XXVI
The Young Cripple awoke face down in a field. She was tumbled upon a pile of reeds with her legs outstretched and her mouth full of dirt. Around her, she could hear people talking, but it was faint, like a whisper, and she couldn’t make out a single word. Every nerve in her body squealed at her to get up and run. And she tried, she did, to crawl her way out of this heap, but she couldn’t move a muscle; she couldn’t even spit out the sand that was caught in the back of her throat. She merely lay there on her belly, with her face buried into the clumps of grass and soil that had broken her fall.
“Go into the Light,” spoke a voice that rolled like thunder.
As it spoke, a bright, blinding, white light switched on.
The Voice sounded urgent, yet hushed; like a quarrelling father. The Young Cripple tried to find its source. She tried to hear where it was coming from so that maybe she could lean her head in that direction, and shout for help. But as the deafness in her ears started to resolve, and as her hearing became more acute, what had at first sounded like faint whispers, was now more akin to deafening screams. The kind that billowed from twisted wreckages.
There were thousands of voices, maybe millions. They were all shouting and screaming, and begging to be saved. It was chaotic at first, the sound of so many voices at so many differing pitches, yelling so many different things. The Young Cripple wished she could move her hands. She willed it, imagining herself digging her fingers into the dirt and stuffing it into her ears, to snuff out the god awful shrill.
And as quickly as the whispers had become screams, so too did they turn from wavering chaos, into a synched and uniformed harmony, as one voice fell in tune with other, until a million voices, or maybe a hundred million, had found the same distinct pitch and tone. And they were still screaming and crying endlessly, but they sounded orchestrated, like a choir.
As her senses started to unravel and settle, The Young Cripple’s first thought was of what the hell had happened. How the hell did she get here? And where the hell was here? Had she been in some kind of an accident? Had she been hit crossing a road? Had she plunged from a rope, or a balancing beam? Or had a plane fallen out of the sky, and landed on her head?
“Go into the Light,” said The Voice again.
The Voice, it was nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It was coming from somewhere off in the distance, somewhere quite far, and yet, as absurd as it seemed, it was coming from as near as the back of her thoughts, as if The Voice were her own, which, of course, it wasn’t.
Piled upon the reeds, The Young Cripple fought with all of her might, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move her arms or even drag her legs under her body. She managed to, though, after some great struggle, lift her head in some infantile instinct, to keep from choking on the dirt and grass.
She held her neck as high as she could until she could hold it no more, and then it smacked back into the dirt. Unperturbed, she tried again. With all the force that she could muster, The Young Cripple heaved and hoed, lifting her head and trying as hard as she could to turn to one side, as if this were some challenge or complicated task that she was learning for the first time - without guidance, or without any prior instruction. And again, and again, in sheer frustration, her heavy head crashed back onto the dirt below. On the last attempt, though, before exhaustion pummelled her defences, she managed to tilt her head as it fell so that her face rested on its side, and her heavy breath shuffled away the black dirt that kept settling in the back of her throat, whenever she inhaled.
“Walk towards the Light,” said The Voice.
It spoke in a certain tone now which was no more amicable than the sound of a whipping belt, or a whooping cough. It sounded like an order; like an imperative command, one that beheld untold consequence.
“Walk towards the Light,” it said again, almost like a threat.
The Young Cripple lay still for some time, merely breathing. When her strength returned, she lifted her head once more and stared through the swaying reeds as hard as she could, and she could see, just barely, what looked like the legs of an old woman, bent and twisted into cruel and inhuman shapes; worse than her own.
“Help me,” she mouthed, but it was no use. Her throat was dry, and the only sound that came out was from the grains of dirt and dust that spilled from her cracked lips. “Help,” she pleaded once more, and again, her cry went unheard.
In the distance, from behind a blanket of blinding, white light, an army of soldiers appeared out of nowhere. They carried truncheons in one hand and torches in the other. And as they marched, their general sang songs of faith, and of prosperity.
The Young Cripple twisted and turned, finding strength now returning to her body. She could see through the reeds, the millions of people huddling together on a path. Most, if not all, were reaching out into the white light, staring straight into the blindness, expecting and hoping for a hand, or a miracle.
“Help me,” said The Young Cripple, her throat dry and deserted. “Hel….”
She strained her body and lifted her hand up above the reeds.
“I’m here. Someone see me. Help.”
Her voice, like her strength and her memory, was starting to return.
“Please, someone….”
“Shut up.”
It was a boy’s voice; yet is sounded grainy and crackling, like an old gramophone. It frightened The Young Cripple, and had her freeze in her tracks. And now, more than ever, she was desperate for someone to rescue her. She lifted herself with her hands so that her head just poked over the tops of the reeds, and she scanned left and right for anyone from her troupe. But of the hundreds of millions of people, she could see none that were familiar, or looked as if they might come to her aid. Undeterred, though, she fought the aching pains in her body, and the will of her arms to let go. She looked left and right, back and forth, sure that at any second she would find Rex, who with his gigantic size, stood out like a welcomed eyesore, no matter where he went. But his thickly deformed head and his nary developed ears were nowhere to be found.
Though she couldn’t see anyone that she knew, she could see, nearing on the huddled mass, a massive army of what looked like people, who were neither man nor woman. They were sexless and expressionless, and their uniforms were black, with red ribbons on their lapels.
The Young Cripple fought even harder, to lift her body even higher. As it was, only the top of her head stood above the reeds, looking, to anyone who cared to noticed, like nothing more than oddly shaped bush, amidst an unkempt swamp of straggly green grass and weeds. She pushed, though, harder and harder, and lifted her body as much as she could, until her whole face now was free in the open air; air that tasted like licking the inside of a worn truck tire.
“Don’t be stupid. You’ll get us caught. Get down. Get down now.”
It was the boy’s voice again.
The Young Cripple, though, was less frightened now.
“Help me,” she shouted, in the direction of the blinding, white light.
“Stop it. Shut up. Lay down where you were. Just stop shouting like that. They’ll hear you. Got it?”
She hadn’t. She continued – crying, shouting, and pleading.
“You’re gonna get us caught,” said the boy’s voice.
The soldiers had now reached the hundreds of millions of crying people, and The Voice, which had awoken The Young Cripple from some kind of coma or stupor, spoke once again, as the sexless and expressionless soldiers dispersed through the crowd, each finding a pair of pleading eyes, looking with a mix of sheer panic and relief.
“Help,” shouted The Young Cripple. “Over here. I’m stuck, or I’m broken. I need help.”
As she spoke, though, static drowned out her voice, and it was coming from the boy that she couldn’t see - as if he were shushing her; which he was.
“Trust me, just stay down. You don’t want to call their attention. You don’t want to get found,” he said.
The soldiers stood in front of e
ach person, their truncheons stowed in their belts, and one consoling hand resting on each terrified shoulder. They held their torches a mere inch from each person’s glaring eyes so that their pupil’s almost vanished in the blur of white light. And there must have been something about their gentle touch, or in the warmth that shone upon their faces, because, in a second, the people’s terror and worry vanished, as did the volume of their desperate choir.
“Please,” said one of the people, holding a hand over his blinded eye. “Are you here to take us to Heaven?”
The soldier, whose congealing hand now gripped like a vice, said nothing.
“I can’t see,” said the person, “the Light, it hurts my eyes.”
The person was squinting now, trying to lock eyes with their saviour.
But their saviour had no eyes onto which they could lock, no ears which would listen to reason, and no mouth of which to negotiate and concord.
“The Light, sir, it’s blinding,’ said the person, as the soldier unstowed its truncheon, once again.
The Young Cripple swivelled in the reeds, vying to see, or be seen.
“Get down,” said the boy’s voice.
“They’re the Soldiers of Light,” said The Young Cripple. “They’re good. They’re here to help. They take the dead to….”
And it was then that she realized her predicament.
As if she had just remembered where she had misplaced her keys, the knowing of what had happened, and more so, where the hell she was came flooding into her mind. Her memory returned with all the vigour of a hungry dog, or a bout of herpes.
And in a sudden, it had occurred to her that she had been shot, once in her temple. It then also occurred to her that she had died and was more likely now in Heaven.
“Help me,” she shouted. “Soldiers of Light, I bid thee.”
“I’m not lying, I promise,” said the boy’s voice. “They’re bad people. I heard it. Just you listen.”
The Young Cripple shouted some more, but her voice was swallowed by the sound of static. And it was only a second later before she collapsed back onto herself, a tidal wave of pain rippling through her every nerve.
“Lord of Light and Light of Love,” she sang, uselessly to herself, “cast me in your stare. Deliver me from dark abandon, into your hallowed care. Lord of Light and Light of Love, uh…”
It was the sound of truncheons beating on the backs of men, women and children that had The Young Cripple stop her prayer. It sounded like a landslide, and it was impossible to sing over or to even hold a steady thought.
“Shhhh,” said the boy’s voice. “Stay still. They’ll be gone soon.”
The Young Cripple stared through the reeds and could see, outside of the blinding, white light, the sight of millions of weapons, crushing down on the backs of millions of people. The soldiers struck down like the hands of a grandfather clock. They beat and pummelled one and all into absolute submission; the whole while, shining their blinding torches in the eyes of their victims.
“Go into the Light,” spoke the ominous voice that was all around.
The Light was terrifically blinding. Only worse, though, was what it shone upon. The Young Cripple saw, from where she laid, the most horrific kind of violence she had ever seen in her life, and at the hands of her father, she had seen a great deal.
“Oh God, someone help those poor people.”
“Shhhh. Don’t look at them. Just stare at the ground, or at the back of your hand. You probably don’t know it as well as you think you do.”
The ominous voice spoke once again. “Attention,” it said. “Attention one and all. Thank you for your cooperation. We know that you are tired and disorientated. Some, or most of you, know not of where you are, or what is happening. You are on a celestial plain,” said The Voice, “between Heaven and Earth. Very soon The Soldiers of Light will guide you in single file towards salvation. Each of you will be asked to recite The Good Story, the story of your saviour before you can enter Heaven. On our way, we shall practice together. We love you. Welcome. And please, as you go, go with Light.”
The hundreds of millions of people all drudged along in single file with blinding torches and spotlights, held just inches from their faces.
“What happened?” asked The Young Cripple, mortified.
“They come, and they take everyone who arrives. If you fight, or look away from the Light, they do very bad things.”
“I don’t get it,” said The Young Cripple. “Why did they do that? All my life I was told…”
The Young Cripple stared stupid, and in shock, as the trail of people marched along. The first person, whose insolence had brought about the violence, was now somewhere off over the horizon, and behind them, for as far as the girl could see, trailed the rest, walking into the Light, step after step, towards god-knows-where.
“Never look into the Light,” said the boy’s voice, as The Young Crippled turned in his direction, “Look at what is being lit.”
The two stayed silent for a great deal of time, until the sound of marching was no louder than the sound of a grain of sand, falling onto the earth, even from the height of a cloud. It was deathly still, yet in the air, there still hung an odour of incident, as if the people’s fear had perspired a pheromone which lingered, like a cloud of ash, in the air that swept around The Young Cripple’s body. When she was sure the army had gone, she moved to speak.
“Who are you?” she said, still hiding, even though the sound of marching had gone quiet.
“My name is T,” said the boy’s voice. “What about you?”
The Young Cripple thought of her crooked legs. She then remembered every name she had ever been called. And none of them were the kind of names that one would choose to be called unless it was Halloween or a practical joke.
“T? That’s a funny name,” said The Young Cripple, deflecting. “Is it short for anything? I haven’t heard of anyone being called just a letter before.”
The boy’s voice didn’t respond, not in any traditional manner anyway. There was a second of silence or so, enough to spell out an air of awkwardness, but it was quickly broken by the sound of static and buzzing, as a radio dial turned swiftly from left to right.
“Where are you? I can’t see you. Are you near?”
The Young Cripple dragged herself along the grass towards the low buzzing. She could hear what sounded like talkback radio, where a gruff sounding man was pining a lot, in a complaining kind of way, about the current state of affairs. She tried to focus on his voice and to hear what was being said, but in less than a second, the dial turned again, faster than before.
“Is that you?” asked The Young Cripple.
“Yes,” said T, his voice garbled and grainy, beneath a wave of static.
“Where are you?”
The Young Cripple stared as hard as she could in all directions, but she couldn’t see any outline of any boy, anywhere. And the path, were all those poor people were taken; it was now empty from one side of the horizon to the other. It wasn’t impatience that was riling her discomfort, it was fear. She felt as if she were swimming from the bottom of a sunken wreck, and always, just a hand’s reach away was the surface of the ocean, which she could never reach; feeling as if she were nearly saved and would certainly drown, in the very same instant. She felt more alone now, hearing the boy’s voice, and yet not knowing how near or far he was.
“Lord of Light and Light of Love,” she sang, loudly.
“Please,” said T, “don’t do that. If you pray, they’ll find us. I know you’re scared,” he said. “I am too. Just, hold on a second, ok?”
The Young Cripple nodded. She was laid out on her belly, her hands already gripping at a mound of reeds in front of her, ready to drag her further into this swamp, if she had to, for whatever reason. The static continued, but it started to diminish now as a voice became clear on the radio. It was a woman’s voice, and she was singing a song that The Young Cripple hadn’t heard since she was a baby.
“Sleep my dear child,
From tiredness that irks,
Father’s in the field,
And mother’s left for work.
Come down from the rooftops,
The little cat that sneaks,
Keep vigil on my child; may she,
Sleep a quiet sleep.”
Any fears that The Young Cripple had quickly vanished, as if it were a tiny speck of salt, amidst an ocean of calming assurance. The girl sat in the reeds listening as the woman sang, over and over, the song that had been sung to her as a little girl. She sat there in the pile of reeds, with her legs tucked up to her body, and her arms wrapped around them. So detached was she, from her fear and from the sprawling abandon about her, that she hadn’t even noticed how her legs were no longer bent and twisted. They no longer wiggled like a loose tooth, and they were no more crooked than a straight line. She hadn’t noticed at all how her legs looked just like any normal girl’s.
“Was that ok?” asked T. “Was it the right song?”
The Young Cripple wiped away a tear.
“How did you know?” she said.
“Every feeling has its own frequency; you just gotta know how to find it. Sometimes when we feel really off or really down, we can tune into it that frequency, and when we get past the static, we can hear what’s really being said. Did I do ok?”
“You did,” said The Young Cripple, “you did.”
The girl unfolded her legs, and she was smacked with surprise.
“My legs,” she said, wiggling them up and down, and kicking them, as if she were swimming in the ocean; a feat she could have never imagined before. “My legs,” she said again; and then over and over and over, until her words dissolved in the joyful tears that spilled from her eyes.
“What happened? Were they hurt in the fall?”
“No,” said The Young Cripple, crying and laughing at once. “Quite the opposite, actually.”
“I’m glad for you,” said T. “But do you think you can do me a favour?” asked T.
“Of course,” said The Young Cripple, completely besotted by her ordinary legs.
“I need your help.”
The Young Cripple’s ears pricked. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” she asked.
“Can you see me?” said T.
“No.”
“I can see you,” he said. “I’m on the grass, to your left. You have to look closely, though, or you won’t see me.”
The Young Cripple turned around. She hopped onto her feet and stayed crouched, still hidden in the reeds. She hadn’t behaved like this on her feet since she started learning how to walk. She hadn’t felt this free or useful, ever.
“I can’t see you,” she said.
“You’re over me,” said T.
The Young Cripple looked down. There was no boy there.
“Are you crazy?” she said. “Are you sure it’s me you can see? I’m looking down and I can't see any…”
And then she saw it, a small transistor radio, with a little blue light buzzing.
“Hi,” said T, and the blue light flickered and shone as he spoke.
The Young Cripple wore her very best bewildered expression.
“Where are you? I mean, the real you?”
“This is me,” said T. “My body is somewhere else. You have to help me find it. I can’t do it on my own. I’m just a consciousness in a box. Without my body, I am stuck here in this field. Will you help me?”
The Young Cripple picked up the small radio and stared at it.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Are you the radio, or are you inside it?”
“Where are you?” asked T. “Are you your head, or are you inside of it?”
“I’m sorry,” said The Young Cripple, genuine. “It’s just I’ve never met a talking radio before.”
“Will you help me?” asked T.
It was like the Christmas she always wanted; the Christmas that never came. The only thing more amazing and completely unexpected than having normal legs was this, meeting a boy who lived in a radio, and who needed her help. Nobody ever needed her help before.
“Will it be dangerous?” she asked.
“Probably,” said T. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to do it, or that we won’t have fun.”
The Young Cripple felt as if she were teetering over the highest cliff.
“I promise I’ll keep you safe, and besides, I make a good friend. And everyone could use a friend, right?”
“Definitely,” said The Young Cripple with a mad grin on her face.
The idea was ludicrous, but then again, so was the thought of being able to skip as she walked. But if you asked her before she died, if at all she would like to hop or skip, and not merely fall or trip over her crooked legs, The Young Cripple would have smiled and said, “Of course, but not only would I like to, I will.”
Such was her way.
The Young Cripple skipped along the path with her new friend, T, carried around her neck like a pendant, or a very important key. The whole while, a host of songs were playing from the radio from corals and choirs to jazz and blues, and even heavy metal too. Whatever The Young Cripple felt, there was always a station that was playing a song which felt just the same.
And her feelings were jumping about, just as much as she, as they made their way along the path. One minute she’d remember just before she died, seeing Delilah in her periphery, and the same feeling would come rushing back. And T would be so quick, his little dial scanning through billions of bandwidths, and trillions of channels, until he found a song that stopped the girl from feeling like there was someone behind her, pointing a knife or a gun, or just set on kidnapping her, and keeping her in a dungeon.
When she felt happy, like when they stopped for a while so she could play a game of hopscotch, there was a song just for that. And when she felt sad and nostalgic, thinking about all the stuff and people she would miss if she really were dead, there was the perfect song that explained feeling like that, in a way her young words could not.
“How long have we been walking?” asked The Young Cripple. “Feels like forever.”
“It’s hard to tell. I don’t have a clock,” replied T.
The Young Cripple looked behind her. There were no defining features that stood out; no landmarks or milestones. There was no mountain or ridge, and there was no gorge or waterfall. There was nothing but the endless swaying of long reeds, on both sides of a path that was the same colour as the sky above. And looking forwards, there was much of the same, for as far as she could see. The path wound in and out of the flowing reeds. And it always looked, out on the horizon, as if she and the boy were about to near a bend, but that bend never came.
The Young Cripple refused to blink, in case she should miss a thing; a shape, a shadow, or any bending or warping of Light that would hint as to a place or a destination, or anything at all that they might be walking towards. As much as she squinted, though, and as much as she craned her neck, she couldn’t see anything on the horizon. There was no end to their journey.
And then, when she turned to look over her shoulder, she couldn’t see either, where they had come from. They had been walking for so long that it felt like she had always been on this path. She couldn’t really remember the start of this journey, and though she wished for it to happen, looking out into the endless curve on the horizon, she couldn’t actually imagine it ever coming to an end.
Such was life, or death as it was.
“How did you die?” asked The Young Cripple, a little apprehensive.
“Which time?” said T.
“What do you mean? You’ve died before?”
“Yep.”
“How many times have you died?”
The boy’s radio played what sounded like canned laughter, behind a military bugle.
“So far… around fifty or so. But I’m new to this. What about you?”
The Young Cripple felt a little embarrassed.
“One, I think?” br />
“This is your first death?”
The boy’s radio played the sound of a television audience, shocked.
“Is that bad? Or stupid? Or funny?”
The radio was about to play another sound, but T stopped it.
“Sorry,” he said. “It sometimes does that without me wanting. Of course, it’s not stupid, or funny, or whatever. It’s everything but. The first time is….I don’t know. It’s always strange, the very first time that you die. There’s no way to describe it, don’t you think?”
The Young Cripple thought for a second, about her death. She remembered the fear that engulfed her, a moment before the trigger was pulled. The adrenaline that poured through her blood was like wet cement in her stomach, and in every nerve in her body. Even if she had legs and could have run, she wouldn’t have. She had little fight, and even lesser flight.
She remembered the calm too as if she had just run a marathon, and all the world and its millions of problems seemed so infinitely small, and so very far away. She remembered how the cocking of the gun had sounded like a piece of hard candy, being crunched and swirled about in a child’s mouth. She remembered too, how, when the bullet that killed her was fired, it sounded just like a standing ovation, and when it hit her temple, it didn’t nearly hurt as much as she thought it would.
What came after, though, her death - the point between leaving her body, and awaking here in a mound of reeds - was the most unimaginable and preposterous sensation that she had ever experienced. And thinking of it made her smile.
“It was like the first of everything,” she said.
“Death?” replied T.
“I felt, or I think I felt, everything at the same time. Everything that I ever felt for the first time, I felt when I died, all at the same time. It’s like getting every bit of food that there is, and mixing it all together into a little ball and eating it, and then all the flavours explode at the same time. And one minute it's hot and spicy, and the next it’s cool and it freezes your brain. And then it’s sweet, and your teeth are tingling, and at the same time it’s tangy and sour. But it’s salty too, and it makes you want more. It’s like that, except I felt happy, like when I got my first skipping rope, and at the same time, I felt really sad, like when my father cut it in two. I felt the most scared I’d ever been, like the first time I was left alone, and I felt the safest too, like when I woke up in my mother’s arms. I felt angry. I wanted to punch a hole in the omniverse. And I felt so in love too. I just wanted to hug the whole world, especially those that didn’t deserve it. I felt…” she said, spinning in circles with her eyes close and her arms out wide, as if she was certain that no harm would befall her.
“Everything,” said T.
“Everything,” said The Young Cripple, smiling, and holding the radio close to her heart.
“I’ve been born and lived as many times as I’ve died,” said T. “And as intense and complete as dying feels, I have to say, I much prefer living. Life is more subtle; experiencing each emotion on its own, in context with the world that abounds. I really like the spaces between words for example; the silence between sounds, and the calm between waves. At the same time, though, dying is pretty cool,” said T, laughing.
“What does your body look like?” asked The Young Cripple, slowing her skip and settling back in a gentle stride.
“Like yours I suppose, except I have an aerial on the top of my head. Without it, I’m not much clear in what I say, you know, with all the static and that.”
“What’s it like?”
“What? Having an aerial?”
“Being a radio.”
“No different to when I was a person, like you.”
“You were a person too?” asked The Young Cripple excited, as if everything had, all of a sudden, become less strange.
“The seventh time I died,” replied T.
“So you’ve died a lot?”
“Not a lot. But, next to you, I suppose I have.”
“What happens next?” asked The Young Cripple, curious, and a little scared.
The radio eschewed a grating static that sounded like screaming.
“What’s supposed to happen….is not what is happening,” said the boy.
The dial on the radio turned and the static grew louder and more irritating. From inside of it, though, The Young Cripple could hear what sounding like a small child sobbing, whilst in the background, what sounded like a prayer, a creed, or an anthem was being read aloud.
“At the centre of the omniverse, there is a boy who waits by a door. The boy is omniscient; he just doesn’t know it yet.”
The Young Cripple looked doe-eyed. It sounded improbable, yet patently true.
“What’s behind the door?”
“The door leads to an infinite number of universes. And to pass through, you have to tell the boy a story.”
“What kind of story?”
“Anything; anything at all.”
“What if he doesn’t like my story? What if it’s too simple? What if there are no surprises?”
“What boy doesn’t like a simple story? As long as it is yours, it will be different from anyone else’s. And the boy would least suspect that. He’ll like your story, and he’ll open the door, and let you through.”
“And then what happens?”
“You’re born again.”
“What do you mean? Like a baby?”
“A different universe, and a different world. But basically the same you. Except different of course.”
“Different how?”
“Well maybe you might be a person, like you, or you might be a radio, like me. Or you might be a quark, a beam of light, a rainbow, or you might even be a block of ice, a leaf, or the tiny the insect that crawls along it. You might even be a planet or a star. Or better yet, a betta fish.”
The Young Cripple looked at her body; she couldn’t imagine being anyone else.
“How do I know what I’ll be? What if I don’t wanna be a planet?”
“It’s not up to you.”
“Well, who’s it up to?”
“The boy,” said T. “And his imagination.”
“Sounds weird,” said The Young Cripple. “But ok. Well then, if that’s what’s supposed to happen, then what is happening?”
Once again, the radio exploded with static, and the sound of rattling cages.
“I don’t know,” said T. “It’s just that things don’t feel right.”
“Nothing feels right,” said the girl.
“You’d know if you’d died before. It’s different here now, on The Bridge. There’s a feeling, and I can’t explain it. But when I fell the last time when I got separated from my body, I saw lots of beings arrive as they do, in groups and clusters. Except, normally they, or we… normally everyone helps each other and eventually finds their way to the door. It takes, usually, as long as it takes – to find the door and to be ready to pass through. But those soldiers, they’re new. They’re not supposed to be there. They’re not part of the equation. They just appeared all of a sudden, the last time I died. They were waiting, and they took everyone, like prisoners. I don’t know what’s going on, but something doesn’t feel right.”
“Is that where your body is…behind the door?”
“I’d say so. But I’m not sure.”
“How do we get it back?”
“I don’t know. It could be anywhere. It could be in any world, and in any universe. And it may not even look like my body anymore.”
“What do you mean? What could it look like?”
“Well, anything really. It depends on the place, and what kind of stuff there is. And then, in the end it’s just chance.”
“But if it’s changed, how will you know what it looks like? And if you find it and it has changed, how will you know it’s really it, and nothing something else?”
“When you were alive, did you know your body by the way that it looked, or by the way that it felt?”
The Young Cripple
thought about her demented legs, and the shame that it used to bring. If ever she was lost and a party was put on her scent, it wouldn’t be her face on the carton of milk. It’d be her banged up knees, and toes that looked like mashed potatoes.
But for someone whose gift and charm was her knack to tell magnificent stories, what harm was to happen upon having a couple of odd appendages? It’s not like she was modelling shoes or braving a tightrope. It was only when she was trying to be someone that she was not, that she ever felt ashamed, awkward, or disgraced - and more so, aware of her body, or anything for that matter, outside of her wicked imagination. And when she thought of writing in the morning sun, The Young Cripple quivered with delight. Moments like these were rare, but they occurred enough for her to know that they were no fluke. And how she felt being herself, was so much different to how she felt trying to be someone else. And even if a thousand years passed since she felt that way again, she would know, like a drunk crawling onto their own bed, that she was home, beneath her own skin and bones.
“Well?” provoked T, playfully.
“The way I felt I suppose,” she said, shying away.
“You suppose?”
“Ok, the way I feel.”
“Exactly. I am not the extension of myself, and neither are you. A captain is not his vessel, and a father is not….”
“His child,” said The Young Cripple, feeling the first of many anchors lift.
The two sat quietly for some time, racking their brains. Well she, her brains, and he, his channels and bandwidths.
“I got it,” said T.
The little blue light on the radio flickered with glee.
“What? What is it? What do we do?”
“We march in there,” he said.
“Where?”
“Where my body is silly.”
The boy’s voice turned static once more.
“Are you mad? We just walk in there? With no army, no nothing?”
“Yep.”
“Wherever that is?”
“Yep.”
“And find your body?”
“Yep.”
“And then what?”
“We get it back,” said T, defiant.