The hills were alive with the sounds of music. Bird call encroached each side of the unsealed metal road that wound it’s melancholy way up into the hills. The sun shone just a little over the tops, casting an almost saintly glow onto the lush greenery starting to come to life. A lone dust trail revealed a car slowly winding its way up the hill.
This is a place once called the King Country. The only king in residence now vibrates from the player in the car, perhaps worth more than the car itself, it blazes out ‘I’m Bad’. Gabby sings along at the top of her voice. ‘The King of Pop’ she thought, or rather the late King. She stopped singing as she remembered …
I was born John Jacob Andrew the third. On the 12 of July 1959. Daisy is my godmother. My mother’s choice. She is my guide. With long dark hair streaked with grey, tanned wrinkled skin, so tall she touches the sky She is old, like me. I will be, in four or five days time, 100 years old. I do not know what day it is, or even the hour. I stopped being in time some many years ago, or perhaps it was not so long ago. I do not care, I have stopped being in time.
I know I will be 100. Others have told me so. I am blessed with a good heart.
I suffer. As we all do. I am old, and perhaps you think that my suffering has come with age? No. in fact it has always been here. As I have grown I have come to accept it, befriend it. And through that acceptance, my suffering is no longer my disease, it is my gift. What for such a long time distracted me, no longer does. Now I enter and leave my cage at will. I am both the warden and the prisoner. The psychiatrist and the patient. I am the questioner and the confused.
I am the guarded and the free.
I am the feared and the fearful.
I have never killed anyone Many though have disappeared.
I am a sage, a wise man, a wizard. And at that I laugh out loud. I express myself and this room becomes alive. Comfortable. So comfortable. This place in which I sit, so comfortable. I am relaxed, resting in a beautiful place, surrounded by wood and stone, and yet feeling only the lightest of touchs, the most slightest of temperatures. I am at peace - it is so easy to slip away. Just ‘whoosh’, and I joyously wave my frail hand in the air. My body is small, wrinkled … my hand so cultured. It is a landscape of huge towering ridges of rock and sweeping cavernous valleys. Etched many shades of brown. This is a barren place, those that travel across carry their own water.
Nothing much moves across this landsape. It is a still and quiet place. My body barely moves now. Perhaps for many years I have been very still.
It has been many years since Gabby disappeared, and many years since Daisy returned.
She hands me a garment. To keep me warm in this cold cold place. It is special. A suit of armour.
I am a knight. Perhaps. A suitor. Although the armour is rusty, decaying. No mind. Never mind. It is armour nevertheless …. I watch as the colours change from grey to orange. I like orange.
I raise my eyes from my self and gaze upon her, as if for the first time. She is stunningly beautiful. She is the world to me. She is me. She loves me.
“It is that simple” I speak into the emptiness. There is nothing in front of me, yet I know he is there. He says nothing. Sitting across from me. He has remained silent throughout. He is weighing it up. My words on one side of the scales, my sanity on the other. They are in perfect balance. It bemuses him.
“I have no doubt” I say, looking him in the eye. It is as if doubt never existed. I am untroubled, other that a need for sustenance I am free of want. I am in an almost primordial state, strangely familiar. I feel I know this place, so close to when I was born.
Her coldness escapes her fingertips and crawls up my arm. It is her death, her gift to me. She las led me to the window, away from the sleeping children. Away from the inside of the house. Away from the inner most room, the sanctum.
Outside all is bright. Light blue and yellow, bright on green and grey. A hot air balloon, striped red, white and black drifts across the clear morning sky. Inside is a man known by her brother. A golden man who once was poweful, persuasive. He glowed in an already bright land, and those of us not satisfied with our lives, those of us still hurt and afraid, those of us who lived too far away from the places of our birth, we saw in his golden words a yellow brick road.
Daisy’s brother walked this road, hand in hand with the golden man. He was always going to. Daisy knew before he did. Daisy knew that night so so long ago when she lay in the sand listening to the waves crash ever so gently. She knew then who he was.
The coldness touchs my heart. We stand inside the window turning blue. I know something wonderful, something terrifying is about to happen. Something I have never experienced. I am on a paradigm edge. The coldness is now all over me, within me. Cold no longer exists, I am cold. This is all I know.
And in this place, she fades. I start to lose touch with her. I am unsure whether her fingertips touch mine. She has gone and I am no longer afraid. I am no longer inside.
All is yellow and light blue. Bright on green and grey. It smells alive.
Whatever we want. I mull it over. What is it that I want. I wonder. I dream. I am not asleep, I can hear myself snoring. Rythmically. Mellifluously. I can feel Daisy sitting in bed next to me, watching television. Watching with a sadness that I can hear in her breath.
I open my eyes and look at her. She does not feel my stare. Tears roll down her face. She is in mourning. She remains like that until the seeping cold light of early morning passes the blind. The darkness has receded and she falls onto her side, away from me. I lie, watching her limp form become more and more distinct, until she is covered in a blue frost. Finally, when the grey that streaks her hair turns to brittle white, I rise.
I am a ghost. My breath leads me silently around the sleeping house. I know she fears me when I am not there. Early in the morning, she lies and thinks of me, or someone like me, creeping around her home. Searching out her children. She is the ladybird and I am the fire that seeks out her daughters. One by one they hide from me. They are hiding here somewhere. Hiding from me. They know I am coming and they tremble with excitement. This is a game.
Hide and seek.
They tremble, waiting for me to come to them again in the cold, cold night.
And then she is there, beside me. Daisy. Her ice cold fingers touch mine. I turn to her. Her face is swollen blue, her lips whisper ‘I know you feel it too’. I feel it. The cold of this cold cold night.
She leans in. Her frozen lips touch mine and I feel her, she knows what I am. She knows what I think. She knows what I want.
There must be some kind of way out of here. I am the passenger, simply that. Whoever is controlling this thing, let me out of Here.
Here. This vehicle. This place.
‘This room?’
I look at him. I had forgotten he was here. Here. With me …
‘Always’, he interrupts again.
Yes, he is right, always. He will always be with me. Interrogating me. Interrupting me. Inviting me to kill him. And I know that is a trap, there is always another. There always has been.
‘Has there. Are you sure’ he asks, not as if there is any answer I might know. Is that why I am here? Is this the end of the killing? And exactly how I wonder does that benefit me?
‘I know all the others’, he is speaking again, orating. ‘I know all of them, all that have been before me’. I know he is lying, or perhaps not lying, he simply does not mean what he says. He does not say what I hear. He may know all those I have killed, but he does not remember their names. I do.
‘But they are dead to you’. He looks at me blankly. It is a matter of fact look. It is a matter of fact statement, and I do not disagree.
‘They are dead, surely, yet I know who they are. I have met them and loved them …
‘… all of them?’
I am not sure. I do not dare open my mouth. To lie now, at this point, in this place would be … unwise. Untrue. False. Fatal. Did I love all of them? Did I? Perhaps I did and when I was with them I did not know it. I did not know how to express it. That’s it. I loved them, it was just I did not know how to tell them, show them. They did not feel the love. The light emanating from me.
His face remains blank. His stare goes beyond me, through me, over and around me. He does not know if I am lying.
I do not know if I am lying.
‘In that case’, he says, his face breaking into a broad smile, ‘We can believe what we want’.
