‘Feeling better?’
What kind of question was that?
‘Where am I?’ he replied, genuinely confused.
‘My place, stupid. Under sufferance,’ she said, climbing over him. ‘Fancy some breakfast? I’ve just got time before I go to work.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Eggs?’
‘Bacon and eggs. And fried bread…’
‘Fried bread only,’ she chided. ‘No meat – and no lewd remarks, either.’
‘Mushrooms?’ he asked of his veggie girlfriend, smiling, he hoped, winningly.
‘Got none.’ She dressed in a hurry, regulation blouse and skirt over cotton bra and knickers.
He smiled at the little bows.
‘Tinned tomatoes then.’
She shook her head before securing its outgrowth in a ponytail.
‘You’ll be telling me next, “No brown sauce”.’
‘No brown sauce. Sorry.’
‘Shit…’
‘Yes. And I need to find my shoes. So don’t push it.’
All elasticated up, she left the bedroom.
He must have come out of the tunnel at some point, he reasoned. He must have found the day; not necessarily the one he’d lost, but a day all the same.
Michael lay where he was, comfortable among her sheets, with her perfume and her nightie, discarded some hours before, anticipating cooking smells, dozing, for a good half hour before receiving a kiss on the cheek by way of an apology and the promise, if he’d get the shopping, of her famous macaroni cheese.
He grabbed her wrist.
‘There’s cornflakes,’ she told him.
‘And milk?’
‘Bye. See you this evening.’ And she was gone, Vanessa Cardui in a daze.
Her teddy bear winked.
A sly, malicious lowering of one frayed eyelid, the gesture brought a chill to his lungs, an inhalation like that from a fridge. He couldn’t take his eyes off the teddy, which remained still, knowing that if he did it would advance, clawing at the duvet, or perhaps ducking under to gnaw at his legs. This was an evil bear, a jealous brown ursine creature sat at the foot of the bed, awaiting its chance, some lapse it might cruelly exploit, teeth bared and paws lashing out. Michael pulled his feet slowly toward him. The bear, Funnykins, leaned over, readying itself.
The atmosphere hummed with a cold blue light.
He made a break for the door, slamming it behind in time to trap his tormentor, who scratched at the wood and rattled the handle, growling angrily the while. There was no lock, no means of securing the bear inside, so he looked around frantically for anything he could use either as a barricade or a weapon. Just a towel on a radiator; but he was able to bind handle to radiator, manoeuvring vacuum in front of door for good measure. That ought to buy him a few minutes. And it was a few minutes he needed, naked in the hallway, his clothes the wrong side of this portal, a few minutes in which to dress himself and find an exit.
Emptying the washer produced the expected blouse and skirt ensemble, a departmental store uniform that would have to suffice, naturally underlain with Vanessa’s white cotton, tight below, spacious above, the former a discomfort he’d endured before, the latter cured with kitchen towel. Fortunately his was skinny. Still, he couldn’t fasten the skirt properly, having to make do with a zip half way up. That just left shoes, and a hat, a disguise of some sort to convince the world of his girlie credentials.
No time to put his face on. Stuck between a plastic bag and an umbrella advising Holsten Pils as a preferred method of inebriation he chose the umbrella, imagining it had more defensive options. The bag might be useful for suffocating teddies, but he really didn’t want to get that close. Besides, it was flimsy, plain and unbranded, and served only to mute the creams and greens of his outfit, while the umbrella was perfect camouflage, neatly matching his skirt and designed for golf. The question of footwear remained, however, to be resolved by Tom & Jerry oven gloves.
The scratching at the bedroom door fell silent. No longer a backdrop, its absence served to increase the threat. Michael poked his head round the jamb and made quick scrutiny of the adjoining living space.
Plenty of places to hide for a bear one foot tall.
His heart had stopped, he felt. No, it was only muffled by the kitchen towel.
Then a window broke. Funnykins had found another way out.
He bolted for the front door, brolly raised but unopened, Tom chasing Jerry chasing Tom. Outside the sun offered a morning of long shadows and growing heat. There wasn’t much traffic, pedestrian or automotive. He had no money for the bus. His own car was some miles from here, he thought, although he couldn’t be sure. When had he driven last? No sign of it in the street. Must still be in the woods. A roar and a crash. Not the bear – breath caught – but a passing inter-city and a milk float, the milkman startled by a cat.
There was an obscenity as he swung a boot.
Missed, naturally enough, the large ginger practical joker then vaulting two fences and a bush before placing itself, tail erect, in the love apple’s path.
If it was in cahoots with Funnykins he was screwed. Something about its protruding tongue though, spoke of a different truth.
Michael crossed the road.
Ginger watched his back.
The sun levered up, foreshortening ghosts.
People began to appear. None he recognized. Crouched beneath the umbrella’s generous canopy he made his way into town on foot, losing first Tom then Jerry, their cartoonish ways tripping him and stubbing his toes. His bare feet on the pavement felt primal, encouraging him to wander across a variety of surfaces, from concrete to grass.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked so much. Maybe it had been yesterday; maybe ten years ago. Always more of a driver than a pedestrian, he sensed a fundamental change in attitude, a constitutional shift not unlike that experienced by political parties that can’t get elected – something he might change his mind about later, in car, in power, in partibus infidelium.
His legs felt good. That was it. It was ages since he’d felt the wind on his knees, a raw feeling Michael wanted more of. Short trousers had been the norm until he was eight of nine, thereon for sports only, something he shied from as a teenager. This was a Cub Scout thing, grass stains and grazes, sixpence a week subscription and merit badges. A time of innocence. He revelled in it now, flouncing his skirt and kicking his shoeless heels. Who cared if his feet got dirty? If he smelled, he smelled of earth and dog shit inadvertently rollicked in; a healthy boy odour, how he must smell under the skin.
Slugs and snails and puppy dog’s tails…
The sugar and spice appearance a dissimulation.
But he enjoyed that too, the crease of elastic about crotch and under arm, the annoying shortening of stride dictated by the style of skirt. It he was to break into a run, it would be one of those quick shambling perambulations adopted by women caught in the rain or late for the bus, with just the bottom half of his legs in motion, while everything from the knees up remained relatively still. He’d get where he was going, but against physics, fashion shaping his gait, a more powerful force on the planet than anything yet discovered by man; appropriately feminine. Not that men didn’t suffer the inconveniences of such dictates, but what they suffered paled next to corsetry and stilettos. Extremes perhaps, yet valid benchmarks…self-sacrificial.
Then his eyes caught a policeman. In a vehicle outside an off-licence. Windows down, short-sleeved, talking into a radio.
Michael changed direction.
He couldn’t go back the way he’d come, so he headed instead for a gap between buildings that opened onto a stretch of derelict land, an old mine, long since levelled, black dust and dandelions its congregation. There were newer churches in these parts, mostly involving reconstituted ingredients. Past the site were houses.
Kids playing football scrutinized him. They had cold, cruel eyes; too young to hide anything.
They followed, curious and smiling. Who was the crazy woman? they wondered. Why was she walking here? They lit cigarettes and threw coals, which bounced off his umbrella.
Underneath he was laughing.
He admired their rudeness. It was honest. They grew bored and returned to their game, goalposts fashioned from beer cans and the bones of old pit ponies.
Feet black, Michael arrived at a garden.
The contrast was magical. From death to life, a boundary marked by wood slats and chicken wire. Nothing substantial. Still, he feared to trespass. Was it that he belonged among the dead? Or was life just too scary? Unable to decide, refusing a referendum, he followed the makeshift fence to its corner, then on to a scrub path that turned into concrete and eventually tarmac, a short distance from there to the road that marked his original trajectory. Though what it was he’d aimed for was forgotten.
Escape, surely. Funnykins was back there, a teddy bear in mortal combat with a tom cat, himself fleeing the scene like a frightened bride the embrace of a new husband, at once embarrassed and ashamed, victim to a man/woman compatibility struggle that was, in reality, as complex and dangerous as Lego.
He’d hit his head, and never fully recovered. Sledging in his anorak. X-rays revealed nothing, but to the love apple there were obvious cracks.
He’d fallen down the stairs, off his bike attempting a wheelie, out of a tree, from a roof, over a fence, banging his cranium on surfaces as varied as limestone and linoleum.
He’d had stitches. Bruises, large and small, had adorned his frame. There were metal plates, screws in his limbs. He’d had skin grafts and his tonsils removed. His appendix had exploded.
But all that was behind him. Growing up, eventually, had seen a long running series of accidents come to an end. Now he only sliced his fingers, minor injuries more the result of carelessness than folly. He had recently poisoned himself; out of stupidity, using the same glass for wine and Indian ink.
He was getting old, it seemed.
‘That’s disgusting,’ she opined, reclining, naked.
Disgusting maybe, but she liked it.
‘How long have you been carving dildoes?’
‘They just come out that way,’ he explained, turning the object, using it to stroke her thigh.
‘Phallic.’
‘Admittedly…’
‘But nice…all the same…’
Dioecious creature, he watched her eyes close as he parted her labia with the wood, its shaft a convolution of roundels, three-dimensional and smooth, flowing curves that borrowed her sheen as he worked them both.
It gave him an erection, sculpting, the intimacy of self and material like nothing else.
Sex was an adequate substitute.
To combine them was difficult, extraordinary yet limited; of her he could only shape so much.
Hands covering her face, she raised her hips.
‘Hmmpff…’
‘Nice?’
‘Ohmmm…kind of.’
‘Nice.’
At which point he drifted off.
The candles no longer bathed him. Her skin no longer transfixed. Instead, within the scope of his vision, affected in part by cannabis, several elves meandered, one riding a bicycle, the others on foot. Six inches tall, they dressed in baggy dolls’ clothes, the looted wardrobes of many a Barbie and Barbie clone. Whatever they could get their hands on. Easy, as the security was lax. They took furniture too, even rooms, entire houses if transport could be arranged, cardboard and plastic dwellings they’d hitch to battery-driven racing cars and locomotives. The elves weren’t fashion conscious or vain. Their skin was pale, a waxy grey-blue. They looked like tiny corpses, zombies whose presence bode ill.
The elf on the bike spoke to him, gesturing wildly; but it was in German, squeaky Frank, and he failed to comprehend. Something about wings? Yes, the miniature cyclist kept pointing at his back, flapping his arms – that was clear enough. But not the message, the significance. These were fallen angels perhaps, employees of Heaven who had somehow become detached, or laid-off. They required his help, he supposed, in a way he could not fathom. He might fashion them pinions, for theirs had been clipped. But in this would he invite God’s wrath?
‘Atheist,’ he stated, not believing.
‘Hnngnh?’
And he was here, his fingers wet.
‘Not you,’ he said.
All movement ceased. He’d destroyed the moment.
‘Take it out.’
Michael complied, removing the wand as she removed herself, as he had been removed by mathematics, by the magic numbers estranged.
Nine: Dynamo