Mistaken Identity
John and Brian fell out of the pub and they’d had enough to make them lose their balance. They had tripped over the step and landed with a thud on the car park outside. It was like broad daylight and the moon was full and waxing. They both lay there for a while looking up at the stars.
“Hey! John, is that really stars in the sky? Or are they buzzing around the inside of my head?”
Brian tried to stand up and failed miserably.
“I dunno, mate, ’cause everything is spinning,” John’s slurred reply came back.
Brian said, “I think I’ll phone for a taxi to get us home, or we won’t make it.”
“Who’s gonna pay for that? I ain’t got any money left.”
John pulled out his pockets.
Brian then suggested that they walk home. “We can either go through the graveyard or through the sheep field. Which way, mate? You choose.”
“If we go through the graveyard we’ll need a torch. Don’t forget it’s the old man Hammer’s burial tomorrow. I don’t fancy falling into any graves tonight. Although if we do, I suppose we can sleep it off until tomorrow.” John tried to put Brian off that idea, and he gave himself the shivers. “God we could get buried ourselves, if we fall asleep in there.”
Brian saw the funny side. “Well, at least we won’t be late for our own funeral.” He chuckled and went on.“Okay, I guess it’s the sheep field, then. I hope we don’t stand in any sheep poo, as it stinks. Still, it’s good for the garden.”
“I’ll use my mobile and try and get us a taxi,” John decided. “I can use my credit card to pay. Be my treat.”
In the taxi Brian looked at John and laughed at his snoozing face. He had a bar of chocolate in his pocket and it had melted. He giggled as he smothered John’s face with it.
As they got home, John reached into his pocket for the credit card. But instead he’d pulled out a rose compass. John carried it with him everywhere as it was a present from his late father.
“I can’t accept that,” the taxi driver said.
“Why not?” John was getting shirty. He still thought he was holding his credit card.
“That isn’t a credit card, it’s a rose compass, and we don’t take them.”
John finally paid for the cab, he went indoors and the baby was crying. He went to check on her and got quite a shock. Behind her cot it looked like a monster hovering there.
He went outside of the room and said. “Now I know I’ve had too many.”
John hadn’t realised it was his own face in the mirror, covered in chocolate.
Josie Smith
THE CRADLE RULES THE WORLD
It was supposed to be a game – only a game. You shine a torch, tight-beam, of course, and put your fingers in the way, and the strangest shapes appear on the wall. What are they? Who can say? Those with imagination, that’s who. Are they blessed? Are they cursed?
He wasn’t doing it for the baby – the baby just happened to be looking at the time. Babies do look, when they’re not asleep – and they’re never asleep when you want them to be, are they? Not much you can do about that – they haven’t learnt to count anything when they’re that age, even if they do go goo-goo when you show them the picture of the sheep on the mobile spinning above their head. They go goo-goo when you point to the cat, as well, and the cow and the rabbit and the dog, all of them twirling in the air…
And he wouldn’t have been sitting there, baby-minding, if he could have found his bank-card. He’d have been out, having fun, not still round his sister’s flat because he wanted to avoid his parents. He’d called in on her on his way to town, to have a chat – and then, when he’d wanted to go, he’d picked up his jacket, and put his hand in the pocket for the bank-card for the bus – and there it hadn’t been…
He carried on making the shapes, because there was nothing else to do. He’d have played a game on his mobile phone, if he could have found it. But that, too, had gone walkabout, wandered off into that big area of the Not Available Dreamtime. He’d had it, he knew he’d had it, like the bank-card, and he could have sworn it had been in his jacket-pocket. Borrowers, he thought? In my jacket? Or is my jacket-pocket like a wardrobe, a secret portal to another world?
The thought made him laugh. A good job something does! he reflected. Maybe he’d be better off as a little baby – look at the little bundle, fast asleep now, tiny fist clenched on top of the blanket. What does a baby need? Bank-card? Mobile phone? No – nothing. Just a bit of love and a bit of warmth. If only life were that simple for him… Well, it might have been, if he could’ve rung Jenny, and if she’d been free, and if he’d had any money… And after the pub, walking her home… there was a moon… he could see it through the window… Always one for moonlight, Jenny was, said it made her feel all…
WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!
That was the end of any dream. The baby was awake. He put down the torch, which he still had in his hand, and moved towards the cot, hesitantly. He knew one thing about babies. However you touch them, it’ll be wrong – especially if the mother’s only next door, which she was. And that noise wasn’t going to be stopped by a plaster-board wall. He leant over. There was a funny noise coming from the baby’s chest. Was it a kind of wheeze? He was about to intervene – but his sister barged him out of the way with the kind of body-check he was more used to getting on the rugby-field.
“There’s something wrong with its breathing… I heard an odd sound… ”
The mother, who had the bundle out of the cot and in her arms, reached inside the baby’s smock, pulled something out, and put it in his hand, which he had stretched out to indicate his concern. The mobile phone continued to buzz and vibrate.
Even as he looked, to see who was calling him, his mind was still partly on the child, and on maintaining his relationship with his sister, as a safe haven from his parents…
“And its hand,” he said, “its hand seems all stiff…”
The mother, rocking her child gently, opened the clenched little fingers, extracted the bank-card and passed it wordlessly to her brother, who took it open-mouthed with one hand, while continuing to text a reply with the other.
He nodded his gratitude, but he was already at the door, and clattering down the stairs.
His sister shouted after him, “I’ve told you before – hang your jacket up! Don’t just dump it on the cot!”
But he was already in the street, racing away.
The moon was full and bright!
Mike Rogers
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