Published 'Peripheral Visions' 1991
The sun rose tentatively above the moving mountains and cast golden shafts in various angles across the Enclosure.
“There are always five ways to get there,” Gerry surreptitiously said to me as we stretched our legs in preparation for the journey.
I was on my rump, feet pointing like a ballet dancer’s into the sun, backpack prodding the rear lower regions. Not knowing the manner in which I must have appeared to others in the Enclosure, I pretended to be my own personal see-saw. “Hear-hear,” shouted Gerry as he witnessed my japes. He himself hung by clawed toes from the inmates’ training frame. His body did not really need such toning-up, but he was in the habit of overdoing everything. Living life to the overfull.
Only Blyton said he knew exactly where we were going. Only Gerry, on the other hand, knew the ways to get there; hence his half-stifled statement about the Five Ways. Blood rushing to his head made it seem to bubble in his mouth. Not that he minded. He relished it, in fact.
Slaughtergirl was to be the official guide. Not Blyton. Not Gerry.
Especially not me. She was a petite athlete type, reared as such beyond the Enclosure. Trust me, but I noticed that her breasts had only been forming for a matter of months, pert peardrops unhaltered under the loose singlet. Enticing flashes of their full flesh could be glimpsed through the wide-fitting armholes. Although pretty -- and it was her deep-cheek dimples that attracted me perhaps more than anything else about her -- she was a guide with no sense of direction at all. Or so it was said by those tittle-tattlers in the Enclosure. Some even whispered of her suffocating people in their sleep. Born a psycho, ever a psycho. But beggars can’t be choosers.
I can’t speak for Blyton or Gerry, but I fancied myself to be both a beggar and a chooser. Just look at me, with “rips” in my jeans (that I carefully unstitched with my curved dagger needle of ivory) and a headscarf that’d certainly seen better days. Or worse ones, depending on your point of view.
Slaughtergirl persuaded Gerry to fall off his perch.
“See, the sun is lower in the sky than when it first rose,” she pouted.
I could see her point of view, as I unbalanced into a standing position. The angles of the mountain peaks gave lie to normal duration. But I only had eyes for Slaughtergirl’s thighs as they glistened in their shapeliness. I could have done with them tightened around my midriff, her ankles interlocked behind my lower spine.
She unlatched the wicket gate.
“After you.” Her mouth was serious, but her eyes glinted mischievously.
Blyton, who had been putting on a show of busily packing, suddenly decided he needed more to tote. His face was misgiven. Almost sad. Almost happy, too. I knew he had the destination, or thought he knew, but would never tell me. He wanted to ensure there would be available the one thing we would miss if it wasn’t packed.
Gerry was practising his favourite sport of hop, skip and jump in which he had once won a medal in his earlier (if not younger) days. His stunted kangaroo legs moved faster than my eyes could follow. Something to do with the timing of the blinks and his leaps & bounds.
Eventually, he ground to a halt.
“Which of the five ways, young lady, then?” His sickly smile was meant to be a winning one. I’d seen prison warders flirt better with the worst plug uglies in the Enclosure.
Simpering, Slaughtergirl pointed with her fingernail. It was then I noticed that everything about her was underplayed. There was more to her than met the eye... or ear… or tongue....or even nose… and wandering hands. It was as if she were an alien or angel who had decided to mix in with us hoi polloi humans, death and all. If one wants all the benefits of carnal existence, you have to take the downside too: eventual non-existence.
By this time, Blyton had decided that his soft luggage was complete. The only problem was that it was too heavy and bulky to tote. Slaughtergirl giggled. Her dimples sunk almost to the bone.
I laughed, too, in fellow feeling, and picked up one of the battered suitcases to test its weight.
“Blimey, Blyton, we’re not going into medieval times with this lot, are we!”
He blushed. He did not need to hang upside down for the whites of his eyes to turn bright crimson.
Gerry groaned. Slaughtergirl tutted. It seemed I had let some sort of cat out of some sort of bag. Slaughtergirl rolled on the dusty ground screeching. I should have known that time travel depended wholly on the parties involved so journeying to be unaware of its nature: a secret even from the self.
Only in the Enclosure could we be sure of avoiding any non-sequiturs. Those who prowled between moments would even now be preening themselves to pounce upon any who suspected that Eternity curved in on itself.
I cannot remember what happened next, mainly because nothing seemed to. I quit existence the same way as I came in: through the amnesia canals...
Blyton and Gerry had never been out of the Enclosure before. With me gone -- or, rather, never having been with them in the first place, they had nobody to rib. What was more, Blyton found himself toting all the suitcases.
Gerry wouldn’t be seen dead lugging anything but himself. So, progress was slow. Gerry’s impatience made it seem like a slow-motion replay of a sprinting race, with the sun grinding to a halt in the matchless blue of the Non-Enclosure sky. The mountain ranges crept along the horizon, a caravanserai of misshapen elephants in silhouette.
The symbol of Eternity in the Enclosure’s circles was a perfectly round tusk of white ivory, growing thinner and thicker at both false ends. Or so it seemed.
Slaughtergirl was so far ahead, she couldn’t be seen properly nor even followed. What’s the good of a guide who not only loses the correct route altogether but also misjudges the pace of those following behind? If I’d been there (or anywhere), I would have caught up and deflowered her, sooner than complain. But all Gerry and Blyton did was grouse. They were far too serious for their own good.
“I know where we’re heading,” snarled Blyton. “We don’t need the likes of her. She’d french-kiss us in our sleep only to keep her tongue warm.”
‘Where are we going, then?” snapped Gerry. “Because that’s most certainly the way to go.” He pointed unevenly towards a castle that abruptly appeared through some previously unnoticed mist. “In fact, that castle may well be the place we’re heading towards, rather than via.”
“Nope, it’s not a castle we’re going to.” Blyton suddenly looked dubious, as if he had realized that knowing instinctively where you’re going is not tantamount to consciously picturing it in your mind as a hard and fast goal. “The most we can hope from that castle is that there’ll be someone or other there to tell us which way Slaughtergirl’s gone.”
Gerry scratched his head. “What if she never came this way to the castle?”
“Then we’ll know we’re on the right track.” He smiled smugly. “She’s probably sleeping with that guy who we once thought was with us. Nothing but a slut. And only fourteen, at the optimum.”
“She’s probably older, now.”
“Don’t reckon.”
“Well, she must be a teeny weeny bit older.”
“Maybe.”
“Only goes to show.”
“Mmmm.”
The conversation went on in its bemused vein for quite a while, until even the participants forgot who was saying what… and why.
The sun abruptly dipped behind a moving mountain. Whether it moved with or against the Earth, only the alien observers could tell. The castle lit up in every room, as if a thousand candles were firewicked in unison. Then they were blotted out, as if some monstrous shape had passed between.
“We must regain some sleep before we go on much further,” said one of them, yawning deeply.
“The ground is soft, so why not here?” suggested the other, pointing to a fleetingly moonlit sandpit that had evidently once been a long-jumper’s destination.
They snored, or I guess they snored, for there was nobody near to hear. Slaughtergirl wondered if they were following. She was sure there had been three of them when they left the Enclosure. The one she fancied had disappeared somewhere enroute. The Timekeepers would only blame her for losing one of the party between moments. She cursed. Why had they entrusted her of all people? People? She chortled. She was only a person by default. When in a male mode she was a prison warder. She was the one who had applied the hot poker up King Edward the Second’s jacksy-feeder... Funny, he seemed to enjoy it.
Now, she had been given one of the most important (and difficult) jobs of her long career: to take that unlikely pair following behind her to a place where the officials required a couple of misfits to hang on crosses, either side of...
Me? Blimey!
Blyton laughed uncontrollably when he discovered that his luggage was not so heavy as the ill-cut lumber I had to tote up the hill. In front of all those jeering people, too!
Gerry? Well, he was accustomed to hanging up. Liked it, in fact. They might as well have pinned him upside down, if he’d been lucky.
Slaughtergirl was Pilate’s timepiece. She made him wash his hands before they got going, though.
On second thoughts, the Five Ways were not exactly foolproof. On third, perhaps thinking’s the sixth. And if I’m not too much mistaken (and how can nobody be mistaken), the three of us are still seeking the right destination which remains ever allusive. Like Fate.
I thought I just glimpsed a pair of svelte limbs flicker in the nightlight ahead.
