Chapter 12
“Hello, child. Would you like a sweet?” said The Creepy Old Man, digging his hand into a dirty old heshem bag, pushing around, trying to fumble through its infinite wonder and bring into the light, a treat for the young girl who looked scared and lost.
Safrine stood in her tracks and dared not to look around. The sound of his voice snuck its way into her ears and reminded her of how she felt when she walked through cobwebs at night; that light sticky feeling of creepy crawly things all over her skin waiting to sink their poison into her.
She stood perfectly still; as she would in a dressing of spider’s silk, waiting for the voice to fall from her ear and scutter away on the dusted earth, back into its filth ridden hole.
Instead of looking around, Safrine stared straight ahead as she had for what could have been hours or days since the big man and the sympathetic woman and told her to wait, with the nice woman smiling and promising that she would return in a moment.
That moment hadn’t come.
Safrine dared not venture where the adults had told her not; for she knew that one only pushed against a pillar that would not fall and therefore; though her spirit aided her to flight, she knew she needed the big man to carve out a path and the nice woman to carry her along it for without them, she would feel her brother but have none of the strength to catch up with his shadow.
“Hey little girl, look what I have,” said the voice again.
Again, Safrine kept her focus charged, thinking only of her brother of whom she adored and when his face consumed her conscious eye, she was blind to the threat that shuffled its worn shoes behind her as if some imaginary queue were working its way slowly towards where she stood in a transient daze.
“Do you like rainbows?” said The Creepy Old Man.
“Do you like rainbow shiny stars?” he said again.
The Creepy Old Man had his eyes locked on the little girl and was mesmerized by the way she looked so intently out into the distance. It made him want to reward her more and more and so he reached around with his long skinny fingers inside his dirty old heshem bag and touched and squeezed at this and that until out came his hand with a small furry cat and he put the small kitty right down on the ground and the little cat then made a little cat sound.
“Girl, little girl, won’t you give him a pat. He is just a cute little sad pussy cat. Girl little girl won’t you give him a hug so the sad little cat can be warmed by your love” sang The Creepy Old Man.
Safrine was unmoved and unheard. She stood transfixed by her brother’s eyes that seemed to look past her own intent stare; over her shoulder at something creeping upon her step and kept whatever it was, at bay.
He had always protected her since she was born. He was always there to fend off the bigger children and the adults with their lingering stares and insinuating fingers that were always waving and pointing in her direction.
He always made her close her eyes as he did that specific something that he was great at doing so that they would all go away. He’d never let her see what he was doing because he said it wasn’t good for a child to think or act like an adult for if they did, they’d grow up real fast and start trying to be just as crazy as everybody else and then start being scared of everything and stop having fun.
“Is that what happened to Dada?” she said in her mind to the image of her brother as his face looked over her shoulder at something conspiring against her.
When Safrine was born her mother died. She knew nothing more than that it had happened. Her father never spoke their mother’s name and when she would ask about her, he would lend a soft hand on the top of her hair and hold it there for a moment before getting up and walking away. Usually, he would yell at Donal; her brother, and then, when their father left for the night, Donal would yell at her and cry himself to sleep.
Whenever these memories fell upon her, Safrine would remember the time Donal saved her from The Smelly Boys. She called them the smelly boys because they slept inside a dried sewer pipe every night; a big group of them. There was no water or anything. The pipes hadn’t worked since before she was born; before The Uprising and long before the blackout.
Still, the pipes smelt like old poo and I guess they must have worked for a long time because those boys smelt really bad and whenever they came near, Safrine would make a funny face and pinch her nose and sing; “Smelly boys, smelly boys, 1,2,3. You look like poo and you smell like wee.”
Safrine was just a little girl and they were big and mean. When she sang her song, The Smelly Boys ganged together and at first stood far, away calling her names and then, when she continued her song, they got real angry and came closer and threw rocks at her. Then, when she wouldn’t stop, The Smelly Boys would encircle her and started pushing her to the ground.
This one time it happened and it wouldn’t have been maybe a second after the first boy pushed her that Donal came running from behind the sheds where they stayed and charged at the group, clenching; in his hand, a long shard of glass and he ran at the biggest boy who stood at the centre of the group and when he pushed through the other boys to be standing in front of Safrine; facing this boy, he grunted before jumping up into the air with his eyes wide and wired and stabbed the glass into the older boy’s face. He cut him deeply, from his chin up his cheek and through his eye and when he crashed to the floor, he crouched over his sister who sat giggling to herself as the older smelly boy fell backwards into the group of boys, screaming and crying, holding his hand tightly over his missing eye.
The other boys simply ran away in fright.
Safrine loved the way he would always defend her and she was so proud of how strong he was. When their grandfather taught them how to fight she always preferred to play instead, not having the focus to remember the moves.
She liked instead to play with her puzzle cube and while she turned it with her fingers, she would watch her brother punching and kicking and fastening his eyes like a hunter’s bow, seeing everything about him at once but seemingly only focused on where he would strike.
She always felt brave looking into his eyes and she knew that as long as he was near, nothing would ever scare her; even when she was taken by the men with white hearts. That night; when they snuck out to follow their father, she remembered being so excited, holding her brother’s hand and walking between the legs of all the adults.
They never went out by themselves at night; especially around adults, so it was quite a thing to be out there; just the two of them, running between the long legs, being kicked and shuffled about but managing to not be seen; she holding close to her brother and he, focused as he always was, on the shape of their father, making its way through the massive crowd.
If she were alone she would have panicked. She would have been distraught; kicking and screaming on the ground and most certainly those crazy adults would have done bad things to her, just like they did to all the other children. She always wondered if adults were always this mean to children and if so, then why did they keep on making more?
Then again, they were crazy.
She felt just as brave now, though; ignoring the voice behind her, as she did that night being dragged along by her brother, ignoring the danger of the big people. There were so many of them that night. It was a rally or something. Someone important was going to speak and well, up to that point nobody had ever done that before, at least, not since she was born so people were pretty excited and fidgety and then when they couldn’t hear or see anything, they got really angry.
Her brother’s hand was pretty tight around her, but it slipped away so easily when the big man wrapped his big hands around her and lifted her off the ground. She kept looking at Donal who was looking for their father and he was so stern and brave and she felt that bravery as well and she didn’t at all feel scared when the big man tied her hands together and then carried her over his shoulder as he walked off through the crowd. She wasn’t scared because Donal wasn’t scared. He would rescue her.
He always did.<
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He didn’t that night, though. She called out his name like she always did and eventually he turned and looked at her and she remembered how soft his eyes seemed. They looked like two broken egg shells and the strength inside him was just oozing out and he put his arm out and yelled her name, but she couldn’t really hear over the yelling people and then when he disappeared, she lay across the broad shoulders of the man with a white heart on his chest and she just imagined his face, except with unbroken eyes; as she imagined him now, while The Creepy Old Man loitered about her absenteeism.
Her brother’s eyes were very strong, like that of the sun; so different to other people and Safrine kept his image burning in her mind as a man going blind would; his own reflection. And for the years she was kept tied to a table and prodded with needles and sang to and prodded with needles some more, she never strayed from the industry of her conscious eye, looking long into her own reflection; the insistent staunch stare of her beloved twin brother.
And after years of blood transfusions and watching other children die beside her on a metal tray, she never waned from her focus, she never heard of her captor’s promise and she never lost her faith that he would come and rescue her.
And so, after many years and a great many operation and having swapped so much of her blood, he came to rescue her. And his face was older, just as hers must have looked, but his eyes were just as they had always been; stern, bold and untrammeled; as if he were not the flesh that aged his bones, but instead the fire inside that kept them warm.
And though his face had changed and he wore many more scars, she knew; looking into that fire, just who he was and when he untied her from the tubes that stuck out of her veins and guided her out into the far end of the complex; behind the big containers, she just smiled to herself cause she knew he would always save her, not matter how long it took.
And since that day; only days ago, she had again kept his eyes igniting the hope in her spirit, giving her the will to keep herself positioned where she was, waiting for the big man and the nice woman to return and collect her so that they could continue their way to find Donal and meet with their father.
“I bet you like ponies, there must be one here somewhere,” said The Creepy Old Man, reaching further into his dirty old heshem bag trying to find something to break the girl’s concentration.
The Creepy Old Man stretched his face in a wondering way looking out from the tips of his fingers as they wriggled and wried through the seemingly endless array of this and that inside his spatially paradoxical old heshem bag.
“Do you like stories?” he said.
“What cannot know me cannot will me to give myself away,” said Safrine, knowing of something creeping on her step, but remaining focused in her mind’s eye; her conscious theatre, feeding on the bravery of her brother.
“Oh, such a thing when such a sweet little girl has her tongue wrapped as a man,” said The Creepy Old Man.
“Much better then is it, to be an old man leering upon young girls?” she said sarcastically.
“You’re words are strapping my little one, but you have nothing to fear with me, I am just like you. True, my skin is heavy on my bones, it sits just as loose as time calls me old, but my soul my dear girl is ageless and wild, just as the soul of a rambunctious child. These sticks and these stones may wear at my bones but time, it shall never age me” sang The Creepy Old Man who now stood over Safrine.
His long, skinny and dirty fingers wriggled with excitement as they touched the air that bridged with the skin on her shoulder. He wiggled his toes too in the warm air as they stuck out from his dirty old shoes and The Creepy Old Man was electric with the pulse of youth inflating his sunken veins and warming his discolored blotchy skin.
His hot sticky breath splashed across her neck and she felt an uneasy shiver run up her spine but it didn’t pull her from her concentration and still she stood rooted into the dusted earth, her mind unwavering, feeding directly from the energy bursting from her brother’s eyes like the craning of a flower, thirsted by the morning sun, molested not, by the creeping and crawling insect hungering for its little green leaves.
“What for do you wait, little girl, for what do you wait?” said The Creepy Old Man pressing his long skinny fingers against each other and licking his grimy lips.
“Try as you will to pick and pick away, but for the parts that you pick were never meant to stay,” she said in a riddle.
“Oh, this is fun,” said The Creepy Old Man dancing on his tippy toes; entrenched in the shadow of the young girl who obeyed her focus as the fallen to the fall.
“Do you like puzzles?” asked The Creepy Old Man.
He reached into his dirty old heshem bag and took from its bottomless pit a coloured cube that could turn on itself and with every turn, take one further from where they longed themselves to be. The Creepy Old Man laid his dirty old heshem bag on the ground by his feet and stretched his long skinny old arms over Safrine’s shoulders so that his hands held the coloured cube in front of her eyes.
The Creepy Old Man turned the coloured cube so that the side that was blue was no longer blue and the side that was red was no longer red.
And for each colour to do what of them was said, one had to find a reason outside of their head. For to pursue a colour one would leave another undone, unravel confusion and spoil all the fun but to twist with one’s fingers and not with one’s mind, could make the whole of the colour unto every side.
“I long and I yearn; I hanker and pine, for someone to play with, a friend to be mine. Won’t you come with me and will not you play? Please don’t you keep me at arm’s reach away. For I’m just a boy who has lived all these years, chilled by my aging but warmed by my tears, for sadness alone’s a condition of age, a bargain with time for a child in a cage and so here you do find me, so here I do stand as a child in the body of a dying old man. Please do not weigh and confuse and despise, the boy in my heart for the age in my eyes” he sang.
Safrine comforted in his song and for a moment, lost the stare of her brother and her mind filled with a childish dare. She focused then on the long skinny hands holding a coloured cube before her eyes and she lost herself momentarily in the swift grace of his fingers as they twisted and turned the colours into a theatrical blur.
“If forever you will not, then what of a spell, to join me in game, in song or in tell? If will you will not just to will me away then convince you I will for with me you will stay and your will if you will it, it will help you out, for the odds of the game are decision and doubt and the pot it is grand; a prize to behold, for the shy little girl and boy who looks old” he said.
“What is the game and what is the prize and what is the wish of the boy with man’s eyes?” she asked being charmed into rhyme.
“Return to you I can those who sleep in the sand and of whose presence you wait to escape you from fate that around you calls danger like a shark unto bait. But fail in the trial and triumph is mine, then with me you stay as my friend for all time” sang The Creepy Old Man, still turning the coloured square in front her eyes.
The words sang softly in her ear; along with the swift shift of his fingers, helped to abandon her reason and she thought then of how good she had always been at game.
“What is the game?” she said.
“The cube. Like humming the words to your favourite song, return all the colours to where they belong. Should you be first, get of what you deserve, the wish of your wanting, I grant you my word but should all the colours in my hand first complete then forever you stay as the prize of defeat. Mine, be you mine, be you mine, be you mine; my own little girl for the eternity of time” he sang.
“Deal,” she said adamantly.
The Creepy Old Man stopped the turning of his hands and lowered the coloured cube into Safrine’s grasp. The girl took the cube in her own hands and started to turn. As she did, The Creepy Old Man clasped her hands together, stopping them from turning the square.
“Look at me y
ou will as we play of this game as stories to tell will be told just the same but to cheat you shall not, for before me to start, is you giving your hand for us never to part. If this be your will then be what it may for mine shall you be, forever you stay.”
“Fine,” said the girl “I’ll look to your eyes but when I win of this game it’s of me you’ll despise, for eternity I’ll stay in the back of your mind, haunting your solace and wishing you blind. And the last thing you’ll see is the despite in my eye and it burns in your conscious till the day that you die as a child in the body of a dirty old man, convinced he’s a prisoner of temporal sand and I as the victor will forget of your name, forget of the boy and forget of this game and none shall be told you had once to exist, never your name shall appear on a list. Mine, I be mine, I be mine, I be mine; shall be the will of I am, for the rest of my time. Let’s play” she said, mocking his rhyme.
“Which one of your friends will you will into wake should you win of this game and its prize should you take?” said The Creepy Old Man.
“Only one?” said Safrine angered.
“One hand and one life. One hand lost has you mine” he said.
“That’s not just. I have too much to lose. Surely what’s fair is that you wake both the woman and the man” she said.
“Where is the just if the just is not fair; and then what of the thrill should the risk be not there? Which shall it be then shall it be done to the victor the spoils of a single hand won. So tell me little girl; before you are mine, which prize keeps you game in the back of your mind” he sang.
Safrine thought and argued over which one to wake and even though the big man had played such a cruel hand in her life; having stood over the shoulder as an eagle eye of smaller men who stuck her with needles and tied her to tubes, it was he who had the strength to carry them away from the burning nest and the force to carve out the destiny for which she willed. But she knew he only wanted bad things for her and all of the terrible that he had one would be a far cry from all of the terrible he had yet to do.
The nice woman was nice, but nicety would never sever the ferocity from the ferociousness that was bound to upon them bound, from where it was that dark things seemed to always loom.
Her terrible would not be in what things she may do, but in what; because of her, terrible things may be done. And Safrine knew that she could thirst her way through a drought of kindness on this journey, just a lizard could do without its tail on the brink of escape, for when she found her brother, there would be plenty of love to be had and this thought alone could sustain her as it would be that she made necessary, the evil that adults could do.
If she woke the big man, he could carry the nice woman in his big hands and when they reached the boat where her kin would abide, the big man’s hands would be tied enough for a moment to escape and she could grab onto that moment and run with it into her father’s arms while her brother made all of the bad people go away.
“I’ll wake of the man with calamitous hands,” said Safrine to The Creepy Old Man; her fingers clenching the coloured cube, hoping to herself that she had chosen right.
“So it will be and shall it done, as victor to spoils, as chase is to run” sang The Creepy Old Man.
Safrine left her prints in the sand where she had stood waiting for the nice woman and the big man to return. She turned and faced The Creepy Old Man and gasped at his horrid complexion, his sickly frail body; his deathlike detention.
The two sat facing each other with their legs crossed comfortably, each holding a coloured cube in their hands and each looking the other long in the eye, their fingers perched on the edges of the cubes like a runner’s toes, barely kissing the track, tentatively primed to excel into absolute sprint; the energy of her being building now in her finger tips and waiting for The Creepy Old Man’s call to start the race.
“Begin,” said The Creepy Old Man, shifting his fingers.
Utopian Circus Page 13