Collective Invention by Magritte

The Maidmer

by Graheme Wilson

Claire was having a nightmare in which she was drowning, at least she hoped it was a nightmare. If she wasn’t dreaming than this easily qualified as the worst day of her life, even worse that the day fifteen years ago she was thrown naked out of the girls changing room at school or the day five years ago that she drove her first car into the back of her dad’s new blue Mercedes. She decided to own up immediately and when he finally calmed down he gave her money to have it towed away and crushed. She had survived many nightmares and so far had a 100% survival rate. This time she wasn’t so confident. For one thing It was not normal to be aware in a nightmare that there were any other states of consciousness.

The feeling of helplessness she was currently suffering was common to dreams, the same feeling in waking life usually had a practical way out, she could call someone for help or browse the net and something could be done about it. Claire formulated an idea, she would reason out her situation and by the time she had finished everything would be back to normal, whatever that was.

She started simply so as to creep up on the problem without it suspecting she was approaching.

“A brick stays a brick, it doesn’t suddenly rearrange its molecular structure into a, well a fish now does it?” Clare desperately needed some rational thinking, something scientific to base a theory on, something that would prove beyond doubt that she could not possibly be drowning in air. She wanted to cry but couldn’t and the reason was simple, Claire’s whole upper body was a fish and she didn’t want to be half fish and half woman. It was like somebody who couldn’t make up their mind what they wanted to be. Claire admitted to herself that her biggest problem in life was deciding what she wanted to be. Some people seem fitted for one definite role in the world since they only possessed a skill set for one type of job. Claire was not one of those, she could be anything she wanted to be and that left the choice up to her. She had been an air hostess, a model, a singer, an actress, a business woman – a very successful one as well until the dotcom crash torpedoed her boat hire business.

Clare walked into the sea and kicking her legs and guiding herself with her fins propelled herself forward. As she swam a new idea came to mind. She should recreate the past 24 hours and work out how she arrived on the beach.

Last night she was out, no clues there, she was out every night, drinking a lot of course. She was seeing Toby, her manager at her work, she know he was married even if he didn’t. They had been out to a party till early in the morning. They went back to his house and had a fumble on the bed which was so funny that she burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. She was still laughing when his wife rushed into the room and pushed her shiny black stiletto heel close to her face and screamed out a threat to blind her. No wonder she was having a nightmare, thought Claire. Tony pulled his wife off his girlfriend and received a a blow on his forehead with the shoe and he went down with a river of blood gushing down his nose. Claire realised she would have to fend for herself and grabbing the almost empty wine bottle she smashed the neck off on the metal framed bed and held the jagged end between her and her assailant.

The woman seemed unconcerned and looked strangely at her with her pupils seeming larger, more like those of a cat. There was a low soft purring and a quietly spoken liturgy repeating over and over again. Black fur covered her skin followed by whiskers that sprung out of her cheeks. Her mouth opened wide in a yawn to reveal sharp little white teeth and a long pink tongue.
Claire wanted to shut out the impossible transformation taking place before her but she couldn’t. She tried to force her eyes shut but it seemed like there were matchsticks jammed between the lids. She tried turning her head away and it was as if her head and shoulders were fused into one solid statue.

Now Claire’s body was also changing, her face stretched and her eyes were now on the side of her head, her nose compressed into her head as her mouth stretched the width of her face. She wanted to reach up and feel her face but instead a flipper at her side reacted to her control instead. A chill went through her, she was a fish out of water and a meal for a cat.

Claire flicked her head and poked it out of the water, in the distance something was alternately fading and becoming focused again. It looked like a man’s face. She puzzled over who it might be until he called her name over and over, like a old echoing story with a forgotten ending.

She recognised Tony, a blood soaked handkerchief pressed tightly to his forehead and swam towards his voice. She felt his arms around her and gripped him tightly, she had her arms back and a glance in the mirror confirmed she was human again. She felt the softness of the bed beneath her and cried in his arms in deep gasping sobs.

She noticed Tony’s wife tied to a pink cushioned white chair in front of the dressing table, a black blindfold covering her eyes.

“I’ll make sure she is struck off for good this time”

“You mean that she’s a doctor?”

“No, a hypnotherapist!”

Outside my window blows fear. The world is powered by fear; it’s the only fuel left. The world is a desperate place, hostile and cold, and in it everyone is alone: all hope is lost. I spend my days scavenging for sustenance and during the freezing nights I scramble for heat and some kind of comfort. I’m often left wondering what it’s all worth, this life, what was it ever worth? What’s the point in trying when all avenues lead to death? Nothing lasts forever, and even that concept is hard to accept.

I grew up in a world that was tearing itself apart through greed and selfishness, until eventually it happened, it could take it no longer and the world died; my world had destroyed itself. That’s when the sky went dark and the clouds blocked the light, making each day cold and foreboding, grey and dull. A shrill, freezing wind would often blow across the lands which had become vast and uninviting; the world was closed off to me now. Venturing out became impossible for a time, it was dangerous and my instincts were faltering. In truth I was a danger to myself; the whole world had changed and I was falling behind. I didn’t know how to survive in this new world; my life skills were inadequate, but adapting seemed like a task I couldn’t bear to endure. My endurance was in question and my longevity uncertain.

It was safest in the day to remain indoors. I had a small room in a building to hold up in. I blocked the windows and barricaded the doors. The room was constantly cold; I could feel the heat ebbing away from my fractured soul. I thought it was best, prudent, to keep out of sight, away from other people; they were dangerous, not to be trusted. There was no community, no society, nothing that I could interact with. There was no comfort. My days were spent being haunted by images of the past, lost memories of happier times. They shimmered like golden sunshine on a Finnish lake, but they were more like fragments of a forgotten dream. The smells of summer and the heat on my skin, the taste of the air was sweeter back then. The colours were vivid and brilliant. My life back then was like a dream; it was beautiful, only it was real and I was living it. I could never have foreseen that sometime later the dream would be shattered and I would awaken to a new reality of pain and suffering.

This nightmare really began a short time after I had made the long trek south from Lincoln. That’s where I was when the first hint of danger arose. That’s when the first thoughts of panic entered my mind; panic and fear. Fear is a powerful emotional response; it was fear which urged me into action, fear which dictated my steps. I held myself together long enough to stay focused on the task of survival. The fear of everything falling apart is something so overwhelming that it removed any other emotion from my mind. I knew that the spectre of change was looming, my delusions were telling me that everything would be fine, I could control my fate, my destiny; it was in my own hands to guide my path, but I knew, somewhere inside my mind, I realised the truth, that it was all about to come tumbling down upon me. The world was spiralling out of control. The end was here.

The journey south was perilous; I doubted my ability to last the course. I fell several times on the way. I was collapsing into despair; into the horror that was all around me. I had no choice but to make the trip south and hope that I could affect a change for the good from there, but I knew that the battleground for me remained in Lincoln, what use was I 200 miles south of there? I was doomed to fail. Regardless, I would fight the good fight, trying to do what was right, trying to resist the change, the onset of doom which was sweeping from The North. Hope is what drove me on; the hope that the world might still be a better place, and that there still might be a place for hope. What are we without hope?

The war was over almost as soon as it had begun. There were no photo­graphers, journalists or television reporters that related this event to the people of the world; this event went largely unheard of. Not even I really know what happened, I couldn’t say what caused it. All I know is that now I live in its aftermath. I live in an England of despair, in a county of decay, in a land of no hope. In my heart hope remained for a time, I believed that I had to try and be positive that something good still remained. There was a chance that it could be as good, if not better than before, something to rebuild, but it wasn’t until three weeks later that the battle was truly lost. When my hope finally left and my spirit rose to heaven. My salvation lay across the sea, but my salvation was now dead to me. And now I had to choose: How should I live my life?
I sat in my box room in the building I was holed up inside and I waited for something positive to come my way, a message of deliverance. I had an image in my mind of a fire of hope inside my heart, smouldering in the embers that once fuelled a powerful flame. Something better was coming; I had to believe that I would be rescued from this hell. Still, the sky remained dark and blocked the sun’s bright rays from my face. The light of my life had been extinguished. As time went by I started to accept the situation. There was no-one coming, and any salvation would be of my own making. The world was as it appeared to be, desolate and lonely, harsh and cruel, and for someone as myself to wear his heart so easily upon his sleeve, I would have to accept that pain and disappointment would rise, and rise often. I would have to accept this new world in order to survive it.

Survival was optional and options were few, but survival is what I chose. The question of what would happen next kept its place at the forefront of my mind. What would happen next? I had to know. In the face of suffering the hardships of life I still wanted to see what was around the corner. Every new beginning comes from another beginning’s end and a new door had opened to me; it was just a matter of perspective. Hope had wasted me, but in the embers of the fire that smouldered in my soul, hope was reborn; a flame grew once again.

The memories of the battle, the war, they still remained, and they doused the flames of my spirit at times, but the fires remained and grew stronger. The battle was my battle, the war my war, and my adversary? My adversary had been my dear friend, my best friend, my love, my lover; the woman to whom I had devoted my life, the person who above all I valued. I know nothing of her anymore. She froze the earth, and made the cold winds blow south. She began a conflict which besieged my heart. I wonder sometimes if she is happy, and I wonder if she regrets the war she commenced. She banished me from her door and sent me on the long trek south; I was caught unaware and stabbed through the heart. I died in that battle. She took the spoils of the fight and set off across the sea to take her place as the Ice Queen of Scandinavia. The flame in my soul, my undying inquisitive nature, renewed me, and in time the fire in my soul will scorch the clouds from the sky, the frozen land will thaw and the wide open spaces will beckon to me to set myself free.

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She enjoyed her job as the marketing manager of a fruit importers. She somehow knew that the first time she had to leave work early to collect Martin from school that it would not be the last. The headmistress told her that Martin had upset a teacher by lying. He had told his form teacher that her mother was near her, and couldn’t she see? The headmistress said that teacher’s mother had recently died, Martin must have found out somehow, perhaps by eavesdropping, and it was a cruel deception. Mrs Cooper was outraged at these slurs against her son and said so but the headmistress was having none of it and backed her teacher just as strongly.

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There followed regular visits to child psychologists, experts in their field with letters after their names, names that appeared on published papers with numbered footnotes in small writing and bibliographies covering almost as many pages as the writing itself. Martin wanted to educate them, show them things they didn’t know about how the mind works but they thought they knew it all and he could see their minds switch off when he tried to teach them. Many of the child psychologists had once been teachers but only the best teachers understand that teaching is a two-way process and that the pupil may be the teacher and vice-versa when the occasion merits. Martin bore his disappointment bravely without understanding why he had to keep these appointments because, as he said to his mother, “I don’t understand why they can’t see and hear what I do Mum, why is that?”
Mrs Cooper shook her head; she was completely at a loss to explain to her son the injustice of the situation he found himself in. It seemed that because her son had special talents he was being victimised by the very people who should be helping him. She resolved from then on to persuade him to hide his talent, appease his teachers and survive by pretending to be like them, so, as she explained to Martin, they wouldn’t feel threatened by him. Martin understood and vowed to put the plan into action.  The door bell rung and Mrs Cooper opened the front door to Mr Cooper, whose turn it was to look after Martin as part of their divorce custody settlement. Across the street she noticed a white cat, without a collar, sitting on the brick wall of the house opposite, looking boldly in her direction.

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“Come in, he’s almost ready.”

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“Almost, I expect him to me ready when I arrive”, he joked, but as it was so close to the truth it was a poor joke and nobody was laughing.

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“Please drive carefully”, cautioned Mrs Cooper; she always said that and Mr Cooper always drove his black BMW as he pleased, too close to the car in front, 10 mph faster than the speed limit and he overtook on solid white lines, when he thought he could get away with it.

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Mrs Cooper went up to Martin’s room and spoke with him. She told him what she always said before he stayed with his father. Martin knew it by heart.

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“Don’t tell your father what you see, don’t look through him, don’t talk to anyone who isn’t”,  she hesitated, “who isn’t there.”

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Martin knew she was right. If he told his father what he could see and hear he would become angry, blame his mother for putting strange ideas into his head and accuse him of lying again, but Martin had never lied.

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Today Mr Cooper had planned a trip to the funfair; they were going to have fun on the dodgems, ride the roller coaster, knock the cans down and win prizes at the shooting galley. He was really excited as he reeled off the list, trying to generate something of the same enthusiasm in his son. Martin didn’t really mind, he was happy to be with his father; despite their differences, he loved him. The BMW picked up speed and Mr Cooper overtook a lorry on the dual carriageway and stayed in the outside lane doing 80mph; he liked the feeling of the BMW as it responded to his touch, he knew the car well, what he could do with it and how it would behave under any conditions.

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It is hard to explain why he failed to see the white car that had moved up alongside him in the slow lane. Behind him a big red four-by-four was flashing its lights and closing in fast on the BMW. Mr Cooper struck the white car on the inside lane, sending it hurtling into the crash barrier. The BMW, suddenly slowed by the impact with the white car, was twitching from side to side as as the damaged bodywork jammed against the front passenger side wheel. The articulated lorry driver behind the BMW slammed on his brakes but couldn’t prevent the impact that catapulted the black BMW towards the central crash barrier, sending it spinning round to hit another BMW in the outside lane, which caused Mr Cooper’s car to flip upside-down before coming to rest with all wheels spinning. A quick-thinking driver pulled Martin out but when he went back for the driver the car had become an inferno and all he could do was watch from a safe distance and shake his head in sorrow.

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“You are a lucky boy said the surgeon”

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Martin smiled weakly, he knew that was true because he had met the children who had died there.

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“Daddy’s here, he says he is very sorry for the crash, he wishes he’d listened to you now”, Martin told his mother as he lay in the hospital bed.

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“Tell him I miss him very much.”

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“He knows mum, he already knows”.
Martin recovered fully from his broken arm and leg, a testament to the hero who pulled him out of the broken BMW and the skill of the surgeon who fixed his broken body. Martin had to fix his broken mind himself as there was no one better qualified than him in the whole world.

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(Graheme’s other stories in this series, Gnomes Make A Special Day, The Forest Fisherman and Hestia and the Face in the Fire, can be found on his blog http://yearofreturn.wordpress.com/)

Something for Someone

1

Magic at teatime was irritating.  In the evening, after a good dinner it was mildly diverting, but at teatime, No.

“Mr Molly?”  George spoke quietly.  A tiny figure appeared on the rim of his teacup, bowed majestically, and dived into the tea.  The perfect dive was spoilt by an agonised contraction of the feet and toes as they disappeared into the liquid.

“Hot!” thought George.  Mr Molly left the teacup through a small hole just below the handle, clambered onto the handle, and sat there, out of sight of George, feeling rather foolish.  The tea, which had not previously noticed the hole, slid down the side of the cup into the saucer.

2

George Mademarsh enjoyed a life of rigid routine.  Rigid routine and moderation.  The moderation allowed him the opportunity of being immoderate now and again, but even his immoderation was moderate.  He would occasionally have two glasses of wine with his dinner.  He never had three.

It was on a two glass evening that Mr Molly had first appeared.  George was sitting in his armchair by the fire smoking his pipe – he smoked a pipeful of tobacco on two glass evenings- when he noticed a small silver figure walking along the mantelpiece.  The figure was like a fully grown child – that is to say it had none of the ungainliness of a child, but all of the joy and mischief.

Of course George didn’t believe his eyes.  He marvelled at the way the smoke had curled around to produce such a beautiful effect, and left it at that.

For some weeks Mr Molly was content to stroll along the mantelpiece, or float up to the ceiling, and he only appeared on pipe smoking evenings.  He had a habit of looking at things that were on the mantelpiece and not quite putting them back in the right place, which annoyed George, until he remembered that Mr Molly did not really exist, at which point he became puzzled, and determined to speak to Gladys.  Gladys was George’s housekeeper.

3

George noticed the tea filling his saucer and he moved quickly to stop it from overflowing onto the tablecloth.  Too quickly, and with a clatter he upturned the cup, the saucer and the milk jug.  When Gladys entered a few moments later she found George dabbing at the mess with a dry corner of the tablecloth.  Mr Molly was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh dear, what has happened here…

“Just an accident…

“Not to worry…

“I was just…

“You sit down Mr Mademarsh, it’s just a little spill, nothing broken.”  And quickly and efficiently she cleared away the disorder and a moment later she returned with a clean cloth and said  “I’ve put the kettle on.  I’ll make a fresh pot.”

“Oh no.  Thank you.  I must get back to the office.  Thank you for clearing up the disorder.”  George used his hands and his sweetest smile to persuade Gladys that he really could not wait for another pot of tea, as they walked out of the sitting room and into the hall.  She went into the kitchen with a slight humph.  He put on his coat and opened the front door, where he was pleased to see it was raining, so he collected his new umbrella and set out for the office.  As he walked he tried to collect his composure.  The umbrella afforded him a private, protected space, and by the time he got to the office he felt sure he could carry on as normal.  Then he noticed Mr Molly riding on one of the large droplets that had begun to fall from the points of the umbrella, laughing and waving.

George froze.

“Um, Mr Mademarsh?”  Mrs Clarke was rather tentative.  She worked in the office for Mr Mademarsh, and because Mr Mademarsh always went home for tea at three o’clock and never returned before three forty-five, she had got into the habit of leaving the office at ten past three, having first switched the telephone through to the saleroom where Reg had promised to take any calls, in order to collect her eight year old son from school.  She then took him home and settled him in front of the TV before returning to the office at three thirty-five.  She had not thought it necessary to mention this to Mr Mademarsh.  It was now three thirty-five and Mr Mademarsh was not only there in front of her, where he should not have been, but he was also quite static and blocking the doorway, thus precluding any option she might have had for slipping in unnoticed.

“Um, Mr Mademarsh,” she repeated, “I hope you don’t mind but I just popped home to …Its Jimmy …He’s not very well …” and she burst into tears.

George Mademarsh remained frozen.  Before his eyes sat Mr Molly, laughing.  His seat was a raindrop of perfect liquid beauty containing a world of life and a moment of transformation, hanging from an invisible silver thread.  Poor George.  He had such a perfect unchallenged life.  He had inherited the saleroom from his father.  He had kept on Alf the porter and taken on Reg White to run the auctions and deal with the customers and the clients.  George expanded the Stamp side of the business.  He turned an insular childhood hobby into an insular life.

“I’ll take responsibility.  I said it would be alright.  I told her not to worry.  I said I would mention it to you.  She always gets her job done.”  Reg went on talking because Mr Mademarsh was not reacting.  He kept glancing at Mrs Clarke and saying “It’ll be OK” with his eyes and he kept talking until Alf emerged and said

“You won’t get no sense out of  ’im.  ’E’s had a seizure.”

“Eh?”

“That’s ‘ow ‘is Dad went.  ‘E was older, mind.”

Reg and Mrs Clarke looked at Mr Mademarsh and then at each other and they both realised at the same moment that Alf could well be right because Mr Mademarsh was not moving at all.

Mrs Clarke said “Oo dear,” with the slightest of grins, which Reg noticed, and saw rolls of a good life with a slide and a climbing frame and a little house with neat curtains and a holiday in France every year and parent teacher meetings and a small garden and picking runner beans and retiring and trips to the seaside and ice creams, all in the slightest of grins.

“We’d better call a doctor.  Mr Mademarsh.  Can you hear me?  Mr Mademarsh?”

“Undertaker’s what you want.  ‘Is Dad was just the same.  ‘Ad to break all ‘is bones to get ‘im in the coffin.”

“I think we’d better go into my office.”  The corpse spoke.  He was speaking to Mr Molly, but of course everybody thought he was talking to them, as they did not see Mr Molly.  Their reaction was mixed.  Alf very nearly did have the seizure he was so joyfully describing, and had to be helped inside by Reg, while in the meantime Mrs Clarke was very attentive to Mr Mademarsh, helping him towards his office, help he did not want, and when she then stayed in his office, apparently waiting for him to say something, he was rather bemused.  When she was joined by Reg White, who said that Alf would be fine in a minute, and that it had just been the shock, and that he could explain everything, Mr Mademarsh was more bemused.  When a voice said quietly “I’m sitting on your shoulder, but they can’t see me” he sat down with such a jolt that Mrs Clarke thought he had had another seizure.

“I’ll be fine.  Just go on with your work.  No, no.  I’ll be fine.  Come and check in ten minutes, if you must.  Really, I’ll be fine.”

Poor George.

“I did warn you.”  Mr Molly spoke as he abseiled down the electric cable that hung in a perfect sweeping curve from the standard lamp to the plug.  He used a folded piece of paper looped over the wire and held in both hands.

“But this is my office.  This is where I keep my stamps.  Please stop doing that!”  As George spoke, Mr Molly was about to make his fourth descent.

“Just one more.”  And as he flew down the wire he yelled “Yippee!” at the top of his voice.  Then, rather earlier than on three previous occasions, he let go of the paper and executed a perfect double backward somersault before landing square on his feet.  He turned and bowed to George.  George was dismayed.

“Please.”

“I did warn you.” and with that Mr Molly flew gracefully onto the desk and sat crosslegged on the silver cigarette box which George had inherited from his grandfather.  Mr Molly leant down and read the inscription upside down – “Presented to Mr A.P.Mademarsh for his services to the community of  Ripley and Heanor as a token of appreciation.”

“Please.  What do you want me to do?”

“Something for someone.”  And with that Mr Molly flew straight out through the window, which was not open, and away.

There was a knock at the door.  It was Reg.  “Come in.  Sit down.  Now.”

“Can I say something?  Jenny, Mrs Clarke, she’s very worried about Jimmy.  She doesn’t like leaving him on his own.”

“Who is Jimmy?”

“Oh, Jimmy is her son.  He’s eight.  She had him when she was very young.  She’s on her own with him.  She doesn’t want to lose her job, and she doesn’t know what to do.”

George Mademarsh absorbed the information slowly.  He realised that he knew nothing at all about any of the people who worked for him.  He found it difficult to make connections.  He could not work out what he could do – something for someone Mr Molly had said – was this what he had meant – at this moment Mr Molly came steaming in through the window towing a streamer with the word “YES” written eight times, went around the office once and left as he had arrived.  Reg did not appear to notice.

“Is there something I can do to help?”  George sat with his back to the window.  There was a picture on the wall opposite him and the glass reflected the scene outside.  He saw fireworks exploding in the sky. 

My job at risk’s the least of it.

My wealth’s at risk, my health’s at risk,

My house, my home, my plans at risk.

There really seems no end to it.

It’s time to take stock.

My friends say there’s no need to fret,

Take the chance to choose, to change.

Become your own boss at long last.

You only need some stuff to start

So take your time – just think of it.

It’s time to take stock.

My firm will close its doors in days,

Its shelves piled high with stuff to buy

Which it will sell for less than pence

To recompense in part their debts;

They’ll never miss some little bits

It’s time to take stock

I’d cried my ears off; when I heard she’d OD’ed on Catnip. It had turned her a shade of grey; she looked like a winter’s shadow.

She had the appearance of someone who’d vomited out their own eyeballs, and then gobbled up her own face, but had missed because she couldn’t see.

She slowly came too, I felt cock-a-hoop, almost giddy, like a tipsy wigwam or a wonky snickers bar. Emotionally confused, a mixed bag of meat and cooking sherry. Oh god, make it stop.

She spun me around like a soggy zoetrope all slow and forced, similar to a postman’s deflated tire in gravel.

Her instructions were bizarre and incoherent, she was a user and a junky. I was part of her master plan, a dog-eared Ikea instruction manual, a worn-out Argos catalogue that had been scribbled on by some kid high on haribo, who’d then chewed through the cheap blue pen, inhaled the ink then immediately spat it back out over the commodity section.

She gargled with some words, which then fell from her bottom lip, relieved and wheezing onto her lap. They’d been replicated affectionately in her diary decorated with wilted drawings of flowers bedded in and around the sentences; a sense of hyperbably that was akin to being trapped inside a drunken yet familiar suburban cul-de-sac.

A shamble of a thrill seeker on an aging bumper car track, getting pummeled from both sides, losing her change with every hit, she was hooked.

You must get up, I told her, you’re covered in grease. She never listened, the words never stuck, they’d simply skim off her face and down a ditch. She lit a cigarette and then chain smoked like a trouper. When she’s in her 80’s she’ll look like two cue balls stuck to pack of grey crêpe paper. She was pale and fragile like a crumbling cliff face.

Head lolloping on the back door of a taxi rank, I pulled her up from the floor. She’d been there so long her hair had a side quiff; the long straight fringe and large eyes gave her the appearance of a tatty skateboard viewed from the side.

As we waited for a car to pass by she held my hand, cleared her throat and spat to the curb. I raised my eyebrows and intended to look at her with disgust. Then did the same, I was hooked.

Come on you smackhead, she said, let’s shoot up in the park, or black up; it’s your choice.

She said I was a nutbag, and that racism is shit.

As the night’s damp air set in we lay under the swings and knocked them back and forth, a rush of air on our faces each time they swung by. A full moon framed through an angular set of clouds, the chain’s swing whipping passed like a ship’s radar refreshing in a monochrome sky. She opened a bag of Wotsits and made plane sounds whilst flicking them up and over the oncoming swing, most of which landed on my face.

She rested a Wotsit on my cheek and said I looked like a savory ashtray.

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I sometimes wonder whether, or maybe even hope that everyone knows they are mad and because they know about it they manage to hide it. Then I realise mostly people don’t try to hide it. Instead they openly, almost proudly, display it for all to see. We all do it. Some take pills for insomnia and depression, take weeks off work for stress and exhaustion. Some wake up and hit their boyfriend for what he just said to them in their dream. Scream and yell and cry like a seven-year old because it’s not fair that she did all the washing up this week and he hasn’t told her she doesn’t look fat this morning. Blame your period. Drink twelve beers and piss on your neighbour’s car for a joke. Rip out your own pubic hairs to put them in your friend’s drink. Go to college with your arms bandaged up because you hate yourself so much you want people to see it in your scars. Eat nothing but rice cakes for a week. Eat four pizzas and a litre of ice-cream in an hour then bend over the toilet and heave until your eyeballs bleed. Fall in love. Fall out of love. Wonder whether life is meaningless. Cry.

And this is kind of what I want to talk about now, that whole not-knowing-whether-you’re-mad-or-not feeling. I know that feeling inside out; all because of Them.

The first time I saw one of Them I was sixteen.

I was lying in a rickety wooden bed, in a tiny, damp holiday cottage in Cornwall. In the bed next to mine, my brother was snoring softly. I’d just drifted into conscious from a meaningless dream that was quickly slipping from memory, and I tried to figure out why I was awake. Slowly, I opened my eyes. The room was dark, and my eyesight is poor, but I could make out blurry edges of furniture. I rolled onto my back and at that moment, if my life had been a movie, violins would have screeched shuddering strings. I jumped, took a sharp intake of breath with a whimper, my eyes widened as I strained to see. At the foot of my bed there was a tall figure glowing bright white. There was no sound. It was unclear, like the shapeless lights that roll across your sight after rubbing your eyes too hard. It had no face, no eyes and I could see through it to the wardrobe behind it. Strangely, I then felt no fear, no emotion at all in fact. In fact, feeling sleep wash over me again, I dismissed it as a trick of darkness and dreams, rolled back over and fell asleep again.

The next day, sitting on a bench watching the clouds go past, I remembered that moment, or perhaps was reminded of it, and directly as I thought of it, that silence fell again and my stomach tensed. I didn’t turn around, I never saw it, but I knew it was there. It was like being in the house alone and knowing that there is someone else in there with you. I wasn’t afraid. I was only certain and unquestioning in the fact that it was standing behind me in silence. I remembered once my mother telling me to throw salt over my left shoulder into the devil’s eyes, and I briefly worried that the devil was following me.

But that’s what superstitious people believe, and I am a young, intelligent woman of the 21^st century. I don’t believe in demons and I am perfectly aware that these shapes and lights and movements are simply the effects of an overactive imagination, and possibly a detached retina.

Yet from that moment there were creatures everywhere I looked. My world became a hideous animist reality. I never spoke to Them back then, and never heard Them speak. After all, asking Them what they were was the same as admitting that they really existed and I wasn’t prepared for that. I started to suspect that other people around me could see Them too.

Once, taking a late night walk with a friend, ignoring the way my imagination was turning each shrub into a cluster of short, plump, green gnomes, I saw a tall dark hooded cloak floating past us on the right, and my stomach clutched up with panic. I was trying not to let my eyes follow it, trying to dismiss it from my head, when my friend screamed, grabbed my arm roughly and set off at a sprint. We had reached the safe warmth of my kitchen and bolted the door before I asked her, panting, what had frightened her. She shook her head, embarrassed. After a few minutes of coaxing, she eventually admitted that she had just been hit by an inexplicable wave of panic and knew that she had to get as far away as fast as she could. The same wave of panic the hooded cloak had struck me with, though she had seen nothing.

For a few days I believed that this shared moment of panic, although we had had different subjective experiences of it, meant that the shapes were real creatures. I started buying books on fairies and angels, nature sprites and demons. To my alarm, the more I researched, trying to find a marvellous, supernatural miracle behind my silent stalkers, the clearer they became. They changed to conform to what I had read.

I had to change my theory. If They were able to do only what I knew about Them, They must be entirely my own creation. It could be explained by my brain interpreting my feelings as visual forms. Yes, far better to accept that I was affected by some un-named syndrome and probably needed to be kept in some kind of institute to be poked by bearded men with clip-boards, than to consider some parallel reality populated with fairies that only I could see.

One day I read that The Wee Folk pinched people’s belongings, and to get your items back you stand in the middle of the room and ask politely for it to be brought back. Then you leave the room and when you return ‘They’ will have returned it. Of course, later that afternoon I realised my keys had gone missing. Not pausing to consider the consequences, my mind skipped back to the article and I murmured whimsically ‘Have They taken it?’

The air dropped, my ears buzzed. They were here. I stood up slowly, feeling very stupid. I glanced into the hall, hoping my mother wasn’t near enough to hear. “Please can I have my keys back?” I said under my breath. Never call Them ‘the fairies’, the article had said. Never thank them. I turned to leave, feeling that sceptical blankness of doing something you don’t quite believe or understand, like an atheist saying ‘Amen’ after someone else’s grace.

I was stopped by a rustling noise, and turned back, my stomach twisted with fear. I was just in time to see my keys slow to a stop on the carpet a few inches from my slippered feet.

Could I still blame my own imagination? I couldn’t think rationally anymore. A scream was trapped in my throat for the rest of the day. I slept over at a friend’s house, and she worried about why I was so twitchy and kept looking over my shoulders at every sound. I shook my head at her and said nothing.

What follows is my true story. You can either see it either as one woman’s descent into madness or one woman’s proof of another universe. These days I’m no longer sure.