beautiful monsters

Scutum - the shield

An extract from Crux, the novel I have been working on. Disclaimer: this is a recent addition, and it's really only a first draft at this stage. Daz had a fight with his best friend, Marama, then went off to a party and...

The moment Daz woke up he wanted to burrow under his pillow and claw his way back into sleep. His stomach felt as though it was filled with wet sand, cold and gritty.

“Fuck,” he said quietly, and then turned and slammed his fist into the wall. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

The sound that he’d squeezed out of her had been so quiet, it almost slipped into the darkness without him noticing. At first he thought it was a moan of pleasure, and he’d pulled her closer to him. Then the sound came again, only this time it was more like a whimper. Suddenly her body felt cold next to his own, and he pulled away. The film of sweat on his skin cooled and he began to shiver.

“Lola?” She didn’t say anything, just lay there. “Lola,” he said, louder this time. “Talk to me.” He backed away from the couch, and felt for the light switch. Her body seemed smaller in the sudden effulgence.

“Look at me,” he pleaded, kneeling down beside her, but she stared straight past his shoulder. It would have been easier if she’d cried, but she said nothing, just stared at the wall.

“Fuck,” he said again, and pulled the pillow over his head. Perhaps it had been the alcohol. The punch. It had gone to his head. He felt sick. He didn’t know what to do, he needed someone to tell him what he should do. Marama, he needed to talk to Marama. Then he remembered the way her voice had turned cold, the way her eyes had changed. He’d felt as though he didn’t know her anymore. He was such a jerk, she probably hated him, and Lola hated him, and she’d probably told Jess so the whole school hated him. He groaned and ground his face into the mattress, and then had to pick away the fluff from his sheets that stuck to his tongue.

Maggie. Suddenly he wanted his sister. Wanted her to tease him, and boss him around, and then give him a hug, one of her “squishy hugs,” he used to call them when he was a kid. He crawled out of bed and found some clothes to pull on.

The walk to her flat took him half an hour. It was raining; soft feathery rain, almost a mist. It didn’t so much fall as drift to the ground. Only on the telephone wires, and at the ends of branches, the moisture gathered into fat droplets that plopped to the ground. Everything glistened, as though the world had just been licked clean. The beauty felt incongruous with his life, as though God was mocking him.

Shit. God. Some Christian he’d make.

Maggie lived in the third of a row of identical flats. There were no signs of life as he walked down the driveway. He wondered, for a moment, if it was too early to call, but Maggie was an early riser. He knocked on the door, and as he waited he began to wish he’d thought to bring a jacket. The light rain had slowly soaked through and now his clothes clung to his skin.

Maggie’s flatmate answered the door, dressed in blue stripped pyjamas and puppy dog slippers.

“Hi Daz, I think Maggie must be up in her room. I just got up.” She held the door open for him, and he slipped through and made his way down the hall. Her bedroom door was shut, so he knocked quietly.

“Just a moment.” There was a pause, then he heard her padding across the room, and the door opened.

“Daz!”

He stared passed her into the room.

“Marama?” She was sitting on the bed, wearing a huge purple mohair jersey that mum had knitted for Maggie years ago. She was hugging her knees to her chest, and her eyes were fringed with red. Her face glistened, as though snails had left tracks over her cheeks. Her hair hung in shaggy strands that barely reached to her ears. “Your hair,” he said in bewilderment.

“This really isn’t a good time.” Maggie had taken his arm and was steering him out of the room. “We’ll talk soon,” she said as they reached the front door. He stood there for a moment, trying to think what to say, and she reached out to hug him. “It’ll be ok,” she said, ruffling his hair. “I’ll call you.”

In a daze he walked to the nearby park and sat on a hill overlooking the fields. A bunch of kids were kicking a rugby ball around. It hit the ground silently, then made a popping noise as it bounced back up.

“Light travels faster than sound,” he said aloud, and the knowledge was strangely comforting. The world was still behaving as it should. He noticed that the rain had stopped, but moisture from the grass was soaking through his jeans.

Maggie had answered the door in her dressing gown. That meant that Marama had gone round there early, even earlier than he had. Or that she’d been there all night.

Maggie’s jersey suited her. The green looked good against the pale brown of her skin. She looked comfortable in it. Cosy. He wondered if it was a cold morning, and rolled up his trouser legs to check for goosebumps. None, but there was a bruise on his shin that he didn’t remember acquiring. Somehow it struck him as funny, and he started to laugh. Under the jersey her legs had been bare.

She’d never had boyfriends. Well, she’d kissed Dave in Intermediate School, but that was a dare. He’d figured she was too busy for dating. Or that she secretly had a crush on him.

The rain started again, heavier this time, and the kids disappeared. Daz stood up, and spread his hands wide to catch the droplets.

“Today was brought to you by the letter F,” he said to the empty field. “Fuck, fuck FUCK!” His voice seemed to be swallowed up by the clouds.

*

He was lying on the grass at the edge of the field when the clouds lifted and the stars began to break out.

“Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight,” he chanted, suddenly remembering a book he’d had as a child. There was a little bear who desperately wanted a new lunchbox. All the other kids had colourful shiny lunchboxes with pictures of jungles and trains, but the little bear had a battered old gray one. So he wished on a star. Every night he stood in the back yard and whispered “Star light, star bright,” but his wish didn’t come true. One day his teacher found him crying over his lunchbox. When she found out what was wrong she explained to him that stars were very far away, and they might not have heard his message yet. So that night he went outside and shouted at the top of his voice, “I WISH I COULD HAVE A NEW LUNCHBOX!” His mother gave him a funny look when he came back inside. But the next day, he had a new lunchbox.

Daz laughed, and wished life was that simple. “Wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”

There were two bright stars, just above Maggie’s flat. “If you draw a line perpendicular to the line of the pointers,” he said, remembering his father showing him. “Then you draw a line through the Southern Cross,” he couldn’t find it. Weren’t the pointers supposed to point to it? He looked in both directions they seemed to be pointing, and then he looked in every direction around them, but it wasn’t there. Perhaps it was below the horizon. Did the Southern Cross ever dip behind the horizon? Surely not, how would anyone work out where south was?

Toni was in the kitchen when he got home. “I’m making hot chocolate,” she said. “Want some?”

“Ok.”

“Maggie stopped by. She said to tell you she was sorry about this morning. Wanna talk?”

“Not really.”

“Ok. Put on something warmer and come and keep me company while I drink this.”

His clothes were soaked and stuck to his skin, and as he peeled them off he started shivering uncontrollably. He ran the shower hot and let the water massage the goosebumps out of his arms and legs.

Toni was sitting on the back step when he reappeared, wrapped up in green; the big fluffy jersey that matched Maggie’s purple one.

“Mum, does the Southern Cross ever go below the horizon?”

“Not below our horizon it doesn’t.”

“I couldn’t find it.”

Toni scanned the sky for just a moment, then she pointed to the cluster of stars. He’d been looking in the wrong direction entirely.

“When I lived in the Philippines there were two constellations, Cassiopeia and the Southern Cross. They were like flip sides of a coin. When Cassiopeia rose above the horizon the Southern Cross dipped below, and when the Cross rose again Cassiopeia disappeared. You could never see them both at the same time. We can only ever see the Southern Cross here, but nearer the equator they chase each other on the edge of the sky.”

“Why can’t you ever see them both?”

“Actually I never really understood that,” she laughed. “Your father would know.” They were silent for a few moments, while Toni sipped her hot chocolate. Daz liked to wait until his was lukewarm. “Like counterparts,” Toni went on, and she sounded as though she was remembering something slightly painful. “Except for special circumstances.”

“What?”

When she spoke again her voice was so soft he wasn’t sure she was speaking to him anymore. “Sometimes, in special circumstances, you can see Cassiopeia and the Southern Cross at the same time.”

Posted by Fionnaigh at November 8, 2003 09:08 AM