#leChat

Being Someone You’re Not

Let me explain something very carefully.

Imagination is a wonderful thing, and people should use it sometimes. I can throw myself into anyone’s position through imagination, and it’s not very often I get it wrong. Occasionally, yeah. Most of the time, I don’t though, because I see what that frustration is — what it really is.

Now, I can see the cocky bastard who hasn’t got a care in the world, because he/she comes from money, right? Let me show the other side of that cocky bastard. “I haven’t got a clue. Will you teach me? I’ve never done this before. Could you show me how? I never listened. I’m listening now.”

Unfortunately, although this is all great, the cocky bastard doesn’t understand that this takes time, and effort, and tends to put other people in a position where they start, not only losing money, but not making any. It also means the cocky bastard might start doing shit illegally because he’s above all the rest of us plebeians, and he can make money just like that *snaps fingers*. Language barrier not withstanding, he just keeps doing whatever the fuck he likes because “why not”.

That’s one example. Then you may also have someone who might be, for example, particularly good looking. Now, because they are particularly good looking, they’re not taken very seriously. “Stand over there. Look like this. Move over here, and look like that.” This person might think to himself or herself, ‘Ya know what, I can do a lot more than just look good. Ya know what, I can actually think for myself and I’m actually kind of clever. Funny that.’

Nobody sees this, they might think. They’d be wrong. A lot of people see it. Not everyone, it’s true, but a lot of people. They might say, for example, “Keep going mate, you’re doing a fantastic job. Ignore ’em, buddy, they’ve got no idea what they’re talking about. See those ones there? They might be a couple of nutters, and they have no fucking idea what they’re talking about either. See how they made assumptions about me just then? Not too flash, is it. I’ve got your back. I understand. When we get these little self-centred shit-for-brains people out in the open, maybe we’ll teach ’em a lesson or two, eh?’

Now, there might be a few other people involved in this scenario. They can see it too. It’s happened to them enough times. They might decide to be a little more switched on than other people, and they might say, ‘Take a break, mate. I’ll take over. No one will know. Do something for yourself for a change.’

Unfortunately, the fact that some are female and some are male, and some decide that it isn’t anyone’s business what they are, make it a little difficult for people to be just mates. Why? Because there are other people involved, and they might just have partners that would not understand. Then, you’ve also got the ones that think, ‘hey, you know what, I could hold all these people to ransom by finding stuff out about them.’ But, you’ve also got the ones who say, ‘I might think exactly the same way as you, and there is absolutely no feckin’ chance anyone’s gonna find out anything they could use against ya. If they do, they might have a whole lot of other very angry people to deal with.’

So, here we are. Some of us are making nothing to keep our independence — so it’s kind of not independence anymore, ya know? Some are so entwined in their own misery they keep hanging on to someone else like a barnacle attached to a jetty. It’s been a long time now. The jetty here is starting to get rotten. It’s time to switch things up.

Me personally, I don’t have all the tech savvy shit I need and I don’t have the patience to read through piles and piles of rubbish to learn nothing. I can’t do it for ya. I’m probably none of the things some people think I am, and a lot of the things some people think I’m not, so please don’t make assumptions about me. I know who I am, and I know exactly what I’m incapable of. I’m kind of honest with myself about shit like that.

Everything I’ve asked for help with I have not received. Not once. Everything I have done, I’ve done mostly for other people. Many people feel the same way, I know, but the burden of carrying all that on one’s shoulders, and getting it repeated back time, and time again, is beginning to wear thin. The one thing I will not do, is get rid of my own stuff to make way for others. I’m not a packrat. I’m not illogical. I’m not bragging either. So, to those who think that’s who I am — you’ve got the wrong person.

Right, then.

‘Gonna be like that, then, is it?’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘Oh, you didn’t need to, ya little sh*t, I know exactly what you did, and once again, you forgot the other side of the effing country.’

‘I did not see the other side of the effing country.’

‘Well, it was based on the other side of the effing country. Which way are the eyes facing, eh? We are lookin’ at you.’

The green eyed one was looking at the other, other side of the country. ‘Apparently, we still don’t exist. Isn’t it amazing that we still don’t exist. I’m not getting political at all. It is not in my nature. By the way, I have been there. I had to go allllll the way over there just to see a band. It was okay, I guess. Different.’

They start to mutter to themselves. ‘Did he just? I didn’t know he was here.’

‘Yes, he was,’ says his mother, and she raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t say anything else, but all the other westies know what she’s thinking. ‘We aren’t particularly stupid, and we haven’t forgotten how to speak properly, but we also haven’t forgotten how to dance to a stick with bottle-tops on it.’

‘Yes.’ Someone does a weird underhand punching motion that looks like he’s pulled back on it a bit so no one would get hurt if they’re standing in the way unintentionally.

‘That’s why I moved there,’ said an unnamed person. ‘They can be a lot more real. Most of them anyway. It is rather hot though.’

‘You get used to it,’ said a very tanned and, in his opinion, absolutely beautiful male of indistinct heritage. ‘My mum said I can come back whenever I want, ‘cos I’m a spunk and you’re not.’

The Independent publisher man was horrified. ‘You did NOT just say that. I am too, a spunk that is. My mum said I’m really cool.’

‘I think that might depend on the situation,’ said the mum of three young men. ‘I am not trying to sell them off, but really I think I raised some good looking blokes, so there.’

‘I know,’ said the mother of two girls and a boy. ‘I raised some pretty good lookin’ kids myself. So there.’

The mother of three girls shook her head. ‘Other people might not agree. You lot are trouble with a capital T. My lot are also trouble with a capital T, and I think if I married two of mine to two of yours, then we’d all be in trouble with a capital T.’

She was probably right.

The brother of the one who thought she was totally awesome shook his head and laughed to himself. ‘My sisters and I can dance really cool if we wanna. We just choose to be nice people.’ The dances they had done back in the day tended to take up most of the dance floor, and it was not the highland fling although it resembled it in a number of ways. ‘So, I guess there’s that.’ (His sister had been his wingman on one occasion.)

She had smiled at one of them once and nearly tripped over her own elbow. They had thought that was one of the funniest things they’d ever seen. ‘If he does that kind of thing, a lot of young women would have been in trouble back in the day,’ someone observes. ‘But, we are not allowed to talk about that, which doesn’t seem fair.’

D does not agree with any of this. ‘They are all quite magical, I said that to my dad, and he agreed. I think we should make a movie on this lot, and my dad just gave me the filthiest look. He said you guys are insane, but in a really funny way. He said,’ and here he points at someone else entirely. ‘He could not get your head in a vice because he trained you to get out of one, and he remembers that too. He’s kinda cool for an old guy with no hair.’

Some other people were mortified. ‘I do not think you can say that, D,’ said someone who knew how the system worked. ‘I think you might have to pull your head in, just a bit.’

‘I do not care about these people in my head,’ said D. ‘I am quite sure they can’t be real, because there is simply no chance they can be that cool. Who made them up?’

There was silicone in his world, and he didn’t quite understand that really cool people were not the people he thought they were.

‘Definitely not real,’ he muttered. ‘This is not my time at all. These guys are seriously not my people, but I can’t help but be impressed behind the scenes. That did not make sense, but I can’t seem to tell her I think they’re freshly minted coins and this is still not my time. Not today.’

No one understood that at all, and he didn’t mind, because apparently they weren’t meant to. ‘Not my time to die,’ he said, very clearly. ‘That’s all.’

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.

This One

There you are. There is your opposite. Listen to them chirp and repeat themselves. It won’t take long.

‘There he is.’

‘Is that him?’

‘Oh, I can’t tell how old he is.’

‘Who’s this? Is this the one?’

‘I can’t tell, I can’t tell.’

This is where we disagree. I don’t see this one like you/they see him. No, not at all.

They will be jumping through more hoops than they can count, and I’m not the one to lay those hoops down.

The other one laughs out loud. ‘This is where we agree.’

It won’t be ‘kindly remove,’ at all, now will it.

‘Most definitely not,’ says an older version, who knows this well. ‘I can see the riots, almost. Not those types of riots,’ the friend adds quickly. ‘I see the other kind, the kind I had to deal with, simply from something just like this.’

Across the ocean and in the middle nods, neither sagely, nor thymely. ‘Oh, the poor chap,’ he says quietly, because what he’d picked up along the way had come there quite some time ago. ‘I didn’t think you’d let him down, and you did not. Not at all.’

He regrets this decision later, perhaps, but not right now. Very much right now, he whispers fiercely. What the hell was I thinking.

I’m sure he’s laughing on the inside, and I am likely correct, yet again, because I’m rather good at that.

‘But, who is it though?’ someone whispers. ‘Who is he?’

I will stand up and walk away, and leave them to it.

‘Made it myself,’ I say and high five the much taller one beside me. There is a conspiratorial wink.

‘My mum said that too.’

Just kidding.

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.

“Let Me Show You Something” — from the back of the red stallion.

Let’s go back, before this all began. Let’s go back to where we were, where I was, when I rode the red stallion, not you. Can you hear my horse? Hear him snort as I curve his sweating neck so he circles, see the wetness on his coat. You are the one down there on the ground, not me. You are. I stare down at the man below me, and he stares back up, the sun glinting from his eyes. Behind him, watching in horrified silence, stands a woman with a small child. They are both terrified.

I don’t want to go back.

He doesn’t say this with humour or words. He is simply stating a fact. This man is not afraid because I have shown him it’s okay, but I need to remind him.

‘Stay where you are.’ I glare at him, and for a moment I see fear in his eyes. This is my sword, not yours. This is my spear, not yours. This does not mark me as American. I am Australian. I will let you stand there and watch me circling you, and I do not need to draw on any of them at all. This is mine. It is not yours. ‘Must I remind you again.’ I say this with immense calm in my voice.

I am also saying this politely, this time. Last time I refused, and this time I refused as well, but I am doing it politely. I’m not swearing at you, while you stand there on the sand. I watch your eyes get all big, and I can see you remember this well. I do not think I will dismount, not yet, because back here, I remember how to ride, and I think I might have been particularly good at it, even if he believes I am not well-trained.

Now, see, watch my mount change in colour. This horse becomes the colour of clouds. I have indeed done this before, in this life, and you’ll remember I had to jump off him as he took off down a road with the bit in his teeth, with his tail in the air. Do you remember me showing you that? We laughed about this at one point, my friend, and that is possibly where this understanding began. The fact I could dismount as the Anglo-Arab ran for his friends without injuring myself was simply fortunate, and that is all. Perhaps I whispered this story to another rider and he understood its worth.

This man is not afraid, he whispers in this one on one conversation. I remember it too. I wasn’t there. You did show me. I remember it too. He stares up at this golden helm I wear, and he remembers.

‘Well then.’ I have stopped circling my mount, who was red in this past life. His hooves skitter in the dust, but he knows his place. I can slow this down once again then, can’t I. I am just reminding you, after all. I’m not getting down, because I’m not on a “high horse”, I am not on a clothes horse, and I am not on a horse with no name. This is exactly who I am, not you.

‘You are still not quite ready,’ admonishes the one in the distance, but he is completely, and utterly wrong, because I have been more than ready for a very long time, and you do not mean anything to me at all.

So. I look at this man standing on the ground below me. He is not better than I am, and he is not worse than I am. He is equal, this man, and it would serve him well to remember that. He opens his mouth. A sly grin forms on his face.

‘No, you don’t talk. I am talking now.’ I look at this man with a warning in my eyes. He blinks once. He remembers this as well. This is my time, and it has been my time for a very long time, down here, so you will listen. ‘Stop screeching.’ I say this to an arrogant woman with a small child. She does not appear so arrogant now, cowering within my circle of hoof prints. You sound like a little bird with no wings. Unfortunately for you, I have wings, and they are very large, but I’m not wearing them right now. ‘I guess you’re lucky. Sit down, right there, all three of you, and I will consider getting down from this horse.’

If he runs again, I think to myself as I stare at the woman and make this promise for she who has finally sat down on the sand, I will plant this spear in the sand in front of him, so he probably shouldn’t.

If she starts being daft, I look at the woman as she cradles the small child, I will turn her into a little frog again, and she can bury her head in the sand as well. He hears this from me, and his eyes begin to smile.

As for you, I curl a lip at this man. I am going to get down from this horse. I pat the red stallion’s neck, and he snorts. His eyes do not roll like a mad beast. He is my animal and it will serve them well to remember it.

He is beautiful, isn’t he, this one made of clouds. You are quite lucky this one is made of clouds, because that one I had, the one in the last life, he was not made of clouds at all, and I hope you remember him as well as I do.

You’re welcome.

P.S. You can get the children to draw the red stallion, if you like. I rode him in this past life, yes, by moving into his body and helping him be, and he remembers it well. That one, him standing lost with the woman and the child in the circle I made with the hooves of my horse, he remembers it too. Ask him what it looks like, he can tell you. He knows who I am.

Motivation?

He starts laughing. He knows what’s coming.

‘It did take me a while to get used to it,’ he mutters. ‘Go on then.’

Are we driving? Have we just met? What did I say that made you laugh.

They’re friends.

‘You said I had pretty eyes,’ he says. He chuckles again. ‘I think you may have said that a lot.’

‘One of my favourite pastimes.’

We’re driving.

‘Move over.’

‘I can’t move over. If I move over, I’ll have to open the door, and then I’ll fall out.’

‘Fine then. You should probably stop the car.’

‘Stop the car?’

‘Get your hand off your dick, and stop the car.’

He grins. ‘Got it.’

He gets his hand off his dick, and stops the car. She gets out, lifts a finger (it’s the right way round, dude, don’t get offended) and walks around the back of the vehicle.

‘I’m not stupid,’ she says as she comes up to the driver’s side.

‘I wouldn’t run you over,’ he protests.

‘Shush. Move over. Don’t get that handbrake stuck up your arse though, will ya.’

He moves over.

‘Buckle up.’

He buckles up. ‘Where are we going?’ He grins.

‘Where do you wanna go?’

‘I dunno. I asked first.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘Stop being a shithead. Where are we going?’

‘That way.’

‘That way?’ He points down the road. ‘You mean this way?’

‘Splitting hairs now, are we?’ She throws it in first.

‘Handbrake,’ he mutters.

‘I’ll give you a fucking hand brake. I’m surprised it’s not still stuck up your arse.’

There may be no small amount of chuckling. ‘God, you’re a bitch.’

‘Thank you. Oh it sounds good, doesn’t it?’ The engine has that little bit of a whine – the sound you know you are going to have a good time to. ‘I didn’t think the old girl had it in her. Who did her up?’

‘I did.’

‘You might have mentioned that once or twice. I just wasn’t sure, you know? Said something about the VIN?’

‘Yeah. Might have said something like that. I missed her a lot when she went. Didn’t get stolen though. Know we aren’t gonna talk about that, are we?’

‘Nah. We’ll leave that. Second.’

‘Second?’

Yep. Second. ‘She’s got a bit of grunt. Better for a straight road, I think.’

‘You’re probably right. Couldn’t keep up with me down those windy roads, could ya.’

‘Fuck off.’ Third. ‘Wind the window down.’

‘What the fuck for.’

Oh good, he’s starting to relax.

‘Having fun yet?’

‘Ya know what. I think I am.’ He leans back and winds down the window. ‘Where’d you say we were going?’

‘This way.’

The little girl…

stomped into the room.

‘Get up,’ she said, not very nicely.

‘What?’ the small boy looked up at her with bleary eyes.

‘Get up, I said, or…’ she looked around his room quickly. ‘I will whack you with a tennis racquet.’

‘You will not!’ He shot out of the bed like he’d done something in it.

‘Yes, I will. Where are your brothers?’

‘They’re not here,’ he cried, scrambling for the bin, where he’d hidden her papers. ‘Damnit!’

‘Yes they are. I can hear them.’ She stomped her foot imperiously.

Giggling came from behind the curtains. Perhaps, if the boys had been older, it would have been masculine giggling. As it was, they were still very young and didn’t know how to hide properly. Two sets of feet, in very unattractive shoes, poked out from beneath the hideously orange hanging cloth.

The little girl didn’t say anything to warn them. She picked up the racquet the boy had hidden under the bed and advanced towards the window.

‘Run away!’ the boy called from the bin he had accidentally-on-purpose fallen into. ‘How the hell did this get so big,’ he muttered to himself.

The two brothers peeked out. ‘Oh no,’ cried the one with the blue eyes. ‘She’s gonna get me by Jumminy. I must run slowly in a wriggling line of not very far so I can’t be caught.’ He began to tiptoe, very unquietly, and very vaguely, and hideously slowly in the general direction of something that was not her.

‘Arrrrrgh,’ cried the one with the green eyes. ‘I am friendly, I am friendly!’ He deposited himself on the floor and began to giggle uncontrollably.

‘You are NOT HELPING MOIIIIII,’ said the first boy. His eyes were very large and brown, and rather pretty in their own stupid way. ‘Not fair,’ he muttered. ‘I was trying to be cute.’

‘It does not suit you AT ALL,’ cried the little girl and swung the racquet at him as hard as she could. It hit him on his rather horribly shaped backside, for we must remember he was currently upside down in a bin.

‘You better watch out,’ cried the little girl. ‘For when I grow up, I am gonna get my future husband to come along and clean you up like something or other that I can’t think of right now.’

‘Well then! Well then!,’ the little boy cried from under the sheets of paper he’d finally found. ‘When I get a wife that… when I get a wife, and I WILL, I’ll set her onto you and you’ll be SORRY.’

‘Not gonna happen,’ said the little girl furiously. ‘And I’ll tell ya why. It’s because me and your future wife, whoever she may be, are gonna be best mates, and that’s that. So THERE.’

Someone’s mother dashed into the room as quickly as she was able, with her bad back and gimpy leg, and one eye missing. ‘What the hell is going on,’ she cried.

Her husband walked in slowly after her and surveyed the room. He began to grin.

‘What are you laughing at,’ cried the little boy with the big brown eyes as he backed out of the fallen over bin.

‘I see now,’ said the father. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said to his wife, who was trying to grab one of the screeching boys.

‘Don’t worry about it? Look at them!’

‘They’re fine. The only problem I can see here,’ and the father grinned quite widely. ‘Is the fact there aren’t enough girls in this room. But, that’s okay. They’re playing together quite nicely, don’t you think?’

‘They are?’ The mother looked again. The screeching and whacking and begging for mercy all seemed quite… civilised, if the playing of children could seem that way, especially if it were three boys and only one girl.

‘Yep, it’s fine,’ said the father. ‘They’re all friendly, you see. Kids these days just don’t know how to do it right, that’s all.’

‘What year is it here then?’ the mother asked.

‘Most likely the seventies, or something. Maybe the eighties. Doesn’t really matter,’ said the father. ‘They’ll be alright. See, she’s making him feel better now.’

They looked at the little girl, who was currently trying to drag one of the little boys out of the bedroom door by his ankles.

‘See?’ said the dad. ‘They’re friends.’

The End.

Update from a Small Cat – Jan 26th

‘Ah. You wish me to meander with you.’ It wasn’t a question. The cat had stood up and capered along the wall under the fence at least five minutes beforehand, and was likely waiting on the corner for his frenemy, el cato.

‘I didn’t say that, you did.’ El cato projected this thought through the glass door at the rear of his own house. ‘I am not ambulating today either.’

‘What are you doing then. I can’t see you?’

‘Nope, I am a figment of your imagination and you are a worm.’

‘Oh, fabulous. I have always wanted to be a worm.’

‘You have not.’ Of this, el cato was sure. ‘You said you never knew which end to talk to.’

‘Perhaps I’ve changed my mind?’

‘I don’t think you have changed your mind.’ El cato stood and stretched, fluffing up his magnificent tail. He had spotted le chat peering over the fence. ‘Little basket.’

‘Speak to me not of baskets, I am breathtaking. Look at me.’ Le chat wiggled his backside with anticipation. ‘Just so you know, I’m ready to pounce. I’m not sure what at, yet, but I’m ready.’

The dog on the other side of the fence wrinkled her pretty face. ‘What are they doing,’ she mumbled. ‘And why must I always be the one between them?’

The human, who had not got up to look around the corner (through sheer willpower alone), sighed deeply. ‘I can hear you all. Will you please cease and desist. It is Sunday morning. Even the birds are silent.’

It was true. The birds were distant, the wind was lifting into a breeze, and le chat was beginning to sing the song of the people, so they would hear him and perhaps wonder…

‘Oh there you are,’ said the human under her breath.

‘I was bored,’ murmured le chat. ‘Wall smells like stone, fence smells like metal.’ He stared vaguely off into the middle distance. ‘Cobwebs.’ He crouched low on the sand coloured brick. ‘Extra large.’

The human made a slight wheezing sound which the cat assumed meant she was laughing. He stood and turned, wrapping his own black tail gently around his forepaws. The patch on his shoulder stood out starkly against the white of his coat.

‘My ears are not lopsided,’ he chided her. ‘One is merely listening more than the other.’

On this, they could agree.

‘And, just so you know,’ he added. ‘Bermuda is the general opposite place in the world of where we are, which is why, when I dig, you say I am trying to dig all the way to Bermuda.’

And that was the absolute truth.

The Toreador (a fiction)

‘If I may say, yer ‘onor, my mount has become quite demanding.’ The toreador looked down at his horse. ‘A flaming beast indeed,’ he muttered under his breath.

The horse arched its neck and stamped its feet. Its hooves had been trimmed, and oil applied.

‘Silence,’ demanded the person at the fence. ‘There will be no shouting in this court.’ Their face had become as red as the horse’s coat. The mumbling of the people dulled to quiet.

This horse had been marked on both shoulders, and stood under a tree to keep out of the sunlight for longer than he’d expected. His older companion rolled expressive eyes and stuck out his tongue for good measure.

‘I really don’t feel like being a toreador today,’ said the toreador. ‘Can someone else look after him?’

‘He’s your horse,’ said the other rider. ‘I think he wishes to have some exercise.’

‘Perhaps in the evening then, when it’s cooler,’ suggested the toreador hopefully, then grimaced as he noticed the trembling of the horse beneath him. ‘Bugger. He’s going to be a pain in the backside. Perhaps I’ll take him for a short stroll around the paddock instead.’

‘I do not think that will be enough,’ said the rider of the dark bay.

As if to prove that point, the bay sighed, very deeply. He had been bitten enough by the young maniac beside him over the last few weeks, but it had not ruined his own good nature.

The horse wished the toreador to take him to a bull. He lifted his head and snorted. This time it was the toreador who sighed.

‘The bull always comes to us, you idiot,’ he said, raising his spear. ‘Now for goodness sake, calm down and start dancing.’

to be continued…