(diaryland) November 06, 2009 - 9:50 a.m.

In one news, work sux. In other news, I just ate a pear. In other other news, here's the latest chapter in my novel, Balwyn Fountain. I finally forced my other main character to appear in it.

Chapter the Fifth

The View just wasn�t cutting it the next day. It wasn�t taking the edge off my torment in the way it normally did with its discussions, or its close resemblance to white noise. The groaning mushrooms had become more groany in the last fifteen hours. I had spied on them through the sidelights at about eight-thirty that morning, and they had grown somewhat, some of them reaching just about a metre tall. The tallest one seemed to be bursting open at the top and a horrible, plastic-looking orange spear was emerging from it, accompanied by what looked like a churning cloud of toxic pollen. It reminded me a lot of a David Cronenberg film.

The naked statue guy on the fountain who had looked at me the other night caught me staring. I ran back down the hall, embarrassed.

I couldn�t wait until seven-thirty that night. I thought that overall, the first support group meeting had been crap, and fairly useless, but those workbook things sounded alright. At least everybody in the support group seemed normal. Not like me. Maybe their normality would rub off on me.

I spent most of the afternoon in a ball in the corner of the rumpus room, wondering about the sculpture, the Atlas, that had winked at me. I could see its face in my mind�s eye through the cloud of purple mushroom pollen, looking questioning. It had laurel in its stone hair and its shoulders were shiny. It was so new and pure in its whiteness. It would take two thousand years lying in a river to dull its sheen, and then you could pull it up the riverbank, polish it off and it would return to its original purity, just with the sharpness only slightly taken off the details in the hair.

I didn�t know whether it was something that would protect me, or the face I put to evil mastermind behind my imaginary woes. Probably neither, since it was just another part of the bloody fountain.

The thought of the Atlas was like a virus. I tried to shake it off. My thoughts slowly drifted towards how the hell I was going to escape certain death at the hands of my front yard this time. I rummaged around in my pile of clothes on the couch and came up with a big sunhat. I had this thing about protecting my head when it came to the front yard. Not sure why. I used a belt to strap it to my head in order to not have my only spare piece of headwear disappear into the fountain as well. I grabbed a dust mask from the laundry and put it on so I had a slightly reduced chance of getting asphyxiated from the purple mushroom pollen. God knew how huge and ripe they were by now. I shuddered at the thought of that horrible orange spear shape that had burst out of the biggest mushroom and what the hell the mushrooms did with them. Ugh.

I left the house from the back door this time. Though I dreaded looking at anything outside at the moment, I dared myself to cop a glance. Normality. Just long grass, and the slimy, dollar-sign-shaped swimming pool, and the outdoor furniture setting for fifteen, and the citrus trees, and the stone urn filled with lupins, and the banana lounges. It was innocent. It was peaceful.

I took a deep breath, ran down the drive, got a stitch halfway down, doubled over and panted momentarily, then sprinted to the truck. I kept my eyes on the truck.

As I leapt in through the window this time, I could hear something like what I imagined lancing a boil would sound like if you magnified it a thousand times, or the last few breaths of a victim to emphysema. Those procreating mushrooms were absolutely revolting.

I roared off, shuddering.

I took up most of the modest alleyway outside the bridge club again. I was a tad late. I could blame my fountain for that. This time, the place was actually properly lit. There was a lamp on the table, in the shape of a dolphin. The chairs were still choking the room, all in the way. From what I could tell, every single person in the room was wearing the exact same thing they had been wearing the day before, including myself. Well, mostly. Unfortunately, I hadn�t taken my belted hat off yet.

I noticed an extra person today, leaning on the table as well. I could tell in a second that was Dave. He had a loveable, blank expression on his face. I could tell why Doctor Andr� let his crappy work slide. He just seemed too hopeless for you to want to tell him off.

�Have you got the workbooks?� murmured Doctor Andr�.

�Uh, no,� murmured Dave.

�Could you please go and get them? Officeworks shuts at eight PM, I think.�

�Uh, OK,� said Dave, and he walked out, jangling car keys and tripping over chairs.

He let this man drive?

And so, the scene inside the little cluttered bridge club shed was just as it was the last night, except for the dolphin lamp and except for the large straw hat I still had belted on, but was currently trying to remove.

�Alright,� said Doctor Andr�. �We�ve just about got our workbooks, and we�re all back here again, and we�ve got some proper light this time. Things are looking up!�

I made a clang as the belt buckle I was trying to put down quietly hit a chair leg. I flung the hat on the floor and I felt an indentation all the way around my jaw and up the sides of my face. Goddamn belt. I was most likely just seeming crazier and crazier to these people I barely knew.

Doctor Andr� waited for me to make sure I wasn�t going to clang again. And then he asked, �Do you all now have partners?�

Everybody except me put up their hands to indicate the affirmative. Well, those cheeky little buggers.

�That�s fantastic! So our little attempt at a meeting last night did prove fruitful! And how many of you spent a little time having a chat to each other about the reasons why you think you need to be here?�

Most people put their hands up, except for the clown-shaped man in the business suit and the bespectacled guy in the �I ♥ MELISSA� hoodie.

So, those two were partners. Well, they deserved each other. They sucked.

Doctor Andr� looked at me with a little bit of sympathy, which I didn�t appreciate. �I suppose that since we�ve got odd numbers, this would be inevitable,� he said. �Don�t take it personally.�

�I�m not,� I lied.

I was fully aware that I didn�t have a support group partner most likely due to the fact that I seemed hostile, and the fact that I�d fucked off so early last night. And if there�s odd numbers, someone has to be the loser. I knew that. That was obvious. But I still felt sulky.

That was my normal state of being in recent months, though.

�We�ll see if we get someone who put forward an expression of interest come through in the next few weeks. And you can pair up with Dave until then. I�m sure he�d be rapt. How does that sound?� Asked Doctor Andr�.

�OK, I guess,� I said. I didn�t know if Dave was capable of being rapt, from what I�d seen and heard. Just living day to day was probably a triumph for Dave, I had a feeling.

�Yay,� I said, and crossed my arms.

�Alright, then,� said Doctor Andr�. �So, out of those of you who had a bit of a chat together already, who said something out loud about their lives who had never said it before?�

Three people put their hands up. That was pretty impressive, unless their problem was merely that their name was Michael Bolton.

�So � that�s fantastic!� said Doctor Andr�. �Do we have anyone who is willing to share with the whole group?�

The clown-shaped man in the business suit�s hand shot up.

�I�m sorry, Michael Bolton, but we have already heard from you recently. How about we give someone else a go � how about you, young lady?� Doctor Andr� pointed at the small lady all in grey.

�Oh, me? I would be able to do that,� said the lady in grey, half into her chest. Her voice was high and gentle. �That is, if nobody objects.�

Her voice was so calming that we all waited, unmoving, to go on. She had the kind of voice that casts a spell. She sounded like a little furry baby possum would sound like if it was snuggling and if it could talk.

�My name is Kollwitz,� she began. �I was born in 1921 on the edge of Lublin. My father was a shoemaker and my mother made lace for old ladies who still wanted it on their collars. I had a nice childhood, playing with my brothers and sisters in the fields and the abandoned mill that lay near our house just outside the city. We got by, and we got along. That is, until the Third Reich came about.�

At this point, I was confused because she looked about thirty-ish.

She continued on. �One day, when I went to the bakery to buy my Mum a loaf for dinner, some police stopped me and took me away. They were taking everyone away at the time. They put me in a cell, and more and more people piled into it. Then, after two days, they sent me to a castle � God knows where. It was vast and I was so confused. They put me in a room that had the ghosts of chandeliers in it. It was grubby and there were white rectangles on all the walls where the pictures had been taken off.

�I was kept in this room with about twenty other people. It was a hospital ward. Nobody started off sick, but we were put on a special diet anyway. It was called the T4 diet. We were on it for several weeks before the first person died.

�The T4 diet was an experimental diet. It was mostly one or two meals a day of broth, and a bit of bread. The broth sometimes had a few vegetables in it, but nothing substantial. The nurses would come in and measure us every day, and they would get us to walk up and down the aisle between all the beds and ask us to lift the same things, every time. They measured us and they took notes. We began to work out that the day you couldn�t lift the heaviest object anymore was about two weeks before you were finished. Old or young, it was about the same.

�We all lay there, in our beds, soundless and still. It was hard to tell who was alive or not, and often the only way we knew another one of us had been lost was when the nurses tried to wake them and they no longer responded.

�The feeling of starving to death, inch by inch, was in a way, the most comfortable feeling in the world. Not the first week. That was agony. But I was receding, and living in a cloud, and the only interruption through the fog of my consciousness was the daily assessment. Even that was alright.

�The day I couldn�t lift the apple off the table � that was the day I knew I would die. I didn�t mind. I didn�t care. There were only five of us left by then. Nobody replaced us. The room went quieter.

�That night, I heard a rattling at the window. A tiny blue light flooded the room. I wasn�t afraid. It sounded like somebody was trying to get in, like a little bird. None of us could have helped them, even if we wanted to. Was it a trick? Was it a tree tapping the window in the breeze? Nothing like this crossed my mind. I just wanted to continue in my half-sleep.

�The tapping ceased but the weak blue light remained. Then came the smell of burning, but not quite like any other burning smell I�d ever experienced before. Then, the sound of a latch.

�Somebody came in. They were noiseless. I heard no sound of shoes. I could sense it coming towards me. It bent over my bed, and searched for my eyes.

�I didn�t know the words to describe the intruder at the time. I learned the words later. It was a grey alien in a motorcycle cap. It did a little zap thing with an anthropomorphic laser gun and I was suddenly on a swanky spacecraft in the Small Magellanic Cloud with a very large bowl of pumpkin soup. I took all this in my stride. I ate the soup � slowly and timidly at first, but after a day or so, it was easier. The bowl was bottomless. Then, the soup became thicker- it changed into myriads of different foods every few hours. I became stronger. I could sleep again. I had my own little room, which was in the shape of an egg and had things that came out of the walls when you thought about it, and everything was so strange and wondrous.

�I became nearly like my old self again. My hair had gone grey, though I was only nineteen. But there was colour in my cheeks.

�One day, after about two weeks, the alien with the motorcycle cap came back into my room and zapped me again. I ended up in Bourke Street Mall, two years ago. I think the alien didn�t think its rescue mission through. It delivered be to the middle of Melbourne with me just wearing a pair of pants. That was really embarrassing. I still don�t know why it wore a motorcycle cap, like the gang members in The Wild One. Maybe it thought it looked cool.

�Every day I think about the Shoah, and my family, and the alien. It still baffles me. I think I�ve travelled further than anybody else in the world. I know how to use the internet now. I can also do the ATM banking, but I�m still learning things.�

OK, so now I knew why she was born in 1921 and she looked like a thirty-year-old.

Michael Bolton put up his hand.

�Yes?� asked Doctor Andr� encouragingly.

�I want to retract my sob story, because I now sound like a fucking wanker. Can I do that?�

�No,� said Doctor Andr�. �I already wrote your name on a workbook.�

We lapsed into silence again.

Then, outside the open door in the dark came a dull thud, accompanied by a swear. I knew that it wasn�t the sound of Dave�s voice, returning with the textbooks, but I wouldn�t have put it past him not to be able to walk through an open, 820mm width, dolphin-lamp-lit doorway unscathed. That was the first time I heard the voice of Vaughn Bourbon.