CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness

by Mike Allen

  The Girl Who Eats Fire slipped out of her chair and went to take a closer look at Venus’s photographs.

  It occurred to the Boy that he had never been inside Venus & Milo’s without the Kid. “C-C-Can I ask you guys a question?” The Boy Who Speaks with Walls stuttered only when he was scared. (He scared easily.) It was much easier to speak with walls. He wasn’t confronted with all kinds of imagined expectations and judgments by gazing into the pool of their eyes, because they didn’t have any (at least not the way people understood such things). There was something about the question he wanted to ask that made him feel as if his feet were dangling off a precipice.

  He didn’t usually stutter much with Venus and Milo.

  They were different from other adults. Most adults forgot they had ever been children, but the Boy felt that Venus and Milo, even all grown up, had never completely stopped being children.

  “Of course, Boy, anything!” Venus laughed reassuringly, lighting a long thin white cigarette.

  “Ask away,” chimed in Milo, waving the butt of his cigar and brushing ashes off his dress with his free hand.

  “Well . . . How- How c-come you guys aren’t afraid of- of the K-Kid? Most grownups always wanna run away from our friend. Especially when the Kid laughs, which is almost always, and then you should see the look in their eyes! B-but, you guys, you . . . you like the Kid! Why?”

  “Well . . . ” said Venus. Milo noisily coughed up some cigar smoke.

  “That Kid is pretty special, you know,” continued Venus.

  “Milo and I, well, we . . . We like to be friends with people who need good friends. We’re your friends, too, Boy, and you, too, G—”

  Milo nudged Venus and pointed toward the door with his cigar butt. There was the Kid, inside the shop, leaning on the doorframe and smiling an especially scary smile. The sunlight glowed like a crown around the Kid’s thick auburn curls.

  The Boy exclaimed, “Kid! How did you—When did you—I m-mean, no one heard—”

  Across the room, the Girl grinned.

  “So, I’m special, am I?” That smile was really scary, thought the Boy. If I were a grownup, I’d be running away so fast!

  “Special!” That smile was getting scarier and scarier.

  The Kid moved slowly toward Venus and Milo, smiling.

  Both Venus and Milo trembled a little bit. That smile sure was getting to them. Milo said, “Kid, we—we’re—we’re happy to see you.” Venus’s eyes looked like they were trying to retreat into his head.

  “Special! I’ll show you special!” And then the Kid Whose Laughter Makes Adults Run Away laughed—a soft, menacing laugh. No one laughed quite like the Kid.

  The laughter seemed to grow and take up physical space in the shop, although no one could actually see it. Venus and Milo squirmed, as if the laughter were crawling all over them. They both opened their mouths as if to speak, but then suddenly fled from the front of the shop, to hide behind the bead curtain.

  The Girl now stood next to the Kid, her face back to its neutral expression. “Let’s get out of here,” said the Kid to the other two children and winking at the Girl.

  The Boy was angry with the Kid. What was the matter with his friend today? Why was the Kid acting so mean and tough? The Kid always had an edge, but not like this, not like this at all.

  Outside, the Kid said, “Why’d you guys go in there! Why didn’t you try to find me? Some friends you are.”

  Did the Boy imagine the quickly suppressed sadness on the Girl’s face? Unusually, his anger was stronger than his fear. He confronted the Kid. “What’s wrong you today, Kid? Why are you trying to make everyone so miserable? We were gonna leave there soon to find you, you know. Why d’you do that to Venus and Milo? They’re our friends! They like you!”

  “Ha! Venus and Milo! They think I’m a boy.” The Kid sneered, then grabbed the Girl’s hand. She let the Kid hold it, but she looked uncomfortable.

  “What are you talking about? They never said anything like that! Besides, they like the Girl, too.” The Boy’s earlier feelings of betrayal had resurfaced, and they further fueled his anger toward the Kid.

  “Boy!” The Kid grinned at the Boy. “What are you so mad about? You’re so sensitive. I was just fooling.”

  It was true that the Kid always enjoyed giving adults a good scare. The Kid liked seeing how uncomfortable they could become, liked being responsible for it. The Boy was mollified, at least for now, and he mumbled, “Okay, sorry.”

  The Kid let go of the Girl’s hand and started gesticulating nervously. “We have to do something fun today. Something really exciting! Dangerous!”

  “Like what?” The Boy was not quite successful in hiding that he was once more suspicious of the Kid.

  The Kid glared at him, but then the Kid’s smile unexpectedly turned from menacing to friendly. “Like . . . like . . . Come on, help me out. I want this to be fun for all three of us.”

  “I want to eat.”

  The Boy reflexively picked a lollipop out of his bag and gave it, unwrapped, to the Girl. The Girl never spoke unless circumstances prevented her from staying silent. Her friends knew it, and because they were her friends they rarely required her to speak. Whenever circumstances forced her to talk, the Boy Who Speaks with Walls offered her a lollipop.

  The Boy and the Kid watched the Girl suck on the banana-orange lollipop, both of them stunned into silence by the Girl’s unexpected utterance. She was very thin, so thin her bones looked like they were about to puncture her flesh.

  When she finished the lollipop, she dropped the chewed-up sticky white stick on the ground. The Boy had to stop himself from reprimanding her. Littering was bad, but he felt it was the wrong time to point it out to his friend for the zillionth time.

  “That was good. Now I want to eat something hot. Really hot.” There was cruelty in her eyes when she spoke.

  The Kid quickly took charge again. “Okay, Boy, do your stuff. Find us an abandoned building. One with lots of wood!” The Kid took out a lighter and flicked it on and off three times.

  It was a little-known fact that buildings spoke to each other. Not that every building got along; not every building was community-minded, but that’s true of people, too. The Boy pressed his hands against the wall of the nearest building, Tim Tom’s Fast Food, Fast Photo & Fast Surgery Service Centre, and asked it if it knew of any building suitable for their needs. It did, and it gave the Boy directions. The Boy thanked it, then turned to his friends.

  The Girl Who Eats Fire brought a new lollipop to her mouth—she must have grabbed one from the Boy’s bag while he was distracted—and as the grin spread to her eyes, she rubbed herself against the Kid, like a kitten. The Boy was shocked at the grin that spread across the Girl’s face and at her uncharacteristically coquettish behaviour.

  The Boy said, “There’s a place, but it’s next to Greytown.”

  The Girl’s face betrayed a flash of fear, but the Kid didn’t see it. “Let’s go! I love watching the Girl eat.” The Kid walked off excitedly without a backward glance. The Boy and the Girl hesitated, but then followed their friend.

  Everyone knew about Greytown, but nobody ever went there. Ever. When adults wanted to scare children into submission, they’d threaten to send them to Greytown. They’d point to old homeless men and women—with their crooked spines, broken teeth, and torn, drab clothes, coughing so hard it was easy to imagine pieces of blackened lung flying out of their mouths. They’d say, “That’s what happens to you when you go to Greytown!”

  The children took a detour to avoid running into Cop Carla; that decision was taken wordlessly. When they saw her help old Ms. Blossomglow cross the street to get to Sir Harold’s Personalized Skin-Pigment Treatment Spa & Imported Rug Warehouse, they all knew they had to take a less direct route so the police officer wouldn’t spot them. Cop Carla was always trying to meddle into their affairs. When Cop Carla wore her uniform, the Kid just couldn’t seem to scare her. But a few times, in the evenings, when s
he wore civilian clothes, the Kid had run into her, and those times she’d run away screaming from the Kid. At least, that’s what the Kid had said to the Boy and Girl. The Boy had never seen Cop Carla out of uniform; all he’d witnessed was the Kid’s humiliatingly unsuccessful attempts at making her run away.

  As they neared the edge of Greytown, the Boy looked at the smog that spewed skyward out of the grimy suburb like lava from a volcano.

  The Boy told his friends, “We n-n-need to t-t-tu-t-turn left here.”

  The Kid was jubilant when they reached their destination. “Good work, Boy! This is perfect!” The faded sign above the front door of the abandoned building was still legible: Captain Willy’s Printing Press, Lumberyard & Comprehensive High School. “A school! We’re gonna burn down a school!”

  “What do you kids think you’re doing?” It was Cop Carla, of course. She always seemed to find them, like the time they’d broken into the lollipop factory, or the time they’d started digging a tunnel in the mayor’s backyard, or the time they’d cut out nude photos from a picture magazine and taped them inside the pages of the giveaway prayer books at the Holy Evangelical Steak House, Flagellation Hut & Gas Station. The Boy never did find out how or where the Kid got that magazine.

  The children ran. Cop Carla ran after them. Ahead of the children was a thick wall of smog, the border of Greytown.

  Cop Carla was catching up to them. It was her or Greytown.

  As the Boy hit the smog—it was so thick it almost felt like swimming in mud—Cop Carla shouted something at the children, but he didn’t make out her words. For a second it felt as if the smog held him aloft, but then he almost twisted his ankle with his next step. Suddenly, the ground was rough and uneven, like a bad paving job after an earthquake.

  At first, the Boy couldn’t see anything. He’d stopped running and was now walking deeper into Greytown. After a few minutes, he could see small spheres of light cutting through the grey haze. “Hey guys, lights!” He shouted at his friends, hoping for some response, because he was afraid they’d all become separated in the darkness. From close by, he heard the Girl hiss a sharp “Shh!” Then, he felt her hand on his arm and they walked together, in silence, toward the nearest globe of light.

  The pair stood under the source of light. The flame flickered in the old-fashioned street lamp. Forgetting the Girl’s warning, the Boy shouted, “Kid! Where are—”

  The Girl Who Eats Fire slapped her hand against his mouth to shut him up. She whispered, “Don’t talk. Don’t bring attention to us. And don’t let go of me. This is important: Do. Not. Let. Go. I don’t want to lose you, too.” Shocked at hearing her speak so confidently and spooked by his surroundings, the Boy forgot to offer her a lollipop. After a few seconds the Girl reached into his tote bag and drew out a kiwi-flavoured one. She let the wrapper fall to the ground. The Boy watched the wrapper fall, following its descent with the help of the flickering reflection of light on the transparent plastic, but the feeble illumination was insufficient to penetrate the thick haze as far as the ground. He couldn’t even see his own feet.

  He opened his mouth, almost speaking to the Girl, but an impending stutter gave him pause, and he closed it again. He wanted to ask her questions, but he realized he didn’t know which questions, exactly, to ask.

  The Girl’s gaze panned from the Boy’s face to the wall behind the lamppost. He nodded at her, and they walked together to the wall. The Boy firmly pressed one palm against it. “It says the Kid hasn’t been by here,” he told the Girl in a soft whisper as he removed his hand from the wall.

  Was the Kid continuing the hide-and-seek game that had been interrupted earlier? Or were all three of them lost in this unfamiliar place? The Boy asked himself these questions while he waited for the Girl to indicate what they would do next. She seemed more focused than usual and wasn’t behaving as lost as he felt. He had no idea what to do next.

  Suddenly, he heard the trot of hooves against the pavement. The sound was coming toward them. The Girl pulled at his arm, and together they ran away, to hide from the sound and the light.

  When they stopped, the Boy panted heavily from the exertion and the thick smog invading his lungs. The Girl had no trouble breathing.

  The Boy looked around him, but he couldn’t see anything. The smog was too thick, the atmosphere too dark. He felt completely lost. He couldn’t imagine ever being able to find his way out of this thick mist that made everything invisible. He missed the blue sky; he missed his parents; he missed his house; he missed his mom’s meals; he missed Venus and Milo; he missed The Adventures of Shade Savage; he missed his comic books; he missed the smell of the old paperbacks on the shelf next to his bed; he missed the weekly Sunday phone calls from his old grandmother who always seemed so interested in everything about him; he missed going to the movies on the weekends with his father and Jules (his dad’s best friend); he missed the stray cats he fed in his backyard; he missed the Kid, who had been his friend longer than anyone; he even missed Cop Carla’s constant vigilance. It felt as if all of these things had been forever swallowed up by Greytown, even though the Boy had only been here for a short while, no longer than half an hour. His eyes watered up, stung by the smog, and in no time he was crying.

  The Girl squeezed his hand, allowing him to come through his fit. After a few minutes, he murmured, “What are we going to do, Girl? Where will we go?”

  Again, the Girl spoke: “Close your eyes, Boy. Keep them shut and count to two hundred. And then open them slowly. And you’ll see. You’ll see.”

  The Boy opened his mouth . . . to complain? . . . to ask questions? . . . to disagree? He never found out. There was an urgency to the way that the Girl’s hand tightly held on to his, an urgency that refused to be questioned. He shut his mouth and closed his eyes. And he counted, abandoning himself entirely to the string of numbers. One. Two. Three . . .

  . . . Two hundred! Slowly, like the Girl had instructed him to, he opened his eyes—and found that he could see; not clearly, but he could make out the shape of some nearby buildings and details of their close surroundings, even though there were no lampposts in sight or any other visible light source to pierce the dense smog. His eyes had adjusted to the slight amount of sunlight that diffused through the grey atmosphere.

  They were in a dead-end alley, some three buildings deep and one wide. Across from the wall on which the Boy and the Girl were leaning, cylinders pumped out grey smog: some in quick currents, others in slow streams, others still in irregular explosions like old diesel engines struggling to get started, and still others in steady bursts, as if they were obeying the beat of a military march. The cylinders were of all sizes, some as small as household plumbing, others as big as a patio door. The Boy couldn’t see as far as the roof of the middle building. It was so high it seemed to meld with the smog. The surface of its wall was spotted with all sizes of cylinders, sometimes in thick clumps, sometimes spread out haphazardly. The building to the left, the one closest to the dead end, was only two storeys high, and a huge cylinder, spewing a thick slow stream of smog, sprouted out from the centre of its wall. The building to the right, where the alley opened out, was three or four times as high as the short one and only had one small cylinder out of which smoke leaked out slowly. The Boy could just barely make out the jutting stone that bordered its roof.

  The Girl pulled him up, and they left the alley.

  Again, the Boy was struck by the definite purpose in the Girl’s steps. She seemed to know where she was going. But how could she? And where did she think she was leading them? Back where they’d come from? To the Kid? How could she know where the Kid was in this place? Was all of this a plan the Girl and the Kid had concocted earlier, before the Boy had met them at the Girl’s house? Was this a prank to scare him, to make fun of him? He wished he could voice these questions, but both his potential stutter and the Girl’s stern command of silence stayed his voice.

  They hadn’t walked far when a loud, familiar voice boomed from beh
ind them, “There you are!” And there was Cop Carla, as always, right on their heels. The Boy had never been so grateful for her unshakeable presence. Cop Carla would get them all out of this horrible place that smelled like an old, unventilated garage.

  The Girl screamed, “No!” Her grip on the Boy’s hand was so tight that he thought his bones would break. She started to run away from the police officer. The Boy was taken by surprise by the Girl’s abrupt movements, and they both stumbled to the ground, scraping their hands on the asphalt.

  Again, the Girl screamed, “No!” She reached for the Boy. “Don’t ever let go of me, or they’ll see you!”

  The Boy had no idea what the Girl was talking about.

  Cop Carla knelt down. “Are you kids alright?” She furrowed her brow. “What were you thinking? Coming in here! This is the most dangerous stunt you’ve pulled all summer!” She squinted quizzically at the children and asked, looking the Boy right in the eye, “Isn’t the Kid with you? I saw all three of you brats run in here.”

  “I-I-I ha-he d-d-did we—” The Boy erupted in tears, overwhelmed by the shame of his impediment, the intimidating presence of the adult, and the fear his surroundings inspired.

  In a menacing tone, the Girl answered, “We got separated. Okay? We don’t know where the Kid is. Leave us alone. This is none of your business.” Her voice betrayed absolute hatred for the intruding adult.

  “Well, we’ll see what your parents think about that! Come on! Get up! I’m taking you back home!” Cop Carla stood up, towering over the fallen children.