky Rainbows and all the half-cooked food now stuck in microwaves. I thought about Jase as I put all the books back onto their shelves and wondered if I should ask him what he was doing when the power failure hit.
Making a burrito, he texted.
Seconds left?
two minutes.
What?
I dunno i just read the packet. u?
Eating cereal. Mum thinks the world is ending. Did you know she can speak Polish?
Weird why cereal? it's 800.
Do you think it's the whole city? I mean, our houses are suburbs away.
Dad just fell down the stairs. hang on
what? IS HE OK?
tripped on dannys car fucking shit. yeah he j fell down the last two
Do you think it's weird our phones work but the cars don't? Do the cars work at yours?
i think he tripped. he's telling me to tell you he just tripped and he stubbed his toe but he's fine
Does he think the world is heartbroken?
huh?
Like, it's falling apart because it's sad.
You're weird. wouldn't it be cool if aliens came up from the ground. we'll sneak into a spaceship and take it for a ride
Yes, let's steal a spaceship.
lololol
Mum thinks there's a spy camera in our mirror so she's prying it off with a wrench.
haha you're mum is some kind of wack Mari
I know. She's still out there trying to find it. It's been a while. What are your parents doing?
Dad's yelling at danny and mum's still in the bath
she took a bath in a power failure?
No she was in it.
You're mum's in the tub at the end of the world.
What are you doing?
Cleaning up the lounge room. U?
Lying outside
Why?
what?
Why are you outside?
looking at the moon. everything is bright now that the power is off.
Oh. Yeah, it is. But everything is sort of gross too.
Lol.
It is, it's like without the lights everything is drab and gross.
what? it's great. look at the stars.
It's like we have to see things now. how it really is. the buildings looks tired and mean.
hahahaha you are some kind of weird. look at the stars!!
yeah.
Mari, everything is beautiful.
I don't think mum's coming back.
~
"Well," said my mother. She walked over to the window, pulled back the curtain and peered out. Her long red hair fell in front of her face. She looked luminescent in the moonlight, like an angel, or a really tall, human-shaped lamp wearing a dress.
I continued eating crunchy chocolate cereal even though I couldn't see my spoon. This was kind of hard, but the cereal was amazing so I pressed on.
"Everything's stopped," mother said.
"What do you mean 'everything'?"
"It's just..."
I watched as she tucked some hair behind her ear.
"It's all stopped," she continued, "all the cars and lights and that sign up on the Telstra building, the Ezeglow? That's stopped, too."
I chewed, thinking: what Ezeglow sign? "Oh."
Mother tilted her head a little as she murmured, "It's almost exactly like heartbreak."
The spoon hit my top lip as I said, "Heartbreak?"
"Yes," she breathed, the sureness in her voice mingling with wonder. "It is! Just, oh just like-"
"Mum, it's just a power failure."
"No Marhinad! It's heartbreak. The world is heartbroken, I'm sure." she turned then and gazed at me, not seeing, with tears shining in her eyes. "Mari..."
Jesus. I put the cereal bowl on the floor and went over to join her. Everything had stopped. Cars stood in the street either whole and alone or crumpled in pairs or groups. People were walking or running or huddled on the ground or talking into phones and gesturing wildly around them. The apartment building opposite us stood and stared blankly, all the windows black as if it had gone to sleep. Shops and street lights and traffic lights and road markers were all dark.
And there was the Ezeglow sign. I squinted a few blocks over at the gigantic, dark pink and probably overpriced letters sitting on top of Telstra. No one even knew what it meant.
"Huh," I said, a little impressed. "Why are the phones working when the cars have stopped?"
"Hmm?" Mother waved my words away, "It's the apocalypse Mari! Good god!"
She started moving wildly about the room, picking up papers, and throwing those papers away, and grabbing books only to set them down somewhere else, and moving cushions and taking down ornaments from the bookcase just to set them on the coffee table, all the while muttering a string of words in Polish.
"Mum!" I called, "I can't understand you, stop talking like that."
She ignored me.
I looked back out the window. It was all industrial and dirty. Why had I never realised how ugly this part of the city was? The silence made everything seem hard. Cold. Like after an argument when you've crossed your arms and shut down.
So maybe it was like heartbreak.
"Mum!" I said, "STOP TALKING IN POLISH!"
"Marhinad!" she said loudly from the kitchen, "Help me with this!"
She was pulling things out of the fridge and dumping them on the floor.
"Do you think they can read minds? They have technology for these events, they have microchips and cameras, oh god the mirror!" and she ran past me down the hall and into the bathroom, yelling, "GET THE WRENCH FROM THE CAR! IS IT A WRENCH? THAT THING WE USE WHEN THE DOOR WON'T OPEN?"
I stared at the soup cans rolling along the floor and sighed. "YES BUT IT'S NOT MEANT FOR OPENING DOORS."
"WHAT DOES THAT MATTER? JUST GET IT."
There was another crashing sound. I started picking up the cans. "MUM! FOR FUCKS SAKE, STOP WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING AND SIT DOWN."
Only my mother could make a simple power failure into some global crisis. There was a a thumping sound, some loud and angry Polish words again, and the slam of the back door. Oh great, I thought, stacking creamy pumpkin on top of garden vegetable, she's getting that stupid wrench.
I wondered if she was even strong enough to pry off the mirror or if she'd somehow bribe the man next door.
I started the redundant process of taking all the food from the fridge and arranging it neatly in plastic bags on the kitchen table, thinking about Lucky Rainbows and all the half-cooked food now stuck in microwaves. I thought about Jase as I put all the books back onto their shelves and wondered if I should ask him what he was doing when the power failure hit.
Making a burrito, he texted.
Seconds left?
two minutes.
What?
I dunno i just read the packet. u?
Eating cereal. Mum thinks the world is ending. Did you know she can speak Polish?
Weird why cereal? it's 800.
Do you think it's the whole city? I mean, our houses are suburbs away.
Dad just fell down the stairs. hang on
what? IS HE OK?
tripped on dannys car fucking shit. yeah he j fell down the last two
Do you think it's weird our phones work but the cars don't? Do the cars work at yours?
i think he tripped. he's telling me to tell you he just tripped and he stubbed his toe but he's fine
Does he think the world is heartbroken?
huh?
Like, it's falling apart because it's sad.
You're weird. wouldn't it be cool if aliens came up from the ground. we'll sneak into a spaceship and take it for a ride
Yes, let's steal a spaceship.
lololol
Mum thinks there's a spy camera in our mirror so she's prying it off with a wrench.
haha you're mum is some kind of wack Mari
I know. She's still out there trying to find it. It's been a while. What are your parents doing?
Dad's yelling at danny and mum's still in the bath
she took a bath in a power failure?
No she was in it.
You're mum's in the tub at the end of the world.
What are you doing?
Cleaning up the lounge room. U?
Lying outside
Why?
what?
Why are you outside?
looking at the moon. everything is bright now that the power is off.
Oh. Yeah, it is. But everything is sort of gross too.
Lol.
It is, it's like without the lights everything is drab and gross.
what? it's great. look at the stars.
It's like we have to see things now. how it really is. the buildings looks tired and mean.
hahahaha you are some kind of weird. look at the stars!!
yeah.
Mari, everything is beautiful.
I don't think mum's coming back.
~
Friday 12 June 2015
Why can't I watch AHS all night?
Amarilla was not interested in the five pages of
Shakespeare that Durnham had produced. She said sharply, “What good will that do me, seeing as I am out here unable to read
or playact?”
Oh that Durnham, she though savagely, he is unhinged, unsettling, undemanding, and
very uninteresting!
Durnham said, “I agree! Wholeheartedly! If, and when, you
do partake in the breathtaking art that
is reading, you will no d-“
“Durnham!” shouted Amarilla (startled at the intrusive
thought that had just popped into her head like a ravishing jelly bean (and
although she’d never tasted a jelly bean, she had heard from many that they
were deliciously ravishing)) and tried unsuccessfully to turn her little pot
away from him.
“It is of importance!” he cried.
If Durnham were to have facial expressions, Amarilla
supposed that his eyes would be wide, like someone staring around a bloody mass
in horror, and his eyebrowse would be so high up his forehead that not even the
most skilled Eyebrow Scholar would be able to wrench them down. They would be
thick also, and maybe require a sort of cream to keep them slick. She sat there
in a daze of distorted (yet plausible) dreams, wondering just what colour
Durnham’s eyes would be, and drooping sadly at the intrusive thought and
impossibilities.
Durnham was a plant. He could never raise eyebrows or
stare at her outstanding foliage in admiration.
“I don’t suppose you have ever thought about wearing
shoes?” she asked him.
“…for it was Macbeth-
Eh?” Durnham looked up from his pages and Amarilla sighed raucously.
“Oh, dear, you seem- I mean, are you sick? Was that a
cough?”
“I do not get sick!” Amarilla cried and once again tried
to turn away.
Durnham cleared his throat and Amarilla imagined him
lowering his glasses in a studious way. Glasses!
She yelled at herself. Would he? Oh my, I
just…
“It’s always a pleasure to have you sit with me,
Amarilla, for I do know the ways of the world. There are crabs that clip, and
babies that use up all their mother’s sound until they are red and wet in the face,
there are bees that buzz and try to steal my pollen, but do I let them?! I do not! I have grown strong and sturdy and
purple! Or…” he trailed off, suddenly sombre.
Amarilla looked up, interested. Durnham was staring at
the crumbling wooden planks that made up their sitting bench, and he asked
quietly, “What colour am I?”
Her heart fluttered, her soil sank a little (her pot did
have useful holes in the bottom for drainage and midnight snacks), her little
leaves quivered and she tried very hard not to let Durnham see the expression
in her eyes.
“I believe you are purple,” she said steadily, and, she
thought proudly, rather brisk. As if she was handing out horrible medicine to a
line of noisy school children. She thought about medicine and the process of handing
out, she thought about horrible things that people take and the will it must
require to take them, and take them again, and she thought about raspberry
jelly. How did they get that stuff to fly planes? Then Durnham said: “Have I
always been? I have a bubbling of fear that is grabbing me with all its fingers
and there is a whisper, Amarilla, like a soft breeze carrying doom, like the
spiders that sit on my highest leaves and giggle terrible secrets at me in
their absurdly ethereal voices, I feel-”
“Oh for the sake of my awe-inspiring pot and all that it
holds! Durnham! You are purple! PURPLE I SAY! PURPLE!”
Dunham looked aghast. Amarilla curled and uncurled her
little leaves and the dry ones crumbled onto her soil and she swore.
“You are a tad brittle,” Durnham observed. He nodded.
Amarilla glared. Durnham said, not unkindly but also not as kindly as he could
have, “you are in stress.”
“Stress! I’ll give you stress-”
“I do not require stress,” he said at once, and ruffled
his five pages, “I require an audience! For the need to practice is sure up
there, in the clouds and the moon and the some such, if I am to achieve my
dreams and perspire!”
“Oh for the love of…” Amarilla started, turning away in
disgust, but she caught the eye of a snail chewing something green far down in
the grass. It was staring up at her, chewing slowly, maliciously, and with much
dripping of saliva. “YOU!” she yelled. She turned to Durnham and bumped him.
His pages fell. “It’s Sanrio! Durnham! He tried to eat my lower leaves the other
day!”
“Sanrio? Tried to? Lower? What?” Durnham peered over the
bench down onto the grass. “Oh it is. Hello there!”
“What are you doing?”
“Inviting him up!” Durnham waved excitedly and called
out, “Come and help the dreams unfold! Watch the beauty- I am the beauty,” he
clarified, “and let us dazzle you in a way you have possibly never been dazzled
before!”
“Durnham!” Amarilla hissed, positively incensed.
“What? I said possibly-”
“He tried to eat me!
You see this hole, just here, below
my head and above my stem submergence?” she stretched so he could see, “This is
a bite mark! A battle wound! I have
been in the wars and I survived!”
There was a moment of blinking slowly (Durnham) and
blushing furiously (Amarilla) and chewing repeatedly (Sanrio) until Durnham
said, “Bit you?”
Amarilla said, “Yes. May seventh, when you had that
Welcome Snails party.”
“Oh yes…” Durnham smiled fondly, then became serious, “We
have to take him down!”
“We do!”
“Attending our parties,
drinking all our rainwater (“It was tap,” interrupted Amarilla, “I never serve
rain to guests.” And she gave him a withering glare as if he should have known
this) and then taking part in a host
invasion!” Durnham’s leaves seemed to have grown taller and greener and
firmer.
Amarilla stared up in a fit of adoration.
“We must fight!” he commanded.
“Yes!” she squealed.
“We must conquer!”
“YES!”
“We must take back what is ours!”
“YES! YES! YES!”
Amarilla quivered in potential ecstasy.
Durnham looked absolutely majestic. They both turned and
glowered with all their might in a ferocious way down at Sanrio, ready for war.
But he wasn’t there.
“He’s gone!” cried Amarilla, in a surge of uncomfortable
anti-climax that made her shiny white petals dim to a faded off-white.
“The bloody coward!” shouted Durnham furiously, but also
partially relieved as, being an artist, he didn’t have the nervous system for
war and his petals were quite delicate. He often described them as being made
from the finest, most exquisite and expensive crepe paper in all the land.
(“You mean tissue paper,” Amarilla liked to remark with a snort, “crepe is a
fancy term for tissue,” and as Durnham could only read Shakespeare, he never
knew if she was right.)
“It was all the chewing!” Amarilla commented, “His
chewing somehow aided his speedy escape!”
“Quite,” Durnham pleasantly agreed.
Amarilla frowned, “What do we do now?”
Durnham cleared his throat and rustled his papers, “Let
us continue! We will conquer! We will open up the heavens, and let it all rain
down, for that is what it does when the heavens opens! It rains! And we will rain along beside them!”
Amarilla sagged, “Oh good heavens, help me…”
#
/ \
/___\
d^_^b
Wednesday 10 June 2015
Can we sedate these people with cream?
"But!" exclaimed Amerwort as his mother slid his plate of crumpets away from him, "I haven't finished!"
"Now, Amerwort," she said kindly, but with a ferocious jab of the plate into the bin so all the crumpets fell off, "Go and play outside."
So he grabbed his skipping rope, angrily and sort of in shame as it was a girl's skipping rope, and he lurched outside into the sunshine.
He started to skip.
Up and down his belly went, round and round the rope went, slapping the path each time, and it wasn't Amerwort's fault that he couldn't keep time. He wasn't a professional.
"You're down there again!" shouted Topiary from atop his ladder. The ladder was propped up against the back of Amerwort's house and glinted in a sparkly fashion down at the sweaty boy.
Amerwort grunted.
Topiary called, "The boy who skips!"
Amerwort told him where to go and Topiary chuckled into his plaid handkerchief before coughing once.
"I believe the devil himself wouldn't want me," Topiary said. He laid the handkerchief flat on a roof tile and positioned a nail at the middle. Then whacked it with a hammer.
Amerwort's sweat was now gliding freely down his face and throat and legs, and he felt he had skipped enough, but didn't stop. He should bottle this sweat, he thought proactively. Maybe he could even sell it.
"Would you buy sweat, Topiary?" he asked between jumps and slaps.
Topiary sort of paused mid-whack, but his arm kept going, and Amerwort saw the hammer miss, hit the neighboring tile, causing it to rise up and agitate the nail. The handkerchief suddenly flew off and the nail fell and Topiary looked up at the sky.
Amerwort missed a jump but kept skipping. His feet tangled in the rope and he fell with a soft woooosh and splaf onto the concrete.
"Ow!" yelled Amerwort, unused to this painful action.
"Yeah!" called Topiary, still staring off into the clouds, "I reckon I might!"
"Now, Amerwort," she said kindly, but with a ferocious jab of the plate into the bin so all the crumpets fell off, "Go and play outside."
So he grabbed his skipping rope, angrily and sort of in shame as it was a girl's skipping rope, and he lurched outside into the sunshine.
He started to skip.
Up and down his belly went, round and round the rope went, slapping the path each time, and it wasn't Amerwort's fault that he couldn't keep time. He wasn't a professional.
"You're down there again!" shouted Topiary from atop his ladder. The ladder was propped up against the back of Amerwort's house and glinted in a sparkly fashion down at the sweaty boy.
Amerwort grunted.
Topiary called, "The boy who skips!"
Amerwort told him where to go and Topiary chuckled into his plaid handkerchief before coughing once.
"I believe the devil himself wouldn't want me," Topiary said. He laid the handkerchief flat on a roof tile and positioned a nail at the middle. Then whacked it with a hammer.
Amerwort's sweat was now gliding freely down his face and throat and legs, and he felt he had skipped enough, but didn't stop. He should bottle this sweat, he thought proactively. Maybe he could even sell it.
"Would you buy sweat, Topiary?" he asked between jumps and slaps.
Topiary sort of paused mid-whack, but his arm kept going, and Amerwort saw the hammer miss, hit the neighboring tile, causing it to rise up and agitate the nail. The handkerchief suddenly flew off and the nail fell and Topiary looked up at the sky.
Amerwort missed a jump but kept skipping. His feet tangled in the rope and he fell with a soft woooosh and splaf onto the concrete.
"Ow!" yelled Amerwort, unused to this painful action.
"Yeah!" called Topiary, still staring off into the clouds, "I reckon I might!"
Wednesday 20 May 2015
Is there a colour preference?
Last year I wrote a list of 'Things I Will Do', and then I forgot about it. Literally. I sort of opened up my head as if it was on a hinge, reached inside and scraped out my brain. Oh! How light but magnificent it felt! I was holding a brain, a living, pulsating, slimy, slightly warm part of the body that helped me with everything all throughout my daily life.
I thought, 'Maybe I could sell this.' I signed onto Ebay. I scrolled and sighed and clicked and sighed again, and I had the feeling that something was wrong. I kept glancing at the little brain sitting on my desk.
I got up and made a sandwich. Halfway through I thought, ' A sandwich? Am I not above this notion of lunch? Can it not be time for steak?'
I sensed a growing fascination with food that also made me stand solemnly, as if in church prayer, for I am not one with food. I am not two with food. I am probably not even ten with food, although maybe ten is too high and nobody is. If there is someone out there who is ten at the food life, I would love to greet them halfway up the steps of a large, wooden temple with water trickling from spouts shaped like lions and two birds chirping occasionally but in sync, because birds should unite in pairs.
I would say: "Please! Allow me to pee! I've been standing here for three hours, THREE HOURS MAN, and the water fountain has just broken me, as I would assume it would break even Bruce Lee, however great he was," and then I would berate myself for showing ignorance in a place of worship and serenity.
"Hmm, yes, these water fountains," he would reply, stroking his long, white beard slowly, "the missus is quite fond of them. It would be such a shame."
And I would nod in agreement, very fast, because of the peeing thing.
He would continue stroking his beard.
I would clear my throat, and he would suddenly notice me. "What an honour to have you!" he would claim, like a grandfather would claim to his oyster supplier three days before Christmas. "Would it help you at all if I were to switch them?"
"Eh?" I would reply, looking up from his long white robes. "No!"
He would stumble backwards a little with a hand over his chest at my harsh outburst, and I would worry for maybe eight seconds about his footing as he is old and he is wearing long curling slippers on slightly wet steps.
"No!" I would cry again, "They're the same statue!"
He would straighten, mumbling something about wax or the seventh sun, and say to himself, "But, the switching... it could happen on Saturday, not four o'clock? Not seven o'clock?... hmmm."
"The design would stay the same."
He would reply with, "Most likely. But the wife..."
"Oh, sure," I would agree in an entirely new level of 'not caring' as a coping mechanism for my strenuous circumstance.
"But do come in!" he would suddenly declare, clapping his hands together, "Come and enjoy roast potatoes with us! My wife sprinkles herbs on top, God only knows why, but she makes them taste divine all the same."
So my point is, that while I was stranded in this uncomfortable situation, I rather forgot the list I had prepared and lost all energy to attempt.
And you can't blame a girl when nature calls.
THINGS I WILL DO THIS YEAR:
+Ace my Uni course ^_^. Acing did happen! :D
+ 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. What a time
+Learn to play a tune on the guitar (just a tune!) The Hokey Pokey
+ Start cooking healthy, veggie-loaded meals.
+ Watch all Disney movies again, also includingBrave, Tangled and Frozen. The best! Except maybe Brave, that was a tad slow for me
+Grow a small veggie plant like tomatoes, cucumbers, or even parsley. Tended to a strawberry plant until I left it out in a four-day heatwave one week and a three day downpour the next (--_--). Delivered two batches of strawberries though, so worth it!
+ Attempt at writing a fanfic! >_<.
MOVIE:
I thought, 'Maybe I could sell this.' I signed onto Ebay. I scrolled and sighed and clicked and sighed again, and I had the feeling that something was wrong. I kept glancing at the little brain sitting on my desk.
I got up and made a sandwich. Halfway through I thought, ' A sandwich? Am I not above this notion of lunch? Can it not be time for steak?'
I sensed a growing fascination with food that also made me stand solemnly, as if in church prayer, for I am not one with food. I am not two with food. I am probably not even ten with food, although maybe ten is too high and nobody is. If there is someone out there who is ten at the food life, I would love to greet them halfway up the steps of a large, wooden temple with water trickling from spouts shaped like lions and two birds chirping occasionally but in sync, because birds should unite in pairs.
I would say: "Please! Allow me to pee! I've been standing here for three hours, THREE HOURS MAN, and the water fountain has just broken me, as I would assume it would break even Bruce Lee, however great he was," and then I would berate myself for showing ignorance in a place of worship and serenity.
"Hmm, yes, these water fountains," he would reply, stroking his long, white beard slowly, "the missus is quite fond of them. It would be such a shame."
And I would nod in agreement, very fast, because of the peeing thing.
He would continue stroking his beard.
I would clear my throat, and he would suddenly notice me. "What an honour to have you!" he would claim, like a grandfather would claim to his oyster supplier three days before Christmas. "Would it help you at all if I were to switch them?"
"Eh?" I would reply, looking up from his long white robes. "No!"
He would stumble backwards a little with a hand over his chest at my harsh outburst, and I would worry for maybe eight seconds about his footing as he is old and he is wearing long curling slippers on slightly wet steps.
"No!" I would cry again, "They're the same statue!"
He would straighten, mumbling something about wax or the seventh sun, and say to himself, "But, the switching... it could happen on Saturday, not four o'clock? Not seven o'clock?... hmmm."
"The design would stay the same."
He would reply with, "Most likely. But the wife..."
"Oh, sure," I would agree in an entirely new level of 'not caring' as a coping mechanism for my strenuous circumstance.
"But do come in!" he would suddenly declare, clapping his hands together, "Come and enjoy roast potatoes with us! My wife sprinkles herbs on top, God only knows why, but she makes them taste divine all the same."
So my point is, that while I was stranded in this uncomfortable situation, I rather forgot the list I had prepared and lost all energy to attempt.
And you can't blame a girl when nature calls.
THINGS I WILL DO THIS YEAR:
+
+ 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.
+
+
+ Start cooking healthy, veggie-loaded meals.
+ Watch all Disney movies again, also including
+
+ Attempt at writing a fanfic! >_<.
MOVIE:
6__6v
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