Strange But True
James offered me some of his magic mushroom, which I declined. Obviously he participated in taking some himself. Oh wow, he sank down to the floor and he must have been on a disastrous journey. He screamed, “Take it away!” He was trying to disappear into the corner that he’d slumped down into.
This went on for over an hour, and then it got a whole lot worse. He screamed again.
“Save me! That pirate is going to make me walk the plank and there are sharks in the water. Help, help! Get that monkey off my back, the thing’s choking me.”
There was an axe on the wall and he flew across the room and then began attacking the furniture and then he came for me. I punched him and put him out, and the silence was deafening.
I bent to check if he was still alive. He’d been acting crazy and I’d hit him hard. Picking up my specs, that had fallen off as I’d hit him, I phoned the police. I was shaking and wasn’t sure they would understand that what I was telling them was the truth.
I buried my head in a picture on the wall which was of a dinosaur and felt it might be good if he could come to life and eat me. How the heck had I got into this mess? How will I explain about the magic mushroom, and how I had refused to partake? They will probably think that I’d supplied him with it.
I should have gone with John to Cornwall fishing or crabbing, that would have been great.
If only I had not come here. It was a case that James was new to our community and had no friends to speak of; I’d felt sorry for him. I placed my hands over my eyes as my thoughts were driving me mad. I stooped and picked up a toy ray gun, and I said under my breath, Beam me up, Scotty, it’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.
The Police arrived and got James into an ambulance. He was still very quiet. They asked me to accompany them to the Police station. I asked if I could use the loo as I needed to pee. Reluctantly they agreed to allow it.
I sat in the police car staring out of the window. I gazed at the mountains and felt a shiver as the snow on the Scottish mountains was so white and looked really cold.
At the Cop shop I tried to explain what had happened and apologised that I had hit James. But I explained that he would have killed me in his drug-ridden stupor if I didn’t defend myself.
Their faces said it all, a tall story, I was sure that’s what they were thinking. I have never been so wrong. After they had checked James out they found he moved from his last place because the police had found he was supplying drugs and his usual trip was the Toadstools or the magic mushrooms. As I left the Police station I took a deep breath and a lung full of air. Glad to be free. I’ll be more careful in future.
When my mates meet me after their holidays I will tell them about my adventure with the magic mushroom and the Police. I just bet they think I’m spinning a tall story.
Josie Smith
INTERPRETATION
She knew she had another pair, but she also knew she’d need the first pair to find them. She always kept a spare spare pair in the car, as well as a spare pair for driving, but the car-key wasn’t in its usual place in the hall-stand drawer, and if her fingers couldn’t locate it, her eyes certainly wouldn’t be able to… The ones for driving, which were in the right place, where the key should have been, were only good for seeing things that were already thirty metres away. They glared sneeringly up at her from the drawer.
Did it – at the moment – matter? She ran through what she had to do. Tim was coming for lunch – but he was bringing it with him from the market. Fresh crab! She wasn’t a dog, and she didn’t actually know anyone called Pavlov, but she felt the glands in her mouth begin to work…
Should she tidy up? Caution advised against it. If she didn’t recognise what she was dealing with, how could she be sure she was putting it in the right place? If it was in the wrong place, she’d never find it again! Printed matter was right out. Even things with pictures could be mistaken for other things with pictures…
Surely she could prepare salad with safety? Rip lettuce apart? Grate carrot? Slice cucumber? Mushrooms? She hesitated. She’d been on a fungus foray at the weekend. Her trophies were still in a brown paper bag in the kitchen. What if… ? She shuddered. Simpler was safer. Not being able to see clearly was bad enough. Seeing things that weren’t there, after eating the wrong kind of mushroom, would be horrendous.
She raised her head from the sink, where she was washing the lettuce. Was that really a monkey, hanging from the whirligig washing line by its tail, with its mischievous head looking straight at her? She closed her untrustworthy eyes, and didn’t open them again until she knew she’d be looking at a head of lollo rosso. She let her fingers do the work, and the salad spinner.
The bell rang. Tim early? She ran up the hall. Through the glass of the front door she saw a pirate, his head scarved in a bandana, his hand raising an axe. Naturally, she stopped running, breathed to calm down and switched on her reason. Mad axemen, she said to herself, don’t ring the bell.
It was a smiling, Central European deliverer, baseball cap on back to front (bandanas, after all, were so seventies) and holding a long box, wrapped in shiny black plastic up at an angle that caught the sun, while he fumbled for his signature machine. And after all that – it was for next door.
She’d turned round, and was going back to the kitchen when she saw the brontosaurus skull and backbone hanging on one of the hall-stand hooks. Its eyes glinted at her. It was enough. It was too much. She stood where she was and covered her face with her hands.
Fortunately, Tim was a little early. He rang the bell. He peered through the glass. There was something large and upright in the hall. A carpet? He knew Sheila was planning some changes in the house – that was why he’d brought with him the thing that weighed so heavily in his left hand. He shifted it to his right, and pressed the bell again, in case it hadn’t made a connection.
Sheila, motionless in her brown cord trouser suit, turned and went to the door, eyes downcast, as if she were a Victorian heroine, for fear of seeing anything. As it was, she noticed at once what Tim had in his right hand, which would have eluded her gaze if she’d been on tiptoe, ready for a peck on the cheek.
“My God, what’ve you brought a bloody gun for?” she said – not screaming – she had enough sense not to do that – but in a voice sharpened to breathless hoarseness by intense concern and anxiety. On the one hand, she wanted to close the door, to have the disturbing conversation in privacy – on the other hand, she didn’t want to voluntarily shut herself in with a homicidal maniac.
“It’s a drill,” said Tim, as flatly as he could (which was pretty flat). “You said you needed some shelves putting up.” Normally, he’d have given Sheila a peck on the cheek, and stepped inside – but as things were, he felt a little hesitant.
So she grabbed him, and pulled him in, and back-heeled the door into place as she spun round, and jumped up and pecked him on the cheek and hissed into his ear, “I’ve lost my glasses.”
“These?” said Tim, stretching out his arm towards the hallstand hooks.
The brontosaurus’ll have him! she thought – but it didn’t, because he grabbed its eyes, and it never even moved. But by now Sheila had closed her own eyes, and was just standing completely still.
She felt Tim putting something into her hands, a shape whose feel she recognised. She took what he had offered her, and put it in place on her face, with her eyes still closed, and then opened them.
The brontosaurus head was still on the hook – but it was a crumpled crocheted beret, with bobbles and hollows, and its shiny eyes were gone, she now understood, because they were helping her own pair make sense of the world. Below it hung a coarsely-knitted scarf that she had braided over and over with itself, to keep it from hanging down and snagging on the tops of the umbrella-ribs underneath.
“I came early,” said Tim, putting the drill down carefully on the hall-stand, “because I’ve got to go early – something unexpected came up – so we’d better eat at once, if that’s all right.”
“I’ll just go and finish the salad,” said Sheila, brushing past him, to get into the kitchen.
“Can I do anything?” he asked. “In the way of DIY, that is?”
“Well,” Sheila called from the kitchen, “the painting by the fireplace is meant to go over it. If you put a screw in the wall, we can adjust the height with the picture cord afterwards.”
As she washed the carrot before grating it she looked out of the window. The cheeky peg-bag had half unhooked itself from the whirligig clothes-line and was dangling by one prehensile handle, while the other was reaching down to pick up a piece of fruit. She laughed quietly to herself. Who needs drugs? she thought.
Tim had already hung the picture. She thanked him. They ate. They chatted. They ate. He caught sight of the clock and had to go. The peck at the door lasted a bit longer than usual – after all, he’d just saved her sanity.
She came back in, sat at the table and slowly finished the second half of her glass of white wine, looking at his handiwork, and reflecting on the problem it posed.
It was a large and artistic photograph of snow-capped mountains reflected in the stillest of still lakes, seen, as Tim saw it, from underneath the branches of a shady, overhanging tree… Dark and anonymous foliage framed the top of the picture, and the reflection in the water glowed with inner light. However, if one thought of it differently, or actually looked at the label on the back, which had presumably been stuck on the right way up, one formed a different impression…
Who was she to assert that her view of things was the only right one? Of course, she could hang it the other way up when she was alone in the house – but then she’d have to remember to turn it the other way up whenever Tim was coming round, and that would be an awful bore if he started coming round as often as she hoped he would after that slightly longer than usual peck… Maybe she’d have to get used to his way of seeing things a bit more of the time… and if she ever found that a little constricting… well, she could always just take off her glasses!
Mike Rogers
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