I was thinking of my fiction last night, spanning way back
across my career. It acted as a kind of refuge for my stinkin’ thinkin’. I told
myself that the rigours of the night have purpose, so as to release me free
unto the following day to further write some more, providing that I am capable
and able. And here I am, having survived said rigours, sat at the typing
machine, with the world as oyster. Staring into space.
I can’t start a story here though, can I, it doesn’t feel right. I’m not short of ideas, but executing them now? I’m restricted to an hour or so. If I had a study at home and unlimited beer…that might be a little different. I’m not up for starting a venture in the public library. I’m not up for pressing deadlines. It’s just never the right time.
I do have a working title for one possible story. It’s called ACCIDENTAL ORBS. It starts with a young child getting run over in the street. He doesn’t die but is mortally wounded. It’s touch and go. As a by passer intervenes, a bunch of beautiful orbs leave his body and enter hers. He’s whisked away in a helicopter or an ambulance. She departs the scene and experiences a higher quality of life for a few days. Her perception and mood improve above understanding, all her problems are halved, she starts to live beyond her wildest dreams, good things start happening instantly.
But then, recovering from his hospital gurney, the young boy communicates with her from afar, stating that he needs his orbs back. I’m not sure how this communication would take place, perhaps it would be a disembodied voice upon the ether, or messages in the subtitles of the TV, or blurry text hovering within the fibres of the newspaper, or some such other strange event. Either way, she follows instructions and goes to visit him in a hospital. Maybe his family are grabbing a coffee at the time.
It would be a nice scene. I once wrote overly about a bedside scene on an emergency ward. It was about my long lost sister, when I was obsessed with females of African heritage. Whenever a black girl appeared on the television, I would hit the RECORD button on the VCR. I amassed quite an amount of neurotic footage this way. I even found the confidence to start chatting them up in real life, whenever I was in the city. I took ‘one of ‘em’ for a long walk around the neon districts once. We spent the stroll mostly in silence, holding hands. I didn’t kiss her at the end or swap numbers, because I didn’t even really fancy her, but she was black and that was enough.
My sister was suffering from a rare flesh-eating disease, and in a coma. I had to apply special lotion to every inch of her bare skin on a daily basis. I was addicted to her presence, no matter her condition. I made a big point about her smiles. They lit up the entire room. The whole affair was corny and sentimental, I kept repeating that I was never going to leave her side, I was never going to leave her side, I was never going to leave her side.
She recovered and broke my heart, after everything I did for her. I recall crying for the first time in eight years, in front of my best friend, who could not understand my ache. It ended up with me as a seedy stalker, prying upon her premises from afar at all hours of the night, plastering photos of her over my wall. At one point I was sat in one of her skirts applying her makeup in front of the dressing table, getting into character so to speak. As she was working in a whorehouse and getting chauffeured around by wealthy but perverted clients. It all went so dark, from that pretty calm and peaceful bedside scene. Why did she have to turn out to be such a sex-addicted tramp who can’t keep her legs shut for five minutes?
So (back to the main story) she has to return the orbs because the boy needs them for his future. She doesn’t know how to do this. She doesn’t know how she got them. It’s all like magic; above her head. The boy explains in terms ahead of his years, he appears to be an expert in orbs, and anyway they eventually flow from her belly into his heart or something. Then she’s back to her normal boring life, the fancifulness falls off the design of reality like soap suds, everything is monochrome again, she’s done the right thing but her heart slumps with disappointment.
Then she has a wicked idea. She could turn off his life support and see if the orbs go back to her. She’s a decent lass with a strapping heart who feels for the boy dearly but the elation of the power derived from the orbs have rewritten her reasoning skills. For, sans them, she feels depressed and depleted and even sorrowful.
Maybe she even suffocates him with a pillow.
More likely he gives her one or two back from the bunch as a gesture of goodwill, to keep her still moderately happy.
Or maybe, if she kills him, he could haunt her for the
rest of the tale, traipsing around after her with two feet planted firmly in
the afterlife. Yet another ghost story for our delectation. In a decade or so,
when he reached puberty, if dead boy ghosts ever do reach puberty, he could
rape her on her own bed and wipe his peewee on the drapes. Her fists might tug
the blankets and her nails might break, tendons in her neck straining like
popping cords. He might fling her about the room like a rag doll, like the Evil
Dead having a party with a crash test dummy at a demolition rally, or invade
her private parts with a burning crucifix when she wasn’t looking.
He could drive her into an unsane institution, where she is drugged and studied and forced to tell of her experience about the accidental orbs to the disbelieving ears of doctors. Or maybe she handles it better than that and keeps herself away from the authorities, too high and aloft to spare him a second thought. What would be the point of taking his marvellous potency if her conscience was going to damn her for it?
I’m curious about how the hospital room looks though, before we meander into the nitty gritty. It’d be showered with love wouldn’t it, for a small child, loadsa’ flowers and get well cards, perhaps momentoes like toys ‘n’ stuff. And what of his family, when they return from their coffee break in the lobby, and his school chums and soccer mates? It might be a busy riot of characters. I’d much prefer just the two of them, bound together in fate, having to work something out.
I’ll start writing this baby for you, just as soon as I get my study, and unlimited beverages. I’ll write into the early morn, snow outside, candles inside, all my ink flowing in an exotic direction, the direction of accidental orbs…
