Yonder

Yonder (Chapter Fourteen)

2007-12-20T22:54:48Z

Chapter Fourteen: A Pillow in Bedlam
Synopsis: Llew wakes up to moonshine in the kitchen and Dada in the living room.
Author's Note: Wow, Evil Steve still makes me giggle. Nice change from the cringing.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~ Halfway House ~ The Black Cave ~ Get One Free ~ Vegephobia ~ Lunar City ~ Speaking in Tongues ~ Fairy Hunting ~ Cats and Dogs ~ The Electric Kid ~

A Pillow in Bedlam

I woke with a start – facedown in a feather pillow. What had I been dreaming about? It was some kind of nightmare. Something about being trapped in a burning building with a squealing child in my arms.

I was lying in a cold sweat under the blankets of a four-poster bed. The room had flowery wallpaper and a scent of hand cream and powder puffs. Gauzy curtains were veiling the tall windows like ghosts watching the sunrise. A Victorian dollhouse stood beside the dresser. I caught sight of my reflection in the dusty looking glass. Greasy hair was hanging about my wasted expression. My skin had acquired a sick yellow tint. My right eye looked as though it had been replaced by a ripe damson and then smashed with a toffee hammer. A real shiner. I hauled my clammy body from the sheets. It was dressed in starched pyjamas. Where had I woken up this time? At least it was an improvement on a muddy ditch in the highlands.

I ventured out onto the landing. Half-cracked doors acted as peepholes into a laundry room, a broom cupboard, a study and a loo. There was a cluster of cactuses on the windowsill that surrounded a family photograph of a middle-aged couple and three blonde boys. The laminated family tree helped me identify these people as parents Frank and Linda and children Ruben, Edward and Chad. This was the Butterworth family. This was whose property I had been sleeping on.

I heard voices and clattering from the floor below. As I wandered downstairs my eyes were snared by the childlike artwork that covered the walls. Silhouettes of eagles or maybe angels were cast upon sheets of sugar paper. They were painted in India ink and reminded me of the black blots that psychiatrists give their patients to decipher. A telephone sat on an oval table in the hallway. I decided that it was time I gave Frances another bell. I picked up the receiver and slipped my fingers into the dialing ring – then I dropped the phone with a sudden fright. The earpiece was exploding with space invader noise. It must have been seriously out of order. I looked to the door on my left. A horseshoe and a sign reading ‘Ye Olde Kitchen’ were rudely nailed into the wood. My hunger succeeded on dragging me in.

The curtains were drawn. A cyst of green smoke carpeted the ceiling. Pots and kettles were vomiting pink froth onto cooking rings. Evil Steve was standing over the stove armed with spatulas and seasoning. He wore large plastic goggles that made him look like a mad scientist.

“Morning,” I said.

“Afternoon,” Steve corrected me.

“Is it…where are the others?”

“Your friend went to the Metropolis. Willow goes there every day. He is hoping to find us a base in the city. Crisp said he had a few ideas. Those two guys were up talking together all night. You should have heard em – like philosophers, they were! This morning was weird though. I was frying my Cajun mushrooms and Crisp – he just fled from the house! He wasn’t kidding when he said ‘Vegephobic’ was he? Anyway, they’ll be back some time this evening.”

Had I passed out last night? I felt irked to have missed out on getting to know Willow. Slightly bitter as well. It was clear that Crisp was the one that the electric kid had taken a shine to. Not me.

“I’m just experimenting in here,” Steve continued. “Eddie is noodling away in his attic. The girls are rehearsing in the living room. Oh and Crisp’s sister is playing out in the fields. Hunting for butterflies or something…” he said, baffled.

I smiled. “Something like that.”

“Well, she won’t catch any. Cold weather is setting in early and the insects are dying out. Hey Llew, do you want a taste?”

He held out a wooden ladle. There was a red substance pulsating in its holder. I caught a sharp scent of liquor and stood back from the sparks of white-hot sugar.

“It’s Gin Jam!” said Steve.

It’s alive, I thought.

“I invented it.” He beamed, proudly. “Try!”

“No thanks, I’m feeling rather groggy this morning…”

“Afternoon,” he repeated. “I’m not surprised. That’s quite a shiner you’ve got there. Do you want me to make you a poultice for it?”

“No, it’s fine,” I said, quickly. “Is there any chance of a coffee?”

“We can do better than that,” Steve handed me a plastic thermos. “My own recipe – aniseed, rum, wolfberry and syrup. It’s the ultimate pick-me-up.”

I shook my head, firmly, but Steve was persistent.

“You haven’t lived until you’ve tried my wake up juice!”

Happy to be a lowlife, I thought. My lips were sealed tight, like a toddler who won’t open the tunnel for the spaghetti choo-choo train. Steve shrugged and turned back to his cooking. On the iron stove, the raspberry haemoglobin was already evolving over the brim of its saucepan. I began to inspect the peculiar apparatus on the kitchen table. There were test tubes in the spice rack, molasses in a mixing bowl and wild fruits in the bender. There were pickling jars on the window ledge too, which contained a variety of murky distillations. One was labelled ‘Project X (highly flammable)’.

“Are you a moonshiner?” I asked.

“How did you guess?” Steve smirked. “I ditched BA Chef College* to experiment with it. The bastards won’t let you cook with booze on a foundation course.”

I motioned to the window. “What’s Project X?”

“A little tonic they call ‘the Green fairy’.”

“Absinthe!” I exclaimed. “You made real absinthe?!”

Steve nodded. “It’s my labour of love.”

At that moment the kettle whistled, the saucepan boiled over and something exploded in the microwave. Evil Steve whipped on a pair of rubber gloves and tried to regain some authority over his cooking. I decided that I’d better leave before the fumes intoxicated me. I helped myself to a late breakfast of fruit loops and coconut milk and stepped back into the corridor.

A scream rang out in the next room. The living room, I presumed. There was a ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ notice on the door. I didn’t want to interrupt anything but the scream had sounded pretty genuine and it would be negligent to leave it unchecked. I burst in through the door and found Laurie standing in the centre of the carpet, flushed and teary-eyed with a film of sweat on her brow. She was dressed in black. The furniture had been pushed against the wall to make room for a rehearsal space. A second girl was sitting cross-legged on an ottoman. A petite girl with mousy hair and doe eyes. She wore a velvety purple dress with a Celtic symbol on the breast. There was manuscript in her lap and moccasins on her feet.

“You utter turd!” Laurie spat at me.

The other girl swivelled around to face me and gave me a sympathetic head nod. “Don’t take that to heart,” she said, soothingly. “Laurie was having a moment. I’m afraid that you broke the atmosphere.”

“I can’t believe it!” Laurie tantrumed. “That was the best one yet!”

Her friend remained calm. “I’m Beth by the way.”

“For Godsake, don’t talk to him! I’m losing my motivation!”

“Laurie is rehearsing a one woman play that we’ve written about oppression. She has to perform in multiple characters. It’s quite an emotional ordeal. We’re both so passionate about its underlying metaphors.”

I nodded, tentatively. Laurie exploded again.

“Can’t you even read? Do not disturb – that means keep your nose out, you moron! If you were looking for your little boyfriend…”

“I thought some one was dying in here...” I blurted.

Laurie frowned. “You – you did?”

“See?” said Beth. “I told you it was powerful.”

She snorted. “He wouldn’t understand it.”

“Give him a chance! What did you think of it, Llew?”

The two girls stared at me, expectantly. I looked down at my feet and struggled to think of some compliment that might placate them.

“It sounds interesting,” I managed. “Black suits you.”

Laurie rolled her eyes. “I always wear black when I’m performing. It’s symbolic. Now if you don’t mind...”

I backed out of the room with my cereal wobbling in my hands. I read the sign on the door once again – DO NOT DISTURB. I wish those girls had shown me that much consideration. I sat down heavily on the stairs and began to ask myself what I was doing here – in this madhouse far from home. I had received scroll, I told myself. It was a calling. But had the others in this house been given scrolls too? I had been imagining that the Willow man had chosen me because I was special. Now I had to wonder if it was simply because I was weird.

Not weird enough, I was starting to suspect...

*BA Chef College is based in Stoke and is one of the few education establishments a kid can enter without a single O level. Career councillors have always tended to steer pupils away from the culinary field and they find the mediocre title of BA Chef particularly derogatory. This is a college that actually views home economics as a kind of art form. In the single term that Steve studied there he blew up five kettles and incinerated a toaster, but it wasn’t until he was found to be dabbling in the dark art of distillery that he earned his expulsion.

Yonder (Chapter Thirteen)

2007-12-20T22:22:11Z

Chapter Thirteen: The Electric Kid
Synopsis: The Willow man tells his story as the gang hitch a ride to Butterworth farm.
Author's Note: Sorry it's been so long since my last update. I've been trying to get organised for Christmas.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~ Halfway House ~ The Black Cave ~ Get One Free ~ Vegephobia ~ Lunar City ~ Speaking in Tongues ~ Fairy Hunting ~ Cats and Dogs

The Electric Kid

We were hitching a ride to Butterworth Farm on a midnight milk truck. Our new friends had informed us that ‘Generation Y’ were currently residing at the house, while Eddie Butterworth’s parents were on holiday in the Caribbean. Halogen lights flickered in high corners of the empty vehicle. Black flies were hovering over the puddles of milk that were slowly congealing on the floorboards. When they had drunk their fill, these flies rose up to investigate the lights. Most times they would draw too near and end up fried alive in the beautiful radiance. I watched their little deaths intently through one eye as I held my ski cap against my throbbing cheek.

“Did you see his face?” Crisp gabbled. “I thought we were mincemeat – and then you guys appear like a platoon of Blood Bots. The exact people we’ve been looking for! We’ve been searching for you all day! This is like one of those Dickensian coincidences, man. It was meant to be…”

Willow pulled back his hood. The first feature that hit me was ‘Eyes’. They were emerald. Two green gems set deep in his pallid skin. His lids and lashes were decorated with glitter gel and when they caught the light, they looked like golden tears. The second shock of Willow’s appearance was ‘Hair’. It was platinum blonde and stood on end as if he were gripping a static conductor. It caused his head to resemble a dandelion clock and his body was like a stem; so emaciated that you had to wonder where he kept his internal organs. There was something ethereal and almost transparent about him. It was as if a charcoal artist had sketched those fine features, then erased the illustration and coloured in his eyes. Just his eyes...

“How did you beat that hunk of meat?” asked Crisp.

“I shocked him,” Willow answered, simply.

Crisp frowned. “Come again?”

“Oh I…I have this condition which the doctors are calling ‘Electric Syndrome’. It means that my body is highly charged with static. If I touch another person then they receive shocks. I guess it comes in handy at times. I was fluxing like crazy tonight. The raindrops were fizzing on my hands.”

Fluxing. That was the name that Willow gave to his little pulses and tremors; the current that travelled over his skin. When Willow goes into flux he flinches, his eyelashes flicker and his fingertips reach for his temples. The flux was the main reason that he dressed in the black cape…like a live cable wrapped in gaffer tape. The cowl hung below his knees and its sleeves swallowed his hands.

“What causes it?” asked Crisp, fascinated.

The other girl and boy who had taken care of me, sat on the left and right sides of the electric kid. Beelzebub’s real name was Stephen Errol Neville. It seemed that I wasn’t the only one taken aback by his fiendish features. Even close friends addressed him with the nickname ‘Evil Steve’. The guy had one lone eyebrow that ran across his whole forehead like a caterpillar. He wore a German army shirt and a spiked dog collar. There were a range of orange stains that covered his punk t-shirt and his combat trousers. The halogen lights revealed a face that was maimed with acne scars and hair that was gelled into a thousand tiny horns.

The girl’s name was Laurie Guthrie. She had a dumpy figure and tomato red cheeks. Her clothes were a walking advert for thrift shops; faded flares with glitzy spangles (hand-me-down from a disco diva), a giant chequered shirt (borrowed from an obese brickie) and a rainbow waistcoat (owned by a tasteless snooker player – thrown out by his wife). Laurie reminded me of Boomie Bell*. Spilt ends of nutmeg hair were poking from her purple bandanna. I have reflected already on my bizarre unease towards ‘hats in real life’. Well, ‘big girls wearing bandannas’ simply terrify me. This Laurie girl had been eying me curiously throughout our journey. It is possible that she was trying to fathom which gender group I belonged too.

“What the hell causes it?!” Crisp repeated, insistently. He was clearly awed by Willow. Coming face to face to with someone who had ‘Electric Syndrome’ was better than meeting a celebrity. “Tell us, mate!”

Crisp was hankering after the full campfire tale. He himself had already moved our rescuers with a lengthy sob story of how he and his young sister had been reunited in a service station. Our new friends were probably somewhat baffled by this claim to siblinghood. Odie was an extremely fair child, while Crisp’s own complexion hinted at a Mediterranean parentage. But none of them had pried into the matter, perhaps figuring that Crisp and Odie came from one of those ‘don’t ask’ families.

“Come on, Willow man!” Crisp badgered.

Evil Steve and Laurie were looking nervous and examining their shoes. Willow shrugged nonchalantly and split his lips to tell the tale.

“I was born with the condition. No cure is known. Wearing dark colours helps. Smoking helps. That’s all I can do. My parents were pretty disturbed by it. You know – their kid being more in danger of spontaneous combustion than cot death. They would take me to the supermarket and I would trigger the fire alarm and sprinkler system. They took me on walks down the high street and I would cause interference with police radios. The sirens would chase us all the way home. At school I would get in trouble for shocking other kids in playground. For a while I had no friends at all – until I learnt the light bulb trick that is. Then I was entertaining.”

“Did you get treatment?” Crisp probed, tentatively.

He nodded. “My folks took me for a spell in Mutable Wing* of the children’s hospital. God, I hated that place. The white walls had me drawing twenty crayon pictures every day, but it was never enough to brighten the ward. Other kids used cry themselves to sleep at night. I cried too at first. The night nurses had to strap me to my bed to stop the convulsions. I haven’t cried since I was nine.”

Crisp whistled. I chewed my lip.

“I would just hear doctors saying things like ‘disturbed child’ or ‘unstable child’ when they thought I wasn’t listening. Years of heart readings and blood tests and brain wave patterning. They treated me like an alien.”

His voice broke away in pause. My brain was reeling from the story and the notions it had inspired in me. Willow’s childhood had me thinking that there were two types of ‘outsider’ in this world. Firstly, there are the kids who are born into traumatic situations – weird and frightening situations that force them into feeling like outsiders. Secondly, there are the kids who are born into comfortable environments – a middleclass family, a good education and not a day’s illness. These kids are disturbed by the nicety and blandness of their situations. They want to transform themselves into outsiders because it seems more interesting, more righteous. Meeting the electric kid made me aware of how much I occupy the second category.

“I was fourteen when I ran away,” Willow continued. “I changed my name and hitchhiked to the city. That was five years ago, when I first met the Blooms.”

Crisp spluttered. “You knew Hellraiser Harry? No WAY!”

“It’s true, Godspeed his soul. They rescued me. Let me sleep in the warehouse. Kept me out of shantytown. The old dears even offered to take me on their VSO trip. But a hot climate is murder on electric skin.”

Crisp frowned. “So do your folks know where you are?”

“Folks?” Willow laughed. “I don’t have any. The stork sent me!”

Willow started riffling through his pockets for a cigarette. Crisp smiled at him fondly. It seemed that he had found another soul mate in the electric kid. He wasn’t letting anyone else get a word in edgeways. This irritated me. Crisp ought to remember that it was me who found the Willow man first.

“About the scroll you gave me…” I began, nervously.

Willow put me at ease with a touched smile and I carried on.

“What…what did you mean by ‘Generation Y’?”

He tipped his head. “What do you think it means?”

“I thought it might be a pun, you know – why bother? Why it all!”

Willow flushed in embarrassment. “Well, there’s no right or wrong answer. But the truth is, Llew – the Y stands for ‘Yonder’.”

“Yonder?” I squinted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His smile intensified and his eyes glimmered.

“Just yonder.” He waved his hand out in front of him, his fingers almost touching my eyes. “A path we can travel without signposts.”

The milk truck pulled into grounds of Butterworth farm. I think I must have been punch-drunk after our run in with the bruisers, because Crisp and Evil Steve had to hold my arms to keep me from falling as we walked up the drive to the farmhouse. Laurie was throwing grit at windows and yelling ‘Eddie!’ I looked over my shoulders and saw the neon and streetlamps that illuminated the distant Metropolis. I realised that we were a mile or so away from it now. We had come to the farmland that edged the city. Archie’s tunnels couldn’t be far away.

Willow rapped on the door. Five minutes and nine knocks later a sleep-webby voice muttered through the letterbox.

“What time do you call this?”

“Open the door for us, Eddie,” Willow replied, politely. “I’ve brought some new recruits with me. They’re hurt and exhausted.”

I heard a giddy moan within. “Oh no, no, no…my walls are already bursting with runaways, Willow. It’s getting to be a madhouse in here!”

“But they’ve so travelled far,” Willow appealed. “You wouldn’t have them sleep in the stable now would you?”

“Come on, Butter boy!” snapped Evil Steve. “It’s freezing!”

“Oh whatever, fine, fine…” the voice relented. “Wipe your feet.”

I heard the lock slide back. Crisp’s voice was in my ear – “You alright, Llew? Hang in there, matie…” Odie held the door open and I stepped over the ‘WELCOME’ mat. I felt supportive hands leading me up the stairs. I can’t remember if I reached the landing or not before they had to carry me.

* Boomie Bell is a character actress – a favourite with independent filmmakers. Without the aid of a size 10 figure and paint by numbers beauty, she has risen to fame on the strength of her acting chops. Her sterling portrayal of a lesbian rally-car racer in the movie ‘Dreamers and Chasers’ sealed her cult status. Llew flicked over to the film in the middle of the night and was so enthralled he couldn’t sleep afterwards.

* The Mutable Wing is a ward for children with ‘Unknown and Shifting Disorders’. It deals with physical, emotional and mental conditions. The ‘normal’ kids who come in to have their tonsils removed call it ‘The Mutant Zone’. Willow was a resident there for over a year. A lot of rumours flew around about him and his condition – they would say that he was a test-tube-baby or a genetic experiment gone wrong. Incidentally, Crisp’s Aunt Trisha once took her nephew to The Mutable Wing after he flushed her tomato plant down the toilet. Doctors said that there were no antibiotics that they could prescribe for ‘Vegephobia’, but suggested that little Crisp should have a hobby to occupy him. Music lessons, perhaps?

Yonder (Chapter Twelve)

2007-11-23T15:05:46Z

Chapter Twelve: Cats and Dogs
Synopsis: Llew and Crisp are attacked by a gang of bruisers.
Author's Note: Okay, so this is the chapter where I get in trouble with YA publishers for violence and obsenities. So cover your eyes and ears if this is likely to offend you. To be honest you've probably heard worse on the streets.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~ Halfway House ~ The Black Cave ~ Get One Free ~ Vegephobia ~ Lunar City ~ Speaking in Tongues ~ Fairy Hunting

Cats and Dogs

When it started to rain, we took shelter in the Cineplex on the west side of the city. Fooling a work experience girl that we were newspaper critics, we sneaked into the front row of ‘Screen Seven’. The movie was a blockbuster remake of an old black and white TV serial. About halfway through our popcorn, a senior usher rumbled us and we were frogmarched to the fire-exit. Before our rude eviction from the picture house, Odie lifted some gobstoppers and orange fruities from a passing refreshment trolley. Crisp shook his head and beamed with pride.

“The kid is a pro!” he enthused.

We were shoved out into the Metropolis back streets. The rain was easing off, but the shadows were thick all about us. The alley was clogged with tramps and runaways. Some were sleeping inside wooden packing crates blanketed in bubblewrap, others were rummaging through cinema dumpsters for unspoiled food. Some were huddled around trashcan fires, warming their blue fingers and mumbling life stories. A young woman was sitting alone beneath a battered umbrella, trying to keep a small candle burning as she scribbled in her journal.

Tin cans and banana skins lined the cobbles. An old hobo lay in the gutter, sobbing and trembling. Odie rushed forward to help him, but I pulled her away sharply. I felt a foreboding about this shantytown. ‘There, but for the grace of God…’ preached through my head like a mantra. I wondered if later this evening, we would be asking these beggars for a share of their dustbin treasures.

The back streets were like the catacombs of Greek mythology. Brick walls, wire fences and dead-ends prevented us from returning to Cornerstone Square. We found ourselves approaching a pub called ‘The Blind Sheepdog’. Outside this smoky hovel, a trio of barroom bruisers were hunched upon beer barrels. They were all middle-aged, over weight and pissed as farts. I supposed that they might be labourers from the oil deposit. They wore string vests in the evening chill; their leathery skin acting as insulation. I wondered if they had been barred from the pub’s interior.

“Fucking queers!” one of them hollered.

My ears prickled at this obscenity. Crisp and I had done our best to curtail our swearing since we had a minor with us. Odie’s jaw dropped open. My eyes remained fixed on the pavement as I prayed for that to be the end of the verbal assault. But it appeared the bruisers hadn’t even begun.

“Arse bandits!” yelled one of them. “Fagots!”

“Paedos!” hissed another. “You gonna rape that little gonk against a wall?”

“She'll be about the right size for you, Needle dicks!”

For the bruisers, this last slur was the coup de grace. They wobbled on their barrels, laughing manically. I scowled. These men were nothing more than schoolyard bullies who couldn’t grow up. I have always found that the best way to deal with bullies is to shut them out, bite your tongue and keep walking. The bullies take this as a forfeit victory and you get to keep your teeth. It was a happy arrangement in my books. These thugs were no different from others I had encountered. They just wanted to get a rise out of you.

Unfortunately…Crisp was rising.

Before I could grab his shoulders and beg him yell at him not to be a hero, Crisp wheeled on the bruisers in a pugnacious temper. He launched himself at the leader, the one who had called Odie a gonk. I saw the man’s smile fall from his face as Crisp went for him, pummelling his chest with puny fists. It was David versus Goliath. The bruiser exceeded my friend in height, width and weight. He was able to send Crisp flying into a heap of polystyrene boxes with a single gut punch.

Odie rushed to the mouth of the alley and started squealing for help at the top of her lungs. ‘Run little girl!’ I thought, ‘Run for the hills!’. The bruiser started advancing towards where Crisp lay crumpled. I ran between them like a referee, my hands raised in surrender, my lips petrified into a smile. The bruiser eyed me with contempt.

“You starting too, Mullet?!”

He punctuated this sentence by wrenching the ski hat from my scalp and slapping it to the ground. Several of my hairs went with it. The thug had a ‘just released from the slammer’ vibe about him. My instincts told me to fall to my knees, wail for mercy and offer to lick his boots. Somehow I had to sweet-talk this brute into not butchering my friend. I might as well try to blow down a brick wall.

“Oh, oh…okay gentlemen,” I stammered. “I think everyone is a mite intoxicated here…” I didn’t intend to sound like such a pretentious mincer. The flowery words were just spilling out like nervous ticks. “My friend was just…just a little perturbed with your use of expletives in front of his young sister. We took her to the movies tonight. We didn’t mean to offend you…”

Before I could drivel any longer, I was yanked away by an unknown element. I caught a split-second glimpse of the thug who had pulled at my collar before – thwack! His fist hit me full in the face. I toppled down into the puddles. I could feel the ruptured fluids swelling in my cheeks where brass rings had struck bone. It was a struggle for me not to faint or go into shock. My brain was ringing inside my skull. Fear spread through me like litmus solution.

With me out of the picture the bruisers turned back to Crisp. My friend was curled in the foetal position – badly winded from that initial blow. The chief bruiser barked an order for one of his henchmen to ‘Take the faggot’s pants down!’ Crisp was hauled to his feet and the command was carried out. The thug twisted Crisp’s arm behind his back and held him on his tiptoes. A third bruiser pinned me to the pavement with the heel of his biker boot. The leader took a beer bottle and shattered it against the wall. He waved the broken shard at Crisp’s lower regions with a mocking sneer. Crisp’s legs were trembling now, but his stare remained brazen and tenacious. A broccoli tree would have scared him. A broken bottle he could handle.

“This is what’s coming to you, Paedo…” the bruiser leered.

The punch had made me light-headed. We were in mortal danger here. I should have known it. Two boys (one very effeminate) walking hand in hand with a small girl was a bulletin board of controversy. To their minds, they weren’t being reckless thugs. They were vigilantes, justly punishing a couple of perverted child molesters. An image started to form in my head. Crisp and I left slaughtered in a back alley skip. Discovered by the garbage man the following morning. My parents arriving to identify our mutilated corpses…oh please...no...

A sound. Pelt of footsteps. Through my tear-blurred vision I realised that our circle had widened. Now three extra figures stood amongst us with little Odie by their side. One of the strangers reached for the bruiser’s wrist in the same manner that an adult might disarm a child running with scissors. There was a crackle of static and the bottle dropped. The man recoiled with a tick of horror pulsing over his face.

“What the...he just zapped me!”

“Deck him!” said the bruiser with his foot on my back.

“No way, man. It’s that electric kid. Unfair advantage!”

“Why don’t you say that you’re afraid?” asked the stranger who had disarmed the bottle wielder. “It’s clear that anything out the ordinary is very disturbing to you.”

“Bollocks to you, weirdo!” the bruiser snarled. “The little Gobshite was asking for it!”

“Oh, I see,” the electric kid breezed. “You men are clearly noble warriors who are protecting this city...”

“You’re talking queer!”

“Why? Is this a battle of wits – do I have an unfair advantage?”

“Fagot fairy!!”

The man seethed with a growing frustration. His friends had melted into the night, but for some reason he lingered. A little spellbound perhaps.

“I don’t blame you,” said the electric kid. “Your world must seem very dark. It's turned you into a monster that lives only to prey on lost children. Such is your role in the Metropolis. But we are not afraid of you, monster. Go!”

And believe it or not…the bruiser went.

Crisp stood shell-shocked, his combat trousers still down around his ankles. Odie scampered over and cuddled his naked knees. Two figures stepped out of the shadows and knelt by my side. They hauled me into a sitting position and examined my facial hurts. The first one was a plump girl with freckled cheeks and a bust that was rising and falling before my bleary eyes. The second was a tall boy with a sharp beard and crooked features. I recognised him instantly.

“How many fingers?” Beelzebub asked me.

I tried to focus on the blur of digits in front of me. I could see fingers with ears and noses. Fingers with wings. I rubbed my eyes and stared across the alley at the electric kid. His green eyes were sparkling beneath a black hood. I knew him also. The Reaper of human souls. The Willow man.

Yonder (Chapter Eleven)

2007-11-23T14:20:26Z

Chapter Eleven: Fairy Hunting
Synopsis: Llew and Crisp patch up their friendship.
Author's Note: Odie's hobbie is partly-based on my own childhood interest in Cryptozoology: the study of creatures whose existence is uncertain, like the Loch Ness monster or the Abominable Snowman.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~ Halfway House ~ The Black Cave ~ Get One Free ~ Vegephobia ~ Lunar City ~ Speaking in Tongues ~

Fairy Hunting

It was 6am. A time I would gladly trade insomnia for cancer and throw syphilis into the bargain if only I could sleep. At this miserable hour, I was spewing yellow bile into the Royal Glory bidet. Little lights were prancing before my eyes like smug fairies. I wished they would shut up laughing.

Odie had finally finished her bed bouncing at around 3am. She had then snuggled herself down under the duvet and watched American wrestling on Sky TV until her eyes grew heavy. I had dried my wet clothes on the radiator and slouched on the reading chair in the complimentary bathrobe. I watched over the kid as she sweet dreamed. In those silver pockets of twilight she looked rather cherubic. Then, after an hour or so, she started drooling on the pillow and grunting like a warthog. I noticed that the quilt was crawling with tiny mites. I first took these for bedbugs until I realised that Odie’s hair was doing the same doh-see-doh dance

A telephone alarm call at 7am brought Odie back into the land of the living. She performed an elaborate yawn and then set to work overhauling our knapsack for leftover food – digging deep inside to reach our travel sweets. She left shiny wrappers all over the plush carpet and a gooey ring around her duckbill lips. When the maid arrived on her rounds at about 7:30am, I was compelled to hide inside the wardrobe to escape from her appalled ‘Tut, tut’ noises.

We met Crisp in the car park. The hotel restaurant had thrown him out on his ear for demanding ‘Escargots and Caviar’ as his customary breakfast. He greeted Odie with a high five, but barely acknowledged my existence. We didn’t bother checking out of the ‘Royal Glory’, but headed straight down Forthwith Street to explore the Lost Metropolis. A lovely fuzzword, Metropolis. The dictionary definition for it runs thus – ‘a great industrial, commercial city, densely populated’. In Latin it means ‘Mother State’. I will be brief in my own description of it, since it’s far too depressing to embellish upon. Just imagine a wild flower drained of all its nectar, then soaked in whitening bleach and pasted with concrete. The city feels all aluminium on the surface...like you could scratch it with a coin to reveal its jackpot.

The morning was overcast. Litter pickers were collecting scraps from the ground with claw sticks. The leaflet bandits and questionnaire vampires were out terrorising the pedestrians. Odie was skipping over pavement cracks and whistling a hopscotch tune. Just beyond Cornerstone Square, we saw Eternity Tower*. The sunblinds were shut over every one of its office windows. Four silver pillars encrusted with green lights, flagged down the walkway towards its revolving doors. The building was a fortress. I suppose it was the closest thing to a castle in our own century. Peasants would be similarly ‘removed’ by security guards at the gates.

Cornerstone Square was a feeble excuse for a natural enclosure. Two anorexic trees stood in iron cages and were surrounded by a wilting shrubbery and a balding stretch of yellow grass. It reminded me of a park in my hometown, except that our park featured an old tramp that would loiter around the rosebushes with his flies unzipped. He would offer the contents of his trousers to the children, telling them it was a milk lolly. The scary thing is some would consider taking a lick. There seems to have been a rise in paedophilia in recent years or at least in the myths and hysteria surrounding it. Crummy time to be a kid.

Crisp and I sat in silence at opposite ends of a decomposing bench. A flock of scurvy pigeons surrounded our feet and tweeted for breadcrumbs. They had to be content with Jellicartessen. We were broke. All our money had been blown on laser toys and astro food bought impulsively from the Lunar City market. My eyes wandered once around the park, before I started reading over the selection of carvings on the bench. All the people in love with question marks. All the people who ‘Woz Ere’. There was only one inscription caught my eye. It read –

WANTED

THE ELECTRIC KID

DEAD OR ALIVE!

Odie ambled over to us with her hands cupped. The sleeves of her middy blouse were scuffed with dirt. She had been crawling on all fours through the molehills and the slimy dandelions for nearly an hour now.

“I found one!” she exclaimed.

Crisp gasped, theatrically. “What colour is it?”

“It’s red and yellow and sparkling!” She held her hands to her ears. “It says that it comes from underground. Oh, it’s tickling! You can have it!”

She transferred the mystery gift to his pocket.

Crisp smiled. “I think I’ll call it Gerald.”

Odie laughed and then bunny bounced back to the lawn for handstand practice. My curiosity started to bait me. What in the hell had the kid given to Crisp?

“What did she give you?” I blurted, aloud.

Crisp eyed me, narrowly. “Odie is fairy hunting – looking through the weeds for little people. It’s her favourite pastime. She likes to study them and then release them back into the wild. She’s just given me a flaming pixie.”

“Can I see it?” I asked, then realised how absurd I was being.

“Fairies are invisible in daylight,” Crisp answered.

“I suppose that this is her hippy-dippy parents doing!” I tutted. “Teaching their kid to believe in fairies and goblins and who knows what else! How is a kid that warped supposed to cope with reality? She is living in a bubble!”

Crisp shrugged. “I don’t want to be the one to burst that bubble. She lives in a world of her own, but it’s a wonderful world. She’s a nomad, Llew. In her eight years on this planet, she’s travelled from John ‘O Groats to Land’s End more times than you can count. She’s been living the English roadmovie! She may not be able to read a STOP sign, but how many other kids do you know that can teach you about Irish folklore and Chinese proverbs. She’s a marvel!”

I knew where this was leading. “Crisp, we can’t keep her…”

“But what if…”

“She has nits!”

“Then we’ll get her deloused with medi shampoo! Take another look at that list, Llew. Note the word ‘Saviour’. We’re rescuing her!”

His words sent me back to our school days. Crisp used to steal novels from the library. Bullies and truants would cover them in doodles and swearwords to pass away their detentions. Because of the mistreatment these books received, Crisp never looked upon it as theft. He called it ‘rescuing’.

“Come on, Llew…you remember how it was when we were little.”

“You’re still little,” I muttered.

“We were always plotting to run away. Always saving our pennies in that rabbit hole. Not real pennies, of course. Ring pulls and bottle tops mostly. But we believed. We wanted to be orphans – remember? How we would rip up our clothes and rub dirt into our hair. It was a kid’s dream. Hell, it’s still mine. Now I have found the kid I always wanted to be. We have to stick with her! Someone ought to be looking out for her.”

I looked into my friend’s eyes. His big honest-to-God eyes. I wondered if anyone had ever looked out for him and whether someone ought to now.

“You know these lies won’t last forever,” I warned him.

“I know. But we can keep them up for the meantime. And keep Odie too.”

I nodded. “If we don’t find the Willow man before dark – what then?”

“Well…we won’t be ringing up your mum for a lift home, that’s for sure!” he laughed. “Let’s get our walking arses in geer and find him – come on Odie!”

For the rest of that afternoon, we searched the city for the mysterious members of ‘Generation Y’. We trekked up and down Forthwith Street with our little gypsy girl in tow. We checked the warehouses, the churches, the department stores and the fast food resturants. There was no sign. They could have been anywhere. We just had to keep on trudging through the fetid streets and pray for a pillow to lay down our heads. Night fell as it does so well. Oh, little roads of England, where three lost children roam. Searching for something…maybe impossible to find.

* Eternity Tower is the insurance company that usurped the Bloom’s workshop. It’s a fully furnished, central-heated, double-glazed, middle class work place. Its doors are open to all customers in smart suits and expensive shoes. It would take some hacker to crack their newly developed security system.

( Cats and Dogs )

Yonder (Chapter Ten)

2007-11-23T13:49:12Z

Chapter Ten: Speaking in Tongues
Synopsis: Llew is molested by a ravenous goth girl.
Author's Note: It's no lie that you will find some very wild and sexually aggressive women at SF conventions.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~ Halfway House ~ The Black Cave ~ Get One Free ~ Vegephobia ~ Lunar City

Speaking in Tongues

A sliver of white foam was the only substance remaining in my beer mug. I knocked it back and my intoxication was complete. I was now just a few precious seconds away from a Technicolor yawn. How much snakebite and bitters had washed down my tonsils? Who could say? Whatever the level of alcohol abuse, I was currently balled up on a leather armchair in the Royal Glory lounge bar with a single adjective echoing through my head; “Stupid…stupid…stupid…”

I had barely touched a drop in Shangri-La. I am the biggest lightweight drinker in the known universe. It must be down to a chemical allergy or something. I turn green every time. Contrary to expectation, sci-fi fans are not teetotallers. There were over a dozen drunken space cadets around my table, who were buying twenty drinks per round from the hotel’s pricey beverage selection. These particular geeks were also potheads – mellow from their post-supper spliff and full from the munchies. They sat with their moonboots on the tables; their glasses steamed up and babbled about the continuity errors in episode forty-two of whatever.

Crisp and Odie sat across the room from me, chatting to a twenty-something American called Walter. The yank wore a pink shirt and a party hat with streamers spouting from the tip. He was boasting about his alien abduction experience and denouncing the existence of Areola 51*. Crisp listened in awe to his psychobabble. Odie was painting her tongue blue with a slush puppy and seemed to be finding Walt rather monotonous. I watched her steal a swig from Crisp’s tequila slammer and then spit it out on the carpet.

Our pit-stop at Lunar City had been prolonged, indefinately. The other two were having a wonderful time with the space cadets. Crisp had booked us into the hotel, which had cost us nearly all of our pennies even though he had asked for a single room, third class. The sleeping arrangement was that Odie would take the bed, I would sleep in the chair and Crisp would stay in the barroom until morning. I myself was feeling out of place at Lunar City. The nerds scared me. These people aren’t the shy misfits that we know from stereotype. Some of them have no inhibitions whatsoever about walking up and talking to perfect strangers. As you will see…

The Goth girl caught my eye and then sleazed across the barroom towards me. She wore a black velvet dress and spider web tights. A curtain of greasy hair hung over her hollowed cheeks, framing a pair of albino eyes. In spite of her deathliness, the girl was as pretty as a Japanese cartoon. I drew my knees around my chest as she slouched upon my armrest and crossed her legs over.

“I’ve been watching you,” she rasped.

“Really?” I murmured, not daring eye contact.

“Sitting here,” she whispered. “All alone and sexy.”

“Um…really?” I squeaked, wondering how behaving like a paralytic loser could possibly be viewed as provocative.

“I couldn’t tear my eyes away,” she said. “You’re a He-She*.”

“I’m a what?” I spluttered, knowing damn well what she meant.

The Goth took a strand of my hair in her long talons. “Your hair…it’s so conditioned. And look at your hands.” She started to fondle them too. “So delicate and pale. Like a child’ hands.”

Nervously, I scanned the lounge for my companions. Crisp was kneeling upon a barstool, instructing Odie on how to break into the jellybean machine. The Goth flopped into my lap. I think she must have been high. She smelt like new glue.

“What’s your name?”

I stuttered a ‘L-L-Llew’.

“Llew…” She slurred my name contemptuously. “Take a look at my hands, Llew. I don’t have pretty hands like yours.” The Goth reached into my face. Her hands were haggard like a corpse; blue veins and dirty palms. Her wrists were scarred with shallow scratches. She lifted her sleeve to reveal a tattoo on her arm.

“I did that myself,” she bragged. “It’s a mythic lizard that can crawl through fire. I needed it to hide the needle marks from my mother.”

I examined the tattoo. I couldn’t see any puncture wounds. Either the camouflage was genuinely effective or the Goth was lying through her teeth. I stared into her pinprick pupils and told myself they were only gimmicky contact lenses. I wanted to scream – ‘Forgive me, Crisp! Rescue me from this succubus!’ But the alcohol had rendered me dumb. I was just a little blue bottle in her spider web.

She lassoed my neck with a bony elbow and slipped her tongue into my mouth. A shiver of new experience ran through me. My first kiss. Well, technically not my lip-locking debut. I had once shared a tongueless fish kiss with a spin the bottle player in high school. Hold on for five seconds and then separate. Nothing erotic. This was my first tonsil tickling Frenchie. Now I realise that at seventeen, this makes me an extremely low flier in the sex stakes. The sad truth is that I have always been keen to get initiated. But I seem to give off this ‘frigid boy’ vibe. Obviously the lecherous Goth hadn’t had picked up on that. Now I feared she might eat me alive.

We surfaced for air. I could hear her breath in my ears. It sounded orgasmic beyond my wettest dreams. It invited me to throw her over my shoulder, carry her to the car park and screw her brains out on a stranger’s bonnet. All I really wanted to do was rush back to the guestroom for a cold shower and a nervous wank. But I was trapped in her claws. She sucked on my neck and brought blood to the surface. “I want you, Llew…” she hissed. “I want you to tie me down and lash the sin out of my body with your sweet…delicate…hands!”

In a last-ditch attempt, I slipped from her clutches and scrambled from the armchair. The Goth cackled and kicked her legs in the seat behind me. Her laughter suggested that my harassment had just been a sick stunt to frighten me. Well…it had worked. I hurried over to my fellow travellers. Odie was building castles with beer mats. Crisp improvising love ballads to woo the barmaid.

The girl who pours the ale
Has got my heart impaled
With her sweet cider eyes

And her lips like cheap red wine
How I long to make her mine…

“I’m taking the kid to bed,” I announced, taking Odie by the hand. Crisp and I still weren’t on friendly speaking terms. He just half nodded at me and then turned back to his clumsy flirting.

Odie and I picked up our key at reception. After a long exploration through the maze of tapestries and corridors we located our guestroom. My creepy encounter with the Goth had left me feeling sullied and violated (I was certain she had infected me with rare diseases). However the sexual discovery element of the kiss had given me confidence. I didn’t want to be toyed with anymore. I wanted to avenge the guilt Crisp had flung upon me. I would tell Odie everything.

I opened the door to our hotel room and Odie immediately sprang upon the neatly made bed sheets and started jumping like a Jack-in-a-box. I watched her for a moment, hypnotised by her merriment.

“Err…listen you…” I hesitated.

“I got a big brother, huh Llew?” She bounced on her bum and was propelled back to her feet. “Crisp is sooo funny! He’s the best, you know?”

“The best?” I spluttered. “Well…that all depends upon…what you would say is ‘best’ for a person. Emotionally speaking, I mean…”

I perched awkwardly on the bedknob.

“What I’m trying to…err…articulate, Odie, is…when you are small you want to believe in things. The Easter bunny, the tooth fairy...that is why you’d believe in a long lost…anyway, the real world doesn’t work like that. The truth is often painful…but it’s for the best in the long run. The truth brings you down to earth. You deal with your little upsets one day at time. That’s what being an adult is about…”

The bed squeaked under the girl’s air twirls. Who was I talking to anyway?

“Odie…be sure to brush your teeth after all those sweets.”

I left her to it and went to run myself a bubble bath. A long, hot soak was what I needed, especially after my near rape experience. I decided to bathe in my clothes in an attempt to launder them. I was so filthy by that time I left a tidemark around the white porcelain...

...and I still couldn’t come clean.

*Areola 51 is a notorious website that is impossible to access. There are no links to it and if you type its name into your search engine, it may cause your computer to crash. Rumour has it that the Areola (Dictionary definition: a coloured circle or a halo) 51 home page holds the key to the accelerating universe and the meaning of human existence.

*He-She is the nickname given to androgynous kids. Due to the sexual equality and free clothing rights of present times, there are a vast number of these characters around. The trademark He-She is either a longhaired nancyboy with a coy prettiness and a lack of facial hair or a butch tomboy with a flat chest and an aversion to make up. Basically people who cannot be strictly described with the terms ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. The pretty ones may become supermodels. The plain could end up on talkshows. Kids call them He-Shes. Trust kids to invent a fuzzword for everyone and everything that comes along…kids today.

( Fairy Hunting )

Yonder (Chapter Nine)

2007-11-23T13:20:28Z

Chapter Nine: Lunar City
Synopsis: Llew, Crisp and Odie visit a science fiction convention.
Author's Note: Yes, I have attended SF events myself. I too am 'Glad to be Sad'.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~ Halfway House ~ The Black Cave ~ Get One Free ~ Vegephobia

Lunar City

Skyscrapers loomed on a carpet of grey smog. Vast business complexes that towered over the polluting traffic and the polluted citizens. The Lost Metropolis. A sorry shadow of Neverland. Our Zipper pulled into the station where trains and tramcars were jammed like bad blood in a clogged artery.

“Welcome to the Lost Metropolis…” I muttered under my breath, “…abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

I dismounted the Zipper steps and waited anxiously for my friend and our stow-away to follow. Crisp slumped off the coach – little ringlets of hair drooping sorrowfully about his face. I mouthed the words ‘Are you okay?’ and Crisp gave me a sheepish smile. He was fiddling with the out-turned pockets of his combats, meek and agitated. His manner didn’t tie in exactly with my expectations, but it could hardly have prepared me for what happened next.

Odie bounded from the coach and embraced me around the knees. At first I took this to be a gesture of despair. That was before I felt her muffled giggles against my leg hairs. I had been bracing myself for trauma and tears. Oh God, I thought. We’ve got a crackpot kid on our hands...

“I’m oh so happy, Llew!” she declared.

“Err…did Crisp tell you about your mummy’s list?”

“You betcha!” she chirped. “This is sure gonna be one swell adventure! I’m so very pleased. You don’t need to mind me. I knows my way about the town. I can’t wait to find the Willow man!”

Odie planted a kiss on my thigh and skipped off down the street. I stood there for a moment, blinking stupidly. Then the girl’s words sank in...as did their motivations and repercussions. I rounded on Crisp.

“What – have – you – DONE?” I yelled.

Crisp tried to wrestle an idiotic smirk from his face. He clicked his fingers nervously and bit his lower lip.

“Funny story…” he began.

“Crisp, looky here!” Odie called.

She was waving to something across the street from the station. I followed her gesture and saw an odd metallic figure standing beside a stone plaque that read ‘The Royal Glory Hotel’. It was a grown man in a robot costume. He wore a boiler suit spray-painted silver, four hubcaps as a chest plate and a helmet fashioned out of an old saucepan. The final result was a cross between Killerborg and the Tin woodsman. He waved at us and then cupped his hands around his mouth.

“Nice moonboots!”

“Huh…?” Crisp looked down at his feet.

The robot pointed to the hotel and said; “Heaven this way!”

I felt a headache coming on. Odie darted through two lanes of traffic to the road centre. I shouted for her to come back before she was knocked down. Crisp followed through the lines of speeding vehicles and miraculously arrived on the opposite side in one piece. Odie encouraged me to run the gauntlet too, but I was already stomping towards the pelican crossing. I glanced for a second time at the smoke of the Lost Metropolis. I supposed we would brave that monster later.

I turned into the car park and realised what the robot costume was in aid of. The hotel was hosting a science fiction convention. Before me was a heaving bazaar of tents, stalls and stages, where market sellers in authentic costume were bartering memorabilia and figurines. A luminous banner gave a name to the gathering; Lunar City*. A retreat for all things middle earth and beyond the moon. Space cadets had flocked to the event like pilgrims on a calling to Mecca.

There was a crowd at the gates of the Royal Glory hotel. A TV crew was making a documentary called ‘Crazy Conferences’. An anchorwoman with a blonde beehive and a paisley blouse was probing a young geek about his sci-fi obsession. The kid with his stuffy nose and high I.Q. appeared to be more than a tad camera shy. He wore a space cadet badge with the name ‘Emmanuel’ penned on in magic marker. I decided that if he had any friends they called him ‘Manny’.

“Well err…Lunar City is…erm…an annual event in which science fiction and fantasy fans get together and…err…we trade collectables and we…we fund raise for international charities and…err…we have a variety of…of social activities.”

The kid paused to wheeze nervously on an inhaler.

“How peculiar!” the TV reporter falsettoed. She winked at the soundman. “This is truly a crazy conference! So tell us, Emmanuel – why does this spacey stuff always attract so many weirdoes?”

Manny spluttered with embarrassment (maybe more for the woman than himself). “Well…I don’t see why the fans are…are stereotyped for being ‘weird’. I mean…weird in what respect? Sci-fi is merely escapism, the same as err…a football match or a rock concert. Nobody calls football supporters ‘weird’.”

There was an awkward pause. Then suddenly Manny stared directly at the camera.

“Maybe it’s just that Sci-fi is a culture for individuals? Use the term ‘nerds’ if you will. But these fans are intelligent and passionate people who want to explore far off worlds and impossible inventions. Is that really so crazy?”

“Riiiiight,” said the reporter. She gestured at the cameraman to cut the tape and then attempted to bring the conversation back to a level that she could understand. “Tell me, Emmanuel – do you surf the net?”

Manny frowned at the question. “I have an Internet connection, yes.”

“A computer boy!” she exclaimed as if she was speaking volumes. “I bet there are some of your ‘e-mail pals’ here that you’re meeting for the first time, right? Do you feel that you finally fit in here, Emmanuel?”

Nauseating woman, I thought. Her brain was probably fried from excessive peroxide application. I dodged the camera crew and entered the bazaar.

Despite the anchorwoman’s claim, it was hard to stereotype the attendees of Lunar City. Grey-suited executives were flicking through comic books. Teenyboppers were chasing after TV heartthrobs. Families were huddled around the various platforms that were holding charity auctions, fancy dress competitions and filk concerts. A market seller was sporting a T-shirt with the slogan ‘GLAD TO BE SAD’ printed upon it. The atmosphere was electric. Weirdoes indeed.

The shadows were lengthening by the time I caught up with my so-called best friend. I found Crisp riffling through a shelf of second-hand paperbacks. He was wearing fluffy antenna on his head and held a bundle of laser toys under his arm. He pretended not to notice me. Odie was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, wow! Part 5 of the Blood-bot* series!” he pantomimed to himself.

I wrenched the dumb novel from his hands and slammed it to the ground.

Crisp smiled, falsely. “There’s the man! We’ve been searching everywhere for you. Did you check out the Apollo simulator? It rocks!”

I didn’t answer him. I wasn’t going to blow my top in front of all these strangers (and these folk were especially strange). I knew that Crisp would soon crumble under the silent treatment. I watched him squirm and shuffle from one foot to the other, looking quite ridiculous in his furry headgear. He held out a small trinket in his palm.

“Odie picked out this mood ring for you...moody.”

I ignored the lame joke and the token peace offering.

“She’s getting her face painted, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

I kept up my silence. Crisp rolled his eyes and exhaled.

“I suppose what you’re really wondering is why we’re not taking our problem child to the police,” he stammered. “Well, the thing is, I started to break the news about how her folks had written this letter instead of a shopping list and naturally the little tyke asked to know what it said…” He swallowed hard, very hard. “I, um, didn’t have the heart to tell her the real deal.”

I was beyond shock by now. “What did the Crisp remix say?”

He took a deep breath. “It said that her long, lost brother Crispin had come to take her on an adventure to the Lost Metropolis. I made out that the supermarket meeting was all part of the surprise. It was the best that I could ad-lib at the time. That Odie is such a daydreamer though – she bought the whole blag!”

I closed my eyes and saw red. Crisp’s penchant for white lies and petty theft had gone too far. I raised my index finger and then felt slightly absurd. My jacket was tailored for a female figure. It was giving me bossy boot hips.

“Crisp – this isn’t a game. What you’re doing is practically kidnapping. Now if you don’t tell that kid the truth, believe me, I will!”

To my great surprise, Crisp pushed me away from him with a fierce shove. The laser toys clattered onto the tarmac. His violence caught me unawares and I had to steady myself to keep from falling over. I stared at him.

“I’m not gonna dump my little sister,” he said, evenly.

“You what – she’s not yours!!”

“Is now,” he returned. “But I don’t expect you to understand. You’ve got Frankie and all your cousins – I’ve never had anyone! And since she hasn’t got anybody either, I figure that we’re a match made in heaven. If we turn her in to the cops then she’ll end up in a children’s home. Do you know what it’s like growing up in a home? Probably not since you never visited me!”

A crowd of space cadets had halted their browsing to stare at the outburst. Crisp didn’t seem to notice them. His voice was fractured with uprising tears. Oh God, why could I never visit Crisp in that wretched children’s home? Such a bitter word ‘home’. It’s the one thing those kids are lacking.

“Crisp, I…”

He flicked the mood ring at my feet, rubbed his eyes and stormed off towards the hotel. I gave the bystanders an awkward smile, which served to frighten most of them off. I crouched to retrieve the ring. It had a peace sign painted over its rhinestone. When I slipped it on, it turned blue.

*Lunar City is a Sci-fi & Fantasy fair. Its annual tour hits the 8 compass points of the United Kingdom throughout early autumn. The convention showcases a day of spacey entertainment for the people who don’t get out much. In recent years, the bookings for the Lost Metropolis venue have greatly reduced. Next fall the organisers are planning to switch the location to somewhere more ‘out of this world’.

*Blood-Bots are the comic creation of Howard Goetze. The cyberpunk writer bemoaned that robot carnage didn’t allow for enough ‘Splat Gore’. To this end he invented an army of renegade droids called ‘The Blood-Bots’. These warriors have a metal outer-shell and insides made up of human organs from autopsy. Final annihilation of the Blood-Bots promises to be ‘Gouged Guts Galore!’ The series has struck a cord with maladjusted youngsters worldwide.

( Speaking in Tongues )

Yonder (Chapter Eight)

2007-11-23T12:48:05Z

Chapter Eight: Vegephobia
Synopsis: Llew reflects on his friend Crisp's unusual fear of vegetables.
Author's Note: Crisp's phobia was based on my own best friend's phobia of mushrooms. She gets freaked out by their gills.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~ Halfway House ~ The Black Cave ~ Get One Free

Vegephobia

We waited for Crisp by the mermaid statue. Her long dolphin tail was hanging in the water of a ceramic rock pool. My eyes followed the tiny tributaries that gushed from her nipples like mother’s milk. Turquoise tears spilled over her marble cheeks. My sadness ran with them. Crisp arrived at our meeting place an hour late in high spirits, munching on nachos and full of jam.

“We are in the green, Llewy!” he chirped, giving me a bear hug. “I scored three more rolls on Cyber Samurai and afterwards this guy, Jo-Jo asks me if I’d like to triple my winnings. I said Hell yeah! The next thing I know I’m joining his ten-pin team. We were bowling for a major cash prize. I’m talking bullion! And five games later, we’ve handled our balls very well indeed! Now we’re three hundred quid brighter. Lady luck sure had her hands down my pants today!”

He wrapped up his tale with a bowling swing in the style of Elvis. Then for the first time he seemed to register the presence of a small girl clutching at my jeans. She had been gasping throughout his re-enactment. Crisp ruffled her hair.

“What’s your name, sunshine?” He raised a quizzical eyebrow in my direction.

“This is Odelay,” I answered, glumly. Odie was far too star-struck to reply.

Crisp beamed and offered her a nacho. His causal manner was driving me spare. Could he not sense the gravity of our situation? I snatched the packet out of his hands and passed it to the gypsy child.

“Stay!” I commanded. Odie yapped twice in compliance.

I clasped Crisp’s woollen sleeve and took him aside. Shutting my eyes, I began to babble in non-sequiturs. I ranted about the corrupt loan sharks that destroy families. I ranted about the innocent children born into lives of nomad poverty. I made a good point about it being best to leave these matters to the proper authorities...but not once did I state the plain facts. I was just voicing the panic in my head. When I opened up my lids, Crisp was pulling tongues and silly faces over my shoulder. In the end I simply shoved the note under his nose. As he read over those brief bullet-points of abandonment the twinkling faded from his smile.

“See what I mean?” I hush-hushed. “Look Crisp, I’m thinking this isn’t our problem – we can just drop her off at the information desk or something. Am I right? Let someone else deal with the problem, yeah? We’ll carry on to the Lost Metropolis. It’s for the best. Don’t you think?”

Crisp was disturbingly still and silent. This was making me slightly hysterical. In one melodramatic motion, I took his shoulders and shook them beseechingly. This seemed to wake him from his trance state.

“I’ll tell her,” he said. “The next Zipper leaves in ten minutes. We’ll take her to the metropolis cop shop. They’ll know the drill when it comes to dumped kiddies. I’ll have a quiet word with her en route. Tell her what instructions mummy and daddy left in their grocery list…” Crisp gave me a bruised stare.

“Okay – good plan.” I nodded, vigorously.

“Breathe, Llew.” he advised.

Crisp dressed his face in a happy grin and sauntered back to the mermaid statue. Odie had rolled her floppy sleeves up to her elbows and was fishing out pennies from the fountain. Crisp pulled her back to the ledge.

“It’s not nice to steal peoples wishes, kiddo...”

The gypsy child blushed. Crisp beckoned her near.

“Come closer – I want tell you a secret!” He whispered into her ear like a naughty schoolboy spreading rumours. When he had finished the conspiracy, Odie appeared to be highly excited.

“Do I get the window seat!” she squealed.

“Sure thing.” He turned to me with a flash of remembrance. “Oh Llew, I almost forgot – a present for you.” Crisp produced a pair of shoes from his vacuous pockets. They were stripy and rubber soled. Bowling pumps. I shot him a seething look, which quickly melted into a soft sigh.

We grabbed our possessions from the Tavern and caught the Metropolis bound Zipper. I sat near the front. Crisp led the kid to the backseat for their heart to heart. The bus’s tailpipe vomited its fumes into the afternoon air and we pulled away from our fateful rest stop. I played solitary eyespy for the first five minutes of our journey. Then I began to dread hearing the sound of Odie’s sobs drifting up the coach. I slipped a Zeke Diablo* tape into my Walkman and turned up the volume.

Crisp and I have been like this (fingers crossed) since primary school. Since the time when we believed that ice cream was the cure for tonsillitis and that if you were stabbed with a pencil you might get lead poisoning. I would invite him to my house for teatimes of fish fingers and baked beans, until my family took to him like a third child. He and Frances were both insomniacs and would hold midnight feasts after dark. I would eavesdrop on their secret meetings from the landing. Later on – when we all hit puberty – I became like an obsessed stalker, certain that my big sister and best mate were snogging on the stairs every night. But I found this wasn’t the case. Frances was feeding him secret pepperonis and ham rolls, because his mum wouldn’t let him eat meat or dairy products. Mrs Gillespie was a strict vegan.

I can remember laughing at the word and saying to him, “Vegan! What planet does she come from?”

One hazy day in mid-June, we were collecting frogspawn from our local canal. Crisp had slipped on algae and fallen into the oily waters. Being noble or very naïve, I dived in to rescue him. I had just won my junior life-saving badge and was eager to show off my skills. As we crawled out dripping onto the bank, Crisp had announced that I was his bestest friend in all the world and that we would be pals forever. It was the grandest bravery medal a kid could wish for.

As we lay in the sun to dry our clothes, Crisp suddenly became adamant that I met his father. We sprinted all the way to the Gillespie house and wandered in through the porch, leaving our jackets and muddy shoes on the doormat. Mrs Gillespie had been steam boiling over the stove. She was an extremely beautiful Spanish lady. It was from her that had Crisp inherited his black hair and warm olive skin. I remember thinking that she looked far too young to be a mum. Crisp had told me she worked as a ballad singer at weddings. I could sure imagine her in the spotlight.

“What time is dad coming home?” Crisp had asked.

“Daddy has gone away, sweetie,” Mrs Gillespie had breezed with an odd air of contentment. “Now you children eat your greens, so you grow into tall, strapping boys.”

She had served sprouts, kidney beans and broccoli onto our plates. Crisp had thrown a major tantrum. Stamping his feet, banging his podgy fists on the tabletop. He said he wasn’t going to eat her rabbit food any longer. He hurled plates against the wall, hot tears streaming down his puffy cheeks. Mrs Gillespie had whistled a happy tune and cleaned up the shattered fragments. I had felt terrified in that kitchen, amidst my best friend’s wailing and his mother’s birdsong.

Crisp and me had run away the following weekend. We played Attack of the Killer Vegans in Delemere forest. Eventually we got hungry and went back to my house for waffles.

Two years later, an 8-year-old Crisp had come home from football practice and found his mother out cold on the kitchen floor. She was foaming at the mouth after downing a nasty cocktail of carrot juice and weedkiller. After recovering in the emergency ward, she had been moved to a different kind of hospital – one with rubber walls and visiting hours every six months.

Crisp had spent a time in an orphanage, receiving child therapy for his trauma. We both have baggage about that period. I never did work up the guts to visit him in that sterile building. It was around the same time that Crisp started stealing. He’d take five-pound notes from his councillor’s handbag, which he’d blow on arcade games. Next he went through a string of foster homes and numerous evil Stepmothers before he was finally packed off to live with his Aunt Trisha (or old aunt T-shirt as he called her). I never did learn the truth about Mr Gillespie, Crisp's father. His name could be on the missing person’s list or perhaps on a stone in the cemetery.

I often wonder how Crisp has taken all those bombshells. It was certainly a strain on our friendship. I couldn’t bitch about my sister without him yelling ‘At least you’ve got a REAL family!’ Gossipmongers in our hometown were publicising ‘the carrot juice incident' in fast-spreading whispers. School bullies had a free-for-all when he finally returned to education. They would drop their sweetcorn cobs on his dinner tray and food fights became a regular occurrence. Girls would hide radishes in his pencil box as revenge for all the times he put spiders in their bras.

And to this day, my friend Crisp has a phobia of vegetables. He still wakes up trembling at 2:00am after some recurring nightmare about celery sticks with evil eyes. Poor Crisp. This situation with Odie must be forcing him to relive those delicate days. I really should have left the girl at the pick-n-mix. He probably couldn’t wait to be rid of her – who could blame him?

*Zeke Diablo is an ex-junkie and symbolist poet. He is worshipped in Salt Lake City, where he performs basement-shows to the accompaniment of a dulcimer. Last year he recorded a CD of spoken word entitled ‘The Bathtub & Toaster Suicides’. The album has to be specially imported to England, where Diablo’s legend still lingers in obscurity.

( Lunar City )

Yonder (Chapter Seven)

2007-11-11T13:24:58Z

Chapter Seven: Get One Free
Synopsis: Llew finds a small girl lost in the supermarket.
Author's Note: Well, here's the chapter where we meet Odie who tends to be most readers' favourite character. Hopefully the story gets a little more tense and interesting at this stage.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~ Halfway House ~ The Black Cave ~

Get One Free

Automatic doors ushered me into the store with a friendly bing-bong. Prozac-happy voices trickled over the tanoy promising ‘3 for the price of 2!’ and ‘50% extra - Free!’ A woman with a poodle perm offered me a test taste of caramel shortbread and a medicine sip of raspberry cordial. I breathed in the warm welcome, though I knew it to be a phoney front. The supermarket supervisors are all closet bureaucrats. For instance, anyone caught on security camera without a food carrier is immediately under suspicion of shoplifting and routinely searched. So much for ‘The customer is always right’. I slipped a coin into the trolley hire slot.

The first sight that greeted me was the ‘Fruit & Veg’ section. Vitamin and mineral foods, all genetically modified to perfection – wedges of watermelon, cobs of sweetcorn, bunches of grapes. This display was a common device of store psychology. It gets the shopper to think ‘heath’ – ‘colour’ – ‘freshness’. Crisp would be the exception to this rule. If he had been faced with these leafy appetisers he would have been reduced to shrieks, jitters and cold sweats. I doubted that the pubescent checkout workers were trained to cope with such a panic attack. Best to let to me handle the shopping detail. Leave Crisp to his video games.

By the time I reached the bread isle, my eyes were streaming. Fluorescent lights and the impeccable cleanliness of the food columns stung my unshielded vision with their vibrancy. I couldn’t even read the fuzzy in-store directions that hung overhead. I was stumbling around the cornflake section like a dazed mole and leaving a trail of muddy footprints on the squeaky tiles. Single mums pushing buggy-cars were eyeballing me, their babies bawling spit bubbles of newborn woe. I turned into aisle five where an old woman was having an epileptic seizure in front of the fish counter. “Don’t let her swallow her tongue!” yelled a hysterical checkout girl.

I needed to get my bearings…

What to buy? I remembered Crisp had a philosophy on road food. He said the fundamental elements of any traveller’s diet were sugars and stodge. Fatty foods to combat hunger attacks and glucose treats to keep your energies ticking over. Crisp has lots of odd theories about metabolism. I snatched from the shelves, impulsively. Toffee popcorn (a bumper bag) cheese strings (Italian style) and mini donuts (with assorted dips). I also took a variety pack of Jellicartessen* dinners.

I came to a halt by the confectionery corner. It was there that I caught sight a little girl, who couldn’t have been older than ten. She was scooping chocolate mice into an already fit to burst pix-n’-mix bag. I watched her curiously. She wore a grey school slip and a tatty red cardigan. Her socks were rolled down to her ankles and she was walking in oversized leather clogs. A raggedy pigtail tapered down her back and an uncombed mop of fringe hung over her eyes. Knobbly knees and gangly limbs suggested to me that she was tall for her age. I spied a milk carton, self-raising flour, butter tubs and food colouring in her basket. Cake mix ingredients?

I must have stared at the child too long, because suddenly she wheeled around to face me. I was taken aback by her bucktoothed grin. She dropped her bag of sweeties and they spilled out over the immaculate tiles. She waddled towards me with her steel basket scraping the floor. I spun at 180 degrees on my heels and marched double speed. If there’s one thing I loathed it was children. They mean nothing but trouble and headaches. This one particularly unnerved me. She followed me like a lost puppy chanting “Scuse me!” at the top of her voice.

I was searching for a child no-go zone and eventually spotted the wine aisle. I took a bottle of Spanish red from the shelf and began to read its classical origins with a fierce concentration. It was no good. There was a tenacious tugging at my jeans, threatening to yank them clean down to my ankles.

“Scuse me!” she lisped once again.

A scream was brewing in my lungs. I reached down and eased away her tiny grip. I had to resist my temptation to lift the kid by her lapels and hurl her bodily into the stack of imported wines, thus ending my torment.

“It’s not polite to pull at people’s trousers,” I scolded.

The repugnant child wrinkled her nose at me. “Your clothes are all mucky,” she said. “Smell like cowpats. Why don’t you have shoes on?”

One of Crisp’s little sayings sprung to my mind – ‘Use your vocab!’ I decided to foil the little brat with fuzzwords. “My clothing is paltry because I am a bohemian. I walk the earth barefoot in search of nirvana.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What’s a Bo-He-Man?”

“It extremely complicated. You’ll find out when you’re older.”

I tipped my head to bid her farewell and then moved on to peruse the brandy selection. But all too soon I heard the grate of a basket on the tiles. Then came the pant pulling and finally the inevitable –

“Scuse me!”

“What!” I exploded. The girl flinched as if I was about to clip her round the ear. Her fear softened me. I tried not to be such a monster.

“I got this list off my mummy.” She held out a scrap of paper. It looked as though it had been folded into an aeroplane. “It tells me what put in the basket.”

“Well…that’s very nice,” I said, trying for the third time to make my escape. “Why don’t you toddle off and buy stuff then?”

The child hung her head with a tense frown.

“I don’t reads…” she murmured.

She didn’t…oh. That’s strange, I thought. Maybe I had over-estimated her age. When are kids taught to read and write these days? Did she have learning difficulties? Another thing was bothering me. What kind of parents sent their illiterate daughter out to buy the groceries? What sort of family shops for cake mix at service stations? The girl’s shopping list answered all my questions.

To the Saviour of our only child

· Hey. We bin travelling for a long time with our baby in tow.

· Be certain shes always had food in her belly and warm blankets at night.

· She aint got much schooling, but shes a bright spark our Odie.

· We aint rich folk. To be honest, we had to take on a loan to pay her keep.

· Just a few extra pennies for braces and a little dollhouse.

· Now The Goblins* are coming for us. We dont have much time.

· You cant imagine how hard tis leavin her, but its plain not safe no more!

· We gotta to go underground. Please take care of our angel.

· Yours in faith – the lovin parents of Odelay McCloud

My jaw locked in an incredulous grin. I shared it with the blank shoppers. Someone must have opened the door to the meat locker, because the store had turned deathly cold. My heartbeat hammered against my chest as I waited for the jokers with candid cameras to leap out from behind the canned soups. I looked back to the grocery list, hoping that its message had vanished from the page. Its words seemed even bolder to my frail eyes. That’s the thing about short sightedness – things close up are almost too vivid. I could see the grooves in the paper.

The Odie girl stood bold as brass in front of me, offering a timid handshake. Around her wrist she wore a woven band – the marker of a gypsy child. One of those caravan kids who had pebbles thrown at them in the playground. Her debt-cursed parents had left her fate in my hands. At that moment I made myself a solemn promise…never to take letters from strangers again.

* Jellicartessen products are aimed at under 8’s with revolting appetites. The gimmick is to recreate wholesome family meals in a form that is fun for children. Liquorice and marshmallows in the guise of Roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. Marzipan instead of mash. Lollypops in place of lamb chops. The kids lap it up. Dental bills have been tripled in households throughout the United Kingdom.

*The Goblins are Britain’s most notorious organisation of loan sharks. Like the ocean predators they take their name from (‘Goblin Sharks’) they are rarely seen, deep dwelling and hardnosed. Them most deadly. They prey upon societies outcasts and welfare cases. Our own government still claims that these backstabbing brokers are an urban myth.

( Vegephobia )

Yonder (Chapter Six)

2007-11-03T14:53:44Z

Chapter Six: The Black Cave
Synopsis: Crisp gambles the boy's remaining money on an arcade game.
Author's Note: Hehe! I'd forgotten that I had used split text in this book. That came as a nice little surprise. This novel is a bit of a mess, but at least I was experimenting. Ah memories of gaming. I was a random button pusher too!

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~ Halfway House ~

The Black Cave

The designers of motorway service stations had clearly gone bonkers in the last ten years. Gone were the golden days of simple tea & cake cafes and a lone petrol pump. Rest stops today were at least two miles long and five stories high. This excessive interior would usually contain a multi-screen movie-dome, a supermarket, several department stores and restaurants, a kiddies adventure playground and in most extreme cases, an indoor roller coaster.

We both slept in that morning and didn’t enter the precinct until noon. Crisp was sprightly after his Snoozer slumber and thankfully had no memory of yesterday’s Zipper ride. Our first stop was browsing through the souvenir kiosk. Crisp picked me out ski-cap with the slogan ‘I love NYC’ stitched into the brim. I knew this gift was an insult to my hair, so I didn’t thank him.

Crisp had stolen a jacket for me from the tavern’s cloakroom that morning. Nothing is sacred to his fingers. I’d been moaning about how cold the weather had turned since we left Shangri-La. Crisp said that he didn’t feel it because he has Eskimo skin. I didn’t object to the theft, however the coat he had lifted happened to be a ladies suit jacket in mint green. When I made this point to Crisp he told me to rip out the shoulder pads and quit complaining.

We took the elevator down to the basement floor and gaped at the infinity of food chains – pizzerias, noodle bars, curry houses, veggie bistros and ice cream parlours. The selection was so vast we had to toss a coin to decide on lunch. It landed on tails and we strolled over to ‘Peckish Pastries’ with Crisp sulking over his craving for Chinese spare-ribs. At the counter I stuffed a submarine roll with salami, tikka, mayo, pickle and other yummy sandwich treats, which tickled my fancy. Crisp bought himself a jumbo sausage roll and ordered up a Choca-mocha, Knicker-bocker Frappuccino* with Irish cream. I settled for tea. We sat down to a gingham table spread under parasol shading.

“Listen to this…” Crisp exclaimed, flicking through the trashy magazine he had kept from the Zipper’s selection. “Apparently only two people in a million get struck by lightning in their life time. Jammy bastards!”

I squinted at him. “Crisp…they die.”

He shook his head at me. “You know nothing, boy. If you get hit by lightning it means you get sent back in time!”

It was over dinner that I shared my secret scroll with Crisp. He ate with his mouth open and pastry flakes snowed over the letter from Willow. His reading face was a staccato of smirks and puzzled frowns.

“Isn’t it Generation X?” he asked.

“Not anymore,” I replied. “I think the Y means…why, you know? They’re like an activist group that questions society.”

“They sound like a weirdo cult to me,” he snorted.

I narrowed my eyes at him. There was a blob of whipped cream on the tip of his nose, which I couldn’t be bothered informing him of.

“I’m serious, Crisp! You know how for ages I have been waiting for some kind of…absolution to drop out of nowhere? Well, this is it! I’m positive. The Willow man is…sort of…calling me.”

“Nah Llewy. You’re just wanting to escape from your small town life before it’s too late. The city streets are paved with gold and all that.”

“It’d be a good place to form a band,” I tempted.

“Not the Lost Metropolis! Beggars play tin whistles for titbits in that city. They closed all the theatres and the galleries. The art scene is dead, man. Nowadays it’s all computers and industry. It’s a sci-fi nightmare.”

“But don’t you get it?” I persisted. “The Willow man is going change all that. We should be following him. Crisp, you should have seen the thing he did with the light bulb! You should’ve heard him speak!”

“Okay, okay, I reckon he’s a prophet too. And don’t forget – I’m your human tumbleweed, Llew. If the wind is blowing you toward the city, then I’m game for the ride. But it sounds like this ‘Generation Y’ are looking to step on some toes. Are you sure you’re not jumping in at the deep end?”

“Don’t patronise me!” I snapped at him. “I’m a grown adult, unless you haven’t noticed. In fact, I’m two months older than you are, so I think that makes me wise enough to answer my own calling.”

Crisp smirked, impressed by my bravado. “Right you are then – I’ll see you get to your Willow man. But the Lost Metropolis is a long way down the road, Llew. We’re going to need some green stuff.”

I cringed. “Well, we have £17 left from my allowance. That’s barely enough for two Zipper fares. We are going to need extra cash for food supplies and a hostel when we reach the city. And I’m still barefoot...” I leaned closer to him. “Crisp, what if we were to sell our kidneys?”

“No thanks,” he said. “Let’s gamble them instead.”

Crisp was staring at something over my shoulder. I whirled round in my seat and discovered that it was ‘The Black Cave Video Arcade’ that was sparkling in the corner of his eye. I turned back to him with a stern look and jabbed my finger at his cream-coated nose. He caught my gesturing hand and pulled me to my feet. I was dragged towards the games hall.

Inside the arcade, vidkids were sweating over pinball and fruit machines. Along the far wall, I could see rows of pine alleys and hear the clatter of felled skittles. A doorway to the far right descended into a smoke-filled poolroom where a jukebox was humming. At the cavern’s centre, a dozen hard-thumbed teens were surrounding a console desk – hogging the arcades single unit of Cyber Samurai. Two pixie-sized holograms were floating on the tabletop in silver body armour with neon swords. The words ‘GAME OVER’ illuminated the battleground. Crisp splashed the remainder of our cash down over the message.

“Lookin for a fight,” he leered. “Double or nothing.”

I didn’t think that this crappy cowboy impersonation was the best way in which to greet these anti-social Geordies. Especially when the proposed sport was ‘Intergalactic Ninja’. The vidkids eyed their interloper suspiciously. Crisp beamed at them like the plucky little imp he was.

“Dodo…” said the champ of the last battle. “You want to thrash this guy?”

A chubby pre-teen shrugged his shoulders, flopped into the opposing chair and took the joy pad in his pudgy fists. The loser of the previous duel vacated his seat and gave Crisp a back pat of encouragement. FIGHT OPTIONS flashed upon the table surface. The boy named after an extinct sea bird was Player 1 and chose a best of three match with special moves ON. Then it came to character selection. Dodo picked Killerborg – a titanium-plated death-machine with laser vision and the ability to teleport. Crisp chose Ming-Su, a female tai chi artist – probably because she was kind of cute. The vidkids huddled round in anticipation.

Round 1

Ming-Su’s face is seized by robo-grip. Killerborg savagely mutilates her cheeks, then flings her squealing into the air. The desktop gravity brings her down to a painful landing as she is impaled on the Borg’s razor codpiece. This super-deluxe throw serves to drain almost all her life force and Ming-Su only manages a feeble rabbit punch before she is maimed in a body-slam. KO’d. Dodo one – Crisp nil.

(A joypad and a screen of pixels are the closest thing that kids today have to a real adventure. In many ways it is the ideal adventure. Who cares about ‘Game Over’ when you’re on infinite life? Our old school councillor once recommended computer games as being good stress therapy. Personally I think the lazy quack just preferred zombies to hysterics. Maybe that’s my technophobia talking. I had barely even registered the first round. So what were the scores? Oh dear…)

Round 2

Killerborg lashes out to repeat his power move, but Ming-Su somersaults over-head to safety. She performs a succession of flailing chops to his robotic rear. The little warrioress is striking her attacker left, right and centre. Lightening kicks and hyper headbutts. Killerborg is left for scrap metal. Dodo and Crisp – Evens.

(Second slog. I watch Dodo’s hands as he repeats finger sequences in an attempt to foil his opponent with special moves. Fat chance. Crisp is too jammy. He hasn’t learnt the moves for this game. He has never read the rulebook and he won’t be honouring the codes of combat. He is what beat-em-up fans tend to call a ‘Random button pusher’ or ‘One move wonder’)

Round 3

Both holo fighters dive backwards from their opponents. Skirting around the circle – sizing one another up. Suddenly Ming-Su transforms into a female fireball, rocketing across the arena to hit Killerborg square in the solar plexus. The robot is out for the count and Ming-Su is beating him while he’s down. Vanquished – No! The Borg catches the nimble mistress off guard with a sharp uppercut. The battered bot then grabs the stunned Ming-Su by the throat, jabs her hard in the stomach and proceeds to throttle the girl using her own small intestine as a noose…

(Final round. Last roll of the dice. Last lick of the jam spoon. Throughout the battles, I had been absorbed by young Dodo’s blank expression. It was very much like playing a computer. His face betrayed no jubilation when he scored and no devastation when he floundered. Without warning, Crisp slammed his palm down on every console button. The vidkids performed quick double take at this absurd action. Crisp had fluked his characters power move. It looked like he had the battle in the bag. Or did he? No! Please! Crisp and I were screwed and big time! We’d lose all of our money on this. We’d be forced to hitchhike back to our humdrum hometowns…)

A buzzer rang out. I dropped my head into my hands… and it was a good few moments before I realised that Ming-Su’s life force had had the edge over Killerborg at call of TIME UP. My whole body buckled with relief. Arcade underlings cheered at the newcomer’s triumph. Crisp smiled haughtily as he slapped the table for payment. Dodo begrudgingly counted out his pocket change. Crisp handed me the winnings, but left his stake upon the console table.

“Go get groceries!” he ordered.

Pa-huh! What did he think I was? His submissive housewife? I opened my mouth to object, but then relented, warming to the idea of a quiet shop. My nerves couldn’t hack the tension any longer. I told Crisp I’d meet him by the mermaid statue and exited ‘The Black Cave Video Arcade’.

* The Choca-mocha, Knicker-bocker Frappuccino is (in Crisp’s opinion) the ultimate road-trip recharge. Whether you chose to follow the recommendation of a terminal caffeine addict and sugar fiend is your own lookout.

( Get One Free )

Yonder (Chapter Five)

2007-11-03T13:03:07Z

Chapter Five: Halfway House
Synopsis: Llew remembers the Lost Metropolis and phones his sister, Frances.
Author's Note: Yup, this is definitely reminding me of the way I was as a teenager; full of artsy pretentions and wanting to sound hip when I was really just a dork. Oh well...hopefully I wasn't the only one!

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~ The English Roadmovie ~

Halfway House

Night had fallen by the time our Zipper pulled into its terminal. The multi-storey service station was shimmering with the glow of fluorescent light. To its left were the mobiles of The Travellers Tavern*. A breezy ‘You are here!’ sign told me we had reached Newcastle. I stepped off the bus, supporting my comatose friend and dragging his stolen lute. Crisp was singing ‘Ce Sara Sara’ in his sleep.

We entered the roadside hostel and I swiftly flashed the receptionist my bogus member pass. Crisp and I were assigned capsules for the night. I got number 139. He got 12. I deposited Crisp in his minimalist berth and then left him there to rest. Walking the long corridors, I passed by a water fountain and stopped to douse my head in its cooling spray. The basin filled with dirt and glitter.

When I returned to the entrance hall, I found that someone had abandoned their Ouroboros cigarettes on the mantle. I’m not much of a smoker, but I pocketed the free pack and wandered outside onto the bank that rolled down to the motorway. I sprawled on the wet grass, sparked a fag in one hand and slipped the other into my underwear.

“The Lost Metropolis…” I whispered as if recalling an old flame.

It was the media that had giving the small British city its pseudonym. Crisp and I used to take the Shotgun Train down to it on school weekends. That was years ago, when it was still the cultural heart of our nation. The city was a hedonistic dreamland then; a realm of wild possibilities for the young and impassioned. Its sights and sounds were like Edinburgh Augusts all year round. The opera house would hold open auditions to encourage raw talent. Working class poetry was given a voice in subway readings and underground magazines. Graffiti art was exhibited in Cornerstone Square and procurers would flock from miles around to purchase it.

The majority of art events were organised by Harris Bloom and his wife Hortense, a married couple in their late fifties, still flower children at heart. The Blooms were the proud owners of a vast warehouse in the city-centre. This threadbare building stood 6 floors high and unlike many modern day cathedrals, its doors were open night and day. Its function was to provide a creative workshop for painters, poets, musicians and other oddballs who abstained from shaving and cutting their hair. They indulged themselves in every craft imaginable under that shanty roof – body painting, papier-mâché sculpture, nude photography, belly dance – whether a rehearsal or recital, the expressionism blossomed under the starry eyes of Harry and Horty. Back then the city was known to its dwellers and its tourists as ‘Neverland’.

Then disaster struck. Failed chemistry student Archibald O’Keefe came to town. The young dropout was testing a metal detector he had invented on the farmland that fringed the city. He would go there secretly at night and dig for treasure. Rumour has it that Archie single handily ploughed 36 underground burrows in one summer. Neverland residents learned of the former student’s plight when he took to preaching on Forthwith Street. Caked from head to toe in mud and raving about forgotten mines, most people took him for a lunatic. But that was before the shattering discovery was made. Archie’s tunnels were flooded with oil.

‘Neverland’ was sitting on a precious well of fossil fuel. The city council were quick to notice the profit potential and started pulling money from local arts projects to fund construction of their new rig. The Blooms were outraged. Their youth theatre had been all set to tour Europe with a summer production and now they were being told to find another sponsor. There followed a series of marches with seething hippies waving picket signs and petitions in fury. I was hooked on the teatime news for a week. The media event had turned into a bitter feud between street artists and the authorities. Harry pleaded his case to the council, quoting Shakespeare and Rimbaud with great eloquence, before he was laughed out of the courtroom.

The proposed oilrig was built and started a chain reaction in city developments. The opera house became a cineplex for screenings of the weekly blockbuster. The warehouse was repossessed and converted into an office block for a wealthy insurance company. The city’s economy boomed, but its tourist levels decreased rapidly. Industrial developers argued with agricultural workers over the future of the out-skirting farms. Homeless rates rose due to many ex-artists having to actually live on the never, never. And like a fairytale princess who has pricked her finger on a spinning wheel, the city’s spirit fell into a timeless slumber.

The papers went bananas. Their headlines proclaimed ‘The Lost Metropolis!’ ‘The city that sold its soul!’ etc. The Blooms, having put up a noble stand, decided to take a VSO trip to Africa to restore their faith in humanity. This excursion was also tinged with tragedy when a spider bite left Hortense a widower. Mrs Bloom is reported to have said, “We can’t seem to escape from this black poison…” Lightening never strikes twice, but watch out for that oil...

My nostalgia trip eventually dropped me back at the grass bank. The Ouroboros* pack had emptied down to its last filter and I was nicotine high from my chain-smoking session. I took the scroll from my back pocket and read once more the message from the Willow man. It was its closing line that was jumping out at me – ‘It’s time to paint the concrete.’ I began to wonder how.

Heading back for the tavern, I noticed a string of phone booths lining the service centre’s outer walls. My wallet was in the knapsack in Crisp’s compartment and there was no loose change in my jeans. I rang the speaking clock and the time at the tone was 1:35am. Yeah…she’d still be awake.

Bring! Bring! “Hello?”

I swear that Frances lives with the phone cord around her neck.

“I have a call from ‘Llew’. Will you accept the charges?”

She sighed. “What’s a big sister for.”

The operator patched me through.

“Hey Frankie!”

“Llew – I need another word for ‘joy’.”

“Err…rapture?”

She exhaled. “You’re a walking thesaurus.”

I rolled my eyes. Frances Marsh was composing again. I could picture her now. Half-finished love poems scattering her bedspread, a well-chewed biro behind her ear, a bottle of wine and a tub of ice cream on her dressing table.

“How was the festival?” she asked.

“Oh…I saw Plutonic. I lost my glasses, had my pumps nicked and the world didn’t end. Other than that it was totally boring. How’s college?”

“My tutors know nothing.”

My sister holds no respect for the education system. She uses the word ‘fascist’ a lot when discussing it, especially since failing her second year. Frankie always has her head in the clouds. She is the type who will underline her favourite lines in novels and poems as if it means something. One time she ran away from home and we found her sleeping in a meadow with a rucksack full of Tolkien and Twain. She is currently taking a course in ‘Romance Studies’ at the new college in Stratford upon Avon. Frankie may never finish this course, because every other month she escapes on rambling holidays to Devon or the Lakes. She costs our mum and dad a small fortune. Originally she had agreed to live on college campus, but recently she has sweet-talked them into renting her a little bungalow in the village. My sister is very insistent on her own personal space. I can’t wait to see how she’s decorated.

“So Llew – are you coming home now? Dad’s been saying he can get you a job at the video store. Basically the position entails sitting at the counter, watching movies all day. Dad’s telling them you’ve had a lifetime of experience.”

I bit my lip to keep from screaming. Both my parents are named Joe. They’ve been happily married for twenty years. Early risers. Blood donors. Lotto Players. Goldfish in a bowl. They don’t understand me.

“Actually Frankie, Crisp and I have other plans. We’re not going to get stupid jobs like normal people.” I spat the word ‘normal’. “We’ve decided to extend our trip. I don’t know when we’ll be coming home.”

“Ooh…little Llew heading off into the wild blue!” she sing-songed. “So where are you and Crisp going?”

“That’s a secret. Just tell Mum and Dad that we’re staying at Crisp’s aunt’s house for a while. Okay? Will you cover for me Frankie?”

“Llew…they’re going to freak out.”

“But you’ll throw them off the scent, right?”

“Well…so long as it’s an odyssey.”

“An odyssey! I promise. I’m stargazing as we speak.”

“Be off with you then…”

We said our goodbyes and hung up. I was feeling very intrepid after our talk. I lit my last Ouroboros and tried to blow an aloof smoke ring. In the end, I just coughed and spluttered my way back to the tavern.

* The Travellers Taverns (or 3T’s for short) are managed by the selfsame company as the coaches that commute to them. Their accommodation prices are in a similar range of student friendly cheapness. £8 for a single night and £40 for annual member passports (which are easily forged). The tavern layout was pirated from the Japanese, whose hotels now consist of bedroom lockers (size: 6 by 4) running down narrow corridors. In his drug-sozzled state, Crisp believed he had been brought to the morgue.

*Ouroboros cigarettes are an increasingly popular novelty item. They mock the mainstream brands forced to place heath warnings about Bronchitis and Emphysema on their packets. As a cheery alternative, the Ouroboros box claims that their tobacco grants a smoker immortality and perpetual youth. Health ministers are reportedly ‘unamused’ by the disclaimer.

( The Black Cave )

Yonder (Chapter Four)

2007-10-29T13:01:01Z

Chapter Four: The English Roadmovie
Synopsis: While riding the bus, Llew discovers a mysterious letter in his underpants.
Author's Note: Oh, by the time we reach this stage you can definitely tell the book is written by a teenager! Please forgive how messy and purile some of this chapter is. Feel free to offer concrit if you will.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~ Return to Orbit ~

The English Roadmovie

We boarded the Zipper* bus at a little after 3pm. Its passengers were all snoring under duffel jackets. Everyone looked sunburnt and wasp stung. Their grey eyes shot curious looks at my filthy socks and glitter make up. I squelched down the aisle, stumbling on my turn-ups and rubbing my mouth. The sun on the windowpanes was frying my brain like it was an ant beneath a magnifying glass.

Crisp (who hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours) was cavorting around the bus with a nauseating abundance of energy. He regaled the festival fall-outs with tales of his weekend’s escapades. They grunted at him, rolled over and said, “Buzz off and let us crash…” For his next travel game, Crisp moved onto flirting with the tea lady. I couldn’t help but feel endeared by this sight. My best friend slouching against the old girl’s trolley in a jaunty posture that I doubt he’ll ever grow out of. The grouchy hostess looked close to committing a homicide. Her eyes had narrowed into thin slits as if she were staring at Crisp through opera glasses. Finally the bus driver spotted them in his rear-view mirror and intervened over the intercom.

“Would the passenger in the yellow jumper kindly refrain from wandering the aisles on a moving vehicle, thank you.”

Crisp chewed his knuckles innocently and performed a mocking salute. He blew the tea lady a kiss, inspiring her to scowl at him murderously. Little did this woman know that she would only need to do was brandish a carrot or cucumber at her harasser and he would turn meek as a kitten. But that is a complex matter with my friend Crisp and I’m not going to elaborate on it now.

Crisp flopped down beside me, wearing his cordial grin and slung an arm around my shoulder. My friend wanted a cuddle. He always needed cuddles. Crisp was a social animal and if you didn’t grant him the intimacy he required on a regular basis he would start talking loudly and boisterously to himself. Still I was in no mood for cuddling. I bit my bottom lip as he poked at the corners of my mouth, trying to force me to smile. Then determined to break my silence, Crisp stuck his tongue out and gave me a sticky ear – licking into my lobe like it were a honey pot.

“Knock it off!” I cried.

“Can’t help it,” Crisp laughed, very pleased with himself. “You look so pretty in lip gloss. What’s the matter with you, sugar?”

“Why did Shangri-La have to end?” I sighed.

Crisp considered this. “There’s always next year…”

“Sure. What is muggins here supposed to do for another year?”

He shrugged. “I was thinking I’d form a band. Wanna join?”

“My hands are too small for musical instruments, you know that. And don’t even dream of suggesting vocals. Not after the karaoke incident.”

Crisp sniggered, this time sounding as if he were trapped in a helium tank. His laughter scratched on my sour mood like nails down a chalkboard. I started thinking it was time that hyperactivity boy was unconscious. I slipped twice the recommended dose of Snoozer* tablets into our last bottle of chocolate milk.

“Thirsty?” I asked, passing him the shake.

“Parched!” he declared.

He raised the bottle to his lips, then paused with a musing look. “Did I ever tell you about the film script I’m gonna write?”

I ground my teeth, impatiently. “No, you didn’t, Crisp – but I get the feeling that I’m about to be enlightened."

His grin stretched and his dimples deepened. “So far, it’s untitled. It is gonna be a sort of heist film, come roadmovie, come black comedy about thieves who are on the run through the English countryside.”

“A roadmovie set in England? That’s gonna be one hell of a film short.”

Crisp wasn’t to be distracted. “It’s about this group of drinking pals who get blasted one night and hold up their local with an unloaded gun.”

“Why unloaded?”

“Because they’re just playing games! The gun isn’t even genuine. It’s a fake. They’re keeping it as a front to protect them while they’re on the run from the cops. The guys are planning to drive across the country and then take a ferry to Gibraltar. However…” his voice suggested that ‘the clever bit’ approached, “…on the way they take a hostage, who is this plain cheese girl…”

“Cheese girl?”

“Yeah – you know what I mean. Plain, bland – no relish for me please! Just cheese. Her name is Maudlin. She stays at home every single night and thinks she can communicate telepathically with her stuffed toys…”

“Hey Crisp, you know when I was little I used to…”

“I know you did. It stuck in my mind. Anyway – Maud gets kidnapped and it’s like the first exciting thing that’s happened in her life. She gets to liking the guns and the handcuffs and wants be the human shield in future robberies. This chemistry develops between her and the boss of the crooks and…”

Drink the milkshake, Crisp. You know you want to.

“I reckon this idea could really sell, Llew. And I could have total control over the project. Compose the soundtrack and everything. I’ve even got a part in mind for you. You’re gonna be the boss’s sidekick. You’ll be perfect!”

“Oh, I’m the sidekick. Goodie. So where do we get the gun from?”

Crisp blinked at me. “Movie characters have had guns and bombs since the dawn of time and nobody ever asks where they get them from!”

“That’s in America, you cretin!” I fumed at him. “That’s in Hollywood! Britain doesn’t have a gun culture. There’s really no such thing as an English gangster – you might as well put fairies in your movie!”

“God Llew…you’re such a nitpicker.”

It is a terrible truth that film culture can warp a kid’s fragile vision of reality. Ever since I got a television in my bedroom at age twelve, I have fallen asleep to midnight movies with the sound turned low. This habit equips you with an excellent sense of hearing, but it can screw up your eyesight. Last winter I was prescribed glasses and advised to watch TV with lights on in the future.

“Anyway,” Crisp continued, unflappably. “The gun in my story is really a symbol for impending doom. It’s an art house film…”

“You said the gun was an imitation.”

He frowned. “Maybe the gun is real, but it’s loaded with blanks.”

“Well, what would be the point in that?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered, wallowing in feigned hurt.

“You haven’t really thought the idea through…”

He snorted. “At least I have ideas, man!”

Yes, my friend Crisp possesses one priceless talent; spontaneity. He knows next to nothing about script writing and yet he can ad-lib a shaggy-dog screenplay on a tired afternoon. These scatterbrained concepts have a kind of charm in their enthusiasm. You can hear it in his folk songs too. It’s just a crying shame that Crisp isn’t the loquacious genius that he pictures in his head. Personally I like to think of his ideas as turkeys that might lay golden eggs.

Mercifully, that next second Crisp raised and downed his Snoozer-spiked milk. I watched eagerly as he fell silent and fidgeted in his seat. His eyelids began to flicker, his head nodded and his fingers twitched. Then his lips stretched into a gob-smacking yawn and he was out like a candle.

“Too be honest, mate,” I whispered into his sleeping ears, “I doubt you’d sit still long enough to write the title…”

Now the motor mouth was muted, I could concentrate on nursing my hangover. It didn’t feel so much like a hangover as it did like permanent brain damage. My feet were numb and close to freezing. My ribcage was decidedly pummelled. Worst of all, I was suddenly aware of a squishy, oblong…something lying in the seat of my jeans. This had to be the first time since nursery school that I had allowed my bowels to get the better of me. God, I repulsed myself. Standing awkwardly and grimacing, I hobbled towards the onboard toilet and slipped inside.

Inside the lavatory, I unbuckled my belt and gingerly eased down my trousers. I braced myself for the awful sight and was somewhat baffled to discover that I had excreted some kind of…letter. It was brown and crumpled, but it was a letter none the less. But that was impossible. Nobody poos paper! Not even if they ate the dictionary. I gloved my hands with bog roll and fished the fragile note from my boxer shorts. Gently I unravelled it and stared down at its message.

Dear Reader

Handle this parchment with care. It seems that everything is crumbling to dust these days. Everyone is holding on for dear life.

If you are reading this then it means that you are young. You have been born to a planet on its deathbed - a world that is polluted and diseased. Nuclear tempers are set to blow. How can we escape from this?

GENERATION Y seeks that answer.

If you prefer to dream rather than sleep come to the Lost Metropolis and find one of our number. It’s time to paint the concrete.

Farewell and Godspeed.

The Willow Man

I read the letter three or four times. The words were printed in fine italics. I imagined the author had used a feather quill. The handwriting was shaky in parts, rather like the squiggles of a lie detector. The circle around the Y intrigued me. It looked like an upside down peace sign. I sat in the Zipper toilet for quite some time staring at the coffee-washed paper. Then eventually it hit me. The thunderstorm. The burning port-a-loo. Yetis, mud-fights and tepee tents. Yes! The blue tepee! I had received this mysterious scroll from the Reaper of human souls.

* Zippers are described by their advertisers as “The most convenient trip from A to B”. However this statement becomes wildly inaccurate when a herd of adolescent punks and metal-heads climb aboard. The Zipper is quickly violated into the lowest form of public transport outside prison wagons and cattle vans. Grunge kids even offer their own disclaimer for the vehicles - “No need for seat belts on these dilapidated monstrosities. Passengers will be glued to their seats by bubble gum and snot rags. The bus driver will then torture them en route with reckless three-point turns and easy listening music. When attempting to admire the view, be sure to mark the words ‘CLEAN ME’ written in grime on the windows.”

* Snoozers are the latest in herbal insomnia remedies. It’s likely they will soon be taken off the shelves and deemed illegal, due to their slightly narcoleptic effects. The pilltaker will go through delirium tremens before falling into a dreamless sleep that can last up to 20 hours. The Snoozer user will wake with heavy amnesia, but if anything this adds to the overall feeling of rejuvenation. Llew thinks that Snoozers are a marvel of hippie medicine.

( Halfway House )

Yonder (Chapter Three)

2007-10-29T11:58:19Z

Chapter Three: Return to Orbit
Synopsis: Llew is reunited with his friend Crisp. The two boys are reluctant to travel home.
Author's Note: You'll be pleased to hear that Llew has sobered up considerably in this chapter. Don't worry too much about the strange happenings of the previous night. They'll be explained soon. This chapter is for getting to know the characters!

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~ A Smoke with Death ~

Return to Orbit

I was dreaming about candyfloss. There were deep oceans of glucose and I was swimming through syrup. Sometimes I wished I were a pharaoh with slaves to interpret the nonsense in my head. Drifting through my sticky make-believe, I couldn’t seem to open my eyes. It felt as though someone had poured candle wax over them and stuffed cotton wool in my ears. Yet I could just make out the distant strum of an acoustic guitar, infiltrating my sweet-toothed fantasies.

I’m waiting for Llew,

To rise out of his cesspit.

I think he’s had a few,

He tends to over do it.

Is my best friend in a coma?

Will he soon be an organ donor?

I wish I knew

I’m waiting for Llew…

I opened my eyes and registered that my glasses were missing. My initial split screen vision eventually focused in on a lute player who was crouched at my side. He was baby-faced and of stocky build. Short swirls of hair that looked like liquorice twists were dangling around his big opal eyes. He was shouldering a leather knapsack. His pockets were turned inside out. His clothes were baggy and colour-clashed; a piccalilli Sloppy Joe, camouflaged forest fatigues and a pair of daunting silver moon-boots. Only one teenager in the United Kingdom goes around wearing moon-boots. Crispin Gillespie. I propelled myself into a sitting position.

“Where did you get that?” I motioned to the instrument in his lap.

“Nicked it,” he chirped. “From one of the buses. A bunch of us went to see Kung fu Kimberly* at the ‘New-Wave Stage’. We found out they were having this post-gig shindig so we crashed. By midnight the girls were really hammered and this one guy, Theo, gets lucky with Kim’s trunk keys. The rest of us looted the boot, while old Theo went on to get lucky with their cute cello player.”

Crisp grinned, putting tiny dimples in his cheeks.

“This acoustic piece was about the looniest thing I could lay my hands on. I reckon it’s a mandolin or lute or something. Maybe a banjo. Anyway. How’s tricks, Llew? For a minute there I thought you were pushing daises.”

“Really? I thought the world had ended.”

“Take a look around you, mate. It did!”

My eyes scanned the desolate festival grounds. Shangri-La, which last night had been teeming with carpe diem thrill-seekers, now lay desolate and still. Aside from the odd refugee, the campers had vanished. Chunks of debris littered the grass like hard scabs – plastic bottles, bin-bag ponchos, dirty knickers and mounds of ash. The grey sky was filled with migrating birds, fleeing the country. The wind had contorted the young sapling trees. Plants, earth and roots were overturned, no doubt leaving many a homeless bunny rabbit. The beaten wasteland smelt like hamburgers and gasoline. It looked like the third world. It was hard to imagine a neutron bomb doing much worse.

“What happened here?” I spluttered.

“Zero recall, huh?”

I rubbed my temples. “Blank, blank…”

“Could be you were abducted,” said Crisp as if reassuring me. “This one guy, Gazza, he said he clocked some weird lights in the sky last night. He reckoned all the aliens from all the cosmoses had flown through space to meet us. The visitors probably teleported you on board, rendered you unconscious, probed your every orifice, melted your frontal lobes and beamed you back. You do look like you’ve been subjected to the vacuum of deep space, Llew.”

I held my Martian-mangled skull between my hands. It felt like a paperweight, only with a lower IQ. My hair was a magpie’s nest. I combed my fingers through its tangles and double knots, pulling a feather from my fringe. Somehow, in the chaos of last night, this feather must have become entwined in my greasy locks. But that didn’t explain why it was decorated with India ink. My own personalised feather. I tucked it behind my ear and rose up from the puddle that I had collapsed in. A slimy effluence oozed through the holes in my socks. I whimpered as it slid between my toes and turned to Crisp for some kind of assistance.

“Somebody took my pumps, Crisp!” I complained. “First my specs, now my Goddamn footwear!”

“Be thankful you’ve still got your eyebrows,” he said evenly.

“Why would a person steal my dirty shoes?”

“For the small-time thrill of petty theft.”

My eyes narrowed on him. “I might have known that I’d get no sympathy from a kleptomaniac like you.”

Crisp eyed me critically. “Do you know something...it looks like you were mugged by a teeny-bopper.”

“Why is that?”

“You’re covered in pixie dust.”

I touched my face. My hand came away tainted with lipstick and glitter.

“Ugh…” I cringed. “Sparkle-loving freaks!”

Crisp chuckled through the gaps in his teeth. It is hard to describe my friend’s laugh without bearing witness to it. It is a sharp “Te, he!” rather than a smooth “Ha, ha”. I would liken it to the death rattle of a chipmunk.

“It’s not funny, Crisp! Now I have to trek through this filth in just my socks. My verucca will turn septic and I’ll need parts of my feet amputated!”

Crisp rolled his eyes and stood up.

“Take these.” He bundled the lute and his knapsack into my protesting arms. He patted his shoulders. “Climb aboard, yer wet lettuce.”

I accepted the kind offer of a piggyback. Crisp was surprisingly hardy for a little guy and I did my best to hold our possessions out of his face as we stumbled across the campsite to the dirt track. The yellow grass was crackling underfoot – still statically charged from previous evening’s electricity.

“Aren’t we going back to the tent?” I inquired.

“Err…I’m thinking our tent’s either sunk or speared by now.”

“Speared?!” I exclaimed.

He nodded sagely. “Things turned kind of Stone Age around 5am.”

“My diary was in that tent…” I said, with a low groan.

“Well…it was hardly the most scintillating read now was it? Cheer up, Llew! We’ve got the important stuff like our health and your pocket money. We’ll take a Zipper coach to the nearest service station. We can eat hot dinners, catch some Z’s and find you some new treads. We’ll also buy you a hat to cover your mullet.”

I gritted my teeth. “It’s not a mullet.”

“Your ape drape, then.”

“Actually my hairdresser calls it a ruff shag.”

Crisp exploded into hysterics again (many poor rodents lost their lives). Crisp constantly gives me stick about my haircut. I bet if he saw one Jayze Fantozi* film, he’d agree that mullets can be trendy. In school, we were often subjected to beatings at break time. Crisp would always scold me afterwards by saying – “Bullies just plain hate kids with mullets!” He blames my hair for everything.

Hard knocks in high school will certainly condition you into believing that you’re weird. Crisp was a tenacious little scrapper back then, even though our enemies tended to be bigger boys who attacked in packs of ten. His courage was balanced out nicely by my own cowardice. He was forced to coach me in bravado. “Out-smart the bastards!” he would say to me, “Use your vocab!” Crisp likes my flowery speech, but I’ve always wished I could talk like him. He’s got this streetwise rhythm and it charms me. I suppose at thirteen we all aspire to be our best friends.

When we reached the festival trail, Crisp was pretty knackered and told me to get off and walk. I returned the burden of our communal knapsack to him. Then I started to tiptoe over the gravel and rant that the bus stop was a thousand miles away. And all the while it felt like I was forgetting something.

“Crisp,” I murmured.

“Hmn?”

“I don’t wanna go home.”

“I know,” he replied. We both fell silent.

After an hour or so we reached the crossroads. The signposts had been ripped down from their stands. All that remained was a broken strut, reaching skywards like a starved limb. Crisp and I had no directions.

* Kung Fu Kimberly is a folk singer and black belt. This year’s Shangri-La saw the debut performance of Kim and her all-girl backing band. They stormed the Sunday night set with a Ceilidh of martial arts. They are already smash-hits in Japan.

* Jayze Fantozi was a teen-movie icon for the generation previous to Llew’s own. Critics would often remark how his brooding looks and sharp blue eyes were offset by his eccentric choice of hairdo. He was typecast for playing tortured outsiders in cult indie flicks such as Garrotting Grandma and Pizzaboy in Suspenders. He died from an overdose aged 24 after making only seven pictures (two of which were porn).

( The English Roadmovie )

Yonder (Chapter Two)

2007-10-25T21:48:08Z

Chapter Two: A Smoke with Death
Synopsis: Our narrator Llew joins Satan and the Grim Reaper for a beanfeast.
Author's Note: If you made it through my turbulent opening chapter hopefully you will find this instalment more digestible. The story remains a little screwball and trippy, but this section is far more chilled. Step inside the teepee and pass the pipe.

~ Foreword ~ Methane Flames ~

A Smoke with Death

Grandfather oaks circled the clearing and thatched a rain roof with their loftier branches. A blue tepee was glowing beneath the melancholic leaves of a weeping willow. Purple plumes breathed out from its open curtains, coaxing me forward like ladies fingers. Two peculiar figures sat within.

The closest one was tending to a saucepan as it simmered on their gas stove. His spiked red hair and prickly features were illuminated by the clear blue flame. He had a crooked nose and sharp goatee beard. His companion wore a black cowl that engulfed his spindly form and shrouded his face in shadows. Smoke wriggled from a dubious rizla concoction that he held in skeletal fingers. I recognised these characters. The Grim Reaper and Satan. It had to be. A double whammy of mythical demigods making cameos at the end of time. I decided to eavesdrop.

“Did you see the Corpse Candles?” the Reaper asked Beelzebub. “This festival has been set aflame. Do you know in the dark ages folk used to weave legends around those lights? Tonight they’re just toasting marshmallows...”

Satan sniggered through a mouthful of chilli. The Reaper shrugged beneath his shroud and let out a world-weary sigh.

“Hey – you gonna stand there gawking at us all night?” Beelzebub blurted at me without warning. Just as suddenly his sinister lips drew me a smile. “I’m kidding, man. Come in. Hang with us. We’re having a bean feast!”

I pondered the invitation. Would it be such a bright idea to pow-wow with these notorious anthropomorphs upon the day of reckoning? It would hardly be of merit to my eternal soul. However after eyeballing them so rudely, I felt that I should at least show a little English courtesy. So I slipped inside the canvas lung of shadow puppets and spicy aromas. For some reason there were feathers everywhere, together with puddles of carrot juice and kiwi skins from some bizarre ritual. I told them that my name was ‘Llew’ and Beelzebub slapped me on the back, sending my chewing gum flying. I noticed that Satan was wearing Bermuda shorts. There was a dagger tattoo on his ankle, still bloody. I tried not faint at the sight of his botched body art and held my breath against the exothermic reactions taking place in the devil’s cooking pot.

“Are you hungry?” the Reaper asked me between deep drags on his joint. Death was remarkably soft spoken.

“No-one eats or sleeps in Shangri-La!” I exclaimed a little too loudly. Not the straightest of answers. I quickly curled my mouth into a snarl, trying to make out that I was every bit as demonic as they were. My voice was hard, though my hands were twitching. I wished Crisp were with me.

“Fasting is the healthy option, man,” Beelzebub commended me. “Lots of people been puking up bad veggie burgers this weekend.”

“Yeah…” I sneered. I felt the word ‘twits’ rising up in my throat and I was forced to swallow it down. “Shit brained hippies!”

“Bloody expensive too. Why not just bring your own?”

“That’s what my mum said. She made me pack a load of sandwiches…”

Even before I had finished bumbling out this sentence I felt appalled. My true self had been cast up to humiliate me. Beelzebub pressed a snakish tongue to the inside of his cheek. “Your mother’s a wise woman, kid.”

This wasn’t working at all. Beelzebub had just demoted me from ‘man’ to ‘kid’ at the mention of a lunchbox. I had to up the stakes and fast.

“Actually…I haven’t ingested anything this weekend that wasn’t totally mind altering. Because that’s what Shangri-La’s about, right? Getting all freaked out! And I’ve had to, kind of…overdose on the drugs to err, slow down my bleeding…”

This statement hung in the air for a little while.

“Where are you bleeding?” asked the Reaper, as if concerned.

“It’s my insides,” I bragged. “They’re full of haemorrhages from the mosh pits. I’ve tried to ease the pain, but I probably won’t last the night. Not that it really matters because…” I smiled ready to play my trump card. “…the world’s about to end.”

The dark lords exchanged perplexed glances.

“You believe it’s the end of the world?” asked the Reaper.

“It’s the truth. I can’t believe you guys don’t know!”

Beelzebub shook his head, perplexed.

“Out of the mouth of babes…” I heard him mutter.

I glared at the cynical hellion and went to inform him of the Fat Phenomenon TV* prediction. He flashed me a pumpkin grin.

“Well, apocalypse boy,” he retorted. “I hate to burst you bubble…but it’s like 2:am. Doomsday has missed its deadline. That means no second ‘Big Bang’. Trust me, kiddo. I’m an expert in such matters.”

“These things take time…” I squirmed. “It’s like a burning house! The fire spreads from downstairs and if you climb up onto the roof, you survive longer. What I mean is…Oz is probably toast by now. Our country will be one of the last to go…that’s just the luck of geography…” The luck of geography? I wondered if my ramblings were disturbing anyone other than myself.

“I believe you,” said the Reaper. “God has been gearing up to smite all night. You can’t blame him for wanting to erase this mess.”

This confused me. Did the Grim Reaper really believe in Gods and Reckoning? I much preferred the Big Bang theory myself, because it lets me think of the cosmos as a stupid science disaster and not be haunted by things like karma and sacraments. Plus I have fallen utterly in love with fuzzwords like ‘Atheist’ and ‘Nihilism’ and like to amply them to myself. One time I actually went too far and wrote a rather blasphemous essay in my religious studies class. I remember my teacher gave me ‘3 out of 20’ and an additional note in red pen that read ‘God is listening…’

“Like some?” the Reaper asked, raising his joint.

I lifted my eyebrows and grinned in acceptance.

“We English never refuse an offer of tea,” I quipped, smirking at my wittiness. Then I cringed as a remembered that it was mostly American beatniks who referred to it as ‘tea’. It didn’t get a laugh anyway.

The Reaper handed me his funnel of smoking herbs and I took a wheeze. Hot ash scorched my tonsils, filling my eyes with bitter tears. Beelzebub tilted his head at me. So much for my little junkie charade.

“You fancy yourself as a bit of a prophet, don’t you kid?” said Beelzebub. “You want to see a real bit of sorcery?”

“What do you mean?”

“My friend here…” he gestured to the black assassin sitting quietly beside us. “…he can look into a crystal ball and read your future.”

The Reaper expelled another forlorn sigh.

“Do I have to, Stephen?” he moaned.

The Reaper must have been seriously stoned. Surely he meant to say ‘Satan’. Beelzebub rummaged through the luggage and tin cans that cluttered up most of their tepee space. Suddenly he made a triumphant ‘Ah-Ha!’ noise and turned to me holding a 60-watt light bulb. His steely eyes were dilated and manic.

“That’s not a crystal ball,” I pointed out.

Beelzebub frowned. “It’s enchanted, alright? You just watch.”

The Reaper stubbed out his joint and with slow precision, took the bulb in his hands. When the fuse touched his open palm, it crackled and fizzed. The air inside the tepee seemed to shiver. Then the bulb illuminated. No current, no mains. The fuse was charged by his naked skin. An astounded giggle leapt from my mouth.

“Do want me to tell you what I see in the light?” the Reaper whispered. His airy voice sounded pained. I nodded, anxiously.

“Wire and dust. All visions come from the light in your eyes. I see roads there. Limitless roads. An awful lot of highways for a boy with no future.”

These words caught me off guard. I wondered if I was hearing voices. The pot fumes must have filtered into my ears and pickled my brain. I wondered whether these people might just be bug-eyed hallucinations. I flinched. Death was looking at me for the first time. The half-light fell into the soft angles of his face. For a moment he seemed almost human. But there was an emerald fire in his lidded eyes. A fire that tempted you, ensnared you and whispered ‘You’re the one’.

“Llew…could you travel to the Lost Metropolis?”

I frowned. “You mean that old Neverland?”

The Reaper smiled as I acknowledged the notorious city. He produced a cluster of scrolls from the opaque folds of his black cowl. The letters looked oddly medieval – very ancient and regal. He handed one of the strange parchments to me. It smelt of raw coffee. I should have known better than to take messages from the Grim Reaper. For all I knew it could have been my death warrant.

“We made those special,” said Beelzebub.

“If you’re still alive tomorrow,” said the Reaper. “Find us.”

Okay…so this was getting trippy…

I hastily vacated the mystic tepee, stuffing the scroll in the only secure place I could think of – my boxer shorts. Sad, but true. Even if I did find some willing female, my genitals were numb and shrivelled from the early morning chill.

I wandered around the red campsite. The twilight hour was causing it to resemble a fairy glen. All the trees had eyes. The rain and the rustling leaves sounded almost like pixie laugher. Was it because something fateful and fantastical had just happened to me in that dingy tepee? I suddenly felt as though there might be a thousand secrets, sealed in a thousand scrolls that the universe was keeping from me. I also realised that I was talking to myself. Young couples were peeping out at me from their dome tents like inquisitive fox cubs. I looked up at the stars and the night sky as if searching for flying saucers. After five seconds I stopped pretending. I really wanted those aliens to come.

* Fat Phenomenon TV is a low budget cable show hailing from a small-town in Idaho. It is hosted by ‘The Obesity Boys’ and specialises in taking the current urban myth and blowing it out of all proportion. Llew usually tunes into it over breakfast. So far he has missed the programs tagline ‘The World of UFO Porkies’.

( Return to Orbit )

Yonder (Foreword)

2007-10-25T20:49:37Z

Foreword

When people ask me about my first novel, I tend to describe Yonder as 'a punk fairytale' simply because that is the most concise and fitting definition I can give it. The storyline has all the hallmarks of a mystical quest, but its protagonists are not heroes or wizards; they are a gang of teenage vandals with a grudge against society. The novel's world closely resembles 21st Century Britain except that it is much more wacky and exaggerated and comes with its own popculture. Please look to my footnotes at the end of each chapter for further explanations of my little folkways.

As I have stated on my Profile page I wrote this novel when I was 19 years old, so I hope you will forgive its clumsy naivety in places. My writing has changed a lot since and I am tempted to rip out many of the sentences that now make me cringe. I am resisting because a) there wouldn't be much of a novel left after all my embarrassed ripping and b) I want to preserve the genuine teenage voice in the story. My agent did attempt to sell this book to the young adult market. One of the main reasons that we struggled to find a publisher was because it occasionally features scenes of drug taking, sexual experimentation, violence, vandalism and swearing - issues which of course play no part in a teenage life, ho-hum. For any readers who lead very sheltered existences or are easily offended I'm rating this novel PG-13.

If you are generously taking the time to read this weird little novel off your computer screen then I would like to thank you heartily. I may not have earned any money or launched a literary career from writing this novel, but it was a fun execise and a huge learning curve. If it reaches a few more readers through LJ then it will help to make all my efforts and slaving away worthwhile.

( Methane Flames )