Note:
Chapter totally revised: 12-03-14
The Second Coming
Chapter 2
Girl Meets Boy
2100 words
Once again, Joelle and Ray plummeted into deep sleep, troubled, acutely troubled. Both revived different historic events, traumas better left in remote memories. The return of intense nightmares coincided with the return of their child, their only child, a consequence of whenever he slept under the same roof. They drew no other significant parallels with Rupert, his saintly imagery a sharp contrast from that of the dark incubi that corrupted their subconscious.
Joelle twisted once more, rolled from her left to her right side, and took the duvet with her. As if connected via a set of puppet strings, Ray moved in unison. The couple continued to plummet into rapid-eye-movement, to a level where they relived their future-defining pasts.
At the end of a darkened hall, she leaves her room, then traces a route over the carpet following the floral design; its illuminated pattern swirls back and forth. It’s alive. She nimbly steps in the necessary directions, until her gaze jumps to the sudden shrinking hallway ahead, then freezes. The distant door speeds towards her swallowing the animating carpet beneath, until it reaches her and abruptly stops. The door rests right up against her nose; she sways in its presence. From behind, she hears music and laughter.
‘Can I have a drink?’ she asks to those beyond the door.
It is not thirst that drives her on, but want for acceptance. Always chatting with adults, her mother has no time; she never does. Despite living in the same house, no mother-daughter relationship exists.
‘Please can I have a drink?’ she says again. ‘Mummy?’
Again, her mother ignores her.
She and a man called Reggie are busy behind the bedroom door. Furniture bangs and squeaks, she thinks the pair might be rearranging the room. Soon, the only thing she hears, apart from the continuous clatter of objects falling onto the floor, is heavy breathing. She surmises they must be moving furniture, and that they should have placed loose things in a box. Now they must be having a break; catching their breath after the hard work.
Unsure if they had heard her through the sounds and noises, she knocks on the door one more time.
‘Mummy, I’m thirsty,’ she says. Still no answer, only deep panting.
On tiptoes, she looks through the keyhole, candles flicker and wild shadows dance on the wall. Why draw curtains at midday? Does candlelight help to rearrange things?
Banging sounds start again and grow steadily; she realises she has to raise her own voice, if they are to hear her.
She shouts, ‘Mummy!’
Reggie mumbles something over the din, and then finally, the quiet voice of her mother gradually becomes audible.
‘Ah … ah … yes … ah, that’s it … faster … faster …’ her mother pants in a rhythmical manner, ‘ahhh … oh fu—,’
‘Are you ok, Mummy?’ The child senses something might be wrong.
‘No … ah … don’t stop … oh, God … don’t stop,’ she continues. Her voice, amplifying above any other noise, echoes passed Joelle, along the hallway.
‘Mummy, Mummy,’ she bangs on the door. ‘Mummy!’
‘Go away!’ Reggie’s bearish voice shouts: deep and menacing.
Reggie is hurting her mother; she is convinced of it. The hallway behind the girl grows dark; the only light now flickers from under the door and through the keyhole.
Yet again, she bangs.
‘Stop! Leave her alone. Mummy! Mummy!’
With both fists, she drums on the door and screams out. That wicked man, she needs to help her mother.
Sounds suddenly quieten, except clenched fingers rapping on the door and her racing heartbeat. Noisily beating the door with such concentration, she doesn’t hear the lock unfasten. The door flies open; she tumbles forward, falls into the room, and drops hard onto the timber floorboards just short of the dirty white shag-pile rug. Senses fill with the taste and aroma of heady incense and lingering smoke from her mother’s ‘herbal’ cigarettes; dancing colours swallow her whole.
‘Out of my way, you little shit,’ Reggie shouts to her. He strides towards the door; she rolls over just in time to avoid his cowboy boots, they kick-out in her direction. His every step echoes on the floorboards.
His paisley wing-collared shirt flaps open, as he passes and shows his hairy skinny body. He buttons his trousers; Joelle thinks he’s taken a belt to her. She pushes herself up to see her mother’s red face scowl over the bed. What had he done?
‘Reggie, come back … darling, come on … please, Reggie,’ her mother says. She glances downward and registers the existence of her offspring. ‘She means nothing, Reggie. Where are you going? Please come back.’
‘Get rid of the girl, Penny, for God’s sake,’ his voice echoes along the hallway. Heavy steps thump the stairs. ‘It’s her, or me.’
The front door slams with the sound of a cavernous prison door. It reverberates for several seconds, then the hushed lyrics of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John replaces it, as a long-player skips on a turntable at the back of Penny’s room.
“—’mer heat, boy and girl meet, but uh-oh those sum’—’mer heat, boy and girl meet, but uh-oh those sum’—’mer heat, boy and girl meet, but uh-oh those sum’—”
With a tight-lipped hateful glance, visible pipes of cartoon steam fume from her mother’s nose. She moves away; wisps of moisture evaporate.
Sheets, blankets and an assortment of her mother’s clothes lie scattered over the room, but the furniture is in the right place. Unsettled, the young girl cannot understand what has happened here.
‘Why the hell do you have to ruin everything?’ her mother says when reappearing, her voice masculine and gravely, akin to a cigar smoking dictator. She stands naked and covered in beads of sweat, towering high above; she looks angry. More confusion wells in the girl’s eyes. ‘You never stop bleating, on and on, the noise you make drives me mental.’
‘I thought he was hurting you and, and I was thirst—’
‘Thirsty,’ she bows, her voice still gruff. ‘I’ll give you thirsty.’
She pulls the child to her feet, squeezes tightly a black and blue bruised arm, and then drags her from the bedroom out to the bathroom.
‘Ouch, you’re hurting me, Mummy,’ she tries to pull away. ‘I’m not thirsty now.’
‘You little—’
‘I’ll be quiet I promise. I’m not thirsty. I’m not thirsty.’
‘Liar, you little liar. You messed it up for me, again, “I’m thirsty Mummy,”‘ she mimics. ‘Well here’s a nice bowl of water.’
Penny scrunches up the hair on the back of her daughter’s head and pushes her towards the toilet. The girl grabs the rickety timber toilet seat with both hands and straightens her arms, the seat moves from side to side; one of the hinges has rusted right through, the other strains under pressure.
Both struggle, twist and shuffle against each other for a moment; mother finally triumphs and forces her face into the water. Shock gives the girl renewed energy and she pushes upwards. With the full force of both hands, her mother fights to push her back. The girl’s forehead bangs off the seat and the ceramic bowl. Penny holds her tight and flushes the toilet; the water cascades out, splashing over the floor, the girl’s arms flail unsuccessfully, as she tries to escape.
After what feels an eternity, she gasps for air and slips off the toilet into the rapidly rising water, exhausted. The toilet seat has come away; it hangs around her neck with the look of a swimming medal. She pushes it off, and as it splashed into the water, she kicks her feet and shuffles away to relative safety underneath the basin. Her tears are lost in the soaked hair that quivers on her face. Penny kneels in silence for a moment and ignores her daughter’s whimpers.
Water continues to pour from the toilet and transforms the bathroom into a sloshing sea of murky blue and blood red. Her mother’s naked body dives beneath the water, a glittering bluey-green mermaid tail in her wake.
As the water laps around the bathroom the soaked little girl hears the bedroom door slam in the hallway. Tentatively, she feels the swollen gashes on her forehead and then gasps with terror at the sight of blood on her fingertips. She sloshes through the water to her feet and looks in the mirror; she feels light-headed and holds the basin, fresh red handprints imprint themselves in the brim. Exacerbated by the water, blood streams from her hair, it looks horrific.
Why does her mother do such beastly things? She looks again in the mirror: her pallid face; hair stuck to wet skin; eyes puffy from the water; another drop of blood drips from her chin.
Her eyes close tightly and she wishes her mother dead.
Enough is more than enough; her hand grabs a toothbrush and she wades through scarlet water to her room. Snatches her Sindy doll, pushes it into her school satchel along with, “Button Eyes” the teddy, clean underwear, two t-shirts and a pair of red corduroy trousers. She hopes her mother doesn’t leave her room again, as she splashes downstairs amid the bubbling waterfall. A packet of custard cream biscuits finds its way to her bag and she puts on her anorak. The front door opens, pink tinted water sloshes over the threshold into the garden to freedom. Now she runs as fast as her little legs can, sprinting along the path, out into the road, making her getaway.
Pumped full of adrenalin, she runs and runs for hours, she feels. Unnoticed from Camberwell to Bow, she passes other children; dodges between adults; bravely traverses the city thoroughfares. At every road crossing the Green Cross Code man, with his friendly face, helps her cross safely; she isn’t sure how he manages to get to each crossing before her, but is glad he does. By Aldgate High Street, she is tired, the people and shops are different; everything has become unfamiliar.
The end of the working day makes the streets busier and her view becomes restricted, weaving between endless adult legs. The incident is inevitable, she is tired and begins to worry, fears grow and concentration fails her. A sandal slips over the kerb, as she runs the road edge; she stumbles, grazes the soft skin of her leg, and trips over her own feet, then bounces off the kerb headlong into the path of a routemaster bus.
With no choice, the driver jams on his brakes with a squeal, passengers hold onto chrome poles and seat-top handles, as the bus lurches; not enough time to stop.
The bus continues to skid towards her, closer. She looks up in fear and freezes to the spot, as if hypnotised; the white number plate ingrains itself into her memory: MEL 265. Despite such a vivid recall, she never sees a face; it happens so fast, just a glimpse of the stranger’s hands and arms. Lifted and pushed back onto the pavement by a brown suited man: no matter how hard she tries to look around the edge of the roadside scene, she can see no face. The chance to thank him has passed. People are suddenly tripping over her and shouting.
‘Mind where you’re going,’ says one.
‘Come out of the way,’ says another.
A woman stumbles over the girl’s slim legs. ‘If you’ve broken something in here,’ she picks up her shopping bag, ‘you’ll pay for it.’
The driver climbs out of his cab and rounds the front of the bus. She sits on the pavement and watches him through the surrounding circle of scolding pedestrians, his face pale; he must have expected the worse.
Then he wades in, ‘You could have got yourself killed, not to mention my passengers …’
For the fact that she survived her ordeal unscathed, and with no parent or guardian in the vicinity, everyone takes it upon themselves to chastise her. Once they vent their anguish the onlookers, and their voices dissolve away. She sits alone on the pavement smudges of congealed blood and tears litter her face. The challenge to get far away from her home and hateful mother succeeds, yet arrival to a place where no one cares about her is not part of the plan.
‘Well, what do we have here then?’ an unfriendly dark face of a riot-policeman says, as he examines her tear-stained face. Reaching to his side, he pulls out a dull matt-black gun, points the barrel straight to her head and pulls the trigger.
