Search Results for 'ben'

Everything started to happen at once. As Sanso sat up, craning his neck looking at the door in the ceiling, a terrific flapping and squalking noise approached from behind him, starting as a distant vibration and rising in an unbearable crescendo as it rounded the last bend in the tunnel. Suddenly the noise stopped as Sanso felt a weight on his shoulder, and then a thud on the sandy floor. Bugger this, the parrot screeched in his ear. Bugger this bugger this bugger bugger bugger…

Sanso was momentarily speechless, as his eye fell on the key. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, feeling the rusty weight of it. He turned to look at the parrot on his shoulder, who thankfully had stopped his shrill squalking.

This must be the key to that door, he whispered to the parrot. Let’s try it and see.

Wait for Dory dear Wait for Dory!

Bugger this, sighed the parrot, Here I am bringing the key, remembering everything everyone else forgets, running the show here and I don’t even have a name in this silly story.

That morning Fiona’s boyfriend asked her to marry him. He even had a date in mind. Over the weekend she had told him how she was feeling. She thought she had spoken plainly enough and he had gone away. She had a bad weekend but yesterday felt she was starting to be more herself again. So it came as a surprise, and she had to explain again.

And then she went to bed, and pulled the covers over her head, and let the sound of the rain falling outside soothe her.

She had a funny dream. She was in a courtroom seated on a little wooden chair, wearing a beautiful dress made of exquisite lace. In her arms she held a baby. She had dreamed of the baby before, but in the previous dream she had felt only repulsion for the funny little thing with its exhausted tiny body, and extra long hair. This time she was holding it protectively.

On one side of the courtroom were a group of people looking very serious and professional. She felt them to be mainly doctors and lawyers and they wore dark suits. On the other there were people chanting and waving placards. Some were meditating, others were dancing and they looked like crazy hippy people.

The two groups of people were fighting over something, shouting backwards and forwards, and it seemed to be something to do with her. She was getting more and more tense as she sat on the little chair with her head down and listened to the two sides, till it seemed she might explode.

Suddenly she looked up and she saw a funny Chinese gentleman, smiling and winking at her. He held out his hand to her and, holding the baby gently with one arm, she took it gratefully and they escaped from the bedlam.

When Fiona eventually decided she could emerge from beneath the covers the rain had stopped.

Bugger this! she said

She put on music loudly and danced around the house doing the housework…..

Sanso was used to travelling alone. He’d been exploring this cave on his own for several years now, and it suited him, on the whole. No need to confer, or compromise, or rush to keep up, or slow down to let others catch up. He could follow his own impulses without hindrance. He did meet others on his travels, but only at the cave entrances, or rather, the times and places that the cave entrances revealed. He never felt an urge to settle though at any of these places, always compelled to return to the caves mysterious and ever changing labyrinthine tunnels.

The disembodied voices and coloured wispies were always with him in the tunnels. Sometimes one would be louder than another for awhile, then another would assume prominence. The bleakest coldest times were when he wasn’t noticing them; that’s when he found himself going round and round in circles, lost in the maze.

The electric blue wispy had been around alot lately, comforting him with little explosions of pinprick blue lights, and a golden mustard yellow one. English, not French mustard, he reminded himself, although he didn’t think it mattered and wondered why he’d thought it.

Sanso had been almost crawling for some time in a particuarly cramped and difficult tunnel; bent double for most of the time, his back was aching and he longed to stretch out. The thought of going back, retracing his steps, was unbearable, so he continued, and tried not to be discouraged.
‘Find something to appreciate, Appreciation is the key’ the voice of the blue wispy sounded amused, but in a kindly and endearing sort of way. Harumph, muttered Sanso, easy to say! It would help if there was something to appreciate!

Just then Sanso heard another voice, muttering something over and over again. ‘… dragon egg dragon… egg dog egg … dragon dog egg…’ What the heck was that all about?