deadsand #2
I ignored the raisins and stepped right up to the level reserved for postcards and paint. All the postcards were pictures of Deadsand. Some had donkeys on. I rembered a sweat-hot summer day when I went there with Mollie. She cried all day and ran into an arcade. I started to chase her but was soon distracted by Ice Trance. I stayed there for twelve hours and beat every high score. When I finished I had red hands and a crowd of young admirers who measure a man by things like that. I closed the memory and looked through the paint pots. Velvet, night black, blood white, moon red. Moon red. Moon red and the smell was incredible. I shut my eyes, tilted my head back and let the odour populate my nostrils. It smelled of danger, space, a return to earth through an atmosphere sundered and rent by flame and meteor. I fumbled for the pot, clasped my fingers around it and popped it into my pocket.
The raisin eyes had seen me do it. Watched me thieve the pot and widened into alarm - now they were black grapes, rotating. Her arm extended like the skin on a snake and her knuckles hit the alarm. There was no sound - that is, no sound I could hear, one only meant for ginger ear.
Sound of the bugle. Memories of the last battle when our enemies threw their yellow-banded bodies and stingers at us, bounced from our crusty defences and lay shattered and spent in the doomditches and pools. Sound of the burglar -
ACHTUNG GINGER!
I raced through the streets, bouncing from mother to toddler, bank manager to hippie, dopey emo to bend old man. Each time I manhandled somebody I got a trinket from their soul - a memory, the bad taste in their mouth, a dream bubble. I put these things in a little basket Uncle Steve brought me back from Kiev. It was pretty full by now, and I had been told that I needed to empty it at a special lock before it overloaded. I had other things on my mind - I rushed past a corner shop and saw the ginger blur reflected in the glass. The yelps and screams behind me indicated that this was a big one - they had been getting bigger recently. More ginger, more sugar, sometimes even an extra head. One day the thing would be so big it could just stoop down and scoop me up in its paw. For now, though, the chase was on. I ducked into a department store, felt the listless fog splinter around me as the gingerman walked through the display cases, and then I was out into blinding sunshine and into a queue of people waiting for another wobbly bus.
She looks in the mirror, a glint touches her eye. She is old, very old, her skin wreathed in crinkles and wrinkled but inside she is still the little girl with the red shoes and apples. She doesn’t recognise the face looking back, eyes confused and sunken. A bell. Somebody at the door?
The gingerman was closing. If I could just make it past the trees I would be free home. But there it was, I was in it before I even saw it. Skidding through the water and onto my back, the sudden cold punch of cold ground making a mockery of my flight with hard finality. Two red boots, wellington kind, above them red and black striped leggings, further above the endless, holy sound of a girl laughing, a young woman, then my eyes soared upwards into corresponding brown and were lost. The ginger man shattered into bite size pieces and another scale was lost.
The scale of windrush on ocean, when the sky whips the waves into a tempest and your heart hammers against your chest, your nose and hair wild with salt and electricity. The scale is gone, never to be remembered. No more winds, no more ocean frenzy. The girl vanished in a fast blur from saviour to mermaid to shipwreck and I awoke, in a tight bed, feeling like cigarettes and too much television. I screwed my eyes shut and tried to get to sleep.
On the news, a grey-headed man was talking in a serious voice. The sound was turned down, but I could see pictures of waves crashing onto rocks. The newsreader kept shaking his head and the woman sitting next to him looked sad. I blinked and climbed out of bed. The room was dark and cold, I could hear the clock ticking and wondered what I had to do that day. The train to Deadsand left in two hours. If I didn’t waste any time I could make it and be feeling warm sand between my toes by lunchtime. I wanted to wander aimlessly around the pier, buy some rock, maybe meet some red-cheeked seaside girls. If I didn’t get dressed and make a start I would be wandering around the town again on the verge of trouble or over.
8 months ago