Mistification

by Kaaron Warren

  Marvo always won his races. It was hard to picture opponents. He could only remember faces from TV. He ran against the fastest racers and always won.

  One night his training saved his life.

  For three years, Marvo had been tripping into the house. Never outside it – he was still unaware of a world outside the house. He found food and things nightly, each dusk heralding the chance of new adventure. Each time he reached the world outside, fear came momentarily. The unknown scared and thrilled him and as he climbed the ladder there was always the chance of something new. But for three years it was always the familiar he saw. Then one night, he felt dangerous and bad, he wanted his throat to throb, his face to go red. He wanted to find the room where the races were held.

  He collected their food and left it in the tunnel, then he ran up the stairs, the wind in his ears, hair ruffled. That was good. He ran up the hall, past dark doors (doors behind which islands slept, cars rested, crowds nestled silent) till he came upon a shaft of light. Here, perhaps, were the races. Regaining some sense, he slowed his pace and crept to the door.

  There, he heard shouting voices, so loud his ears rang. And he saw flesh, true flesh. He had not even seen himself naked – there was no large mirror in the room and he would not appear that way with his grandmother around. He most certainly had not seen her naked. He did not mind the most horrific stories, graphic details, the cruellest sights on the television. But to see his grandmother naked, or to touch himself, was too shocking. He hated discussions about himself, any intimation of person. When his grandmother wanted to talk about what he would do when he left the room forever, he hated that.

  He had seen TV flesh, but this was so soft, so… meaty. It looked like food, like something you would eat, and the thought made Marvo sick. He knew you did not eat human flesh. The sight horrified Marvo and he gave a half-shout, the greatest noise he had made in three years. A grunt.

  The flesh stopped writhing. A voice demanded, "Who's there? Who is it?" and Marvo ran, fleet of foot and invisible, down the stairs and out of sight before the man could rise, wrap and follow.

  Marvo sat behind the wall in the tunnel to catch his breath. The food was there, gathered earlier. But if his grandmother heard his breath, she would punish him.

  When he was rested, Marvo returned to the room. He now knew the feeling of excitement.

  His grandmother was not in a curious mood when he returned. She didn't ask about his red face, she didn't want to hear about the adventure. Marvo, forgetting about the trouble he might get into, began to whisper quickly, words describing each step.

  "I want to run again, Grandmother. I loved how it felt."

  "You will run plenty when you're older. Outside."

  "Outside? When?"

  "Not yet, Marvo. When you're older."

  He pestered her for three days, desperate to know what she meant. The more he pestered, the quieter she became until, if he closed his eyes, he thought he was alone.

  He learnt a lesson there: desperation is not the way to get what you want. People will give it to you if you pretend you don't want it. Because six months later, when Marvo was twelve, when they had spent four years in their room, his grandmother grew thinner and thinner. He brought more food, took risks to bring her treats, thin slices of cake, shaved off the sides of leftovers; soft bread when he stole out early in the morning rather than late at night; and, once more, chocolate. She nibbled at his offerings, then told him to eat the rest himself.

  "My age is giving me a message of speed. Tell it all. Tell it now," she said.

  She began to tell him something about the world outside the house.

  "The whole world is not in the house. The places on TV are outside it, they are far away. You can travel to them; you can find them. Seek sometimes with your eyes closed, sometimes shut your ears. You will catch things that way."

  His grandmother told him that he must leave soon. She began to cry. She said, "I will be dying soon. You must not remember me; you must leave; carry my body into the passage way near the air vent; they will find me eventually and we will not give away this place. You will need it again. Go to the city," she said. "The biggest city you can find. There the magic will come." She gave him a large white envelope. "In here there is a message for you to read when you turn thirteen. You don't have to read it on your birthday. You read it when you are ready. Once you read it, you will no longer be a child. You will have the weight of the world on your shoulders. You will be a different person."

  Marvo took the envelope, thinking that perhaps he would never choose to read it.

  It was not until he was much older he considered how bored his grandmother must have been. He was able to potter and play and imagine; she lay on the bed and watched the TV, or told him stories. He hoped that she was never bored, that his magic saved her. She was happy, alone and quiet with her magical grandson.

  One morning, she said, "I would like to go today," and he put his hands over her eyes and kissed her nose, something he didn't really like to do because she was so old, he only wanted to kiss a young woman, a woman from one of the other rooms of the world, one of the young women he saw on TV. But he kissed her nose and touched her eyes and felt her relax. She had told him all about death so he did not feel frightened of her dead body. He was frightened at the thought of leaving, but she had given him a parcel, with money and jewels to use, and a message he was not to read until he turned thirteen.

  He carried her up the ladder; she was so light he climbed as easily as he did every night. He remembered he'd left the TV on, so rested her on the platform to go down again and turn it off.

  He took one last look at his things, his bits and pieces, knowing he could not take them all with him. He took the sound knob his grandmother had removed from the TV; it would forever remind him of this room. He had known where it sat for two years now, and he considered it a sign of his maturity that he had never used it to turn up the sound. He left almost everything else behind. He left the wand which had never felt right, the toys, the fruit pits. All he took was the TV knob, the nun's habit, the note his grandmother had given him and the rope he had made himself.

  If dying wishes are not fulfilled, the restless spirit will come back to haunt the living who failed in that promise. Marvo feared this so he did as his grandmother wished.

  He placed her body near the air vent, the place she had designated for her final resting. He searched her pockets to find a memento, something with her smell. He found a small, black potato.

  He listened until it was safe to leave, then he walked through the corridors of the house. Silently and quickly, he arrived at the door he believed led to the other side, to the world where there were beaches and caves and other people, animals and weather, books and places to eat, nuns and people who ran.

  The small door was almost concealed beneath the stairs. Marvo had never opened it for fear of letting that world in.

  He stood by the door. He felt excitement and what he identified as terror. He didn't know where the entrance to the other world would be. What if he appeared in a jail, opened up a door and walked straight into the exercise yard? Or into a bedroom, or a school room? He didn't know.

  He closed his eyes, thinking of his grandmother.

  "Goodbye, love," he whispered. He threw open the door and stepped inside.

  It was dark. He was not there yet; another door, perhaps, on the wall, which needed to be opened. He walked forward, his hands outstretched.

  With a noise so loud his ears numbed, he came to a collection of brooms and mops, tripped over a metal bucket on the floor. He clutched and grabbed to save himself from falling and clasped a small and perfect stick. With it he balanced and stood. This was a broom closet. Like in all the shows he had seen. It was not the door. It was a closet. And he had made enough noise to raise the house.

  He listened for sounds of arousal. He heard a mutter, a footfall, a door slamming open.

  There was only one other door he had not tried. Hi
s grandmother called it the "front door" and told him it lead to the Front, where the men waited with guns. Marvo now felt this was the door for his exit. But where would the men be?

  Running now, he reached the door. He knew locks and keys. Here was a lock without a key.

  He closed his eyes. He saw a hand removing a key and placing it in a pocket.

  There were shouts now. He had been heard.

  On either side of the door, windows, four panes, just big enough for his small body. Using his new cane he smashed a pane. He threw himself outside, feeling no cut, no pain.

  The men were shouting now. Marvo landed running.

  It was cold. It was dark. Marvo smelt leaves, the air, mud, grass. He did not falter as he breathed in these things. He knew what they were from TV, and from his grandmother's descriptions.

  He ran.

  The men were more used to running and Marvo heard guns, heard clicks. They could see him clearly. The moon was bright.

  Marvo thought hard about concealment. If the men couldn't see him he would be safe. Marvo saw the first of his own true magic. A little magic of his own, a little mist.

  The mist rose about him and quickly grew. He could not see his way, so he closed his eyes and ran with his cane before him, letting it lead him.

  The voices faded. The smell of gun was gone. Marvo paused once to glimpse his home in its entirety. The place of his birth and childhood. It was so much smaller than he'd imagined, but then he'd imagined it was the whole world. It stood three storeys tall, with two dozen windows. The roof was steep and needed repair and it was built of grey stone. He knew that deep inside was his room and his grandmother's body. Ivy, healthy and wild, covered half the house. Someone had attempted to clean one corner and that section looked naked compared to the mossy rest of it.

  He would seek throughout his life for other stories of strange births.

  He ran.

  The mist travelled with him as he ran over dirt, grass and macadam. The smells around him changed, assaulted him.

  His surroundings became more complicated, and there were people, more and more people as he ran.

  Night fell, but he didn't want to sleep. He ran through towns, through suburban streets, past wild yowling packs of dogs and incurious hunting cats. He rested sometimes, looking back to see where he came from. No men were in sight, no guns either.

  He didn't know big city from small but when, as the sun rose, he had been running on hard ground for an hour he decided this was a big enough place. He saw people asleep in doorways. He found a doorway for himself, curled up away from the sun, and gave in to exhaustion.

  The world outside the house was strange and terrifying. Loud. If it wasn't for the mist, Marvo would have been lost. It softened the noises and it cleared in certain directions, leading him.

  He expected it to be like the world on TV, where you could find everything in careful compartments. In reality, food shops sat next to clothing shops next to bookshops. At least everything was labelled, large words he could read and understand.

  People behaved differently than they did on TV. Some of them did stand and talk and smile at each other, but they didn't stand still for half an hour and talk and move from the kitchen to the lounge room, then back again. They walked past him and disappeared. He could not see the end of the world from where he stood. There was no familiar face, no rocks or rivers, no beach, no mountains to climb. Just a city, and he had seen those, though never so big; a city big and loud, hurting his ears. He walked up and down, sniffing the smells, waiting for magic to come.

  He had only ever whispered in his grandmother's ear. He leant towards people and whispered into their ears. It took him a while to lose this disconcerting habit. As people rushed past him, he whispered, "Where is the beach? Where is the magic show?" but they didn't hear him. He wondered if he was speaking a different language, then he realised they couldn't hear him. His voice was too soft; he couldn't shout. The sound of his own voice was more frightening than anything else, because it was familiar and strange together. He wondered what his grandmother's voice would have sounded like, and he was sad because he would never know. He cried alone, ignored by everyone who passed.

  The smells of the city astounded him. He had not smelt things before – hot chips and car fumes, other people (his grandmother did not smell), the road, the footpath, the feet upon it, the smell of babies, the smell of hair. The smell of flowers. His grandmother would draw a simple rose and tell him of its scent, but he was stunned to realise flowers had such a powerful smell.

  He sat in a place where people could watch TV and drink coffee, and the coffee was hot and tasted bitter, and he was amazed to learn something about the TV shows he thought he knew so well.

  There were songs on TV. It had always seemed strange; he did not know why the shows he watched had the same clippings for a minute or so every time; the rocking ship, the walk through the haunted house. The same thing every night. He didn't ask his grandmother because he didn't find it questionable, merely interesting. Now he realised they were songs telling the story of the show, telling it every night.

  Marvo spent his first two nights alone, wandering the streets, sniffing and looking and being invisible. He found a man asleep on the footpath, his limbs curled up, his flesh half bare and covered with goosebumps. Marvo whispered to the man, "Are you cold? Would you like to use my cloak?"

  "I haven't slept in half a year," the man said, and accepted the cloak as a pillow and a coverlet. He spoke very loudly. "You have lent me your cloak. I will lend you the story of my birth, but you must give it back when I have finished. It is not to be repeated."

  Marvo agreed to the condition, though wondered how the man would know if he kept it.

  "I hope you're mature enough to hear my story. I like my voices loud, my music, TV, my noise, I like it loud. I feel comforted by loudness, it takes me to my birth, though of course I don't remember that. I remember the hum of noise though, for sure. The hum and loudness of the riot."

  Marvo had seen birth on TV. He knew what it looked like. It was people in sharp green clothes bending to obstruct the view. It was babies drawn from some secret place and held aloft, bloody and triumphant. It was women (never men) crying, baby placed in arms. He never knew the names of the babies he saw, so he christened them himself. They were Gilligan, Jim, Rolf, Jeannie, Barbara, Max. There was Bobby, Kirk, John, Marilyn, Bette, Sam. He named a hundred babies in that room. He knew about birth.

  Marvo's head thudded, aching with the sound of the man's voice. He lay beside the man on the rough pavement, feeling its texture on his cheek, his palm. He felt the corner of the note his grandmother had given him dig into his hip and he shifted slightly.

  Marvo remembered silence, and the lesson he learnt was that when he was sad, stressed, scared, he needed only close himself up somewhere quiet like the room and he would be comforted.

  "Are you ready to listen?" the man said.

  Born Amongst Chaos

  I don't have much left to me that's special, apart from the story of my birth. But my death will be of interest to an observer like you, a kindly boy like you. Stick around and watch me go if you like, but I can't tell you how long it'll be. By the time I finish the story, perhaps, or by the time you turn thirty. It'll be hunger or thirst that'll take me, nothing else.

  It was one of those crazy things; no one ever traced its source. Some people thought the heat set it off, but that's no answer. People are hot all over the world and they don't riot like that. But there was cheap gin floating about, cheap as beer and they all drank it. They left it lying around and the kids drank it; my mum told me the phrase then was, "Keeps you cool at least." She didn't have any – she didn't want to hurt me in her womb. I've never forgotten that.

  Another thing was the government had cut off the money going to poor people. Where I came from, that meant hunger. And so they were buying the cheap gin and no food, and when a big expensive car ran over one of us, the suburb erupted.

 
The car was destroyed by the people on the street. The two people inside (a driver and an owner, if you can believe the stories) were beaten, even though the person they ran over was saying, "I'm all right." The two rich people (well, the driver had a job so he was richer than most) were beaten to death, and soon the area was a war zone.

  The noise began there. Thunder, screams, shots, sirens. My father wanted to get my mother away but a car was impossible – the people on the streets hated cars now and were tipping even the familiar ones over. So he bundled some things into our wheelbarrow and made Mum sit on top. She told me she had the giggles and so did Dad; her so pregnant, being wheeled like a child playing.

  They didn't get very far. It was a bad choice Dad made, and years later, when Mum had lost her sense of humour, she was bitter about it.

  "But look at me, Mum, I'm fine," I'd say to defend Dad. "Nothing wrong with me." But I said it in my loud voice, so she shook her head.