Ghosts
of Another Size
Steve
Finbow
They lived in a bungalow not far from the sea.
Out of the windows of his bedroom, he could see a land of plump
magpies. His was a happy childhood. Then the vans came. They
were geometric, heavy, like the cows in the fields. The vans
sat out front, shivering as they settled. His parents met each
morning and communed in silence over plates of bread and butter
and steaming cups of tea. As he came from his bedroom, behind
his father, his mother would nod and gesture to the chair and
the food laid out on the table. He would sit and look to his
father. His father would fold the newspaper in half, pull his
glasses down to the tip of his nose, nod, replace his glasses
on the bridge of his nose, return the newspaper to its full
height, shake it, as if, momentarily, it had displeased him,
and continue to read. Within the confines of their home, they
nodded and shook, smiled and grimaced. Then the vans came. The
men who came with the vans swore and spat. They pointed and
punched. His father, jerking back his head, thrusting out his
chin, ushered him to his room. Magpies bobbed on the branches.
The cows in the field were still and easy. He could hear the
furniture scrape as it was lifted and the rooms being reshaped
by absence. He opened a window. The magpies scattered into the
wind. He could hear the dull thud of moving, as if thick sticks
were beating a prone body. He closed the window. The thuds,
muted by glass, became low sighs of labour. After a while, his
bedroom door opened and his mother, standing silhouetted, put
her head on one side and smiled, then pouted, then smiled again.
She stretched her arms in front of her and held out her hands
as if measuring a cat. He went to her, placed his head between
her breasts, and inhaled. There was no smell. He walked through
the empty house to the front step. The vans bristled in anticipation,
impatient, straining. He looked at his mother. She shook her
head. He looked at his father. His father looked down. He looked
at the driver of the first van, a burly man, pink of face, red
of nose, green of tongue. The man threw his head back and laughed.
He laughed.
He loved her. She loved him. Holding their heads
under water, burning their feet with matches, and slashing their
clothes with razor blades, was the only way she could relate
to her dolls. He, meanwhile, in the adjacent bedroom, sprayed
his toy cars with lighter fluid stolen from his father's toolbox,
and lit them with matches she gave him as a reward for showing
her his penis while they splashed in the neighbours’ paddling
pool. His cars burned in a violet light; the fire left blistered
and peeling paintwork, tiny rubber tyres melted to the metal.
His cars were the magic carriages for her blighted heroines.
Her dolls' faces were rubbed white, their hair cropped, their
feet mangled in flames. He destroyed his cars but his soldiers
remained pristine, grinning plastic witnesses to the mayhem
around them. His teddy bears were not so lucky. His teddy bears,
with amputated limbs and substitute eyes, compelled one to look
away in embarrassment or disgust. She attempted to assuage the
teddy bears' shame by applying liberal amounts of make-up to
their misshapen bodies; this only added to their plight and,
though inanimate, the teddy bears appeared to writhe in ignominy
under her eager fingers. She clothed her dolls in sheets of
ham, leaves of Spam, and watched her pet cats lick and bite
the meat-wrapped toys. He, in his re-enactments of famous battles
– miniature Marnes, diminutive D-Days – opened tins
of corned beef, re-shaped them into vague bodies, and deployed
them on the battlefield rug. She used her dolls as nurses administering
to the heaps of reformed meat. His immaculate soldiers and her
disfigured nurses sometimes coupled in the midst of battle,
watched over by giant manic teddy bears. He constructed cities
from Meccano, Lego, and K’Nex. She destroyed these cities;
her air force of mutant harpies deconstructing skyscrapers with
their feet, churches with their heads, and airports with their
stumpy hands. He ploddingly rebuilt them; peopled them with
soldiers until, inevitably, they were again reduced to rubble.
Their parents lived another life in rooms hardly seen by their
children. Their mother held coffee mornings while their father
was at work. Their father told their mother risqué jokes.
Their mother loved their father. Their father loved their mother.
The parents loved their children.
Forced to leave the city by the thousands of birds
that settled there – the birds roosted on buildings and
the shadows cast by the birds made the buildings seem more solid,
more three-dimensional, if that was possible – they drove
to a forest in their small car and parked the car off the road
by a wooden gate that marked the entrance to the forest. There
were no signs to tell them the name of the forest, nor any maps
to indicate how far it stretched. Moving quickly through the
forest, they headed toward the sound of running water. Was it
a stream? A waterfall? A lock? They held hands as they ran and,
in so doing, tripped and fell over brambles, logs, and discarded
branches. The forest was small but held many trees and the trees
that it held were all of a different species. No two were alike.
It was through their lack of knowledge of trees that they became
lost. They could not tell the difference between a Chihuahua
ash and an Allegheny plum, between a common chokecherry and
a Showy Mountain ash. And the trees cared. From the path they
had taken into the forest, they found a clearing between two
trees. 'We found a clearing between two trees,' they may have
said later, if later had been available to them. They ate their
food; left their crumbs and their wrappers. The loblolly shed
its pines across the path they had entered on, the wild service
tree had covered the pines with strips of bark and purple leaves,
and the dog rose had pocked the purple leaves with its fruits
of brilliant red. They stared at each other, their eyes brimming
with fears. The sound of water increased in volume and a path
seemed to open up before them. Little did they know that a weeping
ash had cleared the route ahead, funnelling them deeper into
the forest. She fell. He lifted her on to his back and continued.
He fell. They stumbled up and rubbed their eyes, their knees,
and realised that the sound of running water was the sound of
a million leaves in the wind and their cries were answered only
by the chafe of branch on bark and of the birds returning from
their adultery in the city.
He books into the hotel opposite the train station.
The hotel is called the Hotel A. He carries his bags to his
room. The room is plain. The carpet is the colour of dead leaves.
Thin curtains cover the windows. He opens the curtains. The
carpet is the colour of dying fires. He places his bag on the
bed. He takes off his coat and hangs it in the wardrobe. The
wardrobe has two coat hangers inside. He slides his coat on
to a hanger as if putting his arm around a girl for the first
time. In the bedside drawer to the left of the bed is a black
book. In the bedside drawer to the right of the bed is a yellow
book. The bed is smaller than his bed at home. The menu offers
water, bread and a vegetable of the day. He picks up the phone
and listens to its purr, tick, and cough. The bathroom is nothing
more than that. Outside, ghosts of another size, mute and drifting,
patrol the perimeter searching for infiltrators. He opens the
windows and steps out on to the balcony. It is dusk and he can
feel the brothy static of the city. He can just make out, over
the tops of the buildings, the neon sign of the Hotel Z, woolly
in the evening light. It is rumoured that in the rooms of the
Hotel Z there are fire-breathing dragons; their round mouths
light up like orange coals when tickled. Hidden in the rooms
under dense wood are treasure chests containing crushed diamonds,
dark rubies, and shards of emeralds in silk bags. Liquid pearls.
The Hotel Z menu includes bird of paradise soup, pickled lionfish
with shredded opals, ingots. It will take him more than twenty
years to make the journey across the city to Hotel Z. It is
a place where, not knowing they do so, memories frolic.
....
Steve Finbow lives in
London. His fiction, essays, short plays, poetry, and stuff
is in, or will soon be in, 3am Magazine, Big Bridge, Dicey Brown,
Eyeshot, The Guardian Online, InkPot, Locus Novus, McSweeney's,
Pindeldyboz, Über, Word Riot, Xtant, Yankee Pot Roast,
and Zacatecas. He writes the bi-weekly column Pond Scum for
Me Three. He is currently working on a novel. (Yeah, right).
Other stories by Steve:
Because You Just Lie There
and I Want To
The
Last Time I'll Ever See You
