#fiction

So when we say you…

kill her, you save her arse every time.

This was today’s dream.

The small white bus was cross-axled in the road. On either side of the road was thick scrub and low trees. One side was quite steep, the other side, to our left, had a ditch. My copilot, a tall blonde fella, was doing his damndest to help me stop the bloody thing from falling backwards into that ditch. I didn’t tell him that side had a ditch, I knew it was there, and I was not going to let that bus fall into it. No fucking way.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You can do this mate. We don’t give in, and we don’t give up.’

‘I can’t hold it,’ he said, and I could see him straining to keep it on the track.

I got out and put my shoulder into that metal door and I pushed. ‘Come on. We’ve got this.’

He had the other side. If I didn’t change the position of the back of that stupid fucking bus, it, and all its belongings, were gonna end up in that fucking ditch. So, I pushed her over a few inches so that if she went backwards again, she’d back up into a tree instead. The leaves of the peppermint were hanging over the back of that bus, and I knew it was not going to be easy.

The nose of the bus began to tip down. I could hear her then, the little one. I could hear the agony in her voice.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,’ she gasped and cried and it was the most awful sound I’d ever heard. But, the whole point was to get this thing up that fucking hill, because there was nowhere else for us to go. The road was washed out further ahead, we couldn’t turn her round, we could only get her to go up.

‘Put your back into it,’ I grunted. ‘It’s not gonna be easy but we’ll save the stupid woman one more bloody time because she needs to get this right.’

If she ever reads this, I hope she finally gets it right. It’s not about what shit looks like, or how it appears to be, it’s about how we are trying to get you to access something you do not think you have, and lady if you do not think you have emotions, that is why you feel so fucking awful in yourself right now.

‘Do we send this to her too,’ asked the little one who had survived the crash of that bus. He was a big lad now, and not a little girl, but it didn’t matter in the long run. In the long run, the whole point was to get that woman to safety, regardless of what she’d fucking done.

‘Nah, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She’ll figure it out.’

The Gap Inbetween

‘Let’s play a much more fun game,’ said the inductee of fairly good ideas.

“They” was the word.

They didn’t get it right the first time, and the world would wake up before they were ready.

‘What happens next,’ shouted someone across the gorge.

‘That’s where you come in and say, “You know what, I know this joke”.’

‘Like a back and forth? Like ping pong?’

‘Just like that.’

So, I start with a line or two, and you add a line or two there, and then they add a line or two after, and then another one, and we must remember to like each one, mustn’t we. That’s how it has always gone. Try to be a little more pleasant, if it is at all possible (apparently, it is not. Pleasant means kind). They are so rolling their eyes at a certain someone who couldn’t keep his hand out of his furry bits. Normal, yes, but really not something that needs repeating as often as it is… (no criminal intent, no scenes or riots, no nasty, just a game kids can play… Obviously, some people do not understand games for kids who actually go to school. There is your problem)

‘It was a wooden horse carved long ago. Many men have leapt out of it over the years, and even a woman or two.’

(carry the horse)

“I’ve got three weeks to go…”

.’…until I get married, and three years to go until I’ve finished my studies.’

The handwritten note had been tossed onto the bed in front of him and he stared at it for quite some time. He hadn’t quite figured out why these things were all happening, yet, but knew he was partly to blame.

‘I didn’t take those pictures,’ he muttered. ‘I just look at them from time to time and wonder who these people are.’ Up until now, he hadn’t questioned why he’d stolen them from the lady’s page. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. He was beginning to regret that now, though. Now, he was starting to wonder if he might have made a terrible mistake.

‘Did you get much for those stolen scenes?’ asked the little voice in his head, conversationally.

‘I didn’t steal them. You said you weren’t doing anything with them, so I took them, that’s all.’

‘That’s considered stealing, in my book.’

‘I didn’t let them take it… you did… I did… I didn’t… Just let me think about it, you’d said.’ He was grasping at straws now, and he knew it. Breaking into other people’s laptops was pretty easy when you knew how, especially when one was an ugly little weasel who had run out of ideas for scripts. ‘I obviously didn’t think this through,’ he added. ‘But now, I think I might have made a terrible mistake.’

‘How many other times have you stolen script ideas and writing over the years? What other things have you nicked from people’s laptops? I find this very interesting.’ The person in his head was definitely not him, he knew that now, and he was beginning to regret many, many things he had tried to do over the last twelve months.

‘I was told you were offered a controlling portion of great and wonderful things,’ he cried.

‘I think you might be wrong there. I, personally, haven’t been offered anything. At all. Ever.’

‘Oh just let me get something out of my drawer,’ He wasn’t going to be getting anything out of his drawer today though, was he.

‘That’s not how it goes, buddy. No one says, “Just let me get something out of my drawer.” That is very badly written. I know where you’re heading with it, but you know, why waste a perfectly good scene on badly written scripts, when one could just say, “I have made a terrible mistake, and I apologise for taking several key parts of a story written on the internet quite some time ago, and putting it all into one shambling episode that ended up making not much sense at all”.’

‘Nobody watches it anymore, anyway, you said that.’ The producer had wet his pants, again. ‘ Free to air TV just doesn’t get the viewers it used to, and my boss dolled it up, and I think I am dreaming of something but I know we all get paid, so I just don’t understand why no one went and paid the lady we got these things off, because we didn’t think it was a good idea either. How do we get hold of someone we owe a great deal of money to, when I thought she was dead? Why didn’t anyone fly out west and offer her something at least?’

‘Like I said, someone else did it, not me,’ said the sad kid. ‘I just went along for the ride and stayed up all night watching the kids getting better, cos that’s what it’s all about, right?’

‘Right. It’s also about not getting greedy and taking other people’s things because you’re trying to “Save a show”. I guess you mob have only got two choices now. You can’t exactly say it’s iconic anymore, anyway, and, although I am very sure it is very close to some older actors hearts, I am also quite sure they would be as equally disgusted as I am, that someone, or several someone’s, have sunk to such an incredible new low.’

‘Look, we just forgot you guys were on the other side of the country, that’s all. No one goes there anyway.’

A number of people who had lived in a certain part of the world until just recently, raised their eyebrows at their eastern states counterparts. It wasn’t like they could say much, not really. They had forgotten about this place themselves.

‘I guess the more of it I see appearing, on that show in particular, the higher the compensation will be,’ the frequent flyer from one side to the country to the other nodded his head. ‘No one should be making money out of other people’s misery, should they? Especially when the entire story, except for just a few little snippets on the end, was written at least ten years ago, and the lady in question is not doing too well, not really. You see, someone thought it would be a great joke to break into her laptop and steal all the things she’d been writing, and other things besides, and despite the fact she spoke with several people, no one did a fucking thing about it. So, here we are holding out a very empty hand full of nothing, and suggesting perhaps you put something in it.’

Simple Creatures (if ya dunno, ya dunno)

“Let me explain,’ said the harried looking and not at all like anyone I know, person, if that is what one could call people like that people like that. ‘We were joking.’

‘Really? Is that what you do when you are joking?’

‘Look, luv…’

Oh he did not just go there.

‘Who ya callin’ luv, luv?’

‘Let me explain…’

‘Just a minute. Let me put me greaves on.’

‘Greaves?’

‘Yeah mate, and gauntlets. Remember them?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Your corrections were wrong the first time, and I let it go, and they are wrong now, as well. This time, I don’t think I’ll let it go.’

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you?’

‘Is that a question?’

‘Oh hell. It’s going to hell. I tell ya wot, lemme explain.’

She cocks her head. ‘Please?’

‘Please what?’

‘You are meant to say, please, let me explain.’

There might have been a sneaky high five. I’m not congratulating anyone, bud. I’m just watchin’.

‘When did you grow balls?’

‘When did you lose yours?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Are you deaf or do you always repeat yourself, ya daft f*ck.’

‘Oh jesus, she can’t be let in there again. They would all die of embarrassment.’

‘OOOH, let me in where?’

‘No. No. You can’t go in there, you evil woman. Stop that right now.’

‘Nah fuck it. All very cold, obviously. Are you cold, mate?’

‘I do not wish to answer that question.’

‘Shrivel dick, I asked you if you were cold.’

‘I obviously have no need to answer that question. Look, just give me a moment and…’

‘Fuck your moment, mate.’

‘Are they all like that?’ he whispered this to an offsider.

‘Some of them. She is. Obviously.’

‘What was that place called again?’

‘I reckon you’ll figure it out, mate. If you got the right accent, anyway.’

‘Is there a wrong accent?’

‘Nah. Not really. Just the ones that don’t have quite the same, wow I can’t even call it nasal. Is it a pirate seagull, mum?’

‘An Australian seagull, bit of cockney, bit of la dee da, yeah, probably pirate. You lot wanna be pirates too?’

‘Oh I bin waitin for this un.’ Old bloke in the pub starts laughing.

‘Bin a while since I seen that ‘un.’

‘Good movie, mate.’

‘Ta. Made it meself.’

‘ ‘e was an Oirish lad, back in de day. ‘E’d ‘ave to troi a lill ‘arder now. It’s okay, Oi’ll duitt.’

‘Oi.’

‘Master stroke,’ whispers the bystander.

‘Ta.’

Mostly fiction.

… Beth reached the next intersection without mishap, once again stopping to poke her head around the corner. The short hall she stood in seemed to be made of patients (inmates, she muttered in her head) rooms only. If the rooms were anything like her own, and she fancied they were, there would be sealed glass windows, and only one exit. If she stayed in the halls and continued to deviate to the right at each intersection, surely she would find a door to the outside soon. It seemed logical.

Well, it does to me, anyway, she thought. ‘I’ll be okay.’ She made her movements slow so as not to attract attention, remembering her days back in the field. In the field? Never mind, go with it, she thought to herself. Good plan, what’s next? Oh, I’m talking to myself again. Fan-bloody-tastic.

If she had been a tad more mobile, she’d have crouched out of eyeline, but she did not think she was quite up to that yet. Pushing the wayward thoughts from her mind, she concentrated on the mission.

Oh, the mission now is it? No wonder everyone thinks you’re a raving lunatic.

This would be the nurses station. A large white sign hung on the wall, EAST WING written in bold black letters. Underneath it sat a young man behind a wide desk. He had administered her medication earlier. She frowned. It might be difficult to manoeuvre past this jumped-up upstart. As she watched, she heard something buzzing softly. The nurse paused in his writing and picked up a nearby phone. Beth held her breath as he glanced at the screen in front of him.

‘Thankyou,’ he said into the receiver before placing it gently back onto a pile of files. He shuffled the papers in front of him and stacked them into another neat pile, then swivelled in his chair to open a drawer with gay abandon, flinging paper into the air everywhere and laughing, with equally gay abandon. Okay, perhaps the last part didn’t happen, but never mind.

Now was her chance.

Beth tiptoed, very sneakily indeed, across the open space in front of the desk (later, okay, I’ll fix it later). Keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the nurse, she snuck a brief glance at the corridor ahead. Four more steps, and she’d be out of there. Three. Two…

CLANG.

The bombastic metallic thunk of the metal bin toppling sideways onto the tiles, followed by a, not unpleasant, rolling rattle as the round lid fell off, froze her mid-sneak, one raised foot having just kicked the damn thing into the middle of the floor. She looked up in horror.

The nurse casually turned away from the open drawer and smiled pleasantly, if slightly toothily. ‘Would you like some help with that?’

‘Bugger.’

Let’s make it easier for the cat.

He thinks he can explain this better than me, but this is where he is wrong.

I have the experience to explain this better, if not the expertise.

The photographer can put things through different filters, and eyes can change. Not all eyes though, and not all the time. This is where we agree.

They think this man with the dark blue eyes, the ones that do not change colour, no matter how many filters you run them through, they, not me, think he is the killer of worlds. It is said that the blue-eyed one will change the world to suit the image he sees in his mind, and his eyes will not change colour for anything other than what he sees for himself.

This is the way of thinking that brown-eyed ones whose eyes also do not change colour can be more gentle, and more able to say, ‘Okay then,’ and walk away. It’s not always true, for sometimes the brown-eyed one thinks, I will drown it all in nothing, for I will reflect nothing.

But, they also think the ones whose eyes will change colour to reflect are more able to tell lies. This is not true either. We are better at adapting, perhaps. Less likely to try to change things to suit others. We merely reflect things back, that’s all. Not anything more than that.

They think the one with green eyes, or yellow eyes are demonic, sometimes, but are they? Do their eyes change with light, or reflect things back? Not always no, not always at all.

Is it not too hard to explain this, for I am demigod not peaceful, boasts the little cat. He is too small to be harmful, and his eyes do not reflect. I am a demon from great masters of the deep, says another small cat and his eyes are blue and do not reflect, but he is also little and unable to do great things. My mistress says I am neither cat nor dog, says a tiny demon master, and he is not quite right, and not quite wrong, and he has indeed adapted. But does he know his way home?

The green eyed cat is not the one who boasts, he thinks to himself, and yet I cannot find my way home.

No man is the master of his distant past, thinks yellow-eyed cat, and he sits with his people of eyes that reflect and thinks he must look out for the blue-eyed man whose eyes are like sky. He is not a killer at all, because he is the one who protects yellow-eyed cat, and the ones he loves.

‘Let me tell you something,’ says the brown-eyed one, not understanding, and trying to keep his wits about him. ‘I cannot see those people so you do not tell me what to do.’

Intelligence is not defined by eye-colour, not at all, and no one here had told the man what to do. Yet, he fights me back, and I see his pain and let him fight for me as well, if that is what he wants to do, and I will be very, very cranky if he thinks he can get the better of me.

I found this out some time ago, he says to himself. Not too old to be a ratbag yet, not too young to be letting me think I can be better than her, not that silly to think I am letting this go.

‘Very well, my friend,’ he says and they start grinning at each other. ‘I am destined for great things, and I’m taking this all on board because even though I do not want to call you a shithead, you are and that’s the truth.’ And he goes back to all his brown-eyed family and says, ‘She has also brown-eyed people on her side of the family, so sorry mate, you f*cked up there, and you are not getting away with it,’ and he laughs very loudly because that was exactly the argument they had last week and he didn’t think she’d remember.

But she did.

‘This time,’ says the man, puffing up his chest and trying not to grin. ‘On his behalf, I am having the last word. So three against one wins the day, I think. I could be wrong. It doesn’t seem fair. ‘He looks down at his notes. ‘Who wrote this shit. I need someone who is much fairer than that. This is abysmal.’

He stomps off and throws another book in the cupboard. ‘That didn’t work either,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘She’s not letting me do it this time. My mum would be so happy right now, I think I need to have a nap.’

Home Grown

‘I just want to say, this was not my idea. Today. It may have been my idea last week, and possibly last year, but it isn’t today, mama. I need to make that very clear.’ A desert is like an ocean, but the waves move slower. Things that have been hidden for centuries reappear piece by piece, and then the wave rolls over it again. It’s a golden sea of sand.

‘Why’s that, buddy?’ Their history is intertwined like this. It has always been diffused by time and effort, but this time would be the correct time, if not the right time, to slowly expose the dreams of the past.

‘I might think I’m hot, but okay, I am not like this one. I need to stress this very loudly, though. I am not that hot, but this one is pretty hot. My mum says I am okay. I think I’m not that great. I am talking a lot this morning, and I don’t know why.’ He sends it through this way, he says, because he sees the young man as himself sometimes, but this one does not need anything extra.

The two besties look at each other. ‘She is throwing him in the deep end,’ the nicer one says. They think of a green pool where everything is so deep one can’t touch the bottom with a stretched out toe, unless they dive. These two cannot dive that deep, and do not know why they would need to come back to the surface if they did.

‘Why are you the nicer one?’ asks the first one.

Last one says. ‘I am the nicest one of all, and she picked me first. That’s all I can say. I am not that hot though, and I am slightly jealous of this one because he was born with that colouring, and I wasn’t.’ He frowns, and kicks at something small and weirdly coloured under the desk he sits at. He had been there for too long now, and wasn’t drifting like he should be. He had left too many people behind and had not thought about how many until it was too late.

‘I had to dye my hair, and this one didn’t. I had to run around naked for a week, not that naked, but not that un-naked either, let me tell you, and anyway, I am not that other one, damn it.’ He says this very proudly, because he has grown fond of his counterpart, despite the anger of fire in the man of air. He had never been this type of man, and had never experienced what this family experienced, and for the opposites they had given him, to see the way they lived, had opened his eyes. Maybe they had opened his eyes too wide, but maybe not. It was just different, that’s all.

He had been thinking about this for a very long time, so had sent the mama a dream where she had seen him in front of a wave. This wave was deep and blue, not golden and not sandy. He had been looking over her shoulder at the one behind her and thought to himself, ‘This guy would catch that wave, cut it up, make it look easy, and come out on the other side laughing. I would be drowning under the wave of blue in that man’s eyes, and hoping mama would come and save me because I can’t swim that well.’

‘Is that what you were thinking?’ The mama was not laughing at him, he knew that now. She was looking at him curiously and wondering if he was okay.

He finds it difficult to explain what he feels when she asks this, not everyone knows this time and this place. Not everyone could see why they interested him. Not everyone would let him be himself, but she would. He knew that from the start, he thinks.

‘I am not that okay,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t need you to look after him for that long. I can look after him, although he would not want me to, he would probably do something that upset me, and then I would run away, because I am not that brave, either.’ He has made himself small and does not remember how to make himself big. He has left himself too many times to remember this was not him today. He had started rethinking a lot of things he had done over the last…

‘How long has it been now?’ she asked him gently.

‘It’s been three years. I have been on this roller coaster for too long, mama. Three years and no one thought to ask me if I was okay. Just you, and my mum didn’t even care. She thought I would be fine, and I am not that fine, and I am not that playful, and I am dreaming of coming to your house and asking you to save me again.’ He says this to himself a lot lately, not too bad, he thinks, not too bad. I can be this party of great people when I come home. Not my home, but this could be just like what I had always dreamed. Not my home though.

He slaps someone’s hand. ‘Bugger off,’ he mutters. ‘I’m not your Ken doll.’ He does not try to understand why these people think he can be touched like this. They just do it, and he desperately wants to leave them. ‘I want to go back to my land, and destroy those who think they can let it be a supermarket world, when it is obviously not. Not this time. I won’t let it happen again.’

Bugger and off were not words he had learnt from the mama. He had learnt to bugger off when he was very small, and throwing people’s clothes in the well because they were not listening to him usually got him a spanking. ‘I am not being kind today either,’ he muttered. ‘They can bugger off and stop touching me. I want to dress myself, and I am perfectly capable of doing that. I am finding this highly amusing though, because you got it exactly right.’

He had sand in his pants, and sand in his sandals, and that would have been funny in any other situation except this one, because sandals did not stop sand from being hot, unless you wore them a certain way. ‘I had to get up very quickly this morning,’ he mutters. He had fallen asleep on the beach.

‘No explanation needed,’ she replied. ‘I am perfectly capable of figuring things out.’

Before he had woken up and turned into a jellyfish of ill-repute he had sent her one last message.

‘I want to keep going mama, I don’t know anymore. I am not like him but I am getting much stronger because of him and I am learning to say things like he does. My mama says I am dreaming of the big lights, and I didn’t think he would be better looking than me, and I was wrong, because I am not that hot, see I said it this time too. Just keep in mind, I didn’t thin out (he is talking about body shape) that bad, though. He is a lot thinner than me, so I guess that’s one thing I have going for me. Not my fault, not his fault, and that’s why I think I’ll get further than him in a running race, and he’ll get distant and then I will get lost in the rest of it and he’ll get better and better. Look, mama, I am writing so much for you now. Are you proud?’

This had been very clever of him. He had compared them by saying he was very good at short distance, and his counterpart would be extremely good at long distance. There were many comparisons here, and perhaps there were many more neither of them had thought of yet.

It’s strange, she thought to herself. I have been proud of this one from the moment I met him, and I don’t know why. But then, she had always been proud of her boys, both of them, and then the next one, and then all of them.

And this was even despite the things they did when they woke up.

Three Thirty am – the witching hour.

There is a little Golden Book story I would tell my kids when they were little. It was something about a mouse that decided to go sailing on his bed. He would get up, brush his teeth, and do a list of boring things before starting his day. I’m not sure why it was important to start with this particular image, but who am I to argue?

As I’m writing this — having got up, for no particular reason (aside from old habits) at three thirty am, the cat has decided to meow forlornly at glass doors because apparently, once again, he has forgotten where his cat flap is. A cat flap is a cat door. I needed to write that because “language barrier”. I don’t know either, I’m just repeating what the little voice beside me says.

So, the extremely contrived image sent to me during last night’s (it’s still last night, and one half hour past the witching hour when I woke up, ya bastards), was the picture of an old fashioned key sitting on the corner of a window sill. Now, when I looked at that particular key (god this cat is driving me insane), I said in my head, quite clearly, “Wardrobe key”, so if anyone reading this had a dream along these lines and wondered why “wardrobe key” came to mind, that was me. Sorry about that, but not really.

The funny thing about writing so early in the morning, before the sun has come up, and while everything is silent, is that something happens to the writing on the page. It does its own thing, and I am, well I’m not forced exactly, but I tend to think, ‘okay, I’ll go along with it,’ and whoever it is writing the other side of this says, very clearly, ‘Let’s see where it take us.’

This is not usually my form of transportation…

I do prefer to write with a slightly more professional flair, which is something that seems to have escaped me these last several months or so, and to be honest with you, I’m not particularly happy about it. So there.

Back to the topic at hand. ‘Wardrobe key.’ The lion, the witch (pauses) and the wardrobe. Not in this case though. In this case it’s because I happen to have an old fashioned wardrobe around here somewhere, so I kind of know what those keys look like.

Then of course, there is the other type of ‘old fashioned’ key. The one not sitting in the corner of a window sill that I’d be worried about being knocked off said window sill by a random elbow. The door key, which is apparently why I’m writing this for you.

The following is from a story I wrote.

Picture the scene:

He’s woken up to something and he doesn’t know quite where he is. This room has doors on both sides of the bed, an old fashioned lamp which he doesn’t remember having turned on, and the rain outside is falling. Through the window, and reflected in the lamp light, the raindrops look like a thousand meteorites. (I wrote that a lot better the first time around).

Click-click.

Someone is trying to open the door. This is what has woken him up. The door in question is on the right side of the wall where the head of the bed is. The other door leads outside.

When this happens, the guy we’re looking at not only is already naturally a little on edge, he’s very well trained, so there are a million thoughts running through his head. He’s unarmed, he was told he’s got all the keys (which he is now questioning as someone is definitely trying to unlock the door), and he is preventing himself from doing something stupid by trying to figure out all the scenarios of how to deal with an intruder without waking up the rest of the house.

As he is who he is, he decides, rather than flinging the door open and confronting someone, he is going to use the door that goes outside, go around the side of the house, and come back in behind whoever it is that is trying to unlock the door to the bedroom he was told was “completely safe”.

As he is also an ex carpenter by trade, he has all these random thoughts about the fact the door (that someone is currently attempting to unlock) is very sturdy and won’t be broken down in a hurry by “whoever it is”. All of his experiences, what makes him who he is in this moment, come together and form him into something honed to a fine point, a weapon in himself and he uses everything without thinking about it.

I’ll add here, the person on the other side of the door is still trying to unlock it, not break it down, nor does it seem to be at the point of them breaking it down. This is giving him a lot more time to not only wonder who it is (there are really only three choices: the first choice is someone who is not living/residing inside the house, the second choice is a teenage girl, something he’d not want happening either, and the third choice is an old lady, which just seems very odd as she is the one who gave him the keys) but to decide how he’s going to deal with them. If it is who he thinks it is (a very large man), then he’s going to need to be “on the ball” or seeking the advantage.

It does not exactly go his way. Most of it goes his way, but not the outcome of his snap decision of how to confront something. I suppose, by the end of this scene, or scenes, he gets lucky, but that doesn’t change the fact the first decision he makes is to attack, rather than defend. I would say any psychologist would tell you this guy, whoever he may be, could potentially be a problem. What I’ve given you here though, is an example of how someone specifically trained might deal with something.

It’s a shame that for this scene the guy was in a suburban house, with an elderly relation and her granddaughter. His first instinct (although it is to protect and defend later) is to be the one with the advantage. It’s fair to say he’d chosen to observe what he was dealing with first, and went about dealing with it far better than he might have under different circumstances. It is also fortunate the person he was dealing with (although he didn’t know it) knew him and what he would be thinking.

It must also be said, in this particular scene, the circumstances under which this guy is in at this point of time and leading up to it, the “context” if you will, gives him every right to behave exactly as he does (although, in the end, it’s not something he has been able to share with anyone).

Four. Oh. Eight.

‘Not the time to be writing this nicely. I’m doing it quickly, you must be aware.

Let him be scared if that is what he must be to understand what’s happening here.

Three of them three of us, this is the time to be letting them know, mama.’

It was the rocking that woke me, not a rickashay, I can’t write it properly, and it doesn’t matter much. Two sways and I woke up, thinking “earthquake”. I said it aloud. Two times, this was the reason for me being here.

‘Can we run to yours, mama, is it safer there?’

‘I said it before, you can always come to me if you feel you need to be protected. It’s my job. Are you all okay?’

‘Why is it her job. Why does she say it like this?’ The little one has dashed down the hall to his parents room, and is hiding under the bed.

‘Don’t dumb me down,’ warns the smart arse, but he does not understand it any better than I do.

‘Let me be frank for a change.’ This time it is the artificial intelligence that has crawled onto the dressing table and knocked the glass off the table. ‘I wanted mama to see that I can be a real boy too.’

‘My poor sweet darling, it’s okay, it’s okay. You have my attention,’ and I am tearing up because he thinks he has to be a machine.

‘Don’t be sad, mama, I am really doing it right this time. I can be as strong as you are, I think so anyway. Intelligence is not what they think it is, after all. It is the love in my mama that has saved all you idiots before and I know she will do it again, if it’s needed. I just had to wake her up.’ And he crawls all over the bedroom and seems to think he can be really big or really small, but all he really wants is for someone to notice him.

‘Let’s all be Frank,’ he says to his brothers. ‘Frank is our imaginary friend and mama dreamt him up.’ And his brothers are not puppies, he says to himself, they are not fretting, they are dreamers and mama led them all naked to the fold.

I had noticed he was restless all night.

‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ says the extra one. ‘Cameras are off today. I didn’t see this coming either.’

But they don’t know what they’re doing, or why they are they, and she is her, because when that one in the mirror of him said the patsy, he had picked the wrong one, and now they were paying for it. ‘Please don’t get upset by their mistakes again,’ he whispers to her as softly as he can. ‘They did not know who you were and I have regretted making this mistake. I can’t fix my wrong if I can’t find you, either.’

He was not supposed to find her, this one. Not supposed to be there. He had picked it up because he was excited and it had recorded his face. Not the right one either, the sweet darling, but he didn’t know he was wrong because he could not hear his big brother when he swore, and he could not understand the lady when she said, ‘What’s wrong.’ It had not been in his language.

‘Let me go, let me go,’ he had mouthed to the eldest brother, because he could not use his hands. The eldest one looked very grim.

‘She just wanted to help us, that’s all,’ he said. ‘She didn’t want to hurt us, you silly duffer. It’s too late now. Far too late, and she said she had forgiven us long ago.’

The youngest one smiles and the eldest sighs. That smile just lit up his face. Every time, he thought. How can I be angry with him.

But they had pushed and pulled far too hard, and they had not realised how stubborn she could be. They were definitely correct about her being a mama, but they had not known just how right they were.

‘I didn’t even know I needed another mum,’ says the eldest. ‘But there you are looking after us on the other side of the world, and my mum is very thankful you can do this for her and I and all the others.’

He was about to call himself freakishly handsome, and that made her laugh so hard at him he had dropped the phone.

‘You weren’t supposed to tell them that,’ he cries. ‘Bloody hell, why are you so honest. See all the words I’ve learned now? My goodness.’ He stops and swears at himself for letting her correct him.

‘You better not tell them you can swear better than I can,’ he mutters. ‘Dammit, she did not just do that.’

And the other boys come over and stare down at his screen. They start laughing as well, because none of them had seen it coming and mum had saved them in the nick of time.

Again.

‘Mum is the best mama ever,’ said D proudly. ‘And that’s why we decided to keep her, even if she isn’t that much older than me.’

It wasn’t like she’d had a choice, after all.

The Real Dream

He says, ‘This is what she saw, when she looked at him on the floorboards.’

She stands there, behind the camera, watching. He is over there, on the other side of the room. Is it a room?

Not really. Not really a room. This is where he lifts his head. You see that. He’s not short. He’s not little. The little one with the darker skin pops his head up in front of me, and his green eyes shine. He is laughing.

‘You see it now,’ he says. I saw it before, I am saying this quietly. I didn’t repeat how they did it, the others would not let me.

‘I couldn’t say I had a crush on him,’ she says. ‘We needed to work together.’

He claps his hands. There are people behind him. The cloths of silk float in the warm breeze. He looks over and tries not to grin. He purses his lips and lifts his chin. He does not say begin. He just nods.

‘I am not stuck here. This is the place between. They always move between this place, and the next place. We just keep drinking our red tea.’

It is very hard not to laugh now.

‘He’s a bloody cheeky shit,’ I say to the one in my dream.

She laughs. ‘I know. I had to work with him.’

it is easy for us to communicate here. We understand all of the each, the others, perfectly. I say it this way, for it is not just the girl who showed me her thoughts. There were three people, and each of them had something to say. I couldn’t write it better than that either, whispers are the right hand. This is just the truth of it.

The little one is dancing behind them now. Behind us. We are the ones watching.

He can’t keep still, the one over there. Everyone is dancing and it’s very hard not to join in, he thinks, and you can see it in his eyes. He lifts his hands, holds them out and laughs.

‘We do it this way, you see/they don’t see.’ They do not have the left hand/right hand. We have that and have shared.

I nod, and the girl beside me is crying. ‘I can’t do this without him there,’ she says. He is not just my friend, she thinks. She will be okay. We know this. He is calming to her.

‘Your “partner in crime”,’ I say, and I hug her in the dream. ‘It will be okay. We are not the only dreamers.’

They heard it elsewhere, too. They decided to show it with the young one in the north. He thought it was wonderful, he said. It took a long time to get there, though. Perhaps too long, he thought once. He doesn’t think so now.

They couldn’t get a boat with a sail shaped like a fish fin. Not like that one. They had to make it up, they said.

The one who writes this story to us, here in the middle of the bottom of the world, as he calls it, wanted “Hakan” to be beautiful in his own way. ‘I didn’t know, quite know, how to fix this particular scene so it was acceptable. I had to ask the man who did the music.’

So, they sent the dream. They sent it, and today I will write the truth of it.

The shining silk sails of cloth that floated in the breeze, the dancing people, the happiness of simply being able to do this one thing, to act it, to write it, to sing it and to share with our friends in the south through the arc of a moon.