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Corrie:

It was the look on Aunt Idle’s face when she saw them that scared me. There’s something strange going on, and not just everyone acting weird, that’s pretty normal around here, but this was a different kind of weird.

When Aunt Idle nearly suffocated me with that big hug while she was trying to hide that piece of paper, I didn’t think anything of it. Probably hiding another bill I thought, not wanting us to worry about the debts piling up. Mater wandering off like that was pretty strange, but old people do daft things. I knew all about it because I’d been reading up on dementia. They imagine things and often feel persecuted, claim someone stole their old tea set, things like that, forgetting they gave it away 30 years ago, stuff like that. So I wasn’t worried about either of them acting strange when Clove and I decided to go treasure hunting in the old Brundy house, we just decided to out and explore just for the hell of it, for something to do.

The Brundy house was set apart from the rest of the abandoned houses, down a long track through the woods, nice and shady in the trees without the sun glaring down on our heads. Me and Clove had been there years ago but we were little then, and scared to go inside, so we’d just peeked in the windows and scared each other with ghost and murderer stories until we heard a bang inside and then ran like hell until we couldn’t breathe. Probably just a rat knocking something over, but we never went back. We weren’t scared to, it was further to walk to the Brundy place and there were so many other abandoned houses to play in that were closer to home.

We weren’t scared to go inside this time. It was a big place, quite grand it must have been back in the day, big entrance hallway with an awesome staircase like in Gone With the Wind where Scarlett fell down the stairs, but the stair carpet was all in shreds and some of the steps banisters were broken, but the steps looked sound enough so up we went, for some reason drawn up there first before exploring the ground floor rooms.

Clove turned left at the top of the stairs and I turned right and went into the first bedroom. My hand flew to my mouth. I wonder why we do that, put a hand over our mouth when we’re surprised, well that’s what I did when I saw the cat mummy on the bed. I didn’t scream or anything, not like Clove did a minute later from the other side of the house. It wasn’t a mummy with bandages like an Egyptian one, it was just totally desiccated like a little skeleton covered in bleached leather. It was a fascinating thing to see really but the minute I heard Clove scream I ran out of the room and down the landing. It’s not like Clove to scream. Well who screams in real life, the only time I ever heard screaming was in a movie. People usually say what the fuck or oh my god, they don’t scream. But Clove screamed when she saw the room full of mannequins because to be fair it did look like a room full of ghosts or zombies in the half light from the shuttered windows. She was laughing by the time I reached her, a bit hysterically, and we clutched each other as we went over to open the shutters to get a better look. It was pretty creepy, even if they were only mannequins.

They were kind of awesome in the light, all covered in maps, there were 22 of them, we counted them, a whole damn room full of map covered mannequins in various poses, men, women and kid sized. Really clever the way the maps were stuck all over them, looked like arteries and veins, and real cool the way Riga joined up with Boston, and Shanghai with Lisbon, like as if you really could just travel down a vein from Tokyo to Bogota, or cross a butt cheek to get from Mumbai to Casablanca.

We hadn’t noticed at first that we’d been shuffling through a load of paper on the floor. The floor was covered in ripped up maps, must have been hundreds of maps all torn up and strewn all over the floor.

“There’s enough maps left over to do one of our own, Corrie” Clove said, reading my mind. “Let’s take some home and stick them all over something.”

“We haven’t got a mannequin at home though” I replied, but I was thinking, why not take a mannequin home with us, and some maps, and decide what to do with them later.

So that’s what we did. We gathered up the biggest fragments of map off the floor and rolled them all up and used my hair elastic to hold them together, and carried a mannequin all the way home. The sun was going down so we had to hurry a bit down the track. Clove didn’t help when she said we must look like we’re carrying a dead body with rigor mortis, that made us collapse laughing, dropping the mannequin on its head. Once we got the giggles it was hard to stop, and it made our legs weak from laughing.

We got home just as the last of the evening light disappeared, hauled the mannequin up the porch steps, where Aunt Idle was standing with her hand over her mouth. Well, that was to be expected, naturally she’d be wondering what we were carrying if she was watching us come up the drive carrying a body. It was later, when we unfolded the maps, that the look on her face freaked me out.

Fanella was riding her new zebra friend in a big dry meadow. Something she had never seen before. There were other animals with them and it was delightful. The flight of the cranes transported her up to the clouds while the crocodiles would clap in unison in the marshes.
The zebra had told her his name. Rene he was, and glad he’d met her before it was too late. He also said something that she didn’t quite understand. “Other friends are coming, you don’t have to worry.” Why worry when she was with Rene ? Other friends ? Lisa was coming back for her with Sanso ? “We’ll meet soon”, said Rene. Now she was having hallucinations. He was a tall man, half an ebony skin, half white and black zebra stripes. But he was already fading away.
The return back to reality was harsh. She gagged and disgorged sea water on the beach. It felt as if she had been torn inside out.

“There, there. Welcome back young Miss. You’re safe, now”, said a man. He was wearing a smile but she felt it was just a facade.
“Are you okay ?” she asked. Even in the midst of drowning, her maternal instinct was stronger. Surprised showed up on the man’s face.
“What do you mean ?”
“You’re all yellow.”
The man laughed. “I’m quite normal, young lady. Quite normal.” He put his jacket on her shoulders to help keep her warmth as social rules demanded. It was relatively dry, whereas he was drenched. He must have took it off before rescuing her from the sea.

“We should have left her to the barracudas”, said another man. He wore a blue turban, casting a shadow on an already hard face. It was marked by a circular fresh scar around his nose, made by countless small sharp teeth. The flesh seemed to pulsate painfully. She shuddered when she saw his hook-leg, the hook half burried in the sand. She didn’t want to imagine what he could do with it.

“Don’t pay attention to Berberus”, said the first man, “We have no business in hurting young beautiful ladies.”
Something in his smile told her that it wasn’t always true. She forced herself a gracious face, as she had learned to do with the noble men back then in Versailles.
“Thank you for rescuing me, Sir.” She pulled on the edges of the jacket as if she needed warmth. “My name is Fanetta”, she added, lowering her eyes.

Drawn magnetically towards the mannequin stretched out on Lisas’s kitchen table, Sanso forgot all about coffee ~ or indeed polite small talk. As Lisa prattled on, disjointed snippets interspersed with snorts and raucous laughter, Sanso inspected the map covered body before him, and the sea of torn maps underfoot. He circled the table, examining the body and scattered detritus from all angles and perspectives, his mind firing (and sending sparks to relevant departments) at all the connecting routes that caught his attention of particular or potential interest to the current thread of events.

“Make the wind blow the other way!” suggested someone in the crowd.

“Yes! A west wind, blow it west!” piped up another.

“Wait!” shouted another. “That would be an east wind, not a west wind!”

“A westerly?”

“No, an easterly is what we want!”

“Let’s get this right, or we’ll have a fucking tornado” suggested Nasturtium grimly.

Phew, said Becky, mopping her brow with her hand, what a great work out!

Tina was very impressed with how diligently Becky was doing her Visualisation Exercises for Pregnancy, and rather surprised to see genuine sweat pouring down her flushed and hot face. She had agreed to do the exercises with Becky, but truth to tell had dozed off after a few minutes. Still, not that I need to do exercises, Tina thought, admiring her toned and slim body. Becky kept complaining about weight gain, and Tina had tried to point out that was what happened when one had a baby. Becky was having none of it.

By the way Tina, what’s up with Al?

Yeah … said Tina hesitantly, torn between loyalty and honesty. Well I don’t really know. He is a bit obsessed …

Obsessed is the word! It’s turning into a monologue. We had better write something soon or who knows what havoc he will wreak on the reality play. You know he killed the spider?

Well, said Tina brightly, always willing to see the bright side, at least it has distracted him from his body modification experiments for a while.

The dance was very intense and though he wasn’t exhausted. He could keep on doing that forever it seemed.

Georges-Irtak ware dancing-moving swiftly and with such grace and skill in the manipulation of the body consciousness. Irtak alone wouldn’t have thought some movements he was doing were possible for a human being. His bodies seemed so elastic and so changeable.

His attention was so entranced by him-Georges that he couldn’t really feel what he was doing. He was open to himself and he was allowing the other part of himself to move his body and he was feeling in the body of him-Georges also. All that could have been so weird and overwhelming… but his previous practice with his dragon twins had been very useful. He was aware of the intense concentration of energy involved in Georges and the connections, deep and loving, with Salome were so bright and colorful.

He-Georges turned their attention to Salome and send her deep waves of love and fun. She was his lover of many focuses and of many probabilities. Whatever that could mean.

Heckle and Jeckle were suddenly turning around them and generating a mini-tornado of emerald and pink energy. This was facilitating their movements and their expansion to other dimensions.. he was feeling the veil between them thining so much… a side-step move and he would be…

Stop!

The energy feeling made him return in his body all at once. He was still aware of his dragons but his fantastic awareness was like a dim memory. How was he doing that before… This Georges seemed just familiar now, not mingle with him, though…

You wouldn’t do that now Irtak, it’s too early

Georges was smiling slyly. His amber eyes were quite hypnotic but Irtak was feeling centered now and focused in this now.

You’ll learn all that in time… but for now let’s have some cheesy cakes

Dory dodged in and out of the people crowded in the narrow back street. She needed several meters clear run to activate her special flying sandals, and she had no idea which way to go.

A girl in a dark heavy blue cape was fiddling with a map on a street corner. Dory snatched the map off her as she ran past, shouting over her shoulder ‘thanks awfully, dont mind if I borrow your map do you?’

Glancing down at the map, she found it had morphed into a page torn from the old testament.