Hazel In A Jar

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The original true orthodox Hazel lives in a jar. Her brain survived when she threw herself into an industrial mangler in the local science museum. A controller observed the drama via CCTV and switched it off immediately. Her motives were unclear, the lawful investigation deemed it attempted suicide amplified by severe mental health catastrophe. Anyway, although her body was rendered deceased shortly after the scene, her grey matter subsisted to be stored in a bubbly tank of oxygenated fluids for the foreseeable future, in a lab only the authorities knew about.

The authorities had ‘had eyes’ on Hazel since birth. Their interest piqued when she brought a hummingbird back to life in the garden shed. Her elder bro-bro had shot it in the head with a ball bearing rifle from close range after luring it into handy confines with crumbs of fruitcake. Her mother had confirmed it dead as a door nail. 

The family garden shed was full of her mother’s ex boyfriend’s refurbished white goods junk collection. It was dark and damp and dank and dim and dingy. Nobody went in there because of spiders. The tacky webs smelled of old linen. Hazel once had a phobia of spiders until she saw an oriental woman eating deep-fried tarantulas on sticks with syrup at a picnic. Ever since then she lost her fear of spiders. If someone else can eat a giant hairy one, I can sit in a shed with some little ones, we reason her thinking to have been.

Hazel, as a child, had collected magazine cut-outs of pop stars she liked on the telly. She amassed quite a swell of scissored faces, most of them musicians, some of them female soccer stars, with one or two national treasures hanging around in there too. She kept all these excerpts in an over-sized purse she received from a distant uncle. There is an interesting file on this particular relative, he seemed to know Hazel’s promise even before the authorities did, but sadly he died from a drugs overdose before having time to watch the fruition of Hazel’s odd life.

The uncle, named Marvin Lawless, bragged on social media about having a niece who was a threat to national security. He did not appear to meet her very often at all, only once every couple of years in fact, but he made videos and took pictures of them enjoying each other’s company whenever their paths happened to cross. Marvin too had a chequered history, so why unsupervised visits with a minor were condoned is above anybody’s understanding and indicates a major failing from services.

There was a report indicting Hazel’s elder bro-bro snapping Marvin’s jaw at a funeral. Marvin required a lengthy stay in intensive care. The spat was over something silly, an altercation that was never documented. Her brother said he was acting as a torpedo to ‘smash-on-sight’ because Marvin had felt Hazel’s buttocks while pretending to be engaging in a mutual hug. Marvin denied this, and accused the brother of a more serious act of molestation himself.

To Be Continued...