His Adam’s apple moved up and down as if in a spasm – he regurgitated an egg. It dropped from his saliva-wet lips to the ground and broke into two. Tiny snakes ran from the eggshell and dispersed.
The clanking and slithering shadows increased from below. Then, without warning, the ice cream van jingle echoed about the concrete-walled place.
Stave leaped away from the former bus driver who had become the maintenance staff member and ran behind him. The man turned surprisingly quickly for an older person and walked resolutely towards Stave, who walked backwards towards the damaged lift inset into one of the grey walls at the end of the walkway.
‘Have a dance of whirling cloud, spilling your deep centres. Or accept and let the agent of Tremelon knock some clean sense into your silly, slow brain, with a blowtorch.’
‘You really have lost it big time,’ Stave shouted, feeling hot all at once. ‘He’s after every ounce of me, mind, body and spirit, I understand now. He’s a virus, trying to wriggle his way through my being like he’s doing to you. You’ve been blinded in more ways than one. As for the blowtorch, that’d damage me in a big way, for certain, then my temporarily anaesthetised soul would be stolen – molested or worse.’
Nausea feeling its way through my being…
‘He infiltrates spirit in a positive cause. There’s no need to fear him. If you don’t consider a blowtorch part of an exquisite pain, then why not a hammer blow? Short and sharp, maybe to your ribs. He can play them like a xylophone. A rib at a time with a metaphysical hammer. Can you feel your ribs?’
For some reason unknown to himself, Stave complied by touching his chest. He felt numb there, no feeling in the tips of his fingers either.
‘You’re affecting me already, get away,’ he shouted.
‘By removing your physical mass, piece by piece, joint by joint, you will eventually find a weightless haven, a world filled with permanent wonder and deepest enlightenment. Now, you come with me, this instant,’ the maintenance man ordered and while holding his claw hands out again as they snapped together and apart like pairs of scissors, continued, ‘We’ll see if we can’t sort this out. Let me take you down the dark lanes via the grey shadows towards the frenzy of blue light. Give up the fight, sublime fright. You really are far too awake for your own good, you know. You ought to be in the tubes, with the others.’
‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ Stave growled and pushed his new adversary against railings which were beginning to sprout pipes.
Stave ran along the grubby walkway, the pipes continuing their hollow rings and tones. There was only one place to escape, he considered: the lift.
As it became level with the walkway, he dashed in, frantically pressing the buttons on the control panel. The light buzzed and fizzed above him but this time the lift remained stationary. The bus driver turned maintenance man walked casually towards him; he held the lantern which now threw out grey and blue light.
‘Let us dance till blue death overtakes in wonderment of pain.’
A spirit corrupted by Tremelon Zandar, there’s no doubt about it. Got to get away from him.
An oppressive load came upon Stave, a darkening, heavy shroud enveloping his mind. There was singing in his ears like tinnitus, the extraordinary noises from the pipes becoming louder.
The lift began to move down of its own accord, and he descended into the greyness of rattling ducts and pipes. Not wishing to see into the noisy gloom, he turned to the back of the lift and discovered another a pair of automatic doors. When at the bottom of the lift’s descent, the doors opened and a flood of light lit the interior. And just before the lift made its ascent again, Stave stepped forward and out with determination.
11 : JOURNEY TO NOWHERE
He appeared in the midst of a throng of people on an underground train. They talked excitedly together until a station announcement reverberated through the air, “Please mind the doors” then they became silent. As the pneumatic doors shut with a hiss, the train jolted and slid into movement. The passengers erupted into conversation again.
Stave had found a space to squeeze into and leant against the closed doors of the train. To his left stood a bamboo cage, containing three brightly coloured butterflies. They flittered in random patterns. People, crowding about him, swayed with the movement of the carriage, all one way, then the other. Some had eye masks on their sombre faces, some held onto straps that hung from the cream coloured ceiling. One person had an empty fish bowl in his hands while another ate an orange, the sweet and sharp citrus zest in the air.
So many here. Where are they going to? For that matter, where have they come from? I wonder if I used to commute.
How easily I have accepted a lack of memory, and lack of understanding concerning my strange predicament. Within the hold of a wakeful dream which swings wildly from bad dream to good then to bad again.
‘Where does this train go to?’ he asked a woman in the standing group.
‘Why, the gathering, of course,’ she replied gaily. ‘I don’t always wear this hat,’ the woman added, and she stroked her feathered bonnet. ‘It’s in honour. Do you like it?’
‘Very much. In honour of whom though?’
‘You tell me. Are you going to the gathering as well, in your snappy turquoise suit and neat tie? And what a lovely pair of leather shoes.’
A constant rumbled rhythm of metal wheels on the track.
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack…
Stave looked down at himself. The suit was still perfectly tailored, with no marks or rips.
‘Not that I know of,’ he replied. ‘But I know someone who is going. That’s if he escaped, though. Quikso Lebum. Do you know him?’
‘I know of no person called by that name. I use to know someone nicknamed Quicksand. Perhaps I’ll meet Quillso at the gathering,’ she said and gave a cheeky wink.
‘Quikso,‘ Stave corrected.
‘That’s what I said, didn’t I? If he manages to escape, as you told me. Escape from what though, the clutches of a woman?’
She laughed, sounding like the top end notes of a piano keyboard.
‘Far from that – the clutches of an agent of Tremelon. Have you heard of him?’
She shrugged.
‘Tremelon who? I don’t know that name either.’
‘Do you dream?’
‘What do you mean, do I dream? I’m constantly dreaming and never wake up.’ The woman seemed to lose interest all of a sudden and turned sideways in her space to ignore him.
Your ceasing of conversation is unnerving.
Stave turned as well, shuffling one hundred and eighty degrees, to look through the glass pane in one of the doors. As the underground train passed a platform, he saw wooden pallets stacked high with cardboard boxes, and bundles of flat cardboard packs being tied with rope by animated mannequins.
He was becoming claustrophobic with the immediacy of the other passengers. One spoke loudly to him – almost shouting in his ear – above the babble of conversations, with mild panic engrained onto his face. His cheek twitched involuntarily.
'You there.’ The voice taught but refined. Stave turned his head to him and attempted to back away. The man stood too close; Stave could smell whisky on his breath.
Are you drunk?
‘Drunk on the wine of life. How absurd it can be!’ the man said.
‘Can you hear my thoughts as well?’ Stave replied, slightly annoyed.
‘I don’t know, can I? Can you hear me thinking? I hope not. I have some pretty unsavoury thoughts sometimes. They should be kept private, for all concerned. But no matter if you can. Just keep my thoughts to yourself, OK? Listen, I've lost my car, can you help? It was one of many parked under the Olympian Shopping Mall, but it's not where I left it. It’s a silver and black Tissue Derigible. I’m terrifically fond of it. It is terrible; there one minute, gone the next. Somebody moved it to a different bay for a laugh, maybe.’
Another gust of dream wind, although this time
it seemed like a scented breeze.
‘I wish I could help,’ Stave replied, ‘but I don’t know where your car is. I don’t even know where the shopping mall is. I did think I might be going there at one time, earlier today, but I’d rather be going home, somehow, somewhere. Perhaps someone stole your car? These things can happen.’
The passenger narrowed his eyes as if he were in need of spectacles.
‘You could be right. I have to find it. So they stole it and drove it to somewhere else? This is not what I was expecting to hear. I hope they don’t look in the glove compartment. There’s something very personal and special there that no one else is allowed to see. Salted olive?’
The man held out a greaseproof paper bag filled with them.
‘No, but thanks for offering.’ My mind is acting in a strange way, with this forgetfulness. Have I stolen a car? Would I have done such a thing? Am I in purgatory? That’s a possibility. Surely I’ve done good deeds in my life. But what if my deeds no longer remembered have been terrible? Do I forgive myself, now I have forgotten them? Illogical train of thought. Of course I wouldn’t have stolen anything… ‘I do hope you do find it. Where are you travelling to?’
The man furrowed his brow.
‘Somewhere else.’
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack…
Other than where you are. Can you believe you live a waking dream? Or do you insist you’re in your bed asleep, your mind here, your body there? Or do you reckon you can’t awaken to a more real state than this real state because you are already awake?
Stave's attention was diverted from the conversation and his thoughts by a squealing of the underground train’s wheels. He looked out of one of the door’s glass panes again, to the murky walls outside of the rocking carriage. Now the train moved at a gentle, slower pace. There were alcoves chiselled out of the granite-grey tunnel sides. Illuminated within each were household items such as a bedside lamp, a bottle of milk, and a pair of yellow gloves.
The other passengers appeared to be talking nonsense with animated features and forced smiles, all still swaying with the movement of the carriage, as the train increased speed again.
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack…
Stave gently pushed his way through them to the aisle of the main carriage and was surprised to find that all of the seats in the compartment were empty of passengers, save for one. Most of the seats – on both sides – were covered with convoluted tree branches. The tree roots, like chunky fingers, disappeared into the metal floor. Snails, the size of fists, were held in their twigs and embedded in the vertical, green poles. At the end of the carriage, the twirling wood reached ceiling height, tendrils finding their way around the strip lighting and along the studded seams of curved metal panels. And hanging at random on the clusters of wooden stems were beautifully-fashioned, silver coat hangers. He inspected one: it had been carved into intricate patterns and engraved with tiny icons.
The young lady from the bus sat amidst the tangled and entwined branches either side of her, contentedly inspecting one of her wooden fish as if reading a book.
‘Hello,’ Stave said with pleasure at recognising her, ‘you’re Mariella Fortana, aren’t you? We met on the bus. Glad you escaped. Is Quikso Lebum with you?’
She looked up. Her face had become painted with a chalky white paste, with a single black spot above the deep red of her lipsticked mouth. Her mahogany-coloured hair was now blonde and without her pigtail. She gripped the wooden carp firmly.
‘You can’t have it,’ she said matter-of-factly, clutching it to her chest.
‘I can’t have what – your fish? I don’t want your fish, really. It’s a perfect sculpture but it’s yours. I wouldn’t dream of taking it from you. It would look nice suspended from one of the hangers though, to display it. It’d be like an unusual gallery exhibit or a unique mobile.’
‘My fish haven’t got hooks so I can’t hook them. I’ve studied them enough to know that,’ she replied with an unexpected sadness in her voice.
‘Surely they have. The one you’re holding, there’s a hook on the back of it.’
‘Well I never,’ she exclaimed, ‘That wasn’t there before,’ and she stood, and hung the fish onto a coat hanger dangling from one of the branches. ‘Thank you, whoever you are.’
‘Stave; Stave Swirler. Surely you remember me from the bus.’
‘What bus?’ she answered, genuinely puzzled. ‘Oh, that bus. But thank you, Mr Swirler, that looks really lovely. It shall remain there until I reach my destination. Yes, I remember you now. On the bus in the tunnel. That seems months ago. Are you going to visit Alicia at the gathering as well? Are you a dream instructor in training?’
She gave a becoming smile and for some reason known only to her, held her hands level with her face.
The miraculous in the mundane. Where did that line come from?
Stave said, ‘I did consider I was going shopping at the Olympian Shopping Mall, on the outskirts of a city. But don’t think I am now. Perhaps I need to find my cottage.’
‘You have a cottage?’
‘As far as I remember.’
‘How wonderful,’ Mariella remarked with sincerity.
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack…
‘How did you get here from the bus? How did you escape the agent of Tremelon?’ he asked.
She creased her forehead in concentration.
‘Ah yes, the bad guy with the hidden face kept on trying to take his mask off but every time he did, Quikso kicked him in the shins. Quite easy really. He eventually vanished. Don’t know where to. The bus driver was acting in a peculiar way. He kept wanting to dance, but we wouldn’t let him near us. At one point he was chasing us around the bus, his strange lobster hands–’
‘Or crab.’
‘–crab or lobster hands out in front of him. Eventually, two men arrived in a truck. They opened the engine flap at the back of the bus, one holding a funnel and the other with a gallon can. Filled the tank with diesel, I think. They said they were from the bus company head office and demanded that we abandon the vehicle, as they had to drive it to the nearest garage for repairs. Strange to think it needed repairing after it only ran out of petrol. They did keep on flicking their heads towards the bus driver as if passing some silent message to us. The driver was argumentative and strangely creepy. Wouldn’t open his eyes. But eventually, he agreed to let us go. And when the bus was in the distance along the tunnel, Quikso and I set off to find the next dream exit.’
‘Dream exit?’
‘We are heading deeper into the dream, aren’t we,’ Mariella continued. ‘But just before we started walking, the bus driver gave me a rosette; you know, the sort given for horses at gymkhanas or dogs at showgrounds. A rosette with deep grey, voluptuous petals, and two streaming ribbons. Identical to the one Quikso has. I quite like it.
‘Then we walked along the tunnel for at least a quarter of an hour. I was surprised we could breath the air but there were no exhaust fumes to speak of. It seemed very draughty all of a sudden though…’
‘What did you do with the rosette?’ Stave said, becoming agitated.
Without answering, Mariella nodded and placed a hand into her holdall, retrieving the grey and blue rosette.
‘It’s here. Isn’t it beautiful!’ she exclaimed, smiling.
The low-level conversation from the passengers standing by the carriage doors became louder all of a sudden, as Stave widened his nostrils.
‘Throw it away,’ he ordered, ‘I think it’s from a trainee agent of Tremelon. Aren’t your hands burning?’
Mariella looked bemused.
‘Don’t be silly, my hands aren’t burning for any reason. It’s a thing of beauty, don’t you think? See how the grey loops, like petals, are almost velvet. Delicious, deep velvet.’ She placed the rosette to her nose and inhaled the heady aroma emanating from it that only she could smell. Her eyes widened and she laughed again in delight. ‘T
he odours conjure red flock wallpaper and thick treacly wine, and closed-in, dusky, snuggle places. I’ll pin it on my dress now.’
‘Don’t do that, you’ll never get it off,’ Stave insisted. But it was too late: she had pinned it to her marble-patterned dress. ‘Ah, now you’ve been marked.’
‘That’s downright wrong of you to say. No one can mark me in my dream.’
This can’t be your dream; it’s my dream. Or maybe not. I’m beginning to doubt that.
Stave put his hands onto the rosette.
Mariella cried out, ‘What do you think you’re doing? Do you mind?’
‘It’s for your own good. I’ll bear the pain of burning fingers and take it from you.’
‘No you won’t,’ she said and she wriggled while Stave attempted to undo the safety pin attaching the rosette to her dress. His fingers were burning as expected but he persevered. The rosette would not move still nor was he able to rip it from the pin. The eight loops of material immediately appeared to be made of felt, then silk, then wool. He began pulling material, those forming the petals, from the rosette but they never decreased, for with each loop torn away and cast to the floor of the carriage, another appeared in its place. It seemed impossible to remove or destroy. Now the centre of the rosette was made of glass, then stone, then ceramic, then metal – like blackened iron – the whole of it, including the two strips of ribbon, the pin, and the material of her dress where it was pinned, melding into one.
My fingers are burning too much; can’t bear the pain any longer.
He quickly pulled his fingers away.
‘Mariella, I’m sorry.’
‘And so you should be, trying to take what’s mine.’
‘I mean, I’m sorry I couldn’t take it from you, for your own good.’
‘Well, that’s as may be.’ She sighed. ‘OK, you did enhance my dream with the hook. I forgive you. And you deserve something in return.’
‘No, really, not necessary,‘ Stave said. ‘And the hook must have been there in the first place.’
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