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!"

3 comments:

  1. Fascinating read. Stream of conscience? Dream sequence? Another source of inspiration? I tend to read a lot of fantasy and fiction (though not only). Noting I'm a fan of Le Guin, Bradbury, David Lynch and Cronenberg, Barker, King and E. A. P., it may go without saying that writing of this kind has had a definite appeal. This narrative is stimulating, unusual. I'm glad I read it.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! I find I have to be in the mood to write like this, but it's pretty close to my natural style. I actually haven't read any of the above authors, except one book of King, but I'll have to check them out.

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  2. Fascinating read. Stream of conscience? Dream sequence? Another source of inspiration? I tend to read a lot of fantasy and fiction (though not only). Noting I'm a fan of Le Guin, Bradbury, David Lynch and Cronenberg, Barker, King and E. A. P., it may go without saying that writing of this kind has had a definite appeal. This narrative is stimulating, unusual. I'm glad I read it.

    ReplyDelete