Chester Parsons is Not a Gorilla

by Martyn Ford

  For the third time, I stepped into Brian’s office. I felt around on the ground for my body, then lay flat to look through the thinner smoke. I could only open Tito’s eyes for half a second at a time – it was like taking photos. Fire. Fire. Desk. Fire. Smoke.

  There. There I was. Asleep on the floor next to a burning piece of melted ceiling.

  I picked myself up and turned as a huge beam, hot and orange, fell in front of me. I was trapped. Dizzy, lost – confused. There was nowhere to go. I hugged my body tight, shielding it from the heat, holding my sleeping head and huddling low. This was it. It was over. Every direction was death and danger and pain and—

  BANG. A fire extinguisher exploded next to me, spraying white foam all over my fur and clearing a narrow exit. I squeezed through the doorway, stepping on crunching embers and grunting, patting out flames on my leg whenever they appeared.

  Into the stairwell, down, down, dizzy, coughing, carrying my limp body, hoping I was OK, hoping the smoke hadn’t done too much damage. Steam lifted away from my black hair as I stumbled outside and, still holding myself in my arms, sat on the ground. I could hardly breathe. I could hardly think.

  I just cradled my body and, still wheezing, tried to jump back into my own mind.

  At first I thought it was working – I heard a strange sound, like wind. But then it felt like I was falling, like my limbs were weightless. And weak. That strange peaceful sensation arrived. Warm. Comforting. I was letting go. Submitting to it. And it was fine. My vision blurred as I realised what was happening, as I realised what this feeling was. It was Tito.

  He was dying.

  The anger I had felt about Brian exploiting me seemed ridiculous now. How could I possibly be upset about that when this was exactly what I had done to Tito? Stolen him from his cage, then dragged him through all this fear and danger and pain.

  I felt him try to breathe but his body was giving up, shutting down. And then, with a sigh, everything went dark. I tried to cling on, I tried to move, I tried to kick my legs out like this was a nightmare.

  With every last piece of strength I could find, I jumped …

  There was nothing. I was nowhere. But, then:

  My eyes burst open and I took a huge lungful of air. I saw the sky filled with smoke. I breathed and breathed, panting and panting. Still lying in Tito’s arms, I looked up at his huge black head, which was hanging over me, perfectly still.

  Over to my left, I noticed the camera was on the ground, filming us here in this final pose. The animal-control van on one side, the broken gate and the burning building behind us.

  ‘Tito,’ I said, shaking him. ‘Wake up. Wake up.’

  His heavy arm was on my lap. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He didn’t squeeze back. Then I sat up and hugged his gigantic body as best I could. I felt warm tears stream down my cheeks. They were sooty and black. I wiped them away.

  ‘Please,’ I whispered. ‘Please wake up.’

  Holding him, I cried and pressed my ear into the middle of his wide, silent chest.

  So, yeah, that’s pretty much it. A lot of the earlier footage got destroyed in the fire, which was quite annoying. But everything we recorded over that crazy night and morning was still on the camera. Amy posted it on her YouTube channel. As you can imagine, it got plenty of views. Now she has millions of subscribers, so that’s good. And Brian was in massive trouble. Kidnap, fire-starting, all sorts of different crimes. Some I had never even heard of, but they sounded mega serious. I actually felt a bit sorry for him in the end, because he wasn’t ‘bad’. Well, I mean, all right, I guess he was – but he didn’t want to hurt anyone. He just wanted to make a good show which, I suppose, he did.

  Red Rose Pictures went bust after the fire – not because of the lies or anything, they just didn’t have insurance on their building. Some probably good people lost their jobs and stuff so maybe it was kind of sad. Brian wasn’t very popular with them.

  Remember Screentwist? Course you do, the production company that made Sword of Steel and Stone? Well, when all this stuff – about Brian, Red Rose Pictures, the star swimmers and everything else that happened – came out, they got in contact with Dave, who got in contact with us. (Dave’s my agent who sorts out my auditions, in case you forgot – he’s pretty cool. He’s also got a pet snake called Jeremy Taylor, which is odd because people rarely give pets surnames. Just thought – I’ve never taken control of a snake, wonder what that’s like? Probably horrible. Just a long wiggly body. No arms or legs or wings. Whoa, imagine how scary snakes would be if they had wings.)

  And now they’re making a film about it all. I think it’s going to be called The Boy Who Lost Himself – or something like that. I said they should call it Chester Parsons is Not a Gorilla, but they said that was a stupid title. In the movie I am playing myself, which is quite strange, and Francis is playing Detective Pepper again. So he’ll be an actor playing a character who is an actor playing a character. Makes me go cross-eyed to think about it. He’s also mentoring me at the moment and has given me some great tips.

  One of the producers, Harry (hi there), asked me to write some notes on the story from my perspective. But you know that already, because you’re reading it.

  I was dreading this – remembering everything and trying to write it down – but it’s actually been quite fun. Sorry if I got carried away. And I did as you said – I’ve been totally honest. But only because you promised (promised, promised, PROMISED) not to share it or publish it anywhere.

  That’s still the case, right? You’re not getting this printed? It’s definitely not getting published at all, even online?

  What else? Oh yeah, Amy’s got a new identity. Loser Amy is gone, thankfully, but now there’s Crazy Amy. Crazy Amy is obsessed with finding Cold Rain. She’s so obsessed in fact that it’s crazy – hence the name. Man, she does bang on about it.

  I have told her loads of times that he could be anywhere. Obviously, he got arrested, but as you know, he’s in a ‘coma’. Although really we all know what that means – he’s hiding somewhere, in another body, maybe a baby – hey, maybe a snake. He’d make a good snake. I hope if he has got himself a new body, he grows up to be better than he was – and, without the star swimmers to help him remember, it’s possible he will.

  ‘Don’t you want to find him for what he did to Dad?’ Crazy Amy sometimes asks, all wild-eyed and weird.

  ‘Yeah, but … where would we even start?’

  The star swimmers disbanded and basically disappeared. It was like they never existed at all – proper spooky stuff. There are even people now who think they’re made up. In fact, there are comments online from people who believe everything that happened to us was staged – as in, totally fake. Like a really big viral promotion for the film.

  Maybe that’s a good thing? Particularly for me, considering my history.

  Fred got in contact. He said that with Cold Rain gone the elders were happy to fix everything – to tell the truth, return all the children to their homes. Basically undo all the bad stuff they’d done. I sort of feel sorry for all those star swimmers – if they really were just trapped there, too scared to leave or challenge Cold Rain, then I guess they were victims too. They’re free now.

  Although apparently some are still out and about doing their old tricks. So if you ever see a person sleeping on the bus, it might just be a mind jumper. Give them a poke from me. (It might actually be a regular person who’s tired – if so, apologise for the poke).

  I asked Vladovski about that box of repressed memories in my head and he said I shouldn’t look at it until I am an adult. Which is fine by me. I’m happy pretending to be a normal kid and not a strange reincarnation of a semi-evil, nine-hundred-and-ninety-year-old mystic called Wise Earth. No matter how you slice that up, it’s unusual. (That’s another reason I want this to be mostly secret, Harry, because the whole Wise Earth stuff is a bit … I don’t know … dodgy?)

  After the fire, I was safely back in my body and they kept
me in hospital for a bit. While I was there, Francis showed me a photo on his phone. The image of the crashed animal-control van, the flattened gate, with Red Rose Pictures HQ all burned-out and black in the background. Me, lying in Tito’s arms. It was on a news website, and the headline of the story was ‘Animal Control’.

  ‘See, animal control – get it?’ Francis winked.

  ‘Yeah, I got that ages ago,’ I said. ‘Stop pointing stuff like this out.’

  There was another thing I was going to mention, something about—

  Oh yeah. The other week Dr Vladovski came over and we were in the garden and I saw that he put his arm round Mum’s shoulder. I thought nothing of it at the time. Then he came over again – just to see her and, this time in the kitchen, I saw they were holding hands. Honestly, it was one of the worst things I had ever seen. I wanted to attack him with a spade. Get away from my mum, you absolute scum box. But then I thought that was unreasonable. Then I thought some more and even imagined they might get married one day (obviously that’s just my imagination and probably wouldn’t happen). He would then be my stepdad.

  I looked at my thoughts, just like he had taught me to. After disgust had faded away, I felt positive about this idea. I remembered what he said to me in the dreamscape. He promised to be honest and to keep me safe. Those are the two main things really, if you think about it. Maybe throw in ‘be nice’ and you’ve got the full package.

  Also, Carlos wants to be in the movie – he’s actually amazing. Even though he’s pretty much all rat now, he still knows some incredible tricks. He sits and rolls over and does all the things a dog does, and more, which is cool. Can he be in it? Obviously, he’d play himself. It’d be better than CGI. Fake rodents always look wrong.

  But I want to be serious for a moment and talk about Tito. I felt bad about him. That really upset me. Poor guy. Not sure if he was a hero or a victim or both. But I am sure that he didn’t deserve everything I put him through. He certainly didn’t deserve to die while saving me. It’s hard to explain how attached I was to him – he was so much more than a friend, or a pet, or even family. He was part of me, I was part of him.

  Sorry to have such a sad ending – if it’s any consolation I feel super guilty about it. From now on I will be nicer to living things. I think we all should.

  After giving Mum a big load of cash from Screentwist (thank you again) and my remaining money from Red Rose Pictures, I donated the rest to some charities. One that helps people with malaria in some country I’d never heard of, and another that rescues gorillas when their forests get cut down, again in a country I hadn’t heard of – I think somewhere in Africa? Man, my geography is not good. I should look at a map.

  As for me, I’ve been pretty good at mindfulness stuff. I notice my own thoughts all the time and pay plenty of attention to what’s going on in my brain and my body. Now I hardly ever get lost in thought. This keeps me pretty calm, so I can go to auditions without The Fear ruining everything. Very handy. Occasionally I muck around with mind jumping, but I am always ultra-careful not to be gone too long. Also, I tie my body to the bed or the radiator or something, for obvious reasons.

  I think that really is it …

  Telling you this story has been difficult, but knowing how to end it? This is nearly impossible.

  Shame there’s not a cool bit where everyone’s smiling and that – you know the classic scene at the close of a movie when everything is all fine?

  Let’s pretend there was. OK. So it was summer and we were all in the park. Everyone. Even Dandelion somehow (I know that doesn’t make sense, but we’re just pretending). It’s all sunny and warm and great. There’s that summer smell in the air – birds tweeting, butterflies, everything. Picture the moment: visualise – we’re basically talking about paradise. Then everyone runs together and does a big group hug.

  ‘Hurray. Are we happy?’ someone asks. ‘Have we all learned a lesson and changed in some way?’

  And then everyone shouts ‘Yes’ together. People are laughing and high-fiving, pointing at each other and doing little knowing winks and fun eye-rolls before they hug again. It’s all a bit brighter than normal. Then everyone gets on a boat and the boat sails away towards the sun and then a piano plays and we fade out to black for the credits. And maybe there could be another bit at the end of the credits so some people stay in the cinema even though the lights have come on? Just a short scene, maybe with a squirrel?

  Or would that be a bit much? I don’t know – you’re making the film, you work it out.

  I feel like I should say something clever though. Something insightful that’ll sum the whole thing up? Something Francis would say.

  Um. Maybe … ‘The end’?

  That’s rubbish though.

  Oh, I don’t know. Just remember your favourite part. The roof bit with Cold Rain was crazy, right? I enjoyed meeting Carlos. (Oh yeah, he has an awesome cage in my room – essentially rat heaven.) And the supermarket section was quite fun. Honestly, this chapter is not that good. I’m rambling. It’s like I don’t want it to be over?

  But it is. It is done. Finished.

  As I can’t think of anything, I am just going to stop typi—

  Aha, you thought it was over. Did you know (you probably do), this is called ‘breaking the fourth wall’. Talking to the reader directly. Like in a theatre, you have two side walls and the back wall – and then a fourth imaginary wall between the actors and the audience. When you knock that down, you have broken the illusion.

  This is a bit like consciousness. You are the audience. Reality is the play. And the wall simply isn’t there.

  (That’s quite a cool last line? I mean, obviously I’ve ruined it now, with this one, but you get what I’m saying.)

  Anyway, cheers. Bye.

  About the author

  Martyn Ford is a journalist from Hampshire. His debut, The Imagination Box, received huge critical acclaim, and was followed by The Imagination Box: Beyond Infinity and The Imagination Box: A Mind of its Own. This is his first standalone title.

  Also by Martyn Ford

  The Imagination Box series:

  The Imagination Box

  The Imagination Box: Beyond Infinity

  The Imagination Box: A Mind of Its Own

  ‘Entertaining.’

  Financial Times

  ‘Exciting plotting is cleverly suffused with subtle humour.’

  BookTrust

  ‘A hugely entertaining adventure.’

  We Love This Book

  ‘Hilarious and extremely enjoyable. Will appeal to both boys and girls and will definitely make readers laugh.’

  Books for Keeps

  ‘An imaginative, exciting adventure.’

  WRD

  ‘An involving and highly entertaining read.’

  The School Librarian

  ‘A winning combination of ingredients, this is a fantastic title for confident readers.’

  Carousel

  ‘Should find broad appeal.’

  Booklist

  Copyright

  First published in 2019

  by Faber & Faber Limited

  Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street

  London, WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2019

  All rights reserved

  Text © Martyn Ford, 2019

  Cover illustration © John Kelly, 2019

  The right of Martyn Ford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and tho
se responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–33224–3