With Warm Regards, Franny

by Ben Chambers

  “I’m not missing, thank you very much!” I said. I was feeling very irritated at him. He was being incredibly rude! “Let me go!” I tried another karate chop. It didn’t work this time, though. He wouldn’t let go of me. He started pulling me towards the car.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said. He was kind of yelling at me. “You’ve got to see your mother.” He was still pulling me toward the car.

  “Stop!” I screamed. I started hitting him in the face and stomach and anywhere I could reach. But I couldn’t get him very well. I only had one arm. He was holding my other one.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, you crazy girl,” he said. Then he grabbed my other arm, so I couldn’t hit him anymore.

  “Help! Help!” I started screaming. “Let go of me!” I tried to kick him, but I couldn’t really do it properly. He was too strong. He was pulling me over to his car. Then, suddenly, someone ran up and punched Pete right in the face. Right in front of me, I saw him get punched in the nose. He let go of both of my arms right away then. Pete sort of stumbled backwards and fell right down onto the concrete with a big grunt. It was the man who I saw before, with the red hat. The one who stopped to look at us across the street. He had punched Pete. He started saying something to me, but I didn’t hear him. While Pete was still on the ground, I knew I could get away. I ran as fast as I could. I just kept running and running. I was so glad to get away. I was very thankful that man had saved me. I wish I had said thank you to him, but I didn’t think of it at the time. I ran all the way through the university until I got to the park. Once I was pretty far into the park, I turned around and saw that there was no one behind me. I had gotten away. I leaned up against a tree to catch my breath. I was breathing very hard.

  After I calmed down a little bit, I started thinking about that man doing that very cool punch. I’d never punched anyone in my life before, but it looked very cool. Very badass. I turned to face the tree that I had been leaning on and put up both my hands in fists in front of my face, like boxers do. Then I started pretend-punching the tree. I was ducking left and right and throwing a lot of jabs and upper cuts. I’d seen quite a few scenes like that in some movies. I pretended the big tree was big old fat Pete, and I was punching the daylights out of him. I was hitting him over and over with awesome combos. I wound up this very big hit and let loose right in his jaw, just to finish him off. Then I pretended the tree slowly started tipping over, like they do when you see loggers cut them down. Right there in the middle of the park I yelled, as loud as I could, “Timber!” and raised my arms up in victory.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was in the park then, just walking along trying to think of what to do. Sometimes, when I’m feeling upset, or if I’m trying to figure something out, I like to go for a walk through the park where there are lots of trees and grass. Normally, it’s very relaxing to be in all the nature. It’s especially nice when there are birds, too. But the birds must have all gone to sleep, because I didn’t hear any. And the park didn’t look too relaxing at night, to be honest. It was kind of spooky. The park was mostly lots of grass with this pathway that went through it. It was just one very long and squiggly pathway. There were only a few lamps with some light, and the rest of the park was all dark. Even though I couldn’t see it just then, I knew there were patches of bushes and trees spotted all around the place. I started thinking that anything could be in those bushes, watching me, and I wouldn’t be able to see it. It could be rats or people or even my dad.

  It seemed all of a sudden that the wind picked up. Maybe it’s because I was in the park and there wasn’t as much shelter from buildings and things. I actually started to get very cold pretty quickly. The wind was blowing quite hard, and I even started shivering a little bit. I sort of hugged myself by grabbing each of my shoulders and crossing my arms across my front. I was trying to keep in some of my body heat so that I wouldn’t feel so cold. But it didn’t work very well. I thought maybe it would be very nice if I had a very nice warm blanket, and if I was in bed in my own house, and if my dad was coming in to my room to say goodnight to me, like he used to do. He’d always do this very nice thing. He would always come into the room, and he’d put something on the bed next to me. I wouldn’t know what it was at first, because it would be quite dark in my room. I like sleeping in the complete dark. Some people like night lights in their room or to keep the hallway light on or something. But I don’t. I like it pitch-black. But my dad would put something down next to me, and when I felt it, it was a hot water bottle. It would be all jiggly and very nice and warm, and I’d hug it in close to me. I’d pull it under the blanket and hold it right into my tummy. I like that the best, because you can feel the warm spread all throughout you, kind of like if you’d just drunk a very warm hot chocolate, maybe. Then my dad would lean down and say, “I love you from top to bottom, side to side, back to front, and toes to nose.” That’s what he used to say to me every night, when he’d tuck me in to bed, and he’d kiss me right on the very tip of my nose just after he said it. Even when I wasn’t a little girl, even when I was quite big, he’d still say it to me. Sometimes I’d think it was very lame, because I was old, and you’re only meant to say that sort of stuff to kids. But mostly, I’d secretly think it was very nice.

  I started thinking some more about my dad then. It was kind of making me feel quite happy. I was thinking about when I was little, and he used to play guitar for me. He was pretty good at playing guitar. Ever since I remember, he would always practice once or twice a week. Every now and again, he would call me over and ask me what song I’d like to hear. Sometimes, I’d ask for songs that he didn’t know how to play. He’d say he was sorry that he couldn’t play it, but that he’d try to learn it for me for another time. Often, he did do that, too. He would go to the library and find the sheet music for all my favourite songs. Even if he didn’t like the song himself, he’d learn it anyway, just so that he could play it for me.

  But then we’d find a song I liked that he did already know how to play, and he’d start playing it. Then, one of my favourite things to do when I was a young girl, I don’t know why, but I’d ask him to play the song faster. He’d be playing it really well, just like the real song, but I’d ask him to play it faster. So he would. But then I’d start asking him to play it even faster than that. I’d start saying “faster, faster” over and over again. And he’d keep playing it even faster than before, and I’d get so excited. I don’t know why, but I’d just get so excited and start bouncing all over the place as it got faster and faster. Then, when it was so fast that he couldn’t play any faster at all, and his fingers were going like crazy, and I was jumping all over the place like a maniac, he’d accidentally mess up, and we’d both just start laughing more than we’d ever laughed before. And he’d pick me up and we’d both laugh so much together. He’d call me a wild child, and I’d laugh a lot at that too. It was some of the most fun I ever had.

  I was really happy for a moment, thinking about that. I actually had a big smile on my face, I didn’t even notice I was doing it. But then I remembered he was dead, and I wasn’t smiling any more.

  I started wondering what happens to tattoos after you die, like my dad’s Piglet tattoo. If it rots away or not. I know your skin kind of rots and disappears when you die, but I wondered whether your tattoo did, too. Or whether it just stayed there, looking the same, while the rest of your skin turned black. I wasn’t too sure.

  Then I started thinking about maybe I should go home to my flat to sleep. But then I remembered all the things that happened to me the other night. I didn’t even understand why my flat mate, Tom, did it to me; he wouldn’t tell me. That was the worst part of it all. He didn’t say anything at all the entire time. It was horrible. He just kept touching me all over and lifting up my skirt, and I kept asking him what he was doing and telling him to stop and pushing him away from me, but he just kept doing it and didn’t say anything at all.

  I started getting very scared of the dar
k just then. The park was very quiet, and I couldn’t really see anything around me at all, except for the path, and a whole lot of shadows. Then all of a sudden, I called out, “Vincent.” I was trying to see if my cat, Vincent, was anywhere around. I sort of said it not too loud, in case there were people listening. I started looking around but couldn’t see him anywhere. I started feeling very panicked. “Vincent!” I yelled out again but pretty loud this time. I thought that if Vincent was with me, he would make me feel safe, and I could cuddle him all the way through the park, so I wasn’t scared any more. I started crying and kept yelling “Vincent!” over and over. But I couldn’t see him anywhere.

  I had these tweezers in my bag for if I ever needed to make adjustment to my eyebrows. I stopped and took them out. They were these ones with very sharp ends so that you could get all the pesky little hairs that didn’t want to come out. I pulled up my skirt a little bit, so that my thigh was kind of exposed, and dug the sharp point of the tweezers into the skin there. I pushed quite hard until blood started coming out. That made me feel a bit better. I sort of stopped crying after that. Then I wiped the tweezers on my skirt and put them back in my bag. My skirt was black, so I knew it wouldn’t stain it or anything.

  I was walking towards the centre of the park, towards this big rotunda thing that was there. It was this big circular area with a roof and seats that you could sit on. But when I got quite close to it, I saw this man sitting on the seats. He was smoking a cigarette. I thought he looked quite scary, in the dark there. I couldn’t really tell what he looked like, though. I could mostly only see his outline and the little glowing end of the burning cigarette. I didn’t really want to go near him, but I didn’t have a single choice, unless I wanted to turn around and go back to university and risk running into Pete again.

  The path went right by the man. I kept on walking and sort of put my head down. I learned from quite a young age that when boys and drunk people and things are yelling at you and trying to get your attention, if you just put your head down and keep going, it works most of the time. But when I got near to him, he said something to me. “Hey miss.”

  I was worried something like that would happen. I know I should have just ignored him, like I said before, but for some reason I didn’t even think. I stopped and turned to look at him.

  “You want a smoke?” he said.

  I should have run away right then. But for some reason, I said, “Okay.” I don’t even know why I said it. It was a very immature thing for me to do. I know that. My mind was just really jumbled up at the time. I was actually feeling quite cold though, and I sort of thought a cigarette could warm me up. I thought I could just take it from him and go smoke it by myself somewhere. I’m not much of a smoker, but I smoke occasionally. At parties, mostly. I suppose I’m a social smoker. But when I walked over to him, he motioned for me to sit down next to him, so I did. He was probably fifty, maybe. I’m not very good at telling people’s age. He looked quite scraggly. I think maybe he was homeless or something. He didn’t smell too good, either. He handed me the cigarette he was smoking. It was already half burnt down. I could smell then that it wasn’t a normal cigarette. It was drugs. I took one puff. It’s quite embarrassing to say, but that was actually the first time I had smoked any drugs. I’ve seen my friends do it before, but I never really felt much like doing it with them. It’s odd, though, because even though I knew it was drugs, I actually still did feel like smoking it that night. I kind of didn’t really care anymore if it was bad for me. I guess it was because I didn’t feel too good. I thought it might be fun. I thought it might cheer me up. But it didn’t. It just made me feel very tired, mostly.

  We both kept sitting there together, smoking. We didn’t say anything to each other at all. I guess he wasn’t interested in talking to me. He just handed me the cigarette a few times and let me smoke it. I was just looking around at the park and thinking about how different it was at night. It wasn’t really pretty anymore in the nighttime. It was just dark. I wondered if maybe it actually was still pretty and that I just couldn’t see it, because the sun was gone. Or whether it actually changed at night, and it wasn’t pretty any more at all. And even if you had lots of light to see things, it still wouldn’t be pretty. Until the morning, when it would get nice again. It was quite a strange thought. I wasn’t even sure if it made sense, but I was thinking about that anyway, for quite a while.

  I started to feel a bit sick, so I lay down on the bench. I had my eyes closed, but I could hear the man take out another cigarette and light it for himself. I didn’t really remember too much after that. The next thing I knew, it was the morning time. The man was gone, and there were already people walking through the park. I got up and started walking towards university. My hip was quite sore from sleeping on the bench, and I had a headache, too. I decided I would go use the student bathrooms. I really wanted to brush my teeth and have a shower.

  Chapter Twelve

  I went into the bathroom block underneath the commons building. It was the only one with showers. It was completely empty in there, and it was very quiet too. It was almost like a basement, with no windows and nothing moving in there. I went past the row of toilet stalls and down the back towards the showers. They have two showers in there, side by side. The water pressure isn’t very good, but the water gets extremely hot if you turn it all the way up. I love very hot showers. Like boiling water. I love it best when I get out of the shower and look in the mirror, and my skin is all bright red. That’s when I know a shower was really hot enough.

  I went into the shower stall and hung my bag up on the hook on the back of the door. They have a convenient hook there for hanging up all your stuff and a little shelf for your shoes. I started taking off my top when I remembered I didn’t even have a towel with me. I wouldn’t be able to get dry after my shower if I didn’t have one. I had one in my locker actually, for just this sort of occasion. But that was way down the corridor. I was just standing there, not wearing any t-shirt, only a bra, and not sure what to do. Then I had this very mischievous thought. I thought maybe I could just go get my towel but not even put my shirt back on when I went to get it. I could just run down the hallway, into the locker area, with only a bra. I thought some people might see me, but I could be very cheeky and just run past them very quickly, so they wouldn’t be too sure what they saw. They would think they knew what they saw, but they couldn’t be certain. I thought that would be very naughty and a lot of fun, too. But after a moment, I realised I didn’t want to do that. I wasn’t really feeling the best, and you have to be feeling pretty good to do something like that. I put my shirt back on and took my bag and stuff with me to the lockers. I thought about leaving all my stuff in the shower stall, but I didn’t want to risk it. I’ve had a lot of bad luck lately.

  They have all the lockers in these big long hallways. It was kind of freaky down there. Especially that early, when nobody was around. It was just me and about a million grey lockers. But I remember, back in my second year at university, I discovered something very exciting. When you go to buy your locker, they give you a padlock and two of these little keys so that you can unlock it. I think one of the keys is a spare, in case you lose the first one. But one day, I was in the hallway with all the lockers, and I suddenly got very curious. I was curious about what was on top of the lockers. Because I was too short, and I could never see up there. So I started jumping up and down to get a better view. Mostly it was just dust and some rubbish, but then I saw something special. I saw a shiny little silver key. I jumped up and grabbed it very quickly. It was one of the keys for a locker padlock. I could tell because they all look pretty much the same. Then what I did was I started trying the key in some of the locks. I started seeing if it would fit into any of the padlocks around where I found it. And it did! I was so shocked! I had only tried it in about four different lockers, and then one of them worked! It was practically right underneath where I had found the key. I opened the locker and found a bunch of textbooks and
paper inside. I remember getting a bit nervous and looking all up and down the hallway. There wasn’t anyone there, but I figured anyone could come around the corner at any moment. So I shut the locker pretty quickly and locked it back up. Then I jumped up again and put the key back where I found it.

  But that made me even more curious. So I started jumping up and down all the way along the hallway. You might not believe me, but I found about five keys! I really did! They were all up on top there. The owners must have thought they were being very sneaky, hiding them up there. But I discovered the secret. Whenever I found a key, I would try all the lockers around it. Sometimes people would walk past, and I would have to stop and pretend like I was tying my shoe or something. I felt like a detective. I was even able to get into about two more lockers; it was insane! I found all sorts of stuff in those lockers. Mostly just class stuff which wasn’t too interesting. But in one of them, I found a bouncy ball. I remember it exactly. It was this little yellow bouncy ball with a smiley face on it. When no one was around, I took it out of the locker and threw that thing as hard as I could against the ground. You should have seen it! That little ball went psycho. It bounced around about a hundred times in that narrow hallway, flying off everything. I almost fell over trying to run after it to catch it again. I probably looked crazy. It kept bouncing away from me. But luckily, I managed to grab it and stuff it back in the locker before anyone discovered me. I bet there are still lots of keys up there, but I haven’t ever checked again.

  I found my locker and opened it up. I had quite a few interesting things in there. Some of my treasure. There was a t-shirt that I forgot was even in there. I hadn’t been to my locker in quite a while. I always like to get a locker at university every year, to keep my stuff in. But after about a week, I always forget that I even have it. So it’s kind of a little bit useless. The t-shirt was of Freddie Mercury, who is this very good singer that I like. I really like wearing the shirt because it reminds me a lot of Freddie when I look down and see him, and that usually makes me happy. I hate it though when I see people who wear t-shirts of bands, and then they don’t even know anything about the band. They just wear it for fashion, instead of for liking the band a lot. I once went into a class in my first year of university, and I didn’t have any friends to sit next to. But then I almost couldn’t believe it. I saw this person wearing a t-shirt of Freddie Mercury, too. And so, I went to sit next to them. I was quite excited, because I thought we would have some interesting conversations since we both liked the same stuff. But as soon as I started talking to them about Freddie, I could tell straight away they didn’t even really know who he was. It made me quite annoyed, and I wanted to get away from them quickly. But I couldn’t, because the lecturer started talking and you’re not allowed to move any more. It just seems crazy that people would wear a shirt like that when they don’t even like what’s on it.