London When it Rains

by C. Sean McGee

  “Or someone we pick up in a bar.”

  “You see that doesn’t just happen. We don’t just go out for tacos and come home with some hot girl whose gonna want to get fucked shitless while you sit there watching. That’s what whores are for.”

  “Nope. I don’t like prostitutes. They have diseases.”

  “They have classy ones.”

  He was firm on this point.

  “Or fuck it, whatever,” he said. That’s not the point.”

  “What’s the point, hubby bubbly?”

  “The point is….”

  He eyed The Old Man once more. His look said, ‘Ready when you are, chief’.

  “Look, one minute you want to watch me with some other chick, then it goes to me and you sharing a girlfriend, and then finally me watching you getting drilled by some big dicked wanker. Ah, fuck it.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, fuck it.”

  “Don’t be like that. We can do what you want to do.”

  “Nah, fuck it.”

  “Well, now I’m upset.”

  “Well, that’s not my fault.”

  “Then whose fault is it?”

  “Fuck me. I don’t know. Mine. Yours. The fucking fairies. Look, are we doing the fantasy or not?”

  Hilary smiled.

  Greg, though, looked tense. Were he a kettle he’d be blowing steam by now.

  “Of course we are,” said Hilary.

  “Well which bloody one?”

  “Are you better yet?”

  “What?”

  “Just checking.”

  Greg gasped several times.

  “I love you,” said Hilary.

  “Ahh fuck.”

  Hilary smiled, a cheeky forgive me kind of grin.

  “I love you too,” said Greg.

  It was unfortunate, but it was true.

  “Before we get to tonight’s topic…”

  It had already three hours, and only now Charisma broached on the topic.

  “I want to just go on a tangent for a second or two.”

  This would be another hour or two at least.

  “Just, before we talk about how to call fairies, unicorns, and mermaids, I want to just take this moment once more for us to meditate as a group. There is so much to be grateful for, but most of all, I am grateful for having all of you in my life, in my heart, and in the palm of my hands as your guide, your leader, your empath, your chosen one, your divine eye, your mystic, your sage, your teacher, your leader, your mother, your mind, your heart, and your womb. Our community is whole. The perfect balance, and I am so grateful.”

  Once again, she was staring at the two empty mats. She smiled and she hugged herself. “I wish it could stay this way forever,” she said.

  And as she did, there was a roar of an engine and the sound of small trees splintering and being ripped in half as the out of control vehicle sped towards their camp. All eyes shifted in that direction – peering madly through the open door of the hut and scared stiff, not knowing whether to run and be slowed down, or to sit in a group, and hope that someone else would be picked off in the initial impact.

  The screeching got louder and then there was the sound of tumbling and twisting metal, followed by one last final bang and then what sounded like a sun shower of broken glass raining down on the path outside their hut.

  It was quiet after the collision – amber, The Old Man would say.

  Eventually, a door creaked open. It sounded like some metal Frankenstein gnawing on a mountainside. The door screeched several times. It sounded stuck.

  “Fuck,” shouted someone in the car.

  It was a man’s voice. He didn’t sound angry, and he didn’t sound like he was in shock. If anything, he sounded pleasantly surprised.

  “How’s that, honey?” he said. “You alright?”

  Inside the hut, nobody dared moved. They were all scared to death.

  “I did not expect that last roll, babe, what about you?”

  “That tree came out of nowhere.”

  It must have been his wife. She sounded shaken and maybe injured, but even still, she too sounded in some way pleased and more than a little surprised.

  “How’s the wee one? You ok there, bud?”

  “Sweet, dad. Might be stuck, though.”

  “I’ll get ya out. Hang tight there, little buddy.”

  All of this played out in the darkness. The Father did as he said he would. He got his son out in one piece and he was quite jovial about it the entire time. He brushed his son off and then did the same to his wife and to himself. And then, when they were somewhat scrubbed up, they stepped out of the darkness and into the light of the hut.

  “How are ya?”

  The three of them were cut and scratched. They were covered in dust and small shards of glass. The boy’s hair was puffed out on all sides and the wife and a nervous wobble in one of her knees. NO matter how calm she was from the waist up, her left knee just wouldn’t quit.

  The Father had a board in his hand. It looked like an Ouija board. There was a spinning dial and a whole pile of commands lined up around a circle. One of the commands said ‘Kill everyone’, while others were more discreet such as; ‘Wave and offer a polite hello, ‘Dig a hole’, ‘Go straight to bed’, ‘Bake a tin of muffins’. The board was titled, ‘Greetings and salutations’. At least half of the commands on there were in some way violent, and least a quarter required an oven or a baking tray. The Father spun the dial and the family watched, exhilarated. And everyone watched with them. The small arrow passed the board a dozen times until it started to slow and just as The Father was reaching for his gun, the arrow skipped one more spot.

  “Hi there, we’re the Hughes’. Nice to bloody meet ya.”

  Immediately the native were on their feet and welcoming the new additions to their camp. Some of them offered o brush The Mother’s hair, while others asked the same question a thousand times over about how they got here, where they had come from, and what it was like having survived such a miraculous crash in their car.

  The whole while, though, Charisma stayed on the outside of the circle

  “Unicorns, guys,” she said. “Unicorns.”

  It was no use, nobody was listening. But try and try she did.

  “The trick to calling a mermaid is to spread your energy like a beam of light.”

  So now she started to shout.

  “You have to tap your beam of light on the surface of the water, ever so gently.”

  She was screaming so loud that her voice cut in and out.

  “And you say, ‘Come mermaid, come’ and if you think it, and feel it, and see it, it will happen.”

  Now it sounded like she was picking a fight.

  “The mermaid will come!”

  “Hey guys look,” said The Father, pointing to the empty mats. “What do you say? Do we stay or go?”

  How lucky for the newcomers, there were three of them and there were three empty mats, just as there were three empty beds and three places at the dinner table. How lucky, and what a nice surprise.

  “Coin, coin, coin, coin,” chanted The Son.

  The Father slipped a coin and The Son shouted ‘Heads’ and heads it was.

  “Looks like we’re staying,” said The Father. “Who would have guessed?”

  Charisma stood outside of the circle once more except this time with a shy, nervous smile on her face. It wasn’t a happy kind of smile. Were anyone looking they’d know, it was the kind of smile that garnered a bit of worry and maybe even an intervention. But nobody noticed and even if they did, it was as if nobody even cared.

  The natives were infatuated with the new arrivals. Charisma should have been. Normally she would have but it just seemed like no-one wanted to listen. It just seemed like nobody really cared. They were all just fake followers, stupid half-interested believers. This was just like high school all over again.

  XXXIV

  It had been a difficult week. There had be
en so much change and so much to acclimate to. Charisma felt as if she herself were in retrograde. Nothing seemed to work as planned. Her art classes drew little inspiration. She couldn’t really blame any one person in particular; they all had a hand in it. Ever since that bus got here it had become harder and harder for her to connect with anyone. Not that it was a breeze before but in the past few weeks, it seemed like people were mocking her. It wasn’t everyone. The Old Man had made remarkable progress and he was always a darling in every activity, but there were one or two that did little effort to hide the fact that they’d rather be somewhere else. And all it took one was one weak and pessimistic link, just one, to break the chain of magic. Charisma didn’t know who it was per se, but it was taking its toll and today of all days, she needed a break – she had to get away.

  And so she found herself sitting on the river’s edge, gently tapping her palm on the surface of the water. She had been here since before dawn – meditating and calling on the wisdom of The Mermaids. But there must have been a disturbance beneath the water that was greater than or equal to the one beneath her skin.

  Disturbances like these were common, that’s why it was so hard to contact Mermaids, and even harder if one wanted to call on a Fairy or a Unicorn.

  The Greys weren’t so difficult. They moved about in animal and more often than not, human form, all the time. Sometimes one would think they were talking to their neighbour, their grocer, or even Aunt Janine when in reality they were being visited by a Grey. That was how The Grey’s worked, by subliminal advances. They would visit all kinds of people in all kinds of shapes and forms and they would collect data and even do system updates on people’s conscious states – elevating them to higher states of being and awareness.

  Charisma had met with maybe fifty Greys. She’d been aboard their spaceship more than a dozen times and though she couldn’t speak their language, she could understand almost all of their commands. She would spend hours sitting on the end of her bed, talking back and forth with The Greys who came dressed as her cat discussing everything from divine purpose to love and loneliness and other complex feelings that she had had inside.

  No, The Greys were easy. For an empath, calling on a Grey was no different to the average unawakened person calling for a taxi. Fairies, though, required sensitivity and patience. It wasn’t enough to just believe, one had to be in the right part of the forest, under the right doorway, at exactly the right second. Charisma had only met one fairy. Its name was Teluise. Though its shape was petite and feminine, it was, in fact, sexless. Charisma was three years old at the time. She remembered the feeling more than she did the actual experience. It was impossible to forget. And it was the same year that her father left.

  “Mermaid, mermaid, mermaid, come, come, come,” she sang, as she lightly tapped on the water. “From beneath your mossy rock to the sun, sun, sun.”

  She did this until just after sunset. The mermaid did not come. There could have been a thousand reasons why, but the most obvious was the disturbance in her energy field. Quite simply, The Mermaid did not want to meet her. She was sadder now than she was before. Every thought she had was dark and each one was too heavy to carry around – yet still she clung to them all. There were many times in her life where she had felt like this kind of rejection. This was up there with some of the worst.

  Before she returned to camp, she spent some time meditating – focusing only on her breath. She sounded like she was in the throes of labour. She hissed in and out until her head got dizzy and she almost fainted. It was then that she composed herself and made her way back to camp.

  “I am a beam of light,” she said, as she walked along the path. “Without me, all of the colours melt into vapid darkness. I am a beam, of light and I am a bridge between worlds. I am the keeper of colour. I elevate lives. I elevate the world. I love myself. I am awesome. I love myself. I am great. I love myself. I’m fantastic. Saving the world is my fate. Seal your fate Charisma. Seal your fate. I trust you and I love you.”

  She passed two Greys on her way back to camp. One was in the shape of a bird that was up in a nearby tree pretending to pick twigs and bark for its nest. The other was up in outer space, but she could feel it watching her through its alien binoculars.

  “Hi guys,” she said, prancing back into camp.

  A handful of people looked up from their beetroot soup and waved. It was a poor acknowledgement but at least they noticed her – that was something.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked.

  And it was true. Camp was quiet, far quieter than it should have been. There were maybe a dozen or more people missing. This was rare at dinnertime.

  “Did they go for a hike?”

  The Girl winked at The Old Man. Her intentions were anything but clear. She might have had some linseed caught in her eye or she might have been hinting at some nefarious deeds that they had only recently committed. It could have been one or the other. It was hard to tell, especially considering she had helped prepare the soup.

  The Old Man, though, was arched over with his back legs straight and his hands stretched out in front of his bowing head. “Almost got it,” he said, unsure of how the hell he was gonna get out of such a bind.

  “That’s awesome,” said Charisma, though her voice was flat and she sounded anything but inspired.

  “How do I look?” asked The Old Man. “Did I get it?”

  He, on the other hand, had had a change of spirit and had really taken to all of the classes and activities. Yoga was his favourite, obviously, and then there was primitive tool design. He made a spear in his first class. It wasn’t anything technical or even pretty for that matter. It was just a long stick shaved to a point. It worked, though. He used it that night and every other day since.

  “I think I got the arch,” he said, struggling to keep his wobbling legs from toppling him over.

  His arch was terrible. One leg was straight and the other bent; and the straight one stuck on the strangest of angles; that, and his back looked like a bridge which had recently buckled. It was wonder how he ever managed such a feat in the first place. This looked anything but comfortable. Even to look at him was taxing.

  “You’re doing fine,” said Charisma.

  She didn’t look at him once. She was staring around the empty hut, looking at all the empty mats and feeling pretty much the same way inside. All those whispering ghosts that tell you “You can’t do this,” and “You can’t do that,” they all crept out of their hiding space and they started to collude and conspire against her. Some of them were the voices of her mother and father. Some of them were the voices of jilted ex-lovers and others were like a chorus of cruel and jealous friends.

  “Are you doing ok?” said her mother’s patronising voice, over and over again.

  Her father’s was more direct.

  “Ha!” it said, laughing in one short, sharp syllable.

  “Are you doing ok?”

  “Ha!”

  “Are you doing ok?”

  “Ha!”

  “Don’t you think it’s time to come home?”

  Her mother went on and on and on, and her father met each question with cold, snapping laugh. This, she could deal with. It hadn’t broken her before so why should it now. But it was the mocking of her lovers and friends that got right to the bone.

  “You’re intense.”

  “You’re strange.”

  “You’re clingy and deranged.”

  “I don’t want to offend you, but everything that everyone says is true.”

  “You’re depressing.”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “You’re hell to be around.”

  “I don’t want to offend you, so I think that it’s best if you go.”

  “Your tits are too small.”

  “Your arse is not round.”

  “You’re pretty in some ways, but I’m afraid to say you’re a terrible fuck.”

  “Nobody loves you.”

  “Nobody w
ants you.”

  “Not as a lover, a whore, or a friend.”

  “Are you doing ok?”

  “Ha!”

  “Are you doing ok?”

  “Ha!”

  “Are you doing ok? Are you doing ok? Are you doing ok?”

  “Fuck,” screamed Charisma. “Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  She ran out the hut swatting away the voices that circled about her head.

  “I did it!”

  The Old Man was ecstatic. He had in fact done it. He found the perfect arch. He looked every bit the Zen guru. The others looked on but they did so with growing disinterest. The Girl stared at The Old Man like a dog that had grown ill of begging for its food. Greg had almost the same look. He, on the other hand, had not yet given up on his constant whining and soft begging eyes.

  “What are you thinking, honey?” asked Hilary.

  Whatever it was, it involved hatchets and hitmen.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  The truth was he was imagining her being bludgeoned, or being dragged out into the bush by masked intruders. Obviously, they would be people from the camp, but for the sake of drama and effect, their faces were always covered. He would never lend any harm himself. He would tag along about a stone’s throw behind – close enough to hear the thumps, but far enough to not have to see a thing.

  But even in his head, he couldn’t escape her. The same scene would always out, one that he couldn’t script any other way. He’d be crouched behind a log or some shrub, shaking and nervous as hell. He’d be waiting for the crack of splintered wood and then the thump of a body being dumped into a grave and covered with leaves and twigs. But the same thing happened each time and he couldn’t do a bloody thing about it.

  She’d call out his name. At first, she’d scream, and it’s sound no different to all the times that he had spilled something or pissed on the seat or the floor. That was the scream he could ignore. But the others, though, they hit a nerve each and every time. Her second scream would sound like she was genuinely afraid as if she’d been spooked by a prowler in the kitchen or the yard. It was that scream that would have Greg spring up from behind the shrub, and it was the one’s that followed which had him disarm her attackers one by one and single-handedly come to her rescue before a single blow was struck. He would stand there in each and every dream, looking down at her attackers and feeling capable of anything. Then he would look at her and she would look at him, and she’d say, “Oh me, oh my,” and she’d say “I love you,” a thousand times. She’d run into his arms and they’d kiss – her lips pressed firm against his. Then she’d say, “I’ll never leave you,” and it’s then that poor old Greg would break down and cry.