THE PIER

●1 -> Road to Clammy

She tickled her fingers nervously on the window glass as she watched the landscape change intently, trees and bushes were becoming more and more present, they were more and more numerous. "Mila takes that stuff from your brother's mouth!" The mother croaked from the seat in front of her. Mila immediately stretched out her hand to her brother Johnny, slipped it into his mouth without thinking about it for a moment.《Spring Johnny!I said spring!》She kept tugging at the crap that the boy was trying to swallow 《Mom! They are pages of an instruction book! Jesus Christ! How many times do I have to repeat that you don't have to put sheets of paper near him? You said you would take care of it!》Shouted Mila on the verge of a nervous breakdown, again trying spasmodically to pull those papers out of Johnny's mouth but He kept his teeth clenched like a mastiff grappling with a tasty bone.《 Oh shit! Dad stops the car, there's also sharp plastic between the pages! Stop the car right away! I said immediately! 》 The car was severely stopped, that braking was the only sign of life that the father showed after three hours of driving in absolute silence, fortunately the Golf was equipped with sturdy belts, the bodies of the passengers suffered a net and violent tug, Mila wasted no time, remained focused on her purpose and in that moment of confusion managed to extract the pages and the plastic from her brother's mouth.

Mila inhaled and exhaled deeply. 《We didn't miss much that he choked ...》 she uttered these words almost whispering and at the same time eagerly wiped his beaded forehead with drops of sweat, her gaze was fixed in the void, her head and torso stiff as wood logs they drew the shape of the seat, it seemed that she was glued to that place, she had not yet unfastened the belt. Johnny was full of drool on his chin, he brought his fingers close to his mouth, his hands were long and tapered, his bony pale arms revealed a slender physicality, a physicality more like that of a man than a child, in fact Johnny was not a child, he was no longer a child, he was almost 16 years old but from a mental point of view the doctors had estimated a brain development equal to a child of 4 or 5 years, he was autistic and he also had a rare form of dementia.

《I want my paper!》
《No Johnny! You can't have your paper!》
《I want my paper!》 Johnny shouted, spitting and sometimes eating the words 《No Johnny! I said no!》 this time Mila replied with annoyance
《Paper! Paperrrr! Paperrrr!》 He continued to scream, he rocked back and forth with his body, he banged his hands on the seat in front of him where his father was once again in religious silence. Meanwhile, the mother was trying to get rid of the paper and plastic chewed by Johnny that Mila had promptly passed from the back seat.
《I'm sure I took everything out of his reach, everything that could be dangerous...》 the mother kept repeating as she got out of the car and threw the blob smudged pages and sharp plastic. Shee opened the door on Johnny's side, the woman always had a tissue to carry, wiped the drool of her son, which had now also fallen on his shirt and shorts, she also threw the handkerchief that reached the rest of the mass impregnated of the boy's saliva. She nervously checked between the sides of the seats 《There is nothing here ... here not even ... Mila see if you find something next to you or on the ground!》 Mila slipped her fingers through the meanders of her seat ... nothing, nothing like a newspaper or a piece of plastic, stalled for a moment longer, she had sensed a signal, she had seen a clue with the tip of her eye, she threw both hands on the ground next to his feet, here it is, found the newspaper!
It was not an instruction booklet, it looked more like a gossip magazine, one of those magazines that presented a bit of all the arguments, from the most suitable types of plants to cultivate in the garden to a section entirely dedicated to modeling with lots of instructions to build a magnificent sailing ship and look at the case...obviously the first part of the ship could not be missing. Here revealed the mystery, the instructions or what was left, half a torn page, and who knows what section of the bow or stern of that blessed ship had ended up in Johnny's mouth, he had found that talkative magazine, he had stumbled across the modeling section by accident and had rightly thought of having lunch with a plastic part wrapped in a side dish of paper pages.