Sleight Of Hand

Another 8th birthday party booking. They all seem to be turning 8 this year. Maybe that's also the age where parents finally lose interest in the novelty of their children's birthday parties, and decide to just book a magician.
Still, I shouldn't complain, at least work is steady this year. Means I'm putting in less hours at the petrol station.
Though it's Steph's birthday soon, should probably buy her something good, but it's not like the money is pouring in. She'll understand.
I get to the kid's house, forty of them, it's usually the whole school class and a few extras - cousins, friends from different classes, the token friends of any siblings, or children of the parent's friends. It'd be weird if parties later in life were attended in a similar fashion.
I go through the motions, I think half these kids have seen me before. I hear one whispering the conclusion of the trick to her friend. If I see her at another show she can be the "volunteer" for the custard pie trick. I always save that one for the little shits.
So, I do some giant size card tricks, a stuffed rabbit in a hat, the knotted handkerchief and a small scale swords through a box routine with the birthday boy.
Afterwards I loiter by the food, chowing down on cocktail sticks skewering pineapple and cheese chunks, and I have a slice of plasticky Transformers cake.
"Hey, great stuff," an overly enthusiastic father says, shaking my hand and placing a friendly mitt on my shoulder. "I loved the magicians when I was a kid, had one at every birthday for about five years running. Thought I wanted to be one, until I heard about investment banking!"
He laughs a big cackle. The howl of the well off.
"I got these big, ungainly hands anyways," he says. "Could never get the cards to stay wedged in there. My parents wastes a small fortune on magic kits for me. At least yours backed the right horse, huh?"
I swallowed my mouthful of sponge. "My parents don't know I do this."
"Shit, you are living the boyhood dream, huh?! Ran away and joined the circus, right!"
"They're dead."
His face turned sour and he quietly, quickly made some new friends on the other side of the room.
I tossed my paper plate towards the bin - though it failed to make its target.
After collecting the rest of my pay I packed up and left. Children's birthday parties are no place to hang out, though in my younger days I met some willing single mothers, and once one that wasn't single. Though Steph put paid to all that.
It's not that I yearn for it or anything, that stuff is far more exciting in theory than practice. But there is a certain frisson to those chance encounters now lacking in the inevitability of my days.
I know what bed awaits me, I know who's there, and this malaise comes from somewhere, but, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change things. Not between me and Steph.
I should try and think of something nice to get her. I think I've let her down these last couple of years, I'm sure she's already wondering how I'll complete the hat trick. But, and perhaps I'm ignorant, forgetful or complacent, I just don't remember what she likes.
I resolve to try and listen that bit harder, hear the clues in what she says. Maybe there's something that she keeps hanging out there, like a carrot for a mule, seeing if I'm going to putz it up one more time.
I drive home, passing the petrol station, unconsciously - I think - I slow the car and take a long, lingering look at the place. I've got the night shift there tomorrow, 11pm to 7am.
I take the next junction and, eager to have a drink and slip into bed, I press my foot down a little.
I look forward to the feeling of Steph's body pressed against mine before we fall asleep.
I see a flash.
It's dark. Sudden.
There's a thud, followed by an uncomfortable clatter.
I brake, look back, and see the body lying in the road.
Leaving the car I'm thankful that the street is quiet. A few houses, but not a light on in any of them.
Getting closer I see that it's the body of a young boy, dressed in an unhelpfully dark hoodie and jeans. His face is pale, about from the blood stripe across it. His eyes are wide, lifeless.
I look up and down the road, still noone around. I've been fortunate.
I crouch by the body, hold my hands over his most obvious wounds and I close my eyes.
His sharp intake of breath alerts me.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
He's bewildered, sits up and shuffles back.
"You should wear a hi-viz, or at least something colourful, if you're going to dash across roads at night."
The boy holds a hand to his chest, breathes deeply, as if ascertaining the veracity of the situation against his memory of it.
"You hit me? With your car," he finally utters, though doubting himself.
"Clipped you," I correct him. "Nothing serious, but you should see a doctor just to be sure."
"O-okay..."
I give him my card in case there are any problems. I offer him a lift home but he points to his house, we're right in front of it. I get in my car and drive away.
When I get home Steph is asleep, though she stirs and mumbles a hello as I climb in next to her, kiss her cheek.
As I lie sleepless in bed, I'm brought back to the vacant look in that boy's eyes as he lay dead on the road. That look which confirms the disconnection between body and spirit, or soul, or whatever.
Now I know that if I'm quick then that spirit lingers, as if taking one last look at its vessel and I can encourage it to take up its residence for just a little longer.
I wish I'd known that then, before I killed them.
I told Steph about the accident, sure I left out a few details, like my powers. But she insists that it was, as I say, an accident. But I know more, and I can never find forgiveness.
I've told Steph about that, though I've never told her how she died once. That we were putting up a painting, she was on a short ladder, missed her footing and her head collided with our kitchen worktop.
From somewhere within me came this urge, this futile rage, a seemingly impotent hope. I looked into her eyes, saw that the life had gone. I placed my hands on her, and then it was back.
And she never knew why I cried and held her so close, so tight.
That I couldn't bear the abyss of my life without her.
Yet I know that with every passing day the tide comes in, our lives must end, and it dulls the magic, it dilutes my hope.
Perhaps, I make excuses for myself, I'm so tired, so listless, because I love her so much. If I cared less maybe our eventual deaths wouldn't concern me.
Though I cling onto the idea that there is a soul, that it is that which I coax back to those vacant bodies, and if it were to roam free it would find a fitting afterlife. I can't help but think we are all doomed, and that is what I see in the eyes of those children as I reveal their card, as I pull the rabbit from the hat, as I push the pie into their face.

Choices

 Not quite from the archives, but I wrote this back in June 2013 and completely forgot about it...

Choices

Wearily I rub my eyes, my colleague is sat on the seat opposite me, our train heading towards the office.
    "Feels like Thursday," she pines, it's only Tuesday.
    I nod in agreement.

At work I head upstairs immediately, flick the kettle on, grab my preferred mug and am about to spoon in a miniature mountain of coffee, when I realise the jar is empty.
    I try to cast my mind back to yesterday, remember that last cup of coffee I had, and I'm certain - adamant - that there was definitely enough coffee in the jar for at least three more cups.  I can't imagine who else might have had a coffee, it's a small office, my boss is away on business, and everybody else prefers tea.  Could I have been wrong?
    I pop to the corner shop to buy some more coffee, hesitating at the display comprised almost exclusively of Nescafe brands and one cheap alternative that, experience suggests, will taste distractingly acrid.  I could walk further down the road to a supermarket, but I feel bad for not being at work, I want to conserve my free-time for more important opportunities, so I nab the smallest jar of Nescafe - reasoning that I can get a more ethical alternative quite quickly - and head back to the office.

I text my girlfriend, just something inconsequential, but, after half an hour, I still haven't received a reply.  I try to imagine all the things she might be doing that would prevent her from checking her phone, wonder why she doesn't realise that I just want a little bit of validation, just something to remind me that she still cares about me.  I guess that's pretty desperate.
    Perhaps I was being too optimistic, I reason, even going so far as to call her my girlfriend is a bold gesture.  I mean, we've been seeing each other for a while, but I guess I'm more emotionally invested than she is.  She says it's all quite new to her, I think she's treating it as a bit of fun, a little bit of experimentation, but for me it's serious, I mean, for her it's a choice, but for me it's not a choice, I was born this way, it's who I am.
    Maybe I'm being naive to think that I can get her to change her mind, see me the way I see her, I guess?  But, at the same time, I don't want to force someone's hand, we've always been very honest with one another, but I can't help how I feel, or, at least, how I think I'm going to feel and when it comes down to it; to that decision between seeing her and not seeing her, I'm always going to go for the former.  I guess I'm selfish like that.
    Because that's what it will be ultimately, me forcing someone, who has told me from the start that this is just a bit of fun for them, to sit there whilst I parade my emotions in front of them, a little song and dance, tell them how much they mean to me, but, at the very same time, feel overwhelmingly cruel and guilty that I'm essentially trying to blackmail them into one of two things.
    Either they go back on themselves, cave in, try and take things seriously - against their wishes.  Or, they're the executioner, and they tell me in plain terms that it'll never happen and we probably shouldn't see one another anymore.  I know these are the only two conclusions, but I'm too cowardly to accept that.
    It's hypocritical of me, the amount of times I've told people that my lifestyle is not a choice.  It's one of those questions you wind up tolerating; "Oh, so, when did you choose to be..." You try not to let the eye-roll show.

I struggle to sleep tonight, I wake up, feeling like I've been in bed for hours, though the clock says it's only 2am, yet the sky is a blue-black, like the sun's feeling impatient this morning.  I nod off again, molding the pillow into a makeshift body for me to hold, and then, in what feels like seconds, I wake up again to a  blazing, bright day and the clock tells me it's 7am.
    However, there's something unnatural about the morning, the feel of the streets, the manner of my fellow commuters, it's calm and orderly, like it would be after the rush hour.  But each clock I check just reiterates the time, it's ok, I'm not running late.

At noon I stand in the supermarket staring at the range of microwave meals that often comprises my lunch.  There's a nice looking mushroom risotto for £4, but another in the cheap section.  Out of both boredom and curiosity, I inspect the labels of each.
    Whilst the list of ingriedients blurs into insignificance it's the place of manufacturer that ultimately grabs my attention, with both risottos having been produced and packaged in the very same factory in Chertsey.  Ultimately, I realise, the only thing different about these two items is the packaging, one designed to look decadent and delicious, the other functional and basic.
    But I still buy the more expensive one.

I sent a text to Iwona again, even though she hasn't replied to me since yesterday.  It's been a few days since I saw her and I miss her, though I'm loath to mention this as it might seem a bit too clingy.
    Are we the unstoppable force and the immovable object?  Should one of us bow out gracefully before somebody gets hurt?  I can't help but daydream that there must be some reason, some unconscious something, that is why we haven't done this yet.  Though I suspect that we're both too selfish, we both want to get all we can from the other and only relinquish our hold when we absolutely have to.  In that respect, how is this unlike any other relationship?
    She told me she thought I was open minded, I think that's another stereotype people assume, that because they think it's a choice they imagine that all people are hard-wired to want the same relationships as everyone else, so anyone who chooses otherwise can flip-flop between the two.  If you're a guy who likes guys then there's nothing stopping you from liking girls, if you're a girl who likes girls then there's nothing stopping you from liking guys, but if you're a girl or guy who likes the opposite sex then getting with someone of the same sex just isn't the done thing.

My mum re-married shortly after my father died.  I wasn't shocked, I'd known for years that they weren't happy together, in fact, she'd been sleeping on a sofa in the lounge for the last year or so of their relationship.  I think, if he hadn't had that heart attack, they would have got divorced around about the same time.  At least I hope they would have.
    They didn't want to be married, that was obvious to me and my sister, but they stayed together until we both left home.  I was there last, saw the strained conversations most clearly, in that final Summer, after I'd finished University, earning some money before I moved up to the city.
    I know that they only stayed together because of us, to make sure that we came from what they considered to be a stable family.  It wasn't a stable family, whatever mask of domestic happiness they thought they had created barely covered their lies, eyes the most telltale feature, and stern mouths held fast as inappropriate comments passed idly over awkward dinnertimes.  The farce of my mother carrying duvets and pillows downstairs every night, making her little nest, and then waking up first - or so she often believed - and re-creating the illusion of their normality.
    My sister doesn't trust marriage now, but it once felt like the only way for people to move forward in life.  These ceremonies, she argued, represented the illusion of progression.  We had, as a society, created a series of events designed to act as milestones, deceiving us into thinking that we had achieved something, that we had accomplished a goal as a person, distracted us from the fact that we were, in actuality, unchanging, still fraught with the despair of our youth.
    Nobody chooses to be born.
    My mother once said, though she was half-asleep when she told me this, that I was an unwanted pregnancy.  That her and my father had been fighting, she'd gone out and had some drinks, came home to find him crying, and she took pity on him.  She didn't even think about the fact that she might have gotten pregnant, I guess she had deluded herself to think a child could only be conceived in love.  When she started showing, when the doctor could confirm that she was going to have a daughter, she thought it was too late to abort me, though she wanted to, she wanted to say to the doctor there and then, Please, make it go away.  But, the look in the doctor's eyes had frightened her, made her feel guilty, she couldn't bring herself to do what was in her heart and months later, I was born.
    Both my parents remained quite distant from me, I was raised more by my sister, only a handful of years my elder, but still, as an eager five year old, she'd help change my nappies as best she could.
    I was an anchor though, holding my mother to that relationship.  If I had never been born she could have been free.

It's the end of the month, payday, and for a few fleeting hours my bank account will bob up to the surface, out of debt, draw a deep breath and then sink back under the waves.  I have never really understood it, I try and budget, I don't go out as much as I used to, I home cook as much as possible, don't drink as regularly.  But still, the money goes.
    I scour through my statements trying to find the anomaly, the leak, an unknown standing order perhaps.  But there's nothing out of the ordinary, and when I add it all up, it's exactly right, somehow - despite my best efforts, despite getting a raise again recently - that money still goes and I'm left pawing at the dappled sunshine seen through water, caught in the undertow.
    I want to move out, move on, get a place to myself, start to make what little effigy of happiness I can, but I don't think I can do this on my own.
    That's when I think I'm putting too many of my hopes and dreams in Iwona, too much responsibility unknowingly hoisted upon her shoulders.  But surely, she wants these things too?  And I'll wait, I don't want them now.  But is it naive to keep scratching at the door, like some optimistic puppy, hoping to be taken in?
    I feel guilty for feeling the way I do, as if I've allowed Pandora's Box to be opened.  But I don't feel like I was complicit in the decision, this emotion was lumbered upon me as much as I am lumbering it upon Iwona.  I feel like my mother, pregnant with something unwanted, desperate to get rid of it, but incapable - perhaps afraid - of doing so.  For me, it's because I never want to be alone.  What did my mother want?  Once I was born the slow wait for me to leave began, was it so she could move on with her life, regain what was long lost?  It wasn't her fault that she and my father fell out of love?  I have to wonder if they were ever really in love to begin with?  But, how do we know?
    Love is subjective, which is maybe why it's easy for some and difficult for others.  I wish I could care less, I wish spending time with Iwona wasn't so wonderful.  I feel like a slave to unconscious decisions, but at the same time I am the only one who has the power to do anything about them, but it's only really the power to stubbornly battle on or to walk away.  What kind of choice is that?  There is no fork in the road, just one path, and we can either continue or turn around and retreat.  Perhaps cowardice is just a derogatory term for wisdom?  I know that I'm going to get hurt, but I keep moving forwards.

I had an important meeting this morning, but my train was delayed due to signalling problems and I missed my connecting service.  I wound up getting into work 90 minutes late, having missed the meeting.  A colleague had stepped into my absent place and done, so my boss told me, a brilliant job filling in.  I began to feel my tenuous grasp on my job slipping a little from my fingers, and all I could do was say I'm sorry, it wasn't my fault the train was delayed.  Feebly adding, It won't happen again, but it's not like I can control that.
    For the rest of the day I'm shaking, my emotions are heightened, I'm perhaps a little too curt on the telephone to clients.  I don't know why I feel this way, this is a job I've never enjoyed, yet I've stuck it out, never really looking for another role somewhere else, because I can get by doing this, I'm making a decent wage, I don't want to set myself back.  But I'm not making any progress either.  Sure, they up my salary every now and then, but where does it go from here?  What am I trying to achieve?
    Two weeks later they give me my notice, I have a month left at the office and I should start seriously hunting for a new career, but I give in to procrastination just as I have done for these past three years.  Expecting someone else to pick up the pieces when it all falls apart.

I've been standing still, too afraid to walk forwards, too proud to walk back.  I've let others find me, try and urge me to walk on, or at the very least, go back, see what it was I was heading towards, and try again.  But we don't know, the path began without our permission, it just appeared, one day nothing and the next day expectation.  Except, you can't see the end of the path, you don't get to dictate that either, and maybe you'll walk for a hundred years or maybe you'll walk for a day.  Me, I shrink into myself, someone will come along soon, someone will put their arm in mine, they'll want to walk side by side, keeping me company, making sure I'm smiling, and they'll give me hope that there is something to look forward to.  All paths have to lead somewhere.

Predictions

"Who - why - when - what are you do - done - doing to - today?" my son asked, sat at the breakfast table, pondering his choice of jam.

                "I've got two meetings with clients, quite an important day for me." I smile and pour his orange juice.

                "Con - coke - cork - cool."  He takes a large bite out of the slice, it quivers under the weight of blueberry slathered on top.  "Cat - car - can I ass Mark arouse - around for tea?"

                I take a slow sip from my coffee, "You can ask him around, yes."

                "Who - why - when -what did I sad - say?"

It makes speech easier!  You'll never be stuck for the right word again!  Can automatically translate your speech into twenty different languages, with more being added all the time!  Consult your healthcare advisor about the Predictive Speech implant today!

So ran the copy, and every kid wanted it for some reason that eludes me to this day.  I argued with Terry about it, told him I didn't want to put a chip in our child's head, but he said it was fine.  I asked him how he knew and he told me that he had one implanted a couple of months back.  I was offended he hadn't told me, which he took as an opportunity to remind me that we're not married anymore and he doesn't have to tell me everything.  If anything this just reminded me why I divorced him in the first place.

                We spoke to Dr. Stephens and she said that it's a simple, painless procedure, just a little implant that sits snugly in the interior frontal gyrus of the brain.

                I asked if she knew anybody who had the chip and she told me about her neighbour's kids, said it had improved their manners considerably.  "None of that text speak," she'd confided.

I decided to let Harry stay with his Dad after the operation, I was still quite shaken by the whole thing if I'm honest and thought that if there was to be any teething trouble then Terry would be better at dealing with it.  Me, I'd just drag Harry back to the doctor and get him to take the damn thing out, it's not like our boy ever had trouble communicating before and I'd hate to think of him as part of a little crowd at school.  That Mark is a bad influence, but we all knew those sort of kids, I mean, I aspired to hang around with Julie Walker and Margie Kempton, and now I'm rather glad they ostracised me.

Harry came back a week later, he greeted me with a big hug and beamed, "Hi mum!"

                I must admit I let out a massive sigh of relief that he wasn't spouting gibberish or worse, and Terry could see this weight being lifted from me, he gave me a knowing smile and ambled back down the path to his car.

                Like any one would be, I was curious, and wanted to just test that things were ok.  We both headed, naturally, for the kitchen, where I began to make myself a cup of tea.

                "Would you like a drink?"

                "Yes pl - please," he smiled.

                "Cup of tea?"

                "No thanks."

                "Don't you like tea?" I teased, knowing how much he hated all hot drinks, apart from warm blackcurrant juice.

                "No."

                "What's wrong with it?"

                "It's disguised - disgusting."

                "Disguised?"

                "Dis - disgusting."

                "Disgusting? Why don't you try some?"

                "No!" he objected, laughing as I wafted a tea bag in front of his face.  "Y - Tu - Tic - Tuck!"

                "Tuck?" I squinted, confused at his little face sticking his tongue out in protest.

                He concentrated, thought about what he'd said, muttered the series of words again like they formed part of a spell and then finally announced, "Yuck."

                "Did you mean to say 'tuck', did you know you were going to say it?"

                "Was - wash - wasn't thinking."

                "So, if I were to make you eat this teabag, what would you say?"

                "Y - Yuck," he articulated the world with the same theatrical disgust, and I chastised myself for being over-bearing and suspicious.

But, something lingered, and I phoned up Dr. Stephens who put me on to Mr. Enright at the company that designed the Predictive Speech units.  He reassured me that it would take a while for the chip to completely adapt itself to my son's choice of vocabulary, but it had some very smart software that would begin to recognise his most commonly used words and automatically default to those in future.

                "So the stammer?"

                "That's just the unit trying to second guess him, it goes to what our studies have suggested are the most favoured words based upon the electrical data released from your brain."

                "Why does it need to do that?"

                "Well, to make sure he's never short of a word really, that's the point of the unit ultiimately, you'll never be tongue-tied again, or perhaps it'll help you get the confidence to say those things you never thought you'd be able to, it's also a really useful tool when making an important presentation to..."

                "Save it," I rather curtly announce before ending the call.

I picked Harry and Mark up outside the school gates, they hopped into the back of the car and buckled up.  Mark said hello and asked me how my day was, which was an unexpected pleasantry.

                "How about fish and chips for tea?" I asked, glancing back at them in the rear view mirror as we set off down the road.

                "Yes please!" the two chimed in unison, when presented with a treat precocious boys always regress to being toddlers.

                I put the radio on and we drove to Ryan's fish bar, parked up and bundled out of the car.  It was quite busy for a Wednesday evening, all parents and children who had similar ideas in an effort to spare themselves an evening of cooking and cleaning.

                "What would you boys like?"

                "Cunt and chips." Mark grinned eagerly.

                "Me too, with my - mush - misguided piss," my boy smiled.

                I could see some heads turning, awkward eyes waiting for me to take action.  I crouched down, a serious look on my face, "What did you just say?"

                Mark looked up forlornly at the boards, pointing, "Cunt - cunt - cod and chips," the words came out after some stumbling efforts.

                Harry was already combobulating his sentence, looking down at the floor before raising his head and proudly saying, "Mushy peas."

                "I don't want to hear that kind of language from you Harry, and I'm pretty sure your parents wouldn't want you to talk like that either Mark. Ok?"

                I wanted to reprimand them further, deny them the fish and chips, but I was not certain that they were entirely responsible for their behavior.  Punishing them might only encourage them to swear some more, but this time out of choice.  So we waited patiently, quietly and awkwardly in the queue until we were served and then headed home.

Whilst the boys ate their dinner, with the greasy paper unfurled on their laps in front of the television, I - optimistically considering the time - called Mr. Enright again.

                "Hello?" was the puffed reply.

                "Mr. Enright, sorry to bother you, it's Sarah Alderton, we spoke about my son, he has the...

                "Yes, I remember.  What do you want Mrs. Alderton, I'm just about to leave the office."

                "You mentioned that the chip picks up on frequently used words, sets those as its defaults, well, what if someone used bad words frequently?"

                "You mean swearing?"

                "Well, yes."

                "It depends how much they swore to..."

                "He's a fourteen year old boy."

                "Oh dear, well, then, yes, there's every likelihood that swearing might be a more prevalent go-to for the device but..."

                "Yes?"

                "There are ways to monitor and control the output."

                "What do you mean?"

Upstairs was the instruction pack that Harry had brought back with him, I had dismissed it, having attempted to continue to treat my son as he always was and not some technological hybrid.  But, as Mr. Enright had said, there was a section about parental locks and, in a plastic pocket, a CD-ROM.

                I installed the software on my computer and looked through the options, it was laid out very clearly with a series of sliders to set the level of control.  I decided, considering the earlier outburst, to set the parental lock to high.

                Little green radar signals appeared on the screen, a cartoon representation as it searched for my son's output and then Harry Alderton popped up, alongside Mark Bollard.  I clicked on my son's name and a blue bar filled up to 100% before a rewarding little ping announced that the settings had been saved.

                Feeling satisfied I browsed around the software a bit more, realising that I could open up the implant and look at, and monitor, what new words had been added to the chip's dictionary that day.

                Mantle, tectonic, convergent, had all been added in the past six hours, he must have had a geography class.  But also, highlighted in red - with a note indicating that these words were now restricted from his vocabulary - was clit, cunt and jism.  At first I was more surprised that he'd learnt all three in such a short space of time, but then I did always presume Mark was a bad influence.

                Clicking back through the history of words over the past week since the chip was installed I was alarmed to discover what terrible language my son had managed to amass, words that I am certain I did not know until I was much older than he.

                I decided to look at what words Mark knew, and found a list of equal and greater depravity than my son's.  There were homophobic, racist, sexist, disablist terms, all manner of colourful swears and cusses, lurid descriptive terms, all of which I was able to order by their offensiveness as perceived by the software's online ranking system (clearly I was not the only concerned parent utilising this software).  Yet none on Mark's profile were highlighted in red, perhaps his parents were unaware of his pottymouth or this software, so I felt that they would be grateful if I set the parental restriction for him.

Later that week I received a concerned phonecall from the school deputy headteacher, she asked me to come in for a chat.  I was with a client that afternoon, but let her know I would pop in around 4pm if that's ok, besides Harry's father was looking after him over the weekend.

                There is a note of hesitation, but the deputy headteacher said it would be ok.

When I arrive to the school I'm shown through to the deputy headteacher's office, she stands to shake my hand, but my eyes are fixed on Terry, sat with a stern and serious look on his face, barely a hint of a smile to say hello.

                "Is everything ok?" I ask, my voice immediately weak with worry.  "Where's Harry?"

                "Harry's in the nurse's room taking a nap, he's had a rather stressful day," the deputy headteacher, who hasn't yet introduced herself to me properly, though the plaque on her desk reads Ms. M. Slocum, says sitting back - hand unshook - at her desk.

                "What happened?"

                "They're not sure," Terry begins, resting his elbows on his knees like he would every time he wanted to have a serious talk and scold me for something like I was a child.

                "Harry," Ms. Slocum wedged in, wishing to deflate any pre-prepared tension my ex-husband and I may have brought to the room, "complained about having a headache during his biology lesson, he was then found having a - well, a seizure in one of the corridors.  He's ok," she hastened to add, "we asked him if he had any history with..."

                "No, never, he hasn't gotten any allergies or epilepsy or anything like that, not that we know of."

                "Is he a squeamish boy?"

                "What do you mean?"

                My ex-husband tuts, "They were doing a lesson about reproduction and they think our lad might have got disturbed by it.  He sees worse on telly every..." Having seen how wide Ms. Slocum's eyes had become my ex-husband abruptly ended his sentence early.

                "We've had children faint in classes before, it was just," she searched her mind for the right word, "the severity of his reaction that alarmed us.  I don't imagine you've talked about the birds and the bees with your son before?"

                "My son, Harry, isn’t an idiot, he’s got common sense about things like that… Christ! He’s fourteen, he knows that it’s not a bleedin’ stork that delivers a baby, he knows it comes out of a woman’s…”

                “Mr. Alderton,” Ms. Slocum stood up, her chair squawking across the floor, “that’s completely unnecessary, thank you.”

I went into the nurse’s room where Harry was lying in bed, there were tissues crumpled up on the floor with spots of blood on them, and as I got closer I could see he’d had a bloody nose.  When I gathered them up and tossed them into the bin, Harry began to stir.

                “Mum?” he murmured as if he suspected I was part of a dream.

                “Hey trooper, how are you feeling?”

                “My he – he’s – head hurts a bit.  What happy – happen – happened?”

                “They said you passed out after something in class, do you remember what they said?”

                After a bleary moment trying to recall he turned back to me, “I put my hand up to answer a question, but when I tried to speak I… my head…” he reached to his forehead, started rubbing.

                “It’s ok, sshhhh, there there.” I reassured him, rubbing his hair.

Harry went home with his father for the weekend as planned.  I picked up a pizza and hopped through TV channels until I stumbled upon a cheesy 80s action movie, it was edited for television so kept awkwardly cutting away during the violent scenes and the hero would growl bizarre phrases like: “Go fun yourself!”  After a while it ceased to be entertaining, so I flicked over to a chat show.

The phone woke me at 4am, it was Terry, he sounded desperate, like I’d never heard him sound before.

I arrived at the hospital an hour later, where the doctors told me that our son had had a brain aneurysm.

We deactivated the implant, but were unable to prove a link between the product and our son’s hemorrhage.  We were lucky he didn’t die, but he suffered severe brain damage.  Terry took it terribly, he started drinking again, I was always stronger than him, but it meant that I didn’t have any help looking after our boy, who was now barely a toddler again.

                Sometimes I look in his eyes and see a growing boy buried somewhere deep within, but there’s nothing I can do now to bring him out, to get him back.  The same thing happened to his friend Mark, I know it was that chip in their heads, yet people continue to get them implanted.  Sometimes I open the software on my computer to see if the radar picks up any new devices in the area, I don’t know what I’d do if it did.

Adventures

With great force they wrestled the helmet from Mr. Malpasso's sandpaper hands. It was the last piece of the costume that he'd made, the outfit that he'd been wearing almost every day for the last fifteen years.

When they finally prised it away from him, he, a sixty-two year old man, bawled like a spoilt toddler, dribbling and elongating with a cartoon like stutter, until it sounded ridiculous, one word: pleee-he-he-he-heease.

They took it out front, with the rest of his hand crafted uniform, and set it on fire. It's for your own good, they said. His daughter, Melody, reminsced to nobody about how embarrassed she was to see her father walking around town dressed like a space pirate or something. Captain Malpasso, her youngest, Stevi, corrected her, but her mother wasn't interested.

Mr. Malpasso didn't want the ceremony, they all thought - his children all thought - that it would be symbolic for him, a liberation both literal and figurative, that it would release him from the trappings of his fantasy. You can live your life again, Dad, his son Ryan had smiled, warmly clapping his old man on the shoulder.


He just sat there, in his favourite chair, letting them bumble around him, tidying things away that didn't need to be tidied. They put this week's tv guide into the magazine rack, meaning he'd only have to fish it out again in a short while. They moved the coasters back into the little coaster holder and straightened the framed photographs on the mantlepiece, thus rendering their careful angling nul and void. Now she didn't look over his shoulder anymore.

Doesn't mum look pretty here, Melody asked rhetorically holding a frame. How old was she?

Melody's husband, Phil, took the picture, turned it over, searching for a clue to the year. Graham, he called, his voice slow and simplified for Mr. Malpasso's presumed benefit, how old is your wife in the picture?

My wife is dead, Mr. Malpasso said flatly.


It had been a month after the funeral when he had first worn the outfit. He had walked into the office to various hushed and muffled responses, a few uncensored laughs, and sat himself at his desk and got on with the tasks at hand. He made his calls, he wrote his reports, all was as normal, except he was dressed in a gaudy, shining diving outfit with a vibrant, mirrored helmet, various pipes and tubes hunched up and into the heavy fabric like the body of a sea monster, there were adornments such as the tassled shoulder pads and some random patches, medals and insignia.

He was called into his manager's office before 11am, and after patiently listening to the inevitable company spiel, Mr. Malpasso very reasonably stated his case and his manager agreed and let him continue to wear the uniform to work.


However when Melody saw her father in the uniform for the first time she burst into tears and batted him away, as if he were riddled with disease, when he tried to comfort her in his arms.

She asked him why he was wearing that stupid costume.

He said it made him feel like everything was ok.

She snuffled up the tears, tried to compose herself and accept it.


It was four years ago, when she overheard her father talking to Stevi that she cried about it again.

Dad's lost his mind, she told Ryan. He was telling Stevi about the planets he'd been to and the creatures he'd met, he was telling her about the greedy lizards who live in the clouds, he was talking about things made of eyes and a rocket ship in his shed. A rocket ship! I just thought he wore that thing like a blankie, a comforter, y'know, but I think he thinks he's actually a spaceman.

Ryan was flippant, said he could tell Dad wasn't nuts just by looking at him. Sure, he dresses like he's from a 1970s sci-fi show, but people wear all sorts of weird stuff, he's not doing any harm.

He was curious though, and later, at dinner, he casually mentioned outer space in conversation. Like, I don't think there's anything out there, he lied.

Out where? his father had asked, lifting his visor to take another bite of chicken.

In space, aliens and stuff.

There are aliens, his dad replied.

What?

Plenty of them, all sorts, more than you can imagine, some like us, some you couldn't comprehend.

How do you know?

I've been there, I've been to space, I've seen the universe.

When did you go there?

I go there all the time.


So Ryan agreed with his sister and they began plotting an intervention, it had been eleven years and the time had long since past that he should be confronted on this. Though he kept the suit clean, patched it up when necessary, the suit was no longer the issue, and clearly, to them, the fantasy had begun to rot his brain.

At first they sat him down and talked to him, they kept repeating; You know it's not real Dad?

Mr. Malpasso would look sheepishly at the ground, a glimmer of recognition they suspected, but he'd smile and square up to them defiantly, It's real, he'd say.


So, after four years of quiet private discussions, unexpected trips to therapists, they finally decided to take the drastic step to destroy the uniform, burn down the source of all this trouble and release their father from his delusion.

When the flames had burned out, and the house had been put in order, they stood in the front room where Mr. Malpasso stared at his dim reflection in the television screen.

Ok Dad, Ryan said, we've put some dinner in the oven, it's heating up, should be done in half an hour. Do you want us to stay or would you rather be alone?

He sat, stoic, only his lip seemed to wobble as if with inaudible words.

Melody, not wanting to leave on a bad note, crouched next to her father, put a hand on his side and smiled up at him. I'll come round tomorrow, ok Dad? Help with some gardening?


Phil tried to listen to the radio, straining his ears to hear the football results under Stevi's sing-songing in the backseat whilst she butted the heads of two plastic ponies together. The car door opened and Melody got in, her eyes were red and she, in hurried, fluttering movements, wept away eager tears.

You ok? Phil asked, one ear still squinting to the tinny howls of the crowd.

He told me that this was a terrible reality.

Who did? Your old man?

Melody nodded, sniffed.

Some thanks, Phil scoffed whilst starting the car. Give him time love, he'll learn to appreciate what you've done for him. 

And they drove home.


Mr. Malpasso tried to go to space again that night, but he couldn't do it without his uniform, he just found himself lying in bed, feeling the sheets too tight around his body, and the space where his wife used to sleep, unoccupied for fourteen years. He wished her goodnight, said her name out loud as he had done all that time ago, and had not done since her death.

Mr. Malpasso didn't go to space that night, but he was no longer part of our terrible reality the following day.