Grasslands

by Andrew McEwan

  ‘There's no one on the drawers,’ said Vern.

  ‘He fazed out,’ said Almeric.

  ‘Will he faze back in?’

  ‘Any time now.’

  ‘What's he look like?’

  ‘A boiled lobster with beads.’

  ‘Beads?’

  ‘Yeah, a triple string round his neck.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I'm a special agent,’ Almeric told him.

  ‘Is a special agent different from just an agent?’ Vern wanted to know, thinking of the man-thing.

  ‘Right,’ said Almeric.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘They're special.’

  Vern borrowed Al's skull-and-crossbones labelled bottle, held his nose and took a drink.

  ‘That's disgusting,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ Almeric replied. ‘It's Algebrian.’

  ‘Tastes like battery-acid...’

  ‘It's made from imported seaweed.’

  ‘Imported from where?’ Vern had his suspicions.

  ‘Here,’ said Almeric, proving him correct.

  ‘From just down the coast,’ said Vern, nodding.

  The dark-haired girl and the giant had taken off all their clothes and were now incising each other with bite marks as they climbed the walls, keening.

  Lucy and Harriot shared a cigarette.

  ‘Don't worry about it,’ Almeric said, picking out their mingled reflections in the glass; ‘it's all part of the plan.’

  ‘Plan?’ said Vern automatically.

  ‘Yeah.’ The screwdriver came to rest. Almeric straightened with an audible crack. ‘The Galactic Overlords,’ he said, ‘are sick and tired of herring.’

  ‘I don't blame them,’ Vern answered, drinking deep and long. ‘I hate herring too.’ Especially red ones, he thought, lucidity a temporary resident of his skull.

  The lobster-person appeared on the chest of drawers and waved with an unsettling familiarity.

  ‘How long've you been an agent, Al?’

  ‘A special agent,’ corrected Almeric. ‘For as long as it takes to get the job done.’

  ‘How long's that?’

  ‘Until June the third.’

  Vern paused in his inebriation. He dug in his trouser pocket and found the white envelope with his picture in it, this address on the reverse, and the date: June the third.

  ‘What happens on June the third?’

  Almeric put his arm around Vern's shoulders and drew him away from the window and the coming storm.

  Vern was stunned; his mouth fell open. Almeric was the last person he's suspect of harbouring such comradely impulses. It was totally out of character and left him speechless. Almeric on the other hand seemed fired with a paternal zeal, inspired even, like a man whose finest hour was nigh.

  It was a shame then, an affront to his newfound dignity, when a horde of leather and denim clad bikers charged the door.

  Many things occurred at once.

  The bikers growled and barked in triumph, wielded lengths of pipe and fence.

  The dark-haired girl and the giant melted into the ceiling, their bite marks glaring tattoos.

  Lucy and Harriot shucked off their coats to reveal an array of sparkling lights and pulsating electronic gadgetry strapped about their slim bodies like jewelled lingerie.

  And through the window that may or may not have been H-shaped crashed the van that Vern had last seen dipping below the foamy hooves of white horses, Kevin at the wheel, the same Kevin or a different one who grinned now from the helm of the barnacle-encrusted work's vehicle. Edgar leaned out of the passenger window, his camera held before him, clicking and winding like a demented press photographer who had just stumbled upon a famous actress with her dress tucked in her knickers.

  Time froze everything. The instant was captured, immobile and everlasting.

  The universe moved on without this scene, taking Vern and his mouse with it.

  The vacuums rumbled angrily. The city on wheels thundered past, its sound echoed, translated into stalks of fiery lightning as the night sky exploded into a torrent of rain.

  The clock, any clock, read twelve exactly. The hydrogen bomb was a hydraulic bomb after all.

  And as one world ended another began.

  Vern's. He watched its making. He saw the stars hung up and the moon put out and set to waxing and waning. He witnessed the seasons, the sun and snow. He was present at the birth of a new day, which was as much as anybody could ask.

  He was unemployed come Monday.

  He'd set up his own business, he decided. Pizzas, maybe. More likely the repair and maintenance of diverse electrics and misunderstandable machinery.

  He'd be in direct competition with Stay Fixed.

  He'd call his new outfit Planes' Parts And Aparts, and have as his logo a shiny screwdriver.

  Oh, and a mouse.

  27 - BANDAGES

  The rain extinguishes the fires. A little of the mountains is washed away. In the trampled grass lie the fallen, man and pony side by side, the crows kept at a distance by the silver eagles whose hovering presence so illustrates the beauty and frailty of life and the hanging reality of often sudden death.

  Souls rise with the steam as the sun draws breath. I walk and stop, walk again, in search of those I might tend, as a loving gardener the limbs of plant and tree after the passage of a great storm. What can be repaired, I fix, and what cannot, I prune.

  The cuttings I collect will nourish once more the earth from whence they came, and will come again, in the springtime...

  ‘Hello Vern,’ said Joyce, passing him in the street.

  ‘Hello. ‘

  ‘What happened to your face?’

  ‘I cut myself shaving,’ said Vern.

  Joyce laughed. ‘You've certainly had some bad luck lately,’ she commented.

  Vern disagreed.

  ‘You don't think so?’

  ‘Not really,’ he told her. ‘It could have been a lot worse.’

  ‘How much worse?’ Joyce was aghast.

  ‘Well,’ Vern began, ‘civilization as we know it might've come to an end.’

  She poked him playfully in the ribs. He winced. ‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘Did that hurt? Are you okay, Vern?’

  ‘Okay?’ he gasped.

  ‘You've gone a funny colour.’

  ‘Then I'm fine,’ he said, and walked off.

  She caught up to him. ‘Tom said he was going to put some work your way.’

  ‘I hate work,’ Vern said.

  ‘He'll pay you for it,’ said Joyce. ‘I'll see he does.’

  ‘I hate money.’

  ‘No you don't, you're just down.’

  ‘Down?’ He paused.

  ‘In the dumps.’ Joyce smoothed her dress. ‘You'll pull out of it. I'd bet on that.’

  ‘You would? How much?’

  She folded her arms, feigning serious consideration. ‘Ten.’

  ‘Ten?’

  ‘Ten - twenty! But no more.’ Joyce smiled.

  ‘Twenty?’

  ‘Yes, twenty crowns your luck changes and you brighten up.’

  ‘Crowns,’ he repeated. ‘No bet.’

  Joyce looked tired. ‘Please yourself, Vern.’ She turned from him and strutted away.

  The sun went out and in.

  ‘Luck ain't free,’ said Vernon Planes.

  AFTERWORD...

  This has been a boiled-down novel; a prototype, if you will.

  This has been the turning point in the life of Vernon Planes, technician.

  The nameless city on wheels is a dead city, its defences automated, its dwellers having long since abandoned its towers for the grasslands, forests and clearings of their past creation, in search of a simpler existence.

  Vern, far from being stranded in an alternate plane, need only sniff the air to realize he is close to home. He has about his neck a tripl
e string of beads, clay baubles inscribed with letters, spaced with yellowed teeth.

  They read differently now, but that's another story. He has a world to explore, a world to casually peruse, to enjoy at a trot, a festive canter, as it were, on a calm-caboodle of tours.