All The Nice & Lovely Things

1 - Monsters

~Should be read after The Prefaces.  Sorry for that!~

Chapter One

Monsters

Claw your way out...

The time of unease and unrest began with phone calls.  Three ordinary calls made from three separate cells, made to one landline at least three miles from each.  All lasted little more than five minutes, and ended with the caller declining the conversation abruptly.  The calls were made to a four-storied converted-boat house by the edge of town, a house that had spent many years as both tertiary harbour and forest range-home.  A big home, one grand home.  On any given day, the phone lines were numb and cold if one wanted to call this house, it being so far away from masts and under constant canopy.  But, that morning, reception was temperamental at best, and corded in free static.

That morning started with kingfishers.  Only foolish inlanders or simple tourists had thought that the beaches could be empty on a Tuesday morning, dawn barely up, as the call of popcorn stands, blister-hot hot dogs and blue-moulded strawberries by the short-bus shelter and playground drew the birds in by the hoards.  Coloured balloons were regularly released there, snapped into the wind to either cries of delight or calls of regret for butter-fingering the yarn, face painters worked hard to afford the gas to get here another day and hand-crafted carriage clocks sold by the dozens.  Sold!  For one yoyo.  Nights were claimed by fairy lights and Christmas decorations, all carried to the shores to light the way for moonlight pilgrimages to the blessed coal mines near the patch of shore claimed in force by wild dog roses, or to the set up vigils by forks in the road.

When all was gone, and the shore, a misnomer, as all it was was a stretch of sand that bordered a cleaned bog, was quiet again, when all had been called away on lunch break, litter drew the birds even closer.  The cobbles heaved sighs as the church bell called all away from occupations, and called students back to classes for summer tomfoolery with their pencils.

The morning the birds were sectioned to a torn bag of biohazard Chinese food, the girl who was Kere Reventon was a million miles away, daydreaming about a German boy that worked in a corner shop in town.  She should have been at a deferred English exam, but she’d decided the night before that life was too short to start succeeding at it.  She was trying, and failing miserably, to hold on to the daydream, and she grabbed a thin tan arm and gripped tight.  Consciousness was clawing, and eyes registered that light had come, and that it was time to make with the daytime.  Eyes closed and breathed, touching thumbs to brow, and holding apalm over her face to keep the dying sunrise out.  Even from the second story, the girl could feel the heat mirages slide up from the grass of the garden.

Claw your way out...

Her room was solid with quiet, the slug hush of sun, even though she’d spent the night with a whir by her head.  The man who was her uncle had left the air-conditioning on – unlike him – and left, demonically early, underneath the stars.  She remembered that he should be across the country by now, speeding through the beautiful sunlight on the last dregs of a red-eye flight, expenses paid, first class marquee, Carbernet Franc, 1988, if you please.  His new idea on the longevity of fibreglass was going to make him another half-mill, he’d said, so even she couldn’t have begged him to stay.  And she had.

She sighed, voice broken by lingering night water, and pulled the hand off her face, wincing when the cold air of morning pulled at her nose.  Sneezed.  She refused to open her eyes against the glare, and lay there, like she had that night.  She’d recited the alphabet so many times in the dark that she was probably the only person who was confident enough to say it backwards, and could tell you without blinking what letters surrounded “r.” Q and S; this drinks on you.  There was no sleep to tug onto, and that all she was doing was buying or wasting time, keeping herself in that bed to avoid outside it.  Opened her eyes, took the ceiling in.  She regretted not wearing socks, and flung her legs out of the sweet, sweet heat, practically screeching when the air smashed against her bare skin.  She tugged the baggy, oversized shirt she’d stolen from Beck’s wife’s closet down to her knees and ran to the wardrobe as fast as she could, on tip toes over a floor of deadly lava.