(diaryland) November 26, 2009 - 1:59 p.m.

Chapter the Seventeenth

I left the Heat Death of the Universe where it was, which was on the screen of my computer, and ran down the hall.

Vaughn was fairly blue in the face when I got to the bedroom. By fairly, I mean there were still hints of purple. I guess that�s about as blue as you can get if you�re not freezing to death, actually. His eyes had gone all bloodshot and bulgy.

I waved my hands around in panic, and said, �Uhh� Uhmm��

Vaughn pointed frantically at his throat. Maybe he had a hairball in there.

I had a vague idea on how to do the Heimlich manoeuvre, but considering I was fiendishly short, and that Vaughn was fiendishly tall, I couldn�t see how I was going to get my arms around him, let alone lift him up a bit and do that jerky movement thing I�d observed on night-time TV, so I did the natural thing and flung open the wardrobe doors for the first time ever, found a badminton set that was packaged with a big maroon bow, ripped it open, and hit him on the back with all my strength repeatedly with a racquet.

Geez. This house had come with everything.

Whatever was caught in Vaughn�s throat flew out and hit the wall. It sounded like plastic.

He flopped back onto the bed and gasped for air. His face went from purple, to bright red, then back to normal. �Fuck, dude, that kills,� he wheezed eventually. �Couldn�t you just fire a nail gun into my back next time?�

For some reason, there was a lot of dust swirling around in the air that I hadn�t noticed before. Perhaps I�d disturbed the general layer of uncleanliness over everything and all the grains were just trying to find a new home. I�d heard that a lot of the dust lying around people�s houses blew into people�s windows from space.

This dust I was seeing was only actually about ten percent deep space dust. Most of it had actually come off Vaughn�s back when I whacked him with a badminton racquet. But I didn�t figure that out until later.

I crawled around on the floor and located the item. It was a phlegm covered toy soldier, bright orange. It was exactly like the ones that had rained out of the fountain last night.

I held it up to Vaughn�s face. �Is this yours?� I asked.

Vaughn remained lying there, and looked at me and said, �You need a shower. And I need a pizza. Let it be so.�

That was a bossy and rude thing to say to someone who had just saved their life, and had braved the phlegm to pick up and show them what had just been ejected from their windpipe. But I could see his point about me rather needing a shower. I hated that he was right and that I was foul. �I may consider doing the first one,� I said. And then I left the room. Hmph.

I couldn�t exactly remember the last time I had a shower. I was washing off days and days of grime and arguments and fear and hiding and magic and statue. Maybe the last time I washed was the day before my annual leave started. I thought about Biff and the guys I worked with and how they were a layer of consciousness that rested like ash on top of another layer of consciousness, which was my life before that. Now I had a new layer, a layer that I wished would wash off before I went back to work. I wasn�t entirely sure whether I wanted all of it to go away, but so far it seemed much more trouble than it was worth.

No, I didn�t really want my annual leave to end.

The only thing was, I couldn�t see what had happened last night to work itself out into anything but a big mess.

So, anyway, I had a shower that lasted for about twenty minutes, which I figured was OK in these times of water restrictions because if you averaged out the amount of times I had been washing with the length of this particular go, I�d still come out with an average of about two minutes per day. Damn, that was a good shower.

That was actually probably the last shower I would ever have.

I can�t say the above sentence for sure yet. But I�m pretty sure.

Anyway, I towelled myself behind the ears, and whatever else you do when you�re trying to cease being dripping wet, and left my deluxe bathroom with the feature skylight to rummage around on my couch near the TV for clothes. I really needed to buy clean undies. Washing undies was too hard for me right now.

When I got to my big TV room, Vaughn was not only there, he was lying on my clothes.

�I ordered a pizza,� he said.

This was nothing short of a miracle. I had never, ever, ever used my house phone before. Well, I had eight. But I�d never used any of them before. Well, I had used one once, by picking up and hearing no dial tone, so I had come to the conclusion that I would have to have the phones connected, and that would have taken some brain cells to figure out, and it wasn�t worth it because I had never wanted to speak to anyone in the last year anyway until a couple of weeks ago. Oh yeah, and I�d left my mobile in the truck.

�How the hell?� I asked, sounding like I was in wonderment, which, funnily enough, I was.

�Yeah, I know,� he said. �I picked up the phone and knew how to connect it and everything, and then I knew what number to ring to get a pizza, and I knew what kind of pizza you liked, and then I ordered the kind of pizza I liked instead, which is Hawaiian. Sorry.�

He was right. I hated Hawaiian.

�Ugh,� I said.

�Yeah, I know,� he said. �I think I have superhuman thinking powers too now.�

I tried to direct my thoughts to getting him the hell off my couch so that I could get out of my towel, but nothing happened. He wasn�t that good.

�Move, man. You�re on my gear,� I said.

�Oh, shit, sorry,� he said.

A car horn honked outside.

�I�ll get it,� Vaughn said, and leapt off the couch. He ran down the hall and then paused. He looked out the sidelight near the front door.

�Hey, Anastasia, the pizza guy can�t get into the yard because of your stupid truck. Can you go get the pizza please?� he yelled.

�You get it, man. I�m trying to get clothed here,� I yelled back.

�I can�t! I�m scared!� He yelled, pitifully.

�Scared of what?� I yelled.

�That the fountain will eat me!�

Oh, yeah, right. Of course.

�Fucking hell. Alright then,� I said.

I thumped down the hall in my towel, grabbed random cash off the table near the door and went and got the pizza.

The pizza guy and I exchanged goods and money through the gaps in my wrought iron fence. He was clearly bemused and uncomfortable. �Pizza for breakfast, hey?� he asked.

�I hate this type of pizza,� I said, and then stormed back into the house. My statue didn�t look at me.

�You got a backyard, right?� asked Vaughn as I basically threw the pizza at him and stormed back into my rumpus room.

�Yeah,� I said.

�Let�s eat there.�

I went outside eventually and came across Vaughn, lying on a banana lounge, looking like he owned the place. He had even managed to acquire a ladies� large-brimmed sunhat which he had covering his face.

An empty pizza box had been flung onto the ground somewhat near him. Ants were already streaming over it, trying to pick off the dregs. I couldn�t help thinking of the similarity between that and watching Vaughn get ripped to shreds by hundreds of naked women and squeezed into the fountain that horrific night.

�Sorry I ate all the pizza,� he said languidly through the sunhat, �but I was so, so hungry and I knew you didn�t like pineapple.�

�Whatever,� I said, and lay down on a nearby banana lounge that was only very slightly covered in bird shit.

We may have lounged like that for over half an hour. I could hear a rattle in Vaughn�s chest, and I think I heard it over five hundred times.

It was good to have a proper guest over, doing proper guest things. This is kind what I had envisioned all those nights ago before I opened the back of the truck to find Vaughn in a foetal position, begging to be released onto the streets of St Kilda. I wondered whether he wondered where I�d put his wheelchair. I hoped he wouldn�t ask.

Maybe he did have superhuman thought picking up abilities, because the thing he said to break the silence, just after I�d thought about it, was, �What happened to my wheelchair?�

�I abandoned it behind a cemetery in Eldorado,� I said. It sounded true, because it was true. If it wasn�t true, it wouldn�t have sounded true. Yeah.

�OK,� he said. �Fair enough.�

I said, �Why don�t you call your Mum?�

He sighed. �I don�t want to yet. I just want to lie here and be here and listen to you listening to my breathing.�

�What�s with your breathing, actually?� I asked.

�I�m fairly sure there is another plastic soldier stuck somewhere in my respiratory system.�

�Oh.�

Then we lay there in silence again. I could see that there was a large mosquito generation facility in my dank dollar sign-shaped pool. The sun crawled across the sky. I wished I could chisel the day into a big block of marble and leave it in the backyard forever.

I cleared my throat and was about to say something, but Vaughn beat me to it.

�You know, I don�t want -� he started to say, but then what he was trying to finish saying came out in a series of death-rattling coughs, each worse than the last. It sounded like the coughs of a thousand-year-old man made of pustules and buboes.

I looked around for some kind of whacking device. There were none at hand.

So, as Vaughn Bourbon, titular King of France and Navarre, rival of Charles Napoleon, titular Emperor to the Imperial throne of France, survivor of assassination attempts and interdimensional travel through a very small hole sat there, huddled over, I kicked him very, very hard in the back.

Any incredibly short person would have done the same.

Once again, huge clouds of dust emanated from Vaughn�s back, and this time, I knew that it wasn�t due to my lack of housekeeping.

The toy soldier did not come out. I kicked him again. Once again, clouds of dust flew up, everywhere, even into my nostrils.

It was this point that the thought finally crossed my mind that Vaughn might be disintegrating.

His coughing migrated seamlessly into gagging, and with a generous serving of bile with pineapple, the second toy soldier exited his body. After a series of tears came out of Vaughn�s eyes and mingled with the bile on his chin, a couple of others came out too.

�Woah, shit,� I said. And then, when five more soldiers came out in a myriad of bright colours, and Vaughn was shrouded in more and more dust, I thought, this guy is going to die.

All signs were pointing to Vaughn Bourbon collapsing into a cloud of dust and plastic toys within about the next six minutes. Shit, shit, shit.

I screeched, �Wait there!� which was a bit superfluous, and then ran down the driveway to the fountain. I ran to the statue. I held it. It wasn�t moving.

I put my arms around its neck but it looked blank. �Come on, man. Help me. Help me,� I said. I put my forehead on its forehead and looked into the drilled holes of its pupils. There was nothing. The sunlight was beaming down onto it and it was bright white and warm but it was dead.

The fountain began to rain toy soldiers again. This time, it was not a nice, light shower of cute coloured figures holding uzis. It was a sharp, pummelling, relentless barrage. I let go of the statue and covered my head with my arms. Toy soldiers were getting tangled in my hair. My forearms were getting little cuts and bruises. The sky over me darkened.

�Bwahhh!!!� I yelled as I ran the gauntlet to the shadow of my truck, tripping and nearly breathing in plastic.

I knew what the fountain was trying to say, though.

Back down the driveway I went, and to the spluttering cloud of dust and toys that was only very loosely Vaughn shaped. God, it was awful.

I started to cry as I dragged the banana lounge onto the driveway. Vaughn was evaporating into the atmosphere. I hoped that his essence was still there.

Coughing and breathing the shards of Vaughn Bourbon in, I pushed this mess down the driveway. The screech of the steel chair legs on the tessellated stone pavement was agony.

When we got to the front yard, there was a tornado of ash coming out of the mouth of the fountain. The Atmospheric Skull was back, more malevolent than before. I couldn�t see the statue through the toy soldiers. I couldn�t see just about anything at all through my tears.

I pushed Vaughn�s scant remains on the banana lounge onto the lawn, crushing the rainbow plastic toys in the way. The wind was howling. It took the words out of my mouth and made them irrelevant.

�Fine! Take this, you fucking fountain!� I cried.

I pushed the top of the banana lounge forward like I was emptying a wheelbarrow, and the desiccated, plastic remains of Vaughn Bourbon heaved onto the ground.

I hid behind the banana lounge, slowly retreating.

The whole mess began to move. It bubbled away and turned into superheated glue. The piles and piles of toy soldiers started to seethe. They got sticky under my feet and started to crawl up my legs.

This was not cool.

I decided to fight back. I tore at the plastic that was daring to climb my legs in the swirling cyclone that was my front yard, and kicked and punched whatever the hell it was that was going on all around me. This fucking plastic must have been over a hundred degrees; it seared the top layer of skin off my ankles.

Finally, it began to retreat. The whole big torrent began to retreat. The leering Atmospheric Skull became less defined and started to deflate back into the fountain. The molten, churning plastic which had once been individual bright colours but was now a throng of brown fell up into the fountain, like it was being played in reverse.

The sky stopped being red. It went back to being a normal, sunny day. The grass was slightly singed. That was all.

It was insulting.

I lay there with my sore ankles for an indeterminate period of time. The tears continued to flow out of my eyes and end up in all sorts of directions. Into my nose, dripping from my ear lobes, wherever gravity decided to take them.

Finally, when my eyes ached to much to squeeze out another tear, I got up and dragged the banana lounge back down the driveway. In some ways, that banana lounge was a heroic banana lounge. It had mostly protected me from being consumed by molten toy soldiers, with only a few scratches on the legs. But it was the scene of a very unpleasant event.

I threw it into the dollar-sign shaped pool. A whole cache of disturbed mosquitoes flew off. Yuck.

I went back to the place where the banana lounge had been sitting, just near mine. There was a tiny pile of rainbow toy soldiers still. There didn�t seem to be any rhyme of reason as to what the fountain wanted and what it rejected. Why didn�t the fountain take these, too? This whole thing was senseless.

I picked up the toy soldiers and went inside. I laid them out in a row on the edge of the kitchen bench carefully. There were six of them, all different.

I pondered them a moment, and then I went to bed. There was no more point crying again.