3. AN ESCAPE FROM REALITY

Following the events in "An Escape From Marriage"

There was a moment when Elaine Blockley couldn’t work out what was going on, wasn’t even quite sure that she was in a lightless cellar with only an old torch for company. But she used the torch sparingly, Batteries don’t last for ever, she knew that.

It had started an hour or a day before when thirst had almost driven her mad, but there was nothing to drink, not anywhere.

There was an old tennis ball on the dusty floor and when she kicked it the silly thing split in half and became two tennis balls, the sort you can’t kick and it you do they go nowhere.

And anyway kicking them added to her thirst, somehow. Hunger didn’t matter, but her mouth tasted of the dust from the floor and that’s never nice. Yet there was still nothing to drink no matter how hard she looked in shadowed corners for bottles that might have been lost, hoping. Nothing.

Unless she counted her blood that is.

She knew inside her head, a special corner where logic never went, that blood was liquid and she knew that it she didn’t drink something soon she might get very sick indeed.

She had a chair in her dark world, a wooden chair that was possibly too small to be comfortable, but what did comfort matter when your mouth is so dry and all you wanted was a huge glass of water? Or a small cup? An egg-cup even? That would be enough for starters.

She would die of blood-loss if she sipped an egg-cup filled with her gorgeous red blood, would she?

And that was the moment when logic departed and a strange kind of make-believe took over.

The batteries in her torch started failing as she poked it into the shadows. Everything was failing. Her head, even, was failing, and the sharp stick picked up from the floor bit into her arm. She pushed it and worked it in, ignoring the pain.

When a woman’s as thirsty as she was then pain was no obstacle to survival, was it?

The blood, her blood, tasted of salt. It tasted drier than water tasted. But that didn’t stop her draining the egg cup that wasn’t an egg cup but was half that useless tennis ball. But she’d drained some of her blood into it. Not much, true, but the little she’d drawn into her mouth made her still more thirsty.

“That won’t do you much good,” said Peter Piper.

She didn’t know he was called Peter Piper or Peter anything, but it made sense and he was a pretty child, all dressed in velvet and ribbons and with curly blonde hair and a cheeky grin.

“What do you mean?” she asked, and he giggled.

“Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, drinking blood is silly, it always makes you dry,” he sang. And then he went away, like that. Simple, There one moment and singing about drinking blood, and gone in an instant, pretty Peter Piper and his pearly pants and… and… she closed her eyes.

“Curls,” he said, “pink and practical curls, on my head.”

“That’s it,” she said because even with her eyes closed she saw them.

“Now Peter, don’t tease the poor woman,” said Peter’s father who she knew must be Herman.

“Why not, dad?” asked Peter, grinning so hugely she could slap his face if she had the strength to do it. “I’m so weak,” she sighed.

“That’s because you’re dying,” said Peter Piper, suddenly compassion itself, and she knew he would be crying if only he could.

He put one arm round her shoulders. The arm, the hand attached to it, everything about the beautiful boy was so cold it almost hurt.

Almost, but not quite. Nothing would hurt her again. Not even the gaping wound on her arm.

“You’re coming with us,” explained Herman, “into our own world where angels dared not tread.”

“But isn’t he, the pretty boy, an angel?” asked Elaine.

Herman laughed. “What, that rascal?” he said, “no, our world is the past and that’s where we’ll take you if you like, or even if you don’t like. To meet a whole parade of folk who’ve lived and died in this cottage, and even before it was built. It’s old, you know, and people do live and die. I did. I was around when the big war was being fought, and then I wasn’t. And the boy here…”

“Peter Piper?” asked Elaine, her lips not moving and her breath barely stirring the air.

“Is that what you call him? It suits him well enough, eh Peter Piper?”

The boy giggled and vanished.

“He’s always doing that,” complained Herman, “here one moment and gone the next. Come on, I’ll show you the way.”

And Elaine stood up! Well, a shadow of her did, the shape of her, the thoughts that drove her, they all stood up, but the remnants were left behind in the too-small wooden chair.

“Come on,” ordered Herman, “there’s no time to look back! The past is all that matters because the future, the grisly bones that will become you, are no longer in any way important. Now come on, up the stairs and out of the door into the pantry and the fresh breeze of long ago and far away.”

“But…” she muttered.

“There’s no time for buts. Or all the time under the sun if you like, but no time and eternity are roughly the same thing. So come along.”

She understood, though she didn’t, not really. But Herman seemed to, and that was all that really mattered. So the shadow of her, the thoughts and all that stuff, followed Herman up the stairs.

The pantry was there.

“They bricked this door up!” she gasped as she walked through it, “they bricked it up and left me in the shadows to die.”

“Which, being a lovely lady and considerate, is exactly what you did,” nodded Herman, “welcome to the past!”

“The past,” she whispered, “what part of it, I wonder?”

“Why, all of it, silly!” laughed Peter Piper, who was back.

“Now just you stop that!” ordered Herman with sudden ferocity, not that it made much difference.

“He means there’s any part of the past that you might want,” explained Herman, “in his childish way. He died when he was eleven years old. By died I mean that’s how old he was when they beat the life out of him and he joined us. Shouldn’t have been so cheeky!”

“There’s dinosaurs,” grinned Peter, “great big things that wander around mindlessly either eating the grass and stuff, or filling their bellies with each other.”

“From an age or more ago,” nodded Herman, “and even before then. There’s warm seas and the boring souls that lived in them. Not much conversation there, you know. In fact, none at all. There’s not much thought going on when your entire body is only one cell in size!”

“I remember!” gasped Elaine, “the glorious monotony of being!”

“Exactly,” sighed Herman, “I couldn't have put it better myself.”

“And that was then?” she asked.

“Then is everywhen,” nodded Herman, “you latch on quickly. I’d say it’s time for noggins.”

“Noggins?”

“Of course. Being dead we don’t need to eat but it’s nice to have a time we might spend together sort of socially, so we call it noggins rather than tea-time. So come on and meet nobody or somebody and learn how to be dead!”

© Peter Rogerson 23.08.21

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