Something new! After well over a (rather rollarcoaster-y) year and change! It's very rough and hopefully to be continued but I hope you all like it :)
The thing
is, the thing it’s all about, everything that is, is resonance. Resonance can
shatter glass and shake mountains, can orchestrate a canine choir and even
drive a dictator to tears. All you need to do is find the right frequency.
On that
note (ha-ha), you can have your traditional witches and wizards with their
widdershins, mugwort and fancy magic circles and their stuff works. It’s how
they were taught to think and what they believe – that’s the frequency that
works for them.
Or, if you
happen to be an untaught, off the radar girl you can do the same trick with a
tube of your mother’s lipstick and the shiny side of a kitkat wrapper.
I get the
feeling I’m not making much sense. I should probably start at the beginning and
then maybe you might have a clue what I’m talking about.
The thing
is, my thing that is, I made a promise I shouldn’t have.
****
It wasn’t a
bad promise, one made with ill intent or to get something in return. It was one
that, even though I made it with sincerity, I should never have been able to
keep in the natural order of things. It was a kind lie – like those little plug
in night lights well meaning mothers get and assure their toddlers that it
would totally and absolutely prevent the monster under the bed from coming out
and devouring their souls. A promise like that.
But maybe
the moon was full when I made it or I got bitten by a radioactive wish granting
spider or one of the many small gods got bored of the many talent shows on telly
and decided to play a practical joke on the universe in general and me in
particular. Or maybe I just hit the right note at the right time in the
universal symphony. In any case what happened, happened.
And I got
to keep my impossible promise.
****
My mother
was always the anxious sort. A bit (a lot) overprotective. No playing where she
couldn’t see me, all medical shots carefully catalogued and up to date, and
every lunchbox tested for nutritional value. At school I used to have to sneak
cans of coke from my friends at lunch break – then brush my teeth afterwards
and gargle mouthwash to hide the smell. Even then she still knew.
She had
men, in and out of our lives, now and then. She was always the pretty one. They
didn’t stay. I thought that I was her anchor, an unchangeable fixture that let
her navigate electro hustle and bustle of being alive. On the rare occasions we
watched the BBC news together (something I’ve always hated watching. It’s bad
enough suspecting that the human race is rapidly going to hell
in a high speed jam packed runaway tube train, let alone having it confirmed at
8pm every night) all too often it showed gaunt eyed grey looking parents whose
kids had gone missing. She used to grip my hand tightly and say, in a voice as
cold as the grit at the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean, ‘if you die before me I
will kill myself.’ And then I would laugh and say that even if I died I’d never
leave her. I’d crawl back from the afterlife with news of Nan and some awesome
celestial accessories and keep her company. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick
a needle in my eye promise, promise, promise.
It was
stupid bad luck really. What happened to me. I wasn’t even his type. He missed
the one he was after and I was just a convenient substitute.
Wrong
place, wrong time. Bad luck, like I said.
It still
hurt.
When I woke
up there were bits missing, on the inside. I was a conscientious organ donor,
when I was alive. I thought it would be better to put them to good use rather
than have them go to waste and rot in the ground. However, I really was very
glad that they only took the one eye.
The funeral
parlour had clearly tried really hard to get me looking, if not pretty, then at
least in one piece and somewhat presentable. My textiles teacher would have been
really impressed with whoever did the stitches. I appreciated the effort. I
even send a thank you card, much later in time.
What I
remember most about that first night was the cold. Even though the evening was
balmy and nicely plant/flower/green thing fragranced and stuff I was so cold. The grave
dirt under my nails felt like it had come from the dark side of the moon. The cold and that the dress I was wearing was
weird. I didn’t think it was mine. When did I ever wear dresses? Later I found
out that a distant aunt had picked it for me. Mum couldn’t attend my funeral,
on account of being on trial for murder.
He was
going to get away with it you see. The evidence didn’t add up or it was
corrupted or something. They couldn’t hold him.
Mum knew.
Knew that he was the one who had done those things to me.
On the last
day of the trial, when the jury proclaimed him innocent, she shot him as he
walked out the door. Rumours say that, when she stood over his cooling corpse she
told it ‘why don’t you go and entertain my daughter for a while – she’ll be the one with the
chainsaw.’ But of course, you can’t always believe what you hear, and razor
blades have always been my personal weapon of choice.
It was a
bit tricky visiting her at first – being
legally dead and all. Weirdly, or maybe luckily, despite having my photo
plastered all over the news, no one seemed to recognise me. It could have been
my scars. In the end, I pretended to be
one of my cousins.
Mum was the
only one who saw me as me. When she walked in she went white, really white but
her eyes seemed like black holes – like they were cigarette burns in one of
those posh white rugs. And then she started crying.
I go see
her whenever I can. One of her new friends inside has helped me set up a new
identity. I wanted a snazzy name like Tallulah or Scarlett or better yet my own name but she called me Frankie.
Frankie Price. Funny or not, depending on your sense of humour.
I don’t
tell mum but sometimes I can’t remember my old name. It just goes out of my
head, like the taste of blue ice lollies and the feel of a clean glass out of a
hot dishwasher. At least my name I can check. I go back to the graveyard and
trace the letters carved out on the tombstone. The grass has grown over my plot
but I can still feel the deep brown earth below calling me.
I wonder if I lay
down, could I get up again? Would I want to?
I don’t lie
down, I don’t tell mum.
***
Of course,
the trouble with starting at the beginning is, especially the beginning of
something weird and mad and unlikely, is usually it’s filled with cruddy,
emo-angst recollections. Which, let’s face it, you’re not that interested in.
No, what
you want to know is why I’m crouched on the loo seat of a toilet I paid 30p to
not urinate in, trying to draw a house on a still-chocolate-smeared kitkat
wrapper with a slightly melted and out of shape pink lipstick whilst silently
cursing an inmate of Her Majesty’s Penitentiary called Brenda. Oh, and trying
not to fall into the less than salubrious toilet water below.
Now you’re
interested right?
So where
were we? Oh yes. You see, it’s all about resonance.
