(diaryland) November 12, 2009 - 9:35 a.m.

Part of this chapter happened to me in real life on Monday. I'll leave it up to you to decide which bit happened to me.

Chapter the Ninth

�Hey, I�ve got a question to ask you!� Vaughn yelled, enthusiastically, still waving there in the dark on the other side of the road, his glasses glinting.

He must have forgotten what happened at the end last night. He must have.

But then, forgetting the weird part of last night would have also entailed him forgetting where I lived, because the weirdest part of the night happened where I lived.

So he did remember the weirdest part of last night.

I was still in disbelief. I even put my hand up to my chin and felt it to make sure this was happening.

�Why are you here?� I yelled across the road from my doorstep. The fountain loomed between us.

�I told you. I came to ask you a question. And, hey, I saw you for a second without your sunglasses on. Why the hell do you keep them on your doorstep? I�m not sure if you�ve heard of this, but they make hallway tables to house items like that, you know.�

Vaughn yelled all of this from the other side of the road. If the revoltingly made-up lady who had complained about the Atmospheric Skull did indeed live there, she would have cracked the shits for sure. As it was, there was no oversized Land Rover in the driveway. Maybe she was at some posh restaurant, arguing with her husband. If she was real.

�Was that the question?� I yelled back.

Finally, he rolled over to my side of the street, squeakily. It was like the sound of a toy excavator being wheeled through a sandpit.

�No, that was not the question,� he half-yelled. �Come over here.�

I hated it when people said stuff like that. Come over here. Take your sunglasses off. Hmph. So bossy. At least put please at the end. At least put an upwards inflection at the end of the sentence. Phrasing it as an actual question would be best.

So I said, �No. You come over here.�

He was under the shade of the elm tree in the nature strip, but his chin was lit up with moonlight. �Dude, I cannot get into your yard,� he shouted. �Your highly uncomfortable truck is in the way, and so is your fence.�

What the fuck? Last night, coming loose in my truck was borne like the worst thing that had ever happened to him, and then I left him to fend for himself in the middle of St Kilda Junction like a gutless wonder, and now he was kind of vaguely joking about it.

�Oh, alright then,� I said impatiently, but I was secretly happy. Secretly baffled too, but secretly happy. Fingers crossed I�d actually made a friend.

I crossed the yard. Vaughn came out of the shade and held onto the fence.

Tonight, he wasn�t wearing a purposely obscure band t-shirt. I wondered if it had anything to do with what I�d said when I�d met him.

�I still didn�t ask the question,� he said.

�Yep,� I said.

�Well, do you want to know what it is?� He asked.

�I guess so,� I said. �I don�t have to answer it if I don�t want to.�

�Well, this is it.�

He paused. For spite, I think, just to keep me in suspense a little longer, or to make it sound like it was going to be a very, very serious question.

�Do you have a Mum called Alix?�

I was glad I was wearing my huge sunglasses. �Yeah,� I said, hesitantly, and questioningly.

�I thought you looked familiar,� he said, �especially when I saw you just before when you bent down to pick up your shades.�

I was confused. �I don�t reckon I�ve ever met you before, except for yesterday.�

�You haven�t. Well, maybe we have seen each other before. Did you used to live in Shepparton?�

�Yes.� I was increasingly dumbfounded. �I lived there until I went to uni.�

�You went to study ballet at the VCA, right?�

What the fuck?

�Yeah,� I said.

�Ha! That�s so funny! Your Mum told me you were going to go and do that. She said that you thought you were pretty average, but you figured, why not give it a go anyway? Everybody always thinks they�re going to be the fucking best. I liked that.�

�This is stressful,� I said. �I don�t know how you know this.� I leant my forehead on the closest paling. It felt freezing in the hot night air.

�Your Mum was my maths teacher in Year 12, stupid! I used to live in Shepparton, too, before my Dad went psycho and we had to move to Melbourne.�

�Oh,� I said.

�I was a bit of a cunt back in those days. You know how eighteen-year-old boys are. I gave her a hard time, but she was good. Yeah, a really good teacher.�

�Yeah, she helped me with my maths and stuff,� I said. �But I went to Shepparton Girls�.� I rubbed my forehead on the paling.

�Hey, look at me for a sec,� Vaughn said.

I did. He wasn�t doing anything remarkable. It was just him. His face, looking at my face. It didn�t look curious. Not satisfied either. I couldn�t read the expression. He was so confusing.

My eyes were red under the sunglasses. �Why do you want me to look at you?� I asked.

�Dunno,� he said. �I just wanted to see if I could see anything.�

�OK,� I said.

We were still both holding onto black iron palings, like we were in jail on both sides.

�Hey, I told the taxi that dropped me off here to come and pick me up in ten minutes,� he said.

�OK,� I said. Was I now to provide entertainments?

I could have sworn I heard something rustle. I looked behind me. The yard seemed to be as it was. I turned back again.

�Your profile is different to your full face,� Vaughn said.

�I�d have a pretty fucking weird face if it was the same,� I said.

He laughed. �What happened to you last year?� he asked.

�I don�t want to talk about it,� I said.

At first, the thing that the fountain did next was a big relief because I really wanted to get off the topic of last year. Just when I thought I was loosening up a bit, I discovered that I really wasn�t. I could still only bring myself to think three seconds ahead.

I looked behind me again.

The top of the fountain was murmuring like a sleeptalking mouth, just like last night. But, a ghostly flower did not come out. A wee, little, darling, tiny, miniature person came out, ran along the first tier, where the water would ordinarily dribble from the edges if I ever actually turned the thing on, and jumped off.

�Whee!� It shouted in a teeny-tiny voice.

I turned back to Vaughn. He was staring into my garden.

�Did you see that?� I whispered.

�Yes,� he whispered back, so so quietly.

�Did you see what came out of my fountain last night?�

�Yes,� he whispered in exactly the same way.

I don�t know where the tiny, tiny person ran to. The grass in my front yard was kinda long. But then, another tiny person came out of the fountain and dove off, so we watched that one instead. Then another one, then another one.

Events like this always tend to develop exponentially. They do a lot in animated movies. And so it happened here. Soon, dozens per minute of these little tiny people, all different, were coming out of the fountainhead.

My body was still facing Vaughn, but my head was facing the garden. The tiny people all had very long hair.

The next thing I noticed was the fact that I could now see the tiny people running around in the grass. They weren�t running anywhere in particular; just around and around, all over the place, all so random. They were growing. They were giggling. As they grew, they slowed down. Their insane speed became more human in scale as they became more human in scale. They were all pretty much naked ladies. By pretty much, I don�t mean that there were a couple of guys mixed in there. I mean that a couple of the ladies made a token effort and covered their pubes with a loincloth type thing. A fair few of them were wearing bunches of bracelets all up their arms, but nothing else. They were now weaving round each other in Isidora Duncan type dancing, like you�d imagine paintings on a vase to do if you woke them up.

�Fuckin� A,� said Vaughn.

I was constantly being reminded of how short I was in my daily life, and even though I might not have classed this as ordinary life, I was being reminded again. The ladies were starting to dance near me, like I was in their way of having a good time. They�d completely choked my yard. I got a couple of scarves flicked in my face. Not sure whether it was by accident, or they just didn�t want me, some short chick dressed like a trucker, raining on their parade.

Vaughn looked way too into this display.

I tried to look through the forest of ladies� limbs and tits, which was about my eye level, at the fountain. I tried to see something moving in marble. I tried to find my statue. I was sure that if I could just see it, it would do something. It was impossible.

My personal space was now being invaded, big time. �Uh, I�m going to get into my truck, turn the radio on and ride this wave of dancing nymphs or whatever out,� I said. �You�re quite welcome to wait for your taxi, or I could move my truck and let you in, or something else; just let me know.�

�OK,� said Vaughn, but he wasn�t really listening. He was reaching through the fence with his hand open.

It didn�t take very long before one of the naked ladies with the bangles all up her arms clasped his hand.

I made my way along the fence with great difficulty, getting hair from some wafty lady in my teeth at one point. I managed to get the door of my truck open and leapt in, slamming the door. I wound up the window and watched the scene unfold without me.

And unfold it did. Boy, did it unfold.

I actually had to take off my giant sunglasses in order to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing. Vaughn was being pulled through a fence that he didn�t physically fit through. From the other side of the window and through the chattering noises of the ladies, I could hear the faint screams of Vaughn Bourbon. I could barely see anything of him, but what I could see, it was not good. He was broken.

As soon as the naked ladies had him on this side of the fence, bloody and not exactly in one piece, they all turned into a big fleshy-coloured field of goop, and promptly blobbed back into the fountain with a squeaky balloon-on-balloon kind of noise. The part where they disappeared took about two seconds, just enough time for it to be indelibly imprinted on my mind forever, and just enough time for me to be able to slow the event down in my mind so I could watch it happen again for hours, even if I didn�t want to. And I didn�t.

The yard returned to its innocent self. The fence did not look like the scene of a attempted, if not successful magical murder. All that was left was Vaughn Bourbon�s bashed looking wheelchair on the pavement, slightly skewiff.

The Pretender to the throne of France and Navarre had gone.